Friday, October 03, 2008

Avoiding This

I've been avoiding posting this since I'm totally bummed. I didn't lose any weight this week. I'm still pretty much on track with my goals, I'm just bummed. I blame the beer! Its hard not to get discouraged when you don't see results, especially in the 2nd week. Maybe this is why my therapist took my scale away....I've never had what you would call a healthy relationship with numbers. All numbers, really, not just the ones on the scale. I'm terrible at math.
I'm starting to feel like I'm becoming a neurotic exerciser. I've been reading all these websites and articles on working out and being fit and cardio vs. strength training. I read an interesting article the other day about how steady state cardio does jack shit for burning fat. Wait, if I'm gonna talk about it, I should try to find the link... (https://www.figureathlete.com/free_online_article/training)*
Our new scale tells you your percent body fat and mine is WAYYY too high. And since my usual workouts are mostly steady state cardio, that would make sense, acoording to Rachel (the author of the article). Anyhow, since burning fat is really what I'm after, I decided to spice up my workout with some interval training, which I started last night. On the erg, of all places. I don't know what I was thinking since that machine is the bane of my existence and there were many a time in college where I would have gladly taken a chainsaw to one. Once a rower, always a rower, I guess. Its my go-to machine when I'm looking for a structured workout (i just use the ones we did in college). I started by running to the gym (about a mile or so) and then did 20 minutes of interval training on the erg: 1 minute on, 1 minute off. The I ran back home after stretching. It was tough and my back was BARKING but my heart rate shot right up after my rest minutes and I actually burned about 100-200 more calories than I would have in 20 minutes of steady state cardio. Pretty interesting. I think I will try to do 2 interval workouts a week. Maybe this will be more effective in burning fat and I can work on getting that body fat down...like, a lot.

* Can someone PLEASE help me post links??!?!?

2 comments:

Leslie said...

This is very hardcore of you, I am impressed! Every time I try to make myself do intervals while running I usually end up giving up on them way too early cause they kind of make me want to die. I like to torture myself at a steady pace, apparently.

Did you figure out links yet? It took me awhile to figure them out too--there is a button you click on when you are posting. Let me know if you still need help with them!

Becky said...

Thanks, Leslie! They are super tough, but, as it turns out, you really don't have to do them that long for it to be effective. 20 minutes is usually more than enough, most of the fitness info I've read says professional athletes shouldn't even do more than 30 minutes.

Still workin on those linke, you'll know that I figured it out when I actually have some in the blog text... :-)