Posts by johnnypenso

Elly, after reading your post I thought to myself, "holy cow this chick is headed for a heart attack...lol..  Then just for laughs I calculated my own max which would be about 172 (48) and I regularly hit that exact number on the highest intensity runs of my HIIT.  But like you, it feels right.  I can recover right back to 120 in about 60 seconds and my resting heart rate is around 60 and I think that's pretty good for my age and still being about 20 lbs overweight.

I just started them about 8 weeks ago.  They were tough at first but as my time increased from 30 seconds to a minute and beyond, I thought to myself, "Nice that you're improving Johnny but you've gotta speed this up you don't want to be in the gym all day".  So I looked around and found some 5, 10, 25 lb plates on the floor near me and threw a 5 pounder on my back and did the plank.  Voila!!!  Now I do a warm up set of planks for 30 seconds then add whatever weights I can so that I can only hold them 20-30 seconds...much tougher and saves time...

How I would "handle" that?  She's entitled to her opinion same as anyone else and like most people on most things, her opinion is not based on fact or up to date research, which is a pity, given her profession and the number of women she will train and provide with inaccurate information.  At best, you might have said to her, "I'm trying to follow the New Rules of Weight Lifting for Women workout routine, have you heard of it?"...and start a converstion from there.  You never know, maybe she just doesn't know.  At worst, smile and nod, smile and nod...

I was 5' 10" and 240 at one time.  I'm down to 182 now.  I'll tell you what's worked best for me in the order of importance I think.

1.  Eating whole foods.  I cut out most processed foods and eat only lean cuts of meat (sparingly), fish, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds etc.   Whole foods are healthier, have more fibre and nutrition than processed foods, are cheaper and you'll feel much better physically.

2.  Eating protein with every meal.  Protein needs about 30% of it's calories just to process in the body so 100 calories of protein is really 70 net.   It also helps you feel fuller, longer.

3.  Strength training.  I used to do a lot of cardio, running 12-15 miles a week and circuit training.   A few weeks ago I started a strength training program and realize now that if I had done this a couple of years ago, I'd have been far better off.  I am much stronger, I look better, I've lost 14 lbs in 6 weeks and the workouts are much more enjoyable.  I found cardio pure drudgery.  I do 15-20 minutes of HIIT after my weight routine and I think that's plenty. 

4.  Attitude.  Weight, health and fitness are a marathon, not a sprint.  If you want to lose it quickly at any cost, you'll gain it back just as fast.  All the people I know that have lost weight and kept it off, did it over a long period of time, months or years.  Make it your passion, not your worry.  Enjoy it, revel in it, don't punish yourself over it and look forward to learning new and exciting things about food and fitness.

It's easy for me to say, but unless you are planning on stopping your weight loss where you are now, don't worry about it.  The weight went on where your body's genes decided it will go and it will came off the same way...wherever your genes decide it comes off.  You can't change it, you can't spot reduce so why worry about it?  Stick to your routine, it's working like a charm (congratulations!) and you'll get to where you want to go and look even more fabulous than you do now!!!

For your workout, make sure you do the cardio at the end of the session or on separate days from your weight lifting.  Also, ab work, while toning or building abs is no different than any other muscle.  If you think you're going to get rock hard abs by doing 100 crunches on an ab roller, think again.  Would you get rock hard biceps by lifting a weight you can lift 100 times without stopping?  No.  Work your abs like any other muscle, sets of 5-10 depending on your training style work best for all muscles, for most people.

Don't want to get too technical here but complex and simple carbohydrates usually pertains to the properties of an unprocessed food.  Oats for example are a complex carbohydrate but in processing going from an oat groat, to common large flake oats to quick oats, with each level of processing they rise on the glycemic index thereby affecting your blood sugar in a negative manner with each rise.  Oat groats are much better for your pancreas and blood sugar levels than quick oats, but technically both are from a complex carbohydrate source. 

White flour in white bread, of course comes from wheat, which is a complex carbohydrate, but once you strip out most of the fibre and nutrition, it goes way up on the glycemic scale as white bread again negatively impacting your blood sugar. 

As Meryl said, whole grains are the key and learning to decipher nutrition labels is also key if you are buying lots of packaged, processed foods.   If the first ingredient on the list is not a whole grain, then it doesn't matter what the advertising says or the fancy words on the package, it's not whole grain.

Maybe you can try pasta made with different grains like spelt pasta.  I've had that once or twice and I really liked it...I think regular pasta is as bland as eating shredded paper, it's what you put on it that makes the dish...lol...

I wouldn't call it an addiction but I can't buy it and keep it in the house because I'll just eat it all...lol.  I love Candy Corn!!!

I have to admit I'm really enjoying this thread..you guys are hilarious...lol...

Well if you want to be entirely accurate Foie, NaCl, is not the only type of "salt" or sodium source one can consume in processed or packaged foods.  You could also include the following and much more:

To break it down even further, something like MSG is always contained in the following food products without direct labelling of such:

Glutamate

Glutamic Acid

Textured protein

Yeast Extract

Monopotassium glutamate

Hydrolyzed protein

Hyrdolyzed corn gluten...etc. etc. etc...it's a long list...

I don't know about All Bran Meryl, that's one of the wonderful things about the FDA and our regulatory agency here in Canada...you are allowed to call one thing, many different things, and most companies do when they are trying to deceive you.  

About fructose in fruit...one of my general rules of thumb is...when in doubt, defer to mother nature.   For me it's not a debate about whether HFCS cause this or that specific illness or symptom...it's that there is doubt and I don't need to eat packaged and processed foods, I don't need to drink coke...so I just don't.  Sure once in a while I do when I feel like it cause a little isn't going to harm you, but I just made it a part of my lifestyle not to eat stuff with HFCS or processed food in general.

One piece of advice Paulina that helps me get through crappy weeks...Losing weight or getting healthy is a marathon, not a sprint.   A long term perspective really helps to smooth out the bad weeks...lol...

Yay, another boob thread I can contribute to...lol.  Yes, breast size does contribute to bodyfat %.   Using Kaila for example who is 5'5" tall and weighs 110 lbs at 32DD, and has a BF% of 20 or less, much of that body fat is in her breasts.   If she were a B cup for example, she would likely only weigh about 102-104 lbs and have a much lower BF%, likely around 12-15%.   At 5'5" and 102 lbs most people would consider that very unhealthy. 

Breasts are mostly fat, and some women are just genetically programmed to store fat there as there last resort.  For some women it's on the hips, for some it's in the butt, for some it's on the tummy...everyone is different.

First thing I'd do is make the switch to regular oats from quick oats.  Regular oats are much lower on the glycemic index than quick oats and digest slower, leaving you fuller, longer, for the same calories.  They only take 5 minutes to cook, not much time really.  Other than that, go nuts...lol.  There have been many oatmeal threads on CC for you to look up and you'll find hundreds of ideas...

A friend of mine asked me the very same question a few months ago, and below you'll find a copy and paste of some reserach I did for him:

How it’s Made:

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is produced by processing corn starch to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose to produce a high percentage of fructose. First, cornstarch is treated with alpha-amylase to produce shorter chains of sugars called polysaccharides. Alpha-amylase is industrially produced by a bacterium, usually Bacillus sp It is purified and then shipped to HFCS manufacturers.Next, an enzyme called glucoamylase breaks the sugar chains down even further to yield the simple sugar glucose. Unlike alpha-amylase, glucoamylase is produced by Aspergillus, a fungus, in a fermentation vat where one would likely see little balls of Aspergillus floating on the top

The third enzyme, glucose-isomerase, is very expensive. It converts glucose to a mixture of about 42 percent fructose and 50-52 percent glucose with some other sugars mixed in. While alpha-amylase and glucoamylase are added directly to the slurry, pricey glucose-isomerase is packed into columns and the sugar mixture is then passed over it. Inexpensive alpha-amylase and glucoamylase are used only once, glucose-isomerase is reused until it loses most of its activity. There are two more steps involved. First is a liquid chromatography step that takes the mixture to 90 percent fructose. Finally, this is back-blended with the original mixture to yield a final concentration of about 55 percent fructose--what the industry calls high fructose corn syrup.HFCS has the exact same sweetness and taste as an equal amount of sucrose from cane or beet sugar but it is obviously much more complicated to make, involving vats of murky fermenting liquid, fungus and chemical tweaking, all of which take place in one of 16 chemical plants located in the Corn Belt. Yet in spite of all the special enzymes required, HFCS is actually cheaper than sugar. It is also very easy to transport--it's just piped into tanker trucks. This translates into lower costs and higher profits for food producers.

Why It’s Bad

Besides the way it’s made, there's a couple of other murky things that consumers should know about HFCS. According to a food technology expert, two of the enzymes used, alpha-amylase and glucose-isomerase, are genetically modified to make them more stable. Enzymes are actually very large proteins and through genetic modification specific amino acids in the enzymes are changed or replaced so the enzyme's "backbone" won't break down or unfold. This allows the industry to get the enzymes to higher temperatures before they become unstable.