woohoo

I bought a toy.

It’s not too fancy but it’ll d the basics. I’m gonna use it to help with this cardio weight loss stuff and to play with and see where my heart rate gets to on some different stuff. You’ll see the results.

Stroke

Yeah, that’s right, half my face is paralyzed now.

Wait, no, that was a reference to rowing, my mistake.

Hit the Concept II this afternoon. I haven’t the slightest clue what makes a good rowing workout. I do think I’m gonna finally get a hear rate monitor though

25 -30 rpm 5 minutes
30 – 35 rpm 5 minutes
25 – 30 rpm 5 minutes
30 – 35 rpm 1 minute (I couldn’t keep it up)
smoked
hopped on the bike to keep a moederate pace for a break for about 5 minutes
back to the rower
try to maintain 30 rpms (but not do a very good job) 10 minutes

Stick a fork in me, I’m done.

I’m sure my technique is crap if even that good. I don’t know how hard i was working but I felt like I was working awefully hard. This thing gets into some muscles I don’t use a lot so that is good. I think I may be able to alternate it with some of my park training and do some damage.

I also tried to rachet down on my diet a little bit.

Breakfast (5 am)
1/4 cup steel cut oats
1/4 cup ground flax
1 tblsp maple syrup
4 oz skim milk

1 tblsp instant coffee
1 tblsp sugar
6oz skim milk

7 am
1 yoplait yogurt

9 am
spinach
1 hard boiled egg (not somethin gI have been doing but I though tIwould add it)
Italian dressing

11 am
1 Amy’s organic buritto

1pm
Salad like above

5pm
subway 6″ chicken sandwich

I’m in class from, well now, until 8 so I may nibble something when I get home.

gotta run to class now

What makes a good fat loss workout?

I struggled with a title for this. I wanted to ask “What makes a good cardio workout?” or “What makes a good aerobic workout?”. I know the answer to those things but those aren’t the real queston. I can look up Aerobic workout and find the answer to that. The real question is What is a workout that makes you burn fat.

Whether you believe you should eat more, less, more often, less often, before bed, after breakfast, not all workouts are created equal to burn fat. There are a lot of people that still feel that 45 minutes a day is the secret recipe. Most of them seem to be overweight. Some folks swear by high rep weight lifting. There is the kettlebell crowd.  The afterburn folks who do short intense workouts. Some people even swear by walking.

It seems to me that the only workout that isn’t suggested is powerlifting. I think we can see why. I sit at a desk all day so I probably don’t make my 10,000 steps a day or whatever. When I have walked more, I haven’t seen a huge benefit, unless I walked a lot more. Jogging is ok, I don’t hate it. Well, I do hate it but not as a workout, just cause I’m bad at it. I think everyone should be able to jog a couple miles on short notice but it’s not something that I think leads to long term success, unless you want to be successful at jogging.

Me being me, I like the theory that hard and heavy anaerobic training can burn fat. I haven’t found this to be the case. I think the primary reason for that is A)It’s really hard to push yourself for more than a half an hour to lift heavy, the body can scream really loud and B) your body will break down after a while of this.

I know the kettlebell folks love their kettlebells as weightloss devices. I like the idea, it’s certainly a fun way to do it. That said, I see two issues again A) this is basically a heavy anaerobic workout (See above for issues) and B) The lower back has to quit with the swings at some point.

So there are three camps, each of which have had some successes and a whole lot of failures in weightloss. I can’t see the difference. I have my favorites. I’m hoping to work a little of each but we’ll see.