flab and fitness frustration

[bounceswoosh]

Thanks for all the support and input, everyone! I've been at home sick with some sort of nasty cold for the last few days, but I'll try to pull together my few functioning brain cells and address some of your posts ...

Well, I have to agree with the post that says at some point we have to accept the bodies we have and not torture ourselves too much trying to get someone else's.

Yes, to an extent, but as far as I can tell, since midway through college I haven't been below 28% bodyfat. That simply can't be healthy, and I don't think it's helping me with the many activities I enjoy.

I dropped my body fat from 28% down to 22%. I haven't seen Nancy Clarke's book but are we sure she isn't targeting the 20-something year-old women who have never been pregnant and can lose weight effortlessly? Maybe my point here (hopefully, I do have one) is eat healthfully, watch out for excesses anywhere, exercise regularly and enjoy your life. If you end up losing some weight or fat or both, great but don't make yourself miserable trying to do it. Mark Twain said, "If you can't make 70 by a comfortable road, don't go."

Awesome on the weight loss! Unfortunately, I *am* the 20-something who's never been pregnant, and I can't lose weight effortlessly. I would like to not make myself miserable, but it's hard. It's really hard. I want to see less fat on my body and I want to have a more, well, functional body. Functional for what I do, which is mountain biking, martial arts, skiing, ice hockey ... everything I do would benefit from having less useless weight.

You might find this article by Chris Carmichael (aka Lance's coach) helpful, I already posted it in another thread:
http://www.roadcycling.com/news/article900.shtml

Except for when you first start out, you can't easily build strength while restricting calories, you kind of have to do one or the other.

I did find this article interesting. On some level it makes sense that you can't deprive your body of fuel and still expect to perform well. This article (actually, this whole discussion) prompted a discussion with a fitness-conscious friend of mine. He said that you can work out, and you can watch what you eat, but in his experience you'll never lose fat unless that's your goal. That may not hold true for everyone, but I suspect it may for me. Now I just have to understand how to properly implement the steps to that goal.

bounceswoosh, do you weight train at all? I found that building muscle helped me to get leaner and stronger and also helped me to burn more calories. I did the calorie deficit thing when I was losing weight a few years back, but once I started riding a lot and competing, I started getting dizzy and faint. My body NEEDED those calories. I was bottoming out too often.

*sigh* no, I don't. I find it really hard to make time to do so, and I much prefer freeweights. Machines annoy me. It's hard to find people who lift similar amounts (read: women) and also like freeweights. I'm hoping to build a mini-gym in my basement so that I can easily do some reps when the mood strikes, rather than having to drive to the gym.

Your point about the calorie deficit thing is why I thought lowfat would work; I'd still get the calories I needed, I thought. But I guess I needed more fat, too. I think that avoiding saturated fats is probably still a good idea, which sucks because I adore cheese =P

Monique,
This is the first time Ive visited this forum, and much to my surprise, you live in Longmont too!!!

Hey, neat! Are you a roadie or a mtber?

Anyway, I think your missing the bigger picture here. I think you should be maybe thinking less about % of fat you consume and more about the types of workouts your doing.

This may very well be true. My problem is that I can open up three different books/articles about nutrition and exercise, and each will say something totally different. I don't know who to believe. In college weight training class, we were taught that more than 12-15 reps of any weight exercise was pointless, and that it was better to do enough weight to work yourself to exhaustion in 2-3 sets of 12. Now I'm being told that lots of reps of low weight actually build as much strength, just with more endurance and stronger! Arggggh!

You say that all of your w/o's are lung burners, and thats not good. It is very important to vary the intensity and duration of your workouts through out the week. What your husbands swim coach was doing is breaking down the muscle thru hard work, but then allowing REST, which is the key to improvement. The workout is only a part of the total package. If all of your workouts are the same intensity (hard in your case) the body never has time to fully repair and reap the benifits of those workouts.

It's not that I'm doing these extremely rough exercises as part of a fat loss plan; it's just what I enjoy =/ When I go to a martial arts class, for example, it's completely impossible for me to take it easy. A switch flips in my head and I have to work till I puke, no giving up. On a mountain bike, well, I can be going pretty slowly up a hill and still be panting like a dog on a choke collar.

For the record, rest was never really part of my husband's swim M.O., at least to hear him tell it. They worked out to exhaustion every day. But they were teenagers; I'm pretty convinced that has nothing to do with how I should be training. Also, the coach may have been varying their workout to allow for rest, but not explaining it to the kids.

After all that, you should also take a look at genetics....sometimes we are programmed to have bigger hips, or a little pooch. We can keep it from getting out of hand through diet and exercise, but we may not be able to ever erase it completely.

I would write down all your calories for about 3 days, and make sure that you are getting enough....I agree that sometimes we go too low in calories and that will shut your metabolizim down in a heartbeat.
I second the suggestion on Chris Carmichaels book...very good information.

Good Luck from a local!
Jayne

Thanks, Jayne. I just got off of Depo (I'm on a pill form now), and I suspect that Depo may have artificially raised the level of body fat my body wanted me to have. I won't know for another few months, though. Regardless, bodyfat measuring between 28-32% just isn't healthy, and hey, it doesn't look good, either!

I did the whole nutrition-tracking thing last year and I am 100% confident that I am not undereating. I may do it again, though, just because I snack less when I know I have to write it down.

Just another thought: how are your clothes fitting? Muscle weighs more than fat so while the scales may not move, you may actually be losing fat.

Nice thought, but if my clothes were getting looser, I wouldn't be worried. I take the scales with a huge grain of salt. Actually, I take that back in part; I can see my body "firming up" a bit since returning to martial arts in December. It takes far fewer hours of martial arts to see the results I saw in bazillions of mountain biking hours. DH's theory is that I am afraid to push myself to the brink on a mountain bike (I'm afraid of falling and hurting myself), whereas I have years of experience in martial arts and have no such fear.

This doesn't happen overnight. It takes building good habits to take place of the unhealthy ones, and time. But it does happen. I have never been as fit as I am now, and, because I somehow reached that magical level, it doesn't feel like work to stay here!

That's very cool. My problem has been that I thought I *was* building good habits last year (eating low fat), and it turns out I may have been shooting myself in the foot; not just regarding my own body composition, but my health as well! A series of illnesses and a busted wrist kept me away from workouts long enough to lose a lot of what I'd worked toward; then I had an extremely stressful visit to Germany to see my elderly grandmother, during which time (long story) I really couldn't do anything but eat. After all of that, well, I'm not quite at rock bottom thanks to rediscovering martial arts at the beginning of this year, but it's not pretty. I'm so afraid to choose the wrong fitness approach that I'm not doing anything right at all!

All of that being said, I think there is one thing I can do that can't be wrong: adjust portion sizes. Even if I eat more meals as a result, my stomach will shrink and I won't be able to do as much damage when I pig out.