…or maybe it’s the way to avoid the torture?
A friend of mine read my latest post about exercise and sent me an email informing me that perhaps I’m going about my weight loss goals in the wrong manner. He sent me a few links(Interval Training, Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week, and The Hacker’s Diet), and told me of his experience losing weight, and I’ve decided that it sure can’t hurt to give it a shot. I am so close to meeting my goal at this point but unfortunately I keep losing and then gaining back the same 2 or 3 pounds, over and over. I can’t seem to exercise as much as I eat, no matter how hard I try. Part of that is probably due to my tendency to over-do it every few weeks with my food, because I’ve done so well so far and I surely deserve a break. But part of it is that doing enough exercise to burn off the calories in just one candy bar takes an amazing amount of time, and if I’ve already eaten my food limit for the day but happen to crave and cave, I don’t always have the time (or self-discipline) to invest in working off my extras.
So anyway – I’m going to give this new method a try. I’m changing from tons of cardio to some HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) 3 times a week on my stationary bike with alternate days of strength training (the same strength training videos I’ve been doing, because I love them and they give me great results). And that’ll be my exercise routine for a while. And I’m going to quit counting calories, because it just kills me to obsess over that, and because my friend has given me an improved method where I’m still conscious of what I eat, but not so much that I’m obsessing over whether or not I have enough calories left for any specific food.
This will hopefully be a much more relaxed method of eating awareness, and I’m hoping that the HIIT will turn out to be an awesome way of losing weight. I’ll keep you posted. Keep reading for more in-depth details of what I’ll be doing. If you don’t care so much about the details, this is the end of the post for you. 🙂
My new routine will be as follows:
MWF: Strength training, using two 8 lb hand weights and my own body weight. I use a video called "I Want That Body" which has a total of 6 routines, 1 regular and 1 advanced routine each for: abs, arms, and buns. Each routine is 15 minutes. I do the advanced routine for both arms and abs for a total of 30 minutes. (If you want to tone your muscles this is a great way to do it with only a chair, some hand weights, and a floor mat. Doing these routines twice a week (a total of 1 1/2 hours over the week – twice for abs, twice for arms, twice for buns) has given me spectacular results.)
TThS: Advanced routine for buns of "I Want That Body", followed by stationary bike: warmup (probably not too much since I’ll be warm from the buns workout); HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) for 10 reps, intervals of 20 seconds at high intensity and 40 seconds low intensity, working up to 20 seconds at high intensity and 20 seconds low intensity for up to 15 reps (or until I can’t do them any more, which might just be 10); 5 minutes of cool-down.
Sundays off
If this works, I think I may decide to put all my exercise on the same 3 days, by doing HIIT and then the strength training immediately following. I’m not sure I could do that, however, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea either, but there may be some benefit to doing other exercise during the hour immediately following the HIIT. At any rate, I guess for now I’ll give this a shot.
A few other things I’m doing:
1. Eating about 30 minutes before beginning my HIIT.
2. Charting my weight and watching for the trend I’m looking for (this charting method is thanks to Hans). My goal is to go down at the rate of about 1 pound every 5 days or so. So I’ll be stepping on the scale every morning and charting the number on a piece of graph paper, where I’ll also have a guiding line approximating the loss of 1 pound over 5 days. The most recent 5 days will be examined each day to determine whether or not it’s a "dessert" day. If my 5-day trend is approximately the same as my guide line, I’ll be in for a regular eating day, including dessert if it happens to come up (which I’m sure it will). Should the trend be upward (heaven forbid) or flat, I’ll be drinking an extra glass of water before each meal, going a little leaner on my portions for the day, and skipping dessert.
3. Drinking less water during my workout (previously I was going through 40-72 oz during my 90 minute workout, depending on how thirsty I was), mainly because I don’t have enough time for all that water and because I want to drink more water during the day to help with my food cravings. I’m still aiming for over 100 oz/day at a minimum.
4. Managing my eating differently. No longer will I be counting calories, though I am still aware of how much I’m eating. I’ve spent a while counting calories and I’m aware now of how full my plate is when I’ve typically hit around 300-400 calories. Also, I spent enough time cooking while counting calories that I know what kinds of things are better choices. Instead I’m going to base the eating off the weight charting above, and hopefully find a happy balance. I hate counting calories and am overjoyed at the prospect of not doing it any more. 🙂 If I can obsess less over how much I’m allowed to eat, I’m hoping to start eating the amount my body is asking for instead of trying to eat exactly every last calorie I’m allowed.
5. I was previously doing my strength training routines twice a week, and I’ll be increasing that to three times a week with the new schedule.
All these changes have brought with them a few things I’m not exactly wild about:
1. Getting up 30 minutes before I start exercising, so I can eat first. Apparently this is better than exercising on an empty stomach which I had previously been doing. But I guess the extra time in the mornings will give me a few minutes to work on my blog, so that’s one con turned pro.
2. No more TV. My exercise time was my TV time – I’d watch an episode of something during my stationary bike workout (45 minutes roughly), and I’ll miss that a little. But, on the flip side, I only started watching TV as a way to kill time while I was exercising, so I guess it won’t be hard to get used to no TV again.
3. HIIT is HARD WORK. Yes, it is only about 10 minutes of my day, but that is 10 minutes of misery. At least once the 10 minutes are up, I’m done for 2 days. And if it does what I’m hoping (helps me lose those last 2 or 3 pounds and then keep them off) then it’ll be worth it, especially since it means I get lots more sleep this way! And it brings my total exercise time down to 3.25 hours a week instead of the 9 hours I have been doing every week – a VAST improvement! If I was to cut the strength training (which I won’t because I like having tone muscles) then I’d go down to 1 hour total a week, where only 30 minutes of that is actually exercise (the other 30 minutes is warmup/cool-down). Now how would that be? 30 minutes a week to be the weight I want, and still eat what I like???
All in all, I’m not sure I believe in this but, like I said before, I’m willing to give it a shot. Sometimes the new stuff turns out to be right. If you’re a bit skeptical (like me), take a look at a globe and remember that a revolutionary idea isn’t always immediately accepted.
