Posts by denise07

Original Post by alibsam:

I love how quick some people are to judge other people's lives.

 

As always, udok... wishing you the best of luck. :)

 Agreed.. hope it all works out and that you and your family find happiness.

The temperature fluctuations in the last several decades are not out of the normal range if you consider geologic time -- millions and millions of years.

But we know a few things:

1) temperature is increasing VERY fast. Faster than we know has happened before. These changes have been in 100 years, not 1 million.

2) CO2 and other greenhouse gases have the potential to cause global warming in the atmosphere.

3) we have been realeasing a lot more CO2 at the same time that we have seen the superfast global temperature increases.

4) the temperature increases have far surpassed expectations based on natural causes alone.

5) even if we stop releasing greenhouses gases now, the earth will still continue to warm from all of the stuff currently out there. But it will warm much more if we do nothing, and the differences in consequences of that warming between those two alternatives is expected to be very dramatic.

6) if we decide that we don't know enough and wait until "the jury is in," then we will have to deal with the more dire consequences.

7) even if we think we are not to blame for global warming in general, we are certainly contributing to the speed by pumping out greenhouse gases, and climate change is not just going to decrease biodiversity and kill polar bears, it is going to make our lives much more difficult.  If you have kids and grandkids, this should matter to you.

Another thing I just don't get is why some folks think that anyone who brings up environmental issues like climate change is some sort of fraud. Look at the sides of the issue -- what does each have to gain from their position? The oil companies -- clear economic benefits. The environmentalists? What exactly do we have to gain? We are ALL going to pay for climate change. We will pay more the longer we wait to address it.

Thanks Pam. I usually have cereal for breakfast, which I weigh out, and the unsweetened vanilla almond breeze with it, then either a nonfat latte or a protein shake for a mid-morning snack, a fast food grilled chicken sandwich for lunch, some coffee with creamer in the afternoon, and then dinner is varied. Sometimes I will just snack to get to 1500 calories, last week I had spaghetti on a few days (weighed out the noodles) and low fat hot dogs a couple of days (45 cal dogs & 45 cal bread with mustard). I do eat a lot of sodium but even if I were retaining water, I wouldn't just keep retaining more and more, would I? It is just weird... it seemed like I had lost 5 lbs a couple of weeks ago but then TOM started and the weight all came back and has never gone away again.

Also pretty sure I did not gain 5 lbs of muscle since they tell me that is not quite that easy... I am going to do the big hike again Sat if it doesn't rain too much. Right now the forecast is 40% chance :(

Pam:

STEP AWAY FROM THE POPCORN!!!

Wow, everyone's doing great! The scale is still being mean to me, but I am still giving it a few more days for post-TOM water retention before I ceremoniously destroy it.

I am about to leave for an 8 mile hike that I hope is not a mistake because my hip is still bothering me from my hike on Saturday. I am loaded up on motrin and hope I make it back! At least I am hiking with a friend today and not by myself  like last weekend, so she can call for help I suppose. She is certainly not carrying me out! Anyway please wish me luck as I may need it!

Finally made it back to the gym last night after my leg muscles recovered from last weekend's death march! I realized I have only been to the gym 3 times this month, which is nowhere near my 3-5 times/ week goal! But I have been walking instead and still have an average calorie deficit of 1000/day since Jan 5, so I am happy that I have been able to adjust my intake.

I am getting really impatient for results now but it is still too soon to weigh.. maybe Monday I can get a realistic, non-bloat weight.

In other news, I can't be certain it is totally gone yet, but my vertigo seems to have gone away! Last night I did not have to fight the room spinning when I laid down for bed, like I have every night for the past 4 months! I am going to keep a close watch on it for a week or so but it may have finally left me! Yay!!!! YAY!!!!!!!! I HATE vertigo!

And now maybe I can do crunches again. I have done no crunches for 4 months because every time I tried I would get dizzy and fall off the ball. Funny to watch, I am sure, but not very effective!

I also cautiously tried some upper body weights yesterday with no shoulder pain this morning, so I guess it is time to go back to the trainer. I think I have to wait until Feb 1 just because of my schedule these next 2 weeks, though, it is crazy! And also I admit I want to get just a FEW more pounds back off before he sees me again, too....

If you are only interested in fitness classes, check out your local community college! Mine offers PE classes like pilates, yoga, cardio kickboxing, weight training, etc., and the cost is only around $30 for a whole semester.

Edit: I just read the other responses, so -- what trendstudent said!

Original Post by trayceebee:

Actually I think that if your body temp is cold that you burn more calories... shivering to keep warm, but to cool the body you sweat... which doesn't burn calories.

 This is not true, we burn more calories both when we are too cold and when we are too warm. When we are too warm our metabolisms increase: our hearts beat faster to more quickly move blood to the surface, our blood vessels dilate, and we sweat. It definitely burns calories. In physiology lab we actually measured the metabolic rates of mice in warm and cold conditions and any time the temperature was out of the normal comfort zone, metabolic rate went UP.

I think in general it is not a great idea to deliberately make yourself too warm while exercising because it is easy to overheat, but in theory it should burn a few more calories if it doesn't kill you.  It probably wouldn't be any significant amount though since our bodies are pretty efficient with the whole temperature regulation thing. As soon as we are actually burning more calories, we are also feeling pretty uncomfortable since our bodies HATE burning calories (as we all know so well!). The discomfort usually makes us put on a sweater/take off a sweater/jump in a lake or whatever it takes to make the discomfort go away.

Average calorie deficit for the past 9 days has been 982 calories/day so theoretically I should have lost 2.5 pounds so far. Funny how I can put it on so much more quickly than I can take it off! Well, not funny "ha ha", more like funny "grrrrr!" No use even peeking at the scale since it is my time of month and I am super-bloated.

I have been sticking to 1500 on days that I only walk around my block and do not go to the gym. This is really an accomplishment for me in itself because I could never manage less than 1800 before without feeling starved. Since I know I will need to get my intake down lower to lose weight once I am smaller, I am glad that I have been able to do it. The depressing thing is that if I am 275 pounds now and eating 1500, I don't have very much lower to go and once I am under say 200 it is going to come off very, very slowly at 1200 calories/day unless I am exercising a lot.

Oh well, I should not worry about that until it happens, just need to focus on getting this weight off now.

Late for work again.. ho hum. :)

Hope you all have a good day!

Hi marinehead! Welcome. If ordinary walking starts to get too easy for you and your wife I highly recommend hiking if you have some trails in your area. Hiking has been wonderful for me because it lets me get my heart rate up (way up, sometimes) without so much dangerous knee pounding as from running and jogging. I have bad knees and I can't run, I doubt I will even when I am at goal weight. So hiking is a great substitute, and lots of fun checking out new trails and learning about local plants and wildlife.  And hiking IS weight training as well as cardio. I know because right now I can barely move my legs, they are so sore.

And I'll shut up now because I suspect everyone's probably getting tired of me talking about hiking all the time ... 

Fantastic weight losses so far! I am still not weighing in.. I know I am retaining water right now big time, my muscles are sore from the hike and my period is also about to start so I am probably at leat 5 lbs up. Don't want to know! It should all even out by Feb 1.

Today I just couldn't get back into the work week so I took the day off and went hiking again. Just a short one, and it was a lot steeper than I expected it to be so I was hoping for a bigger burn but my daily total will be about 2600, similar to what it normally is with my 2 short walks. The hike today took about 2 hours but I guess I was going really slow since my legs were so sore. I think it did them some good to stretch out though.

Now I have to figure out where to go this Saturday...

Original Post by humorpam:

I'm so proud of myself.  I stuck to just the one serving of rice tonight and I put the rest in the refrigerator to cool a while.  Then I got it out and divided the rest of it up into 7 one and a third cup servings.  So now,  when I want my delicious brown rice with mushrooms and onions,  I can just pull one serving out of the freezer and fix that instead of putting temptations in front of me by having more than I should have.

 

 And you can  enjoy the fruits of your labor for so much longer, too!

Punkrockriot and topeze -- I really like the bodybugg! It is so nice to have burn numbers in front of me that I do not need to work so hard to calculate and that don't involve so much guesswork. You might know they have an online program for downloading the bodybugg and entering food, that requires a subscription of $99/year (you get a few months free when you first get the bodybugg, but from what I can tell you can't actually use the bodybugg without it).

The food database on their website is pretty sparse compared to the one here though. I often have to come here to get nutrition info to enter over there. Considering they charge for their website you would think they could get a better database!

But it really is helpful because I was burning a lot less on sedentary days than I thought from the calculators on here.. I guess my job should have a "VERY sedentary" category! And it's nice to know how much exercise I need to do to meet my daily burn goal.

I also did bad, bad, bad at Christmas.. I think I gained about 10 lbs in December, so it is frustrating to have to lose the same weight again but it will happen and it is all part of the process!

I finished my hike, barely had enough daylight but I made it! It was awesome, perfect weather and just a beautiful day, and my legs are already killing me and it has only been 90 minutes since I finished hiking. I don't even want to think about how much they will hurt tomorrow, I fully expect to be unable to exercise at all, and barely able to negotiate the stairs to my house, for 2-3 days. I am just hoping for no lasting knee pain, my left knee is bugging me a little.

I will have eaten 2400 calories today after dinner, which seems like a lot until I tell you that my bodybugg says I will have burned almost 5700 calories by the end of the day! So that 3000+ calorie deficit will help make up for the lack of exercise the next few days, and I am still aiming for 1500 for an intake and 1000 for a deficit on normal, non-insane-all-day-hiking-up-the-tallest-moun tain-in-the-area days.

Anyway I just wanted to check in and I am going to go inhale my dinner now!

Pam, what a wonderful start for 2009!