Denying denial.

        When people start trying to lose weight they have a slash and burn approach to their eating. Chucking out every food they love, with a vow to never eat it again. Changing to an ultra healthy, extremely limited collection of foods will yield results, but it's just not practice for living a normal life. I'm not saying "don't eat healthy", but I am saying that you should eat realistically.

     Allow yourself an escape route. By allotting roughly 200kcal of your daily caloric limit for none perfectly healthy foods should give you just enough freedom to stop you from breaking down, bingeing, and giving up.  A flexible approach to eating is a major ingredient in long term weight lose. There will be days when you can't work out, or eat more than your BRM (basal metabolic rate), but that doesn't mean that you have to stop losing weight or gain weight.

    A great example of this is how I've been living lately. I'm in a friends wedding party, that means I haven't been the one controlling the food I have access to. I try and make the better food choices and keep within my BMR, but with the travel to and from the events, plus the time at the events themselves I just don't have time to workout. There are a couple different ways I can approach these situations.

1) I can bank my all or a portion of my 200kcal daily treat reserve. This way when everything is added up at the end of the week I will have had the same amount of calories as the week before. This approach can also be done retroactively. If you unexpectedly go out to dinner, someone buys you a treat, or you just really want one blow out calorie bomb meal you can just cut back your calorie intake by 50-100kcal till things even out.

2) Add extra workouts. This will be easier for people who are counting both calories in and calories out (look to Breaking it down for my parents for more info). Like the calorie banking this can be done before  or after the event, or a combination. By adding about 15 minutes to the cardio portion of your workout can burn about 100kcal. This wont replace a missed workout but it will help soften the blow.

   I find a combination of the two approaches works best for me. Most importantly because I knew I had options I never worried over what food would be at an event, or if I'd be home in time to workout. I just kept going, as I have been and continue to see results.

Tara

Trails of time travel.

     I'm back! Back in Canada and no longer 13 hours ahead of my friends and family. I'm still getting over jet lag, and have been busy as hell since I got home so my exercise has not been what it was. I plan to start back in with the circuit training and loads of walking on Monday, for now I'm just walking. I'm still counting my calories and making progress, also I now have regular access to a scale meaning I can know my weight on a more regular bases.

     I would post more, but my brain just isn't working right now. I promise a longer post next time.

Tara

My house filled with company and my legs filled with pain.

     Hello all, this maybe my last post for sometime. I have two days left of work followed by a week long race around Japan, so I don't know when I'll have access to a computer. I will try to post once more before I leave.

    On the workout front thing have been a little different. Jeremy arrived Wednesday night so my very small apartment now has twice the amount of people in it that it was designed for. This means I just don't have room to do me circuit training like normal. I'm continuing to do my 100 burpee challenge (43 down, 57 to go) and walk insane amounts. How insane you ask, over 30,000 steps a day insane, it's not an intentional thing Jeremy just always walk a lot when he's here. However this does mean that for both of us our legs are screaming in pain.

    Hopefully if we keep up the same amount of walking the pain will go away, because walking less just isn't an option right now.

Tara

GTFOutside!

      Not everyone goes to the gym to workout, working out at home can be very effective. But, just like the gym home work outs can get a little dull. Now that nice weather has arrived a third option is now open, exercising outside.

   Outdoor work outs are a nice option because like working out at home, it's free. You can go to a park, beach, or your own backyard and use the environment to aid your workout. There are some set ups for outdoor workouts that can be found online. The basic lay out off all seem to be;

1) Stretch and warm up for about 10 minutes.
2) A cardio activity for 3-5 minutes
3) A strength activity for 2-3 minutes
4) cardio for 8-10 minutes
5) strength for 2-3 minutes
6) repeat steps 4 and 5 till you're a sweaty mess.

  The cardio options while outside are pretty much anything you could do without equipment indoors. So, jogging, jumping jacks, jump rope, oblique twist, or skaters. The strength exercises are along the same lines, you can increase your options if you're willing to bring along a resistance band or dumb bells. Exercises that are good with no equipment are push ups, squats, or lunges. If there's a bench, play ground, or trees with strong, low hanging branches you can add in pull ups, chair dips, and bench press ups. Your options are only limited by your skill level and your creativity.

   An added bonus to an outdoor workout is that the uneven ground forces your body to stabiles itself. This means that you burn more calories with and outdoor workout than you would doing the same exercises indoors. Just make sure to wear your sunblock.

Tara

The least hated of the evils.

       No one actually enjoys working out, and anyone who says that they do is lying or mentally ill. Exercise is something you do because you have too, admit it there are a load of things you'd rather being doing than exercising.

        The key to keeping up a successful workout routine is to find something you hate a little less than everything else. For me, I seem to feel the least amount of venom for circuit training. I can do 30 minutes, I don't get bored, and it's easy to increase the difficulty over time. The contrast to that is yoga. No matter how many times I try it, no matter how many different variations, I just can't get into it. Don't get me wrong I can do the moves, I just don't care. I gave it a final valiant try, but I'm admitting it here, I don't like yoga and I'm probably not going to do it again.

     Oh, and to make up for my last somewhat depressing post here are some rainbows and kittens. 

                                  

Tara