It's time for spring training! No baseballs required, though. This is all about you and the most important fitness tool in your whole body: your stubborn little noggin. I've compiled a reading list for spring training your brain for a fit and fabulous summer!
A couple of things happened last week that got my brain moving in the direction of brushing up on knowing stuff: 1) a friend asked me for advice on nutrition for strength training, and 2) I went through some pictures from 2009 and noticed that I was much leaner back then. A lot has changed in my training goals and priorities since then, requiring more carbs in my diet, so it wasn't a stumper to figure out why that happened. But it still happened and I still noticed.
I also got the wonderful news last week that I've decreased my body fat since the last time I measured it in November - woo hoo! And with the leaned-out-me pictures still on my mind, that got me in the mood to do some more fat loss. So over the weekend I re-read Leigh Peele's sobering and highly informative e-book, The Fat-Loss Troubleshoot.
And that got me to thinking about the other books I rely on to keep me honest (and informed) about nutrition and how to make sure it works for you. Remember, you can't out-train a bad diet so nutrition is absolutely the most important factor to consider when getting healthy. Exercise is proactive, not reactive. Do not exercise to compensate for bad nutrition! I will not feel sorry for you if you eat crap and wonder why you aren't getting anywhere in your fitness goals!
Anyway. The books.
1. The Fat-Loss Troubleshoot by Leigh Peele. Honest, informative, and technical. It takes the emotion and "it's not fair," out of figuring out how your body uses food, which you know is right up my alley.
2. The New Rules of Lifting for Women by Lou Schuler, Alwyn Cosgrove, and Cassandra Forsythe, PhD, RD. They also have a version for men. It's a great combination of information on training and eating for function.
3. YOU: On a Diet by Dr. Oz and that other guy. Dr. Oz is a cheese-ball but this book saved my life. It is what got me started on clean eating back in the day and I still refer to it all the time. Buy two copies and give one to a friend.
4. Breaking Free from Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth. An oldie but goodie. Wow, this book changed my life in so many ways.
Read! Learn! Apply! And..
good day. :)
I read once that a major contributor to the weight that women gain (or haven't lost) after having kids is due to eating food off of their kids' plates, and I believe it. I am a victim of it myself! After reading The Fat Loss Troubleshoot and getting a black and white reminder that I need to weigh, not just measure but WEIGH IN GRAMS, my food to get an accurate picture of calories in versus calories out, I am realizing just how much of a habit this has become for me.
My kid eats healthy food. I mean, its not like his leftovers are Cocoa Krispies and chicken nuggets. But, as I've said before, even healthy food has calories. Even tomatoes have to be burned into fuel and that means they have calories. I keep a food journal, but do you think I write down those blueberries I tossed in my mouth before putting some on his plate? What's a few blueberries, right? And that spoonful of his oatmeal to make sure it isn't too hot? Pshaw! Scooping up his uneaten broccoli at dinner to prove a point about how they are sooooo goooood that I just want to eat it allllll day long...well, veggies are "free," right?
Not right.
The more I read about people whose fat loss is sabotaged by these seemingly harmless nibbles, the more I started to do the math in my head and realized that I am likely eating on average 300-500 more calories in an entire day than I realize. Uh oh. Damn it!
So I pulled that digital kitchen scale out of the cabinet and got to work. I usually only weigh meat and cheese because they are more calorie dense than fruits and vegetables, and figure I don't need to worry about produce as much. I was very relieved to find that for the most part, my guesstimated portions were right on the money or close to it, and now that I have nixed the kiddo-plate-nibbles, my actual consumption and my http://www.fitday.com/ profile are a little more in agreement.
But to be sure, I went a little overboard with the ziplocks this week and measured every single morsel. To the gram. It's always good to get a refresher on reality.
And in the meantime, I am making smaller portions for my picky prince. Hey, no sense in all that good food going to waist.
Good day! :)
So last week, still on a high from ordering my GoWear Fit (which is on my arm calculating away as I type!), I bought and downloaded an e-book called The Fat LossTroubleshoot, written by a trainer named Leigh Peele, who also wrote the detailed review of the GoWear Fit that ultimately convinced me to buy it.
Now, let me confess something: I made a New Year's resolution this year to stop wasting my money on gadgety fitness doohickeys. I've bought (and lost or broken) more heart-rate monitor watches, pedometers, fancy water bottles, diet and nutrition books, kitchen appliances, and Lord knows what else over the years in the name of making my life easier. And I think I made pretty good progress making it all the way to June before I bought two new fitnessy things at once. :) So yay me.
I read the entire book over the weekend, making copius notes in the margins, and I think it was a good use of $40. In its 150 pages, Peele debunks a lot of myths related to nutrition for fat loss and sheds some light on a few realities that none of us really want to face, like the truth about how many calories we actually burn and how many we actually eat. And, I was very glad to spend $40 to find out that for about 95% of my training and nutrition, I am doing everything pretty darn close to perfect. Another yay for me! As for that other 5%, now that I know about them AND have my GoWear Fit, well I am pretty much unstoppable! I can do anything! Maybe I should call BP and offer my assistance.
The book is really helpful, with some great formulas and calculators designed to explain the incredibly complex human body (well, the part related to metabolism anyhow) in an easy-to-understand and readable format. Considering I really didn't care for the online persona of the writer going in (because I tend to not like people who are like me and plus the homepage of her website made me think that maybe I shouldn't be looking at it on my work computer), that is some pretty high praise! I really liked the book and came away feeling thankful to her for writing it. I would gladly give her some more money to tell me some more stuff.
Check it out - I'll be sharing some of her insights and my experiences with them here as they are relevant.
Good day!
