Lose Weight (and get fit) Before Roo Thread

Hey now, I leash them EVERYWHERE except when we go out in the front yard and I am there and they do not run because they know I will put my foot up their ass and then lock them in the kennel for 15 mins. If there are other dogs out, we leash or I will make them go in the swampy backyard. 

I don't want anyone to think that just because I live in the south that I am a horrible dog owner.

When it rains the backyard becomes a swamp so I take the dogs out in the front without leases on. Tyger would follow, while trying to bite your ankles but I would never just let my dogs out without watching them. WTF is wrong with your neighbor?

Or you can hop on a real bike and ride in the great outdoors.
 
1.Cars try to run you over and or curse at you for riding on their roads.
2 Dogs run after you.
3.Pot holes try to take you out
4.The heat makes you wish you were in hell where it is cooler.

Where is you guys sense of adventure?

I’ve been stalled out for about eight months at a 65ish pound weight loss. I just haven’t had the motivation to be in a calorie deficit long enough to lose what I would still like to lose at some point. But (and it’s a great big but) I haven’t gained back what I previously lost, and I have kept up a pretty regular (if not terribly strenuous) exercise routine. The neighborhood we moved to earlier this year is fantastic for walking, and I’ve been doing at least a couple of miles with a lot of variation on incline most days. Sometimes I’d switch it up and run or row, but mostly I was walking.

In the last month or so, I’ve been working on switching up my focus and adding in a lot more strength training. At this point, I’ve decided not to really think about trying to actually lose weight until sometime next year. Instead, I want to concentrate on getting stronger and healthier. I’m still counting calories on weekdays and considering them on weekends (but I count them on my phone and the phone is staying off on the weekends, so I’m not actually counting them then), but I’m more interested in just keeping them at or slightly under maintenance levels and trying to keep a good balance of nutrients. I started out doing two days a week with weights, and the last couple, I’ve moved that to doing three days with weights and two days of walking with the weekends off for rest days (although I did take the dog on a slower paced mile long walk on Saturday).

I had been kind of winging it on my weights days. Today was the first day I had really planned out my workout, and I got in a really good one. I have the week planned out, all three days are somewhat full body with one day focused a little more on upper body, one focused a little more on lower body, and one more evenly distributed. I’m planning on keeping the same routine for at least four weeks, but probably six, adding weight as appropriate.

I’m feeling pretty good about all of this. So far, I’m enjoying the workouts and especially how they make me feel after. If anybody has any particular tips or anything, I’m all ears.

peloton talk: retook my FTP test this past Saturday, improved my score 14 points, which I'm really proud of. I don't think the Tour de France is going to be calling me anytime soon, but it's satisfying to see a measurable increase in my overall fitness level.

I did what I think is the most typical strategy: 10 minute warm up, then my current upper zone 4 intensity for the first five minutes, then zone 5 for the last 15 minutes. I think so much of this test is mental, because in the first five minutes I was convinced there was no way I could complete the test in zone 4, much less push into zone 5. But I surprised myself and did not let up. I don't know what the hell Matt Wilpers was saying because after 10 minutes my mind turned into absolute mush and 100% of my physical, mental, and emotional energy was dedicated to "do not stop pedaling do not leave zone 5".

I'm super excited I don't have to take another FTP test for a while.

thanks! lol.

FTP is Functional Threshold Power, it's basically a way of measuring your personal fitness. Then from that score your seven "power zones" are calculated, and you use those during your workouts. in a power zone ride, instead of calling out specific cadence/resistance, the instructors will call out a zone, so automatically the power zone rides are tailored to your personal fitness level.

there are different ways of measuring FTP, but the most common is a 20 minute FTP test, in which you go all out and expend every bit of energy you can over that 20 minutes, then it gives you a new score.

Most power zone rides are 45-75 minute rides that focus on endurance, maintaining a moderate pace across 5-8 minute blocks while never truly dropping into full recovery mode outside of those blocks. In power zone language this means most of the time you are in zone 2 or 3. There are also power zone "max" rides which push into higher zones but perhaps counterintuitively it's the longer lower intensity rides that ultimately lead to a higher FTP score and thus improved fitness. The FTP test is more like a necessary evil to get my settings to where I'm achieving maximum benefit from those lower intensity workouts, just something you need to do every like couple or months or so to gauge where you are at.

So much of my exercise is aimed at the goal of keeping me in good enough shape to continue to do live music. Power zone endurance rides are perfect for this. I think I was talking about this when we had lunch, that the power zone rides and stretching have noticeably improved my endurance at shows and greatly reduced incidents of back pain etc.

I did not enjoy my FTP test, but having said that I do love a 20 minute HIIT ride, which also leaves me feeling like I'm dead. Part of the reason I decided to try power zone was to get away from just tapping those 20 minute HIIT rides over and over.

Props again to your yoga skills. The benefits I've seen from regular stretching for a year have definitely got me interested in yoga. I've done a few yoga workouts but haven't delved deeply into it. Every time I've done like a downward dog in front of a yoga person they are always kind of flabbergasted at how bad I am at it. They try to adjust me and i'm like "no if i do that my hamstrings will snap and my leg explode".

I’ve been stalled out for about eight months at a 65ish pound weight loss. I just haven’t had the motivation to be in a calorie deficit long enough to lose what I would still like to lose at some point. But (and it’s a great big but) I haven’t gained back what I previously lost, and I have kept up a pretty regular (if not terribly strenuous) exercise routine. The neighborhood we moved to earlier this year is fantastic for walking, and I’ve been doing at least a couple of miles with a lot of variation on incline most days. Sometimes I’d switch it up and run or row, but mostly I was walking.

In the last month or so, I’ve been working on switching up my focus and adding in a lot more strength training. At this point, I’ve decided not to really think about trying to actually lose weight until sometime next year. Instead, I want to concentrate on getting stronger and healthier. I’m still counting calories on weekdays and considering them on weekends (but I count them on my phone and the phone is staying off on the weekends, so I’m not actually counting them then), but I’m more interested in just keeping them at or slightly under maintenance levels and trying to keep a good balance of nutrients. I started out doing two days a week with weights, and the last couple, I’ve moved that to doing three days with weights and two days of walking with the weekends off for rest days (although I did take the dog on a slower paced mile long walk on Saturday).

I had been kind of winging it on my weights days. Today was the first day I had really planned out my workout, and I got in a really good one. I have the week planned out, all three days are somewhat full body with one day focused a little more on upper body, one focused a little more on lower body, and one more evenly distributed. I’m planning on keeping the same routine for at least four weeks, but probably six, adding weight as appropriate.

I’m feeling pretty good about all of this. So far, I’m enjoying the workouts and especially how they make me feel after. If anybody has any particular tips or anything, I’m all ears.

Not that you were asking for advice, but these are a couple of things that I think have been the best pieces of advice I’ve run across in trying to lose weight/get healthier.

Start with small things. When I knew I wanted to exercise more, the first thing I did was walk the dog a little further every time I took him out. It was maybe like a couple hundred extra steps each day, but doing that felt good, and after a week or two of it, I started wanting to go a little further, then a little further. Whether it’s exercise or anything else, big changes all at once can be harder to sustain than little changes that you build on over time.

Don’t try to lose weight by doing things you can’t imagine doing long-term. Obviously, you won’t have to eat in a calorie deficit the rest of your life, but while trying to lose weight, you still want to eat in a way that you plan on eating forever, just a little less. I know people swear by keto or low-carb diets, but I never ever considered significantly cutting carbs because I love carbs too much, and it would be absolutely unsustainable for me to cut them out of my diet. Also, making things completely off-limits makes them so much more desirable.

Go slow. Weight gain didn’t happen overnight and weight loss won’t either. Eating 1200 calories a day is unsustainable long term.

Drink all the water.

do you drink diet cokes/sodas/pops whatever? i personally don't buy the "diet drinks make you want real sugar" thing, but i do think that anytime i've drinking a coke zero is a time i could be drinking water, and we often mistake dehydration for hunger. i drink a lot of water but I also drink anywhere from 1-3 coke zeros a day, and that could be an additional 1-3 glasses of water. and this is just pure intuition but i feel like drinking carbonated beverages leads to burping which leads to a more open stomach feeling which could lead to more eating.

my weight is still absolutely rock steady at where it was in January lol. my issue with eating is consistency, i'll be good at eating reasonably at a caloric deficit for a couple weeks, lose a couple pounds, feel pretty good about it, then start eating slightly over a caloric surplus for two weeks, gain back a couple pounds.

if i could just stay steady eating a caloric deficit i could shave off the 15 pounds or so i'd like to lose. i'm not even like super hungry when i'm at a slight caloric deficit, i feel fine, i just really like to eat.