mizvalentine

Wine, CHEESE, rock n' roll, television, and working. Used to include bread and any bread derivative (pizza, omg) in there, and sugar...but I kicked those pretty good! The others, I just try to moderate. Work is the hardest one actually, because I love to program and I love making money, but I over-commit and end up tired and miserable and then my workout suffers. Cheese..well...I'll never get over cheese. I jettisoned all other dairy (god how I miss you, cottage cheese!) but the thought of life without cheese makes me want to cry.

I'm back! Sat June 23: 200 KB swings, 20# 3x8 DB benchpress, 40# 3x8 DB skullcrushers, 20# Sun June 24: 2x:30 front planks 2x:15 side planks 3x8 kneeling pushups 3x8 KB squats, 30# 3x8 swiss ball wall squats 3x8 one arm rows, 1x 30#, 2x 20# 3x8 overhead press, 30# 3x8 DB bicep curl, 15# Mon June 25: 200 KB swings, 20#, alternating one- and two-handed 3x8 KB ribbons, 20# 3x8 hip thrusts, unweighted

I feel your pain. Almost literally! I'm also mid-30s and female and I was prediabetic and overweight (even on extreme low calorie diets, which made me miserable) most of my life, have a spinal fusion and degenerative disc disease below the fusion, and two ruptured ACLs in my knees. I've had good success cutting out grains, legumes and sugar on a primal eating regimen... and my emotions really evened out once my insulin wasn't spiking all over anymore, which in turn made it easier to sleep, to exercise, and to keep eating clean. For me, it took a bit of adjustment (digestively speaking) to get used to eating fat and meat, but once I did I lost 35 lbs....it was slow but it happened! Cutting grains also helped with swelling that I didn't realize I had...my face and belly got less poofy, and my joints didn't seem like balls of swelling anymore. So like you said...if your other efforts haven't done what you wanted...try something totally different and see what happens!! I also got a good, exercise-oriented physical therapist and physiologist, and I'd recommend the same to you... they trained me how to work out properly, FOR ME--because of my injuries, my biomechanics are different than most and I would guess you might be the same. The big secret I learned is that I can do lots of stuff, I just have to modify slightly. Now I love to lift, where I grew up hating it because it hurt! And the more muscle I've built, the less my joints and discs hurt... core/glute/back strength supports my bad discs, quad/hamstring strength supports my knees. Just realize that PTs/physios (like all doctors) come from different schools of thought, and some of them think palliatively, while others think in terms of building strength. I personally run as far and fast as I can from the guys that tell me I need vicodin instead of deadlifts Good luck in your life changes...you've come to a good place!!!

Been SWAMPED but working out...just not updating my battle log! I graduated PT on Friday (6 months!) and am now working out at home for a bit while I get my job situation sorted. Trying to use the KB's to maintain my PT progress and incorporate more cardio while maintaining strength....intend to get back to lifting heavy after the new year. Tues Dec 6 Pigeon pose, :30 ea side Chair stretch, :30 ea side Calf stretch, 2x:30 ea leg KB swings, two handed, 5x10, 1min rests, @30# KB overhead figure 8s, 3x8x2 @20# Kneeling pushups, 1x10, 3x8 Front plank, 2x:30 Full side planks, 2x:15 ea side KB deadlift & high pull combo, 3x10 @30#

This was one of the first exercises my PT had me do when my discs went kablooey this summer... bridges are awesome.

I can't speak to your exact back injury, but I have degenerated discs L3-L5 and spinal fusion C3-L2, so I can sort of identify. I also understand wanting to hit the gym hard after an injury! And I love running/walking with weight... I'm about to start running stair drills with a sandbag again, as I'm finally back from my latest flare of DDD. My only advice as a fellow back patient is that strengthening your core, along with back-supportive muscle groups like glutes and quads, is probably going to make everything you do that involves shocking your spine--running, walking, rucking, whatever--safer and less painful. Adding some supportive strength work, under the guidance of a good, exercise-oriented PT, would probably help you strengthen your supporting muscles and make moving under weight a lot safer. If your abs, obliques, spinal erectors, psoas, hip flexors, quads, glutes, etc are strong and supportive, then there's less shock transmitted to your discs and nerves, which means less pain and damage. To use a terribly disgusting analogy...The way I think of it, your average person is like a pork loin with a stiff wire shoved down the center; your average back patient is a pork loin with a pipe cleaner shoved down the center. Us back pain folks need to turn our pork loin into a side of beef to support that pipe cleaner, where as other folks can just lean on their stiff wire til the rest of them catches up. Good luck. I'm totally convinced us back injury folks can do as much as anybody in the gym, BUT I think we have to spend a lot more time on flexibility, stability, and supportive strength building so that our injuries don't sideline us while we're making progress.

Thanks for all the advice & support guys!! I really appreciate it...got too swamped at work this week to reply sooner. Of course you all were totally right, 5 days post-trip I'm right back where I started. Thanks for indulging my temporary freak out. Also...the discussion of measurement tools and math in this thread is TOTALLY why this board rules... I feel the advice about throwing out the scale. But... I think I need it for encouragement, at least til I lose this last 20-30lbs. I find my measurements change so slowly compared to my scale weight that I get really discouraged. I also have a TERRIBLE sense of how much weight I'm carrying, I feel like I look exactly the same no matter how much I weigh. I don't know if its how my fat is distributed or what, but I can wear the same jeans size and be anywhere in a 30-40lb range of weight...I've never worn anything but a 12, 14 or 16 and I've been everything from 160 to 240lbs! That may just be indicative of how stupid women's clothing sizes are, though. That said, y'all are right, I probably need to weigh in monthly or weekly instead of daily, or at least graph the curve so I can get the birds-eye view. I think the daily is making me more crazy than it is helping me. I know I can gain up to 10lbs of water due to hormones one week a month, so I've already stopped weighing myself that week!

Weds Nov 16: Got a nice two-miler in. The unseasonably warm weather has been working in my favor! Fri Nov 18: Deadlifts, 3x8 @65# Lat pulldowns, 3x8 @75# Hip thrusts, 3x10 Incline pushups, 3x8 @mid-thigh bar height Preacher EZ-bar curls, 3x8@25#

So, we took a (much needed) getaway to NYC this weekend. We were staying with friends and eating out all the time, and I fell off the paleo wagon a bit. I didn't do TOO horribly, but I did eat bread three times, a bunch of fried/breaded Japanese snacks (mmm takoyaki!) one night, some fried potatoes one day and drank like a champ throughout (vodka and soda, sake and cider though, no beer). Other than that, no sugar, no other grains, lots of meat and veg. We also walked about 20 miles in 3.5 days. But I gained FIVE FREAKING POUNDS! I guess I was hoping that the walking would offset the poor food choices. Wondering if anyone else has experienced this? I guess I'm just surprised that a relatively short term slip up could make for so much gain. Maybe its water? I'm back on the wagon now though...fear is a motivator! I'll also add...my stomach is a mess. I've had some solid drinking sessions since starting paleo and been fine so I don't think its the booze. Do you guys feel sickly when you 'slip' off paleo and eat grains?

Gah, got SO freaking off track...traveling last week, looking for a new job, and working 2 jobs. Did a killer PT session last Tues, a decent lifting session Thursday and walked probably 20 miles around NYC this weekend, but that's not nearly enough and I feel it. I'm right back in it now... Tues Nov 15: Mostly bodyweight workout at home. Pigeon pose Side plank, 2x :30 ea side Front plank, 2x :30 Sumo Deadlift & high pull, 3x8 @30#KB Backward lunges, 2x10 ea leg Kneeling pushups, 3x6 Bridges, 2x10@ :10 holds Kneeling overhead press, 1x6 ea side @20#KB (no strength at all today so had to stop) One arm row, 3x10 @20# KB

AH...great idea. I think they have some 75# hex DB's I can use. Thanks! Using a bench is a good idea also, but unfortunately there's a poorly positioned rack of fixed barbells in the way (there's WAY too much equipment in our gym, but that's another story...). But I think the DBs are small enough to work.

So, I've been doing bodyweight rows on the Smith machine with the bar just below my chest. I want to get it lower, but the floors are so slippery in my gym I can't do it...my heels fly out from under me. I have a similar, though not as pronounced issue with incline pushups. Any suggestions on how to get around this? Something I can put on my shoes maybe, or a mat you can buy? My gym is pretty archaic...its like Mandelbaum's Gym in that Seinfeld episode. I like that in one sense because its really old school (they have ball-end dumbbells and leather medicine balls!) but its not well maintained. Maybe there's something I can tell them to put in there for safety?

Sat Nov 6: Pigeon pose, 2@ :30 each leg. Trying to loosen up my stiff hip flexors per PT's advice. Hip thrusts, 3x10 bodyweight Front squats, 3x8 @ 35# Incline pushups, 3x8 w. bar at mid-thigh Bodyweight rows, 3x6 w. bar at low chest...tried to lower it but the damn floor is too slippery to maintain the angle without my heels slipping. Very frustrating. Kneeling overhead DB press, 2x8 ea arm @ 15# Grappler's Getups, 1x6 ea side w. 15# DB Wanted to do more, but some a-hole was in there yelling and yelping like a hurt animal and dropping 300# of plates everywhere. I understand we all make noises in the gym, but jesus man, chill the eff out. It was so annoying and obnoxious I had to leave. I dream of the day I have a squat cage in my house...

Thanks! Good to know front squats work the abs hard, core strength is key for my lower discs. I'm deadlifting on the regular... Gonna try adding in those hip thrusts. Seems like a good progression from bridges, which I am doing but which seem way too easy now. Also, they look fun.

Thought you guys might find this interesting... Some research just came out finding that junk food may be as addictive as cocaine. The article here is pretty sarcastic/lighthearted but still sums up the issues pretty well: http://jezebel.com/5855607/junk-food-addiction-as-real-as-drug-addiction-but-less-cool A more serious, thorough take on the same research, at Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-02/fatty-foods-addictive-as-cocaine-in-growing-body-of-science.html If you're like me and get all worked up about such things, the fact that the food companies probably know about these addiction loops and continue to groom their products to take advantage of them, will make you angry. Because these people think we're stupid. I use that as incentive to stay on track, too.

So, last night I went back to PT after a 4 week break...not by choice, but because of insurance nonsense. Anyway, my therapist was impressed with my progress (thanks to all here who've given me great advice!) and did a form check on all my lifts and I'm doing great. However, I admitted I've been getting some pain on the outside of my upper arm after doing back squats. Its a deep, 'electrical' pain that comes on either a few hours after lifting, or the next morning, and goes away in a few hours; and it hops from one arm to the other depending on the day. Ice helps. He said that this was probably C5/6 nerve impingement and wants me to switch to front squats. Of course, I'm going to follow orders, but...I miss back squats already! They make me feel so GRRRRR! Just wondering if any of you experienced nerve impingement in the cervical spine and what you did about it. Also, if I have to do front squats from here on out, what am I missing, strength building wise?

Yes! Most definitely. I think women in particular are programmed to conflate what we eat/what we weigh with our success/failure as people. Beating yourself up is never ever productive. Giving yourself tough love is where its at... but the love is as important as the tough for sure.

Butternut, Carrot & Sausage Soup 1 whole butternut squash 6 large carrots 2 large onions (I like vidalia) ~16oz chicken stock ~1lb good quality sausage (andouille works great but any sausage will do) Thyme, pepper, salt Olive oil Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Wash the squash. Cut the squash lengthways, so you have two long halves. Scoop out the seeds. In a shallow baking pan, lay the squash cut side up and fill the bottom of the pan with about 1" water. Cover tightly with foil. Bake in the oven for 1 hour or until the squash is very soft when you stick a fork in it. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large pot on the stovetop. Peel and cut onions into large chunks, sautee until they start to brown at the edges. Wash, peel, and cut carrots into thin discs, add to onions. Cut sausage into small cubes, add to carrot/onion mixture. Cook at medium high heat until the onions really start to brown and the sausage is crispy, then cover with chicken stock. When squash is done, remove from the oven (don't burn yourself! A lot of hot steam will come out when you take off the foil) and use a large spoon to scoop the meat out of the squash skin; add the squash meat to the onions, carrots, sausage and stock. Add thyme, pepper and salt to taste. Crank up the heat til the soup boils; reduce heat and simmer, covered, for at least an hour. Use a potato masher to roughly mash the carrots when they're soft enough; this will add a nice body to the soup. If you prefer a smoother soup, you can use a hand mixer to puree the carrots and onions before you add the sausage. You can also make this in the slow cooker, or add other vegetables (the pureed insides of a sweet potato will add more sweetness, for example), use different kinds of squash or bacon or chicken in lieu of sausage, add hot sauce or red pepper flakes for heat, or omit the sausage for a vegetarian version. Its a nice versatile base that you can adjust to your tastes.

Pretty much every grocery store carries precooked whole roasted chickens... I think at my local shop they're $6 each. You can get a lot of food out of that and you don't even have to cook it! Generally speaking, the less processed the chicken is, the cheaper it is. So if you're not afraid of cooking a whole bird (and you shouldn't be, its easy) price out whole chickens. You can get those as low as $.59/lb. Wings, legs and split breasts (with the bone and skin on) are always going to be cheaper than boneless skinless breasts, I guarantee it. Its almost Thanksgiving...right afterward, turkeys and hams will go on megasale. Buy them up, cut them in pieces and freeze them! The aforementioned eggs, ground beef and tuna are a great suggestion. Cheap cuts of pork and beef are many and plentiful...look for whole pork roasts, pork shoulder, brisket, stew beef, skirt steaks, primal cut beef (these will be huge slabs of meat that look like the ribs Fred gets in the beginning of The Flintstones, vacuum sealed in plastic... get a sharp knife and plastic freezer bags and cut it into portions). And good grocery shopping game goes a long way. They want you to not take advantage of the deals they put in front of you...don't let them take your money! Any one of these things will help; all of them together will make a HUGE difference: - Glance over the grocery circulars you get in the mail; sales happen on approximately a 3 month cycle, and ALL grocery stores have meat sales weekly, but never at the same time on the same thing as their competitors. So the place you got a good deal on this week will not have a good deal next week, but someone else will. - Subscribe to your grocery store's email list; many send out weekly store coupons for meat, fresh veg and dairy (coupons for these items are rare as manufacturer's coupons in the Sunday inserts). - Make sure you have a grocery store loyalty card and USE IT, it makes a huge difference. - And use Sunday paper coupons for everything that isn't meat... nuts, butter, oil, spices, cheese, toiletries, wraps and bags, cleaning products, dental care, paper goods, almost anything you'd buy in a drugstore--I rarely pay much of anything for these items and it makes more money for the other things I need.

I heart this thread. Critical thinking and polite discourse has got to be higher on this board than anywhere else! I guess I'm doing primal more than paleo. I like my wine and cheese too much to let them go completely! When I started, I did it because I was frustrated and plateaued weight-wise and stayed there for MONTHS. I was eating steamed vegetables, salad, chicken breast, fruit, high fiber bread, juice popsicles, beans, low fat cheese, light beer, diet soda, and tons of low fat cottage cheese and fat free yogurt. I measured and tracked everything that went into my mouth. I was consuming around 1600 calories a day, almost no fat and working out almost every day. I was eating "good" by typical American low-calorie diet standards and getting nowhere. When I jumped into paleo, I hated it and got viciously ill for about 3 weeks. I didn't want to take supplements for my gut because I'm just of the feeling that the body will better adjust itself if you let it, eventually. And fortunately it did. I eased up on the red meat and started cooking with butter and adding bacon and eggs instead, which I could tolerate. That helped. Now, about 6 weeks later, I'm losing about 1.5lbs a week again... at a MUCH higher caloric intake. My stomach is fine, I can actually enjoy red meat, and I feel really good. I've also noticed that I'm not as swollen, in the face and the belly. I'm working out fewer days per week, but at a higher intensity...I never could do that before because I was bonking every time I got in the gym. But I guess the key thing I've learned from this way of eating is that fat is good. That's a really hard thing for me, as I've been eating low fat/low calorie for much of my adult life (and been overweight for most of my adult life), except for a year or two on Atkins, which failed the minute I reintroduced carbs. Its still hard to wrap my head around sometimes. The other thing its reinforced for me is that grains and me don't mix. I've had bread twice in the past six weeks and its remarkable, my gut swells like a balloon for 24-48 hours. I don't know what that means, but its been great to know this about myself. I guess the key thing I've gained from primal/paleo is a feeling of control over my body. Its endlessly frustrating to be eating next to nothing (and nothing very good tasting), starving every day, working out a ton, and feeling bad for years and still be obese and have people telling you, "its calories in-calories out, stupid!" Well, its not. Neither is it a genetic curse. Its just learning what kind of energy your body needs and providing it.

Well, the way I look at it, it took many more years to get to the point where I was so hooked (my folks fed us really good food but they also owned a deli that was basically the town's candy store...unlimited access to all the candy I could sneak, all day every day from birth!)... and probably a good solid 2-3 years of consuming no sugar before I really, honestly didn't care about it anymore. But being able to control my feelings about sugar came on much sooner...I still liked it, and wanted it, but it wasn't as painful or urgent. I think of the cycle like this: first you rely on white knuckle willpower, and then willpower becomes regular habit in the near term, and then over the longer range habit becomes true behavioral/psychological change. So no, a few months won't "cure" you, but a few months is the first step in a process whose only key factor is time. You're not a freak at all! I think this kind of thing is really common actually. Sugar and chemicals have a really powerful impact on our bodies and brains, and when you take that away it makes sense that you're going to freak out for a little while as you adjust. Good for you for taking the first step and having such great success thus far!!

I think everybody's different. I always have to take a pretty militant approach when I quit things I REALLY love, but can take a laxer approach for things that I like but am not obsessed with. For me with sugar, I had to go cold turkey and stay strictly off it for years before I got my cravings under control. I just told myself, "You cannot have that, you are not able to handle it, and it puts your body and mind into an uncontrollable tailspin". No cheat day was going to help me, it was just going to stoke the fires! I pretty much put myself into the mindset of, Put that in your mouth and you will be sick. I have zero taste for sugar now...I don't even like sweet fruit much anymore. So I guess you'll lose your taste for anything if you go without for long enough. More recently, I've been cutting out grains and legumes...that's been mildly disconcerting, but the pleasure I get from those things is less than I got from sugar. I've had a piece of homemade naan on two occasions over this past month and its been satisfying, made me feel good, and then I got right back on the wagon. So I think you just have to look within yourself and see how latched on you are to whatever you're trying to cut out. I always think willpower is a limited commodity, and cutting things out completely is sometimes easier than enforcing moderation on yourself, depending on your psychological relationship to that food. Sort of like, its easy to control the flow of a faucet, but its easier to dam up a river.

Sleep is a tough battle. I've had to be REALLY tough on myself about it. I work one full time job, own my own business which amounts to another 20-40hrs/week, and I'm in 2 full time bands plus I do pickup work so I can be rehearsing 3x a week and playing 2-4x a week when its busy. Plus working out 3-4 times a week. I used to sleep 2-5 hours a night. The trick is, I *thought* I was getting a lot out of my workouts and doing just fine, but the truth is I was bonking all the time and making no gains at all. I was depressed and short tempered, but people only told me that once I turned things around and started acting right. I was so tired, I didn't even know I was being snippy! I force myself to sleep at least 6-7 hrs (try for 8 when I can) now. My memory's better, my singing is better and so is my programming. I learn things for work MUCH more easily. And I've lost 15lbs since August and added 20-40# to all my major lifts just this month. So, I guess my point is, lack of sleep is sneaky, because when you're tired, you can't really evaluate how significantly its effecting you. I think of time spent sleeping as "non-negotiable"... just like getting in the gym and eating clean. I had to upgrade it to a priority.

Yeah, I started out on the assistance machine and I never felt like I really improved at all...I never could lessen the assistance past a certain point. Plus the one at our gym is sort of a pneumatic antique that gets stuck in the up position every once in a while, and I have to do a 6' jump to the ground. Un-fun! I did just get the band suggestion from my PT too. Going to try that, but I think I need a little more training before I can do it.

Thank you! Just looked up bench dips on ExRx, l think I can definitely handle those, if not the elevated variety. Can't wait to try em out! For close grip pushups, is it worthwhile to do those while I'm still on incline pushups/knee pushups, or should I wait til I can do real regular pushups on the floor? I feel like the losing weight part is *almost* like cheating...but a cheat I'll gladly embrace!