Sunday, June 13, 2010

i love this!

This is a quote from the blog of a personal trainer named Martin Berkhan, which I saw linked to elsewhere:

"Never attempt to train yourself into a caloric deficit. Don't spend hours on the treadmill. Diet comes first, cardio second. The dumbest fat loss strategy ever devised is used by people that wake up early in the morning before going to work to do cardio and follow that up with "recovery shake." Congratulations, you just wasted two hours of your life. Cardio is good for cardiovascular health, but most people use cardio as a fat loss tool - and force themselves through regimens that aren't very conducive to their daily routine (or mental sanity). Next time, skip the shake and the cardio. Sleep two hours longer, but skip breakfast and fast until lunch time. This way you can create the same caloric deficit with the added bonus of feeling more rested and having saved more time. You'll be much better off."

As you can see, he is apparently a proponent of Intermittent Fasting and laziness. My kind of guy! I think I need to start reading him regularly.

I am tempted to tell you the good and the bad of my own fat loss battle, but I know y'all aren't interested. Too bad. I'm gonna tell you anyway. So, the good. I went shopping this weekend and finally I think I have enough warm weather work clothes. The good part is that I've been kind of in-between two sizes, so when I was trying things on, I brought both sizes in. However, in every case, the smaller size fit better now. Yay!

The bad? Well, in the evil, evil fitting room in Macys (truly, the lighting in there is so horrible, I don't know how they sell anyone anything), I got a good look at the back of my arms in one of those 3-way mirrors. Holy shit, but I now have this saggy flabby skin in my arm/armpit/back area. I'm sure it looks worse in there than it does out in the world, but still. Now I'm self-conscious about it. And I was feeling so good about wearing my spaghetti strap dresses and such. Boo!

In summary, you should not get up early tomorrow and run, but I should probably go lift some weights.

xoxo

4 comments:

Craig H said...

Nice layout!

If you hurry over here to kiss me while I'm still contagious, you can get in on the ground floor of my can't-taste-anything diet. seriously--i'm right now living proof that when you can't taste anything, you have no desire to eat anything, and i bet that fasting thing under these olfactory conditions would be like falling off a log.

and--seriously--the arm thing? that's just crazee. ;-)

malevolent andrea said...

Are you gonna make me tell the world that you *wouldn't* kiss me this week while you were contageous *and* you forced me to go wash my hands every time I touched you? hahaha (Totally unnecessary because my superior immune system laughs at rhinovirii!) I'm sorry you still can't breathe/smell/taste, though. I thought you were on the upswing :-(

Uncle said...

Wouldn't you think the point of poor lighting in a fitting room is to make you think everything looks gorgeous on you? If the lighting is bad and you still see things you'd rather not, then someone at Macy's has to get on the problem.

malevolent andrea said...

You would think! The lighting in there is what you would imagine in a police interrogation room when they're trying to get you to confess.

I've never understood why stores (especially non-bargain-basement stores) don't make the trying-on process more flattering. Remember the Seinfeld episode with the "skinny mirrors"? There are such things. I swear to god, the fitting rooms in the Banana Republic flagship store on Newbury street has them--everything I have ever tried on in that particular BR has looked fabulous. I have this one skirt that I bought on sale in there which I have worn *once* because it never looks right with whatever shirt/shoes I try with it and I'm always "why the hell did I buy this garment?" And then I remember: oh, yeah, it was from the store with the mirrors in which everything looks good.

You'd think other stores would adopt this policy in their business plans.