Since I laid some ground rules down for nutrition in terms of an obstacle race, I feel it only prudent to do the same for active recovery and injuries.  The only thing that tops being injured is being sick.  I have had a sick 6 year old at home now for 3 days and he is reminding how miserable it is to be sick.  But injuries are annoying because you really want to work out at full capacity but you can’t and the whole time you can hear the pounds collecting on the scale.  So let’s put this in perspective, shall we?

Active Recovery

Active recovery is a fancy schmancy word for “knock it off and rest, will ya?”  In support of us psychos who feel like we’re being lazy because we only worked out 7 days this week (as opposed to the 8 days available to us overachievers), this is a vital tool to be added to our tool box.  Unlike a regular athlete who has full calories available to them at all times, we have to recover in two ways:  fake “high” caloric days and consolidating exercise.

Since our lives are guided by the motto “less is more”, our prep for the race should be a bit less than the average athlete.  For one, a ton of running will kill a physique.  Therefore, that should cut the schedule back a bit.  Secondly, we will need to consolidate lifts with functional training because lifting more would be hard to due to the lack of food in the diet.  And lastly, we do not have enough starch in the diet to go hog wild in terms of energy output without wondering if we’re burning through some major muscle so we need to get smart about adding fat.  Here are some ways to manipulate your schedule:

• Go to full body lifts for now.
• Add functional movements in between the lifts.
• Wear a weighted vest in your workout instead of heavy DB’s or BB’s.
• Leave at least 2 days completely free from all exercise and instead, make them stretch days.
• Eat the most on those days, but not so much that you break the caloric bank.
• Add sprints to your schedule (like 200’s and 400’s) but do not put them after a killer leg workout.  Even if you are doing full body workouts, you may have more of a “leg day” than another day.  Avoid sprinting after that.
• You can make the high cal days high by adding more Omega 3 fats instead of adding more starch.  This will definitely aid in active recovery.
• Drop a day of cardio and make your lifts more dynamic so you suck wind during them.

Injuries

Injuries are a pain in the butt.  And I mean that literally!  I would rather (yes! I got my “I’d rather” in) remove a deep splinter with a butter knife than sit through my summer (again!) with a major injury like a broken limb.  I broke my foot last June and it was miserable.  I refused to be sidelined so I hobbled all over Boston with a huge boot, but it still wasn’t the same.  Because we are on a compromised diet in the first place, our joints and tendons are ripe for the picking in terms of injury.  Fat is scarce in our diet and it is what lubricates our joint capsules  so we have little give and take when we misstep or land funny.  Rolling ankles are almost a given as well as rotator cuff issues.  Be smart!  Make sure you recover and get plenty of sleep.  Should an injury occur, here is what you need to know:

• Your first reaction is to cut all the starch out of your diet.  Don’t do it.  Go to 1/day at least 4 days/week.
• Eat exactly what you need each day.  This means do not go to bed hungry or full.  Either one is bad for different reasons.
• Do not work out on the injured body part until you are completely well.  Trust me when I say this.  We heal jacked up if we do not fully recover.  For the rest of your life, your knee will ache every time you turn on the garbage disposal.  Seriously.
• You will not gain weight if you keep the junk out.  This is not the time to “munchy” yourself into next week.   With that being said, do not try to starve yourself, either.  See above.
• You will feel smooshy.  Itiswhatitis.  You are not losing muscle.  You are losing your “pump”.  Accept it and just know when you lift the right way again, all will be well.
• Don’t be a cardio hero.  If you can’t lift right but somehow can still do cardio, don’t try to make up for lifting with cardio.  Baaaaaaad decision right there.  Just say no.

I feel better now that I put this on paper.  If you go out and act crazy on the course, I have nothing to do with it.   You have been warned.  Hahaha!  Let me know if you are doing one any time soon.  I’d love to know.  Woop woop. )

Ahhh…there’s nothing like a fresh batch of peer pressure to make us do something completely uninformed and irrational.  Gotta love it.

Everybody loves a challenge—especially us.  We love them more than the average person does, to be honest with you.  We can seriously get a little sick with it by setting crazy goals like 5 marathons in 5 weeks and of course, at the time it sounds completely rational.  It even sounds doable.  However, about halfway through the goal we know we are in trouble but we keep on going for pride sake. How about we avoid this calamity by giving you some things to take into account as we head into another year of the obstacle course races?

Let me remind you of who you are.   If you are reading this blog, then you are someone who may or may not realize that you are an athlete but you definitely realize that your physique is part of your overall health and fitness goal.  So it’s not ‘by any means necessary’ to reach the finish line because none of us here would be willing to go up 10 pounds to make the goal happen.  Instead, we will rethink it when we realize that it could take weeks to get the 10 pounds off again and we’ll most likely move on to another goal.  It is what it is.  This gives you an idea of what this series is about because it is not about getting you ready for the Tough Mudder or any other killer race.  No, it is about getting you ready for them safely while taking into account that you will need to be smart about how you fuel for the training, actively recover from the training and psychologically deal with the training. This is not the same as just plain old running or bodybuilding type lifting and if you are not aware of that you may either blow your diet, go crazy or the worst of them all: get injured.

Over the next three days I want to tackle 4 things:

• Tough Guy syndrome
• Nutritional challenges (how to work the STarch thing)
• Active recovery
• Injuries and their ramifications

In less than a month I turn 42 years old.  WOW.  I don’t feel a day over 41 30 yo when I do things, but the next day I feel like I am 75.  I honestly remember the time when I could wake up, decide to run a 10K that day (even though I was not training for one and never ran more than the 10 feet it takes me to get into the shower) and then get up the next morning and do it all over again.  Crazy.  If I did that today someone would be peeling me off the asphalt—and that would be at registration!  Shame.  I need to warm up for my warm up and I know that’s from years of abuse brought on by Tough Guy syndrome.  This malady affects almost all trainers, some group fitness instructors, avid runners and nearly every single physique athlete out there.

Tough Guy syndrome (TGS) is a peculiar syndrome because it crosses the blood brain barrier and renders us dumb as dirt as to the workings of the body and metabolism even though we could school a client on it in a heartbeat.  Somehow, we’re impervious to this information.  We can dispense it, but we can’t use it and because of this, we tend to do some of the dumbest things known to mankind.  It’s unbelievable.

TGS’s power is exacted by finding the weak spot in our immune systems: our egos.  Once it finds that chink in the armor, it quickly spreads throughout the Central Nervous System causing awful symptoms like signing up for and completing the Tough Mudder without any training for it and then systematically bragging about it like you’re a hero or something.  Frightening.  Fevers and chills can result if it goes undetected as people are hot with jealously or cold with disdain around you because you decided to just “pop into” the race.  And because TGS is a syndrome, there is no “one-size-fits-all” cure and normally diagnosis comes only with the egregious symptoms coming to light such as injury or accidents.

But there is hope.  You can take preventative measures to keep from developing this syndrome by realizing a few things:

1)      If you are under 18% bodyfat, you are of the lean community.  You cannot, and should not, put your body to the ultimate test without properly preparing it and fueling it.  Do not eat the same diet you are used to now and then just “jump into” an obstacle course type race.

2)      If you are allergic to starchy carbohydrates because you think they make you gain weight and want to just eat starch the week of the event, you’re in for a big surprise.  We’ll talk about this tomorrow.  Just know that you need to eat them long before the week of the event if you want to use them to fuel your race.

3)      You do not recover the same when you are lean.  You have fewer reserves in the tank and you must keep that in mind.  If you deplete them now, they will not be available to you when go back to working on your physique or just even maintaining it.

4)      You run the risk of injury—major injury—when you are leaner.  This truth comes in handy when you feel the urge to bounce out of bed and conquer the world.  One day of heroism could cost you 10 weeks of working out.  There’s a sobering thought.

This will be a short series.  I am only going to yell at you a little bit (I’m really yelling at myself but I’m using you as the punching bag.  Sorry.) so meet me here for the next 2 days as we get ready for an obstacle race.  Cool?  Woop woop!

My office is so small, when I drop a Kleenex on the floor I have wall to wall carpet.

I don’t care what I do to my office, it is never clean.  Ever.

The pen issue is at least under control now.  But there’s still room for improvement.

I spend at least one day per month, and possibly even more than that, “cleaning” my office.  Either it seems crowded, messy, unorganized, running amuck or disheveled—it doesn’t matter, it drives me crazy nonetheless.  I will move things around, supposedly clean them out, rearrange them and reorder them all to have the same office I started with before.  I do not need a bigger office, I think that would be worse but what I do need is to really stop and think about what is realistic for the space that I do have and then to slowly go about changing that.  It’s unrealistic to think that I am going to dump all my furniture and stuff out tomorrow and start anew so I obviously need to be patient and stop rearranging my pens to make my office look different.  Until I do that, I’m not satisfied and I start the process all over again to find the best office arrangement for me.  And so it goes for skinny fat women as well…

I would rather use the string from an uncooked roast beef to floss my teeth than be skinny fat.  How’s that for drama?  First, that’s not true and second, I was just looking for a way to shove in a good “I would rather” since it’s been at least 4 posts or so since I’ve had one.  I love putting them in and I can’t get them gross enough every time they show up.  But as I was saying…  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that but I will say that it’s not easy being thin.  I know, I know…some of you are throwing a rock at the computer screen right now and I hear you but you need to see it from their point of view.  They have NOTHING to say they have arrived.  Sure you’re thinking they’ve arrived already but not true!  Don’t forget this company is dedicated to looking good naked and nothing is scarier than a sheet of skin hanging off of a coat hanger with back pockets stuffed with cheese.  Ok…I stole that from someone who considers herself to be skinny fat but that’s what they say!  When you have to lose weight, your motivation to keep the good fight going is the scale/BF reading/picture comparisons that you have weekly or bi weekly to go by.  You need those because as far as you’re concerned, you look the same every week no matter how much you lose.  It’s only when you can see it on paper that you actually believe.  So then what does the skinny fat girl have to rely upon if the scale isn’t really moving, body fat readings are hard to get accurately when you are that lean and pictures do not show the detail that she needs to boost her confidence?  It’s a hard place to be and I do not envy them one bit.

This is the thing that is the hardest to accept when you only have to do a body comp change:  you have to diet harder and tighter than a girl who just has to lose body fat.  It is SO hard to lose body fat and not weight at the same time and keeping you focused is like asking my almost 6 y.o. to sit still for 5 min.  Not fun!  It takes longer than weight loss and much more dedication.  And for those of you who have weight to lose, this will be you once you reach goal weight.  You must stay there for at least 6 months for your body to adapt before you start to look like you’re lean.  The quality of your food is essential and you cannot get away with things like turkey bacon, purdue short cuts, packets of oatmeal and so on.  You have to go to the next level in food choices:  steel cut oats, no bacon of any kind (what a shame typing that), high quality fish oil, chicken that’s not soaked in a sodium solution first, etc.  You still do not have to eat organic, that’s a myth, but you cannot do anything processed at all.  You also have to limit fake food (protein powder) because it does not do a body good long term.  (someone’s going to argue with me on this…)  You MUST dot your I’s and cross your T’s and timing is everything.

So let’s wrap this up shall we?

I said I would give you some hard core numbers to live by and here they go.  Please keep in mind these are AVERAGES:

TWENTY SOMETHING:

• Can gain as much as 15 pounds and get away with it.  Not recommended but the earth will still rotate should it happen.
• It will take you as much as 16 weeks to get that off assuming you A) did not recently become lean and b) do not want to kill yourself to do it.
• Should not eat over 2200 cals unless you are over 160 pounds, super tall or genetically gifted.
• Should not go below 1400 cals unless you are a snail, thyroid disaster or under 5 feet.
• You lose at a rate of 1.2/week over the course of 12 weeks.
• You could lose as much as 3/week if you have never lost before or kick it into high gear.
• You will rebound as much as 8 pounds/10 pounds lost if you do it too fast.  So if you lose 20 pounds in 12 weeks b/c you lost your mind and went for the gusto, you have the potential to gain 16 of it back WITHIN THE FIRST 2 WEEKS OF GOAL.
• It will take you 9 months to convert a skinny fat body over to a body that can withstand a full powered booty smack.  This is assuming you are on it like a hornet that whole time.  You will have to be there consistently, though, for 4 months to own it.

THIRTY SOMETHING:

• Can gain as much as 11 pounds and get away with it.  Not recommended but Wall St won’t crash should it happen.
• It will take you as much as 12 weeks to get that off assuming you A) did not recently become lean and b) do not want to kill yourself to do it.
• Should not eat over 1800 cals unless you are over 160 pounds, super tall or genetically gifted.
• Should not go below 1300 cals unless you are a snail, thyroid disaster or under 5 feet.
• You lose at a rate of 0.9/week over the course of 12 weeks.
• You could lose as much as 2/week if you have never lost before or kick it into high gear.
• You will rebound as much as 7 pounds/10 pounds lost if you do it too fast.  So if you lose 20 pounds in 12 weeks b/c you lost your mind and went for the gusto, you have the potential to gain 14 of it back WITHIN THE FIRST 2 WEEKS OF GOAL.
• It will take you 12 months to convert a skinny fat body over to a body that can withstand a full powered booty smack.  This is assuming you are on it like a hornet that whole time.  You will have to be there consistently, though, for 6 months to own it.

FORTY SOMETHING:

• Can gain as much as 5-7 pounds and get away with it.  Not recommended but it’ll be a nail biter should it happen.
• It will take you as much as 14 weeks to get that off assuming you A) did not recently become lean and b) do not want to kill yourself to do it.
• Should not eat over 1800 cals unless you are over 150 pounds, super tall or genetically gifted.
• Should not go below 1100 cals unless you are a snail, thyroid disaster or under 5 feet.
• You lose at a rate of 0.67/week over the course of 12 weeks.
• You could lose as much as 1.5/week if you have never lost before or kick it into high gear.
• You will rebound as much as 4-5 pounds/10 pounds lost if you do it too fast.  So if you lose 15 pounds in 12 weeks b/c you lost your mind and went for the gusto, you have the potential to gain 7.5 of it back WITHIN THE FIRST 2 WEEKS OF GOAL.
• It will take you 14-18 months to convert a skinny fat body over to a body that can withstand a full powered booty smack.  This is assuming you are on it like a hornet that whole time.  You will have to be there consistently, though, for 12 months to own it.

Hit me up and tell me if any of this rings true for you.  I have been doing this for a long time and have seen just about everything in terms of beating the averages so don’t let this get you down.  But do let it give you an idea of what’s realistic.  What I have found is those that are upset are not unhappy because they didn’t make progress, it’s that the goal they had in mind in the first place was based on fantasy.  Adjust your mind now so you appreciate what you yield later.  Cool??  Woop woop!

Recently I read an article that debunked the statement that the world is getting dumber every year.  This has been going on for some time now because many people claim that our children are not as smart as generations before them since they can no longer do math by hand or type a straightforward letter.  Simply not true says the article and how they clear this myth up is by saying that the measuring rod is moved up every year to keep the kids looking dumb but in reality their IQ scores are actually 24 points higher than ours were back in the day.  (I, personally, find that hard to believe since rap has eroded into a hodge podge of non-sense otherwise known as Lil’ Wayne and TV has shows like the Kardashians and Jersey Shore dominate the air waves—but hey, what do I know?)  But something is up because I feel like I am caught in a time warp labeled Ground Hog Day and my days are filled with having the same conversation over and over again.  Can’t some things just go away?

I have spoken about Snopes.com and UrbanLegend.com and really love them for getting rid of internet hoax stuff but why can’t we have one for exercise and nutrition?  There would be some serious information removed from the web if this was enacted and it would probably put some magazines out of business. It would also create peace of mind for those of us who are in the business of making hot bodies so we could exit the Vortex of bad information and never ending myths.  I honestly feel like there is some high level conspiracy out there that keeps these myths-a-coming at a rate faster than the average trainer can quench.  (Hence the woman at the gym who still does side bends with weights.)

Seeing as this week is all about reality, it’s only appropriate to continue on from building into the most controversial topics of all, dieting.  We need to dispel some hype behind dieting so that on Monday, when you become the most focused woman to ever hit the planet, it lasts long enough to take you into Tuesday.  Cool?

WHAT IT IS

Dieting is a way of life that starts every Monday.  Somewhere between the ages of 0 and 4 we are taught that anything that tastes good needs to be severely restricted.  By 7 we are fully dieting even though we don’t even need to lose weight.  It is now taught as a part of science in the 7^th grade and shows up at times on the SATs as a “test” question (you know, the ones that don’t count):  “If Jane spends 2 hours on the TM per day, eats only lettuce and chicken for every meal except breakfast for which she has sawdust and pushes her car to work, how much weight will she lose by the end of the week?” Pick from one of the following:

• 1 pound

• 2 pounds

• 3 pounds

• None—she lost her mind on the 2^nd day and tore through her refrigerator like the Tazmanian Devil on crack.  Now she’s up 5.  Is it Monday yet?

TECHNICAL FACTS TO CHEW ON

Training:  Fast and furious.  No circuit training!!  Metabolic confusion all the way.

Food:  Some…but not much.  No matter how much you are told not to, you will over diet.

Supplements:  A few but nothing like building.  Fish oil is a must.

Rest:  As much as possible but since you’ll be ready to digest your innards, you’ll have a hard time sleeping.  Herbal tea comes in handy here.

THE FINE PRINT

All kidding aside (for maybe one paragraph, I can’t promise), there is nothing romantic about dieting.  Some of us begin the dreams of tricked out Coach coolers with designer chicken in them complete with matching Lulu Lemon pants and tops as if that combo has guaranteed a certain amount of weight loss.  And depending on where you are in your weight loss journey, nothing—not even dieting—can guarantee you some weight loss.  However, none of that is going to help you out when you find yourself in week 5 of dieting, down only a pound and fully frustrated that it seemed much easier the first time around.  Psst…it was easier.

First, whatever you did before to get lean is not going to work this time.  Wait, let me repeat that because I know you didn’t hear that and you’re going to shoot me an email that says, “I did such and such before so I’m going to do it again.  Could you tell me…”  and I’m going to be forced to jump through my computer screen and give you a noogie.  Whatever…you did…prior to today…to get lean…will not…that means won’t… “work”…the second time around.  I don’t care if you don’t use marinade on your meat or if you wear a weight vest during cardio; whatever you do the second time around better be better than the first.  Period.

Second, you will not lose like the first time around.  So as you gear up for next week as the week you’re about to put  the smack down on those 13 pounds you deposited this season, know that it will not come off like some kind of linear magic:  Week 1= 2 #, Week 2=2#, Week 3=1#  and so on.  Instead, it will look more like

(X² + Y² – Z_happiness)/significant other = I ^{meltdown at the mall}

and you will lose nothing for about 3 weeks and then suddenly drop 4 pounds in two days and so the madness continues.

Just like building, there are some things you need to consider when embarking on a 12 week diet to lean out:

• You will automatically forget how hard it was the first time and think it should come off easier and faster than it does.

• You have less patience.

• It’s not fun anymore so you are less willing to suffer for the cause.  You will cut corners, nibble, complain, nag, question and doubt from day 1.  This is the same for having babies.  When you get pregnant with number 2, you are in your doctor’s office trying to get an epidural at week 10 of your pregnancy talking about your back hurts already.  It’s a long haul.

• Give yourself an extra 14 days to get back in the groove.  You will be RUSTY on Monday.

• For the first month you will have at least 10 engagements to go to that involve open bar, buffet, dim sum and any other smorgasbord type of arrangement that’s going to remind you how long 12 weeks really is.

• You will lose in the mirror before you do on the scale!!!!!!!  Do not forget this or you will sabotage your progress!

• You will think you are fatter than you really are which will make you make bad dieting decisions.  This is the weight loss factor.  Multiply it by the number of pounds you have to lose and that’s how big you think you are.  WLF=3.  Have to lose 10.  Crap, I’m up 30.

Ok…you know the deal.  Tomorrow I put numbers to this and break it down because as funny as this is, it really is scary and this is where we lose our minds as sane, informed women.  You can diet successfully the second time around; it’s just not as easy as it sounds.  But the good news is it’s doable!  Armed with the right information, you can absolutely make this goal happen as opposed to going in blindsided and crashing and burning by week 4.  Cool?  See you tomorrow.  Woop woop!

I’m sure some of you have figured out that I have some issues.  From the butter obsession (that I must say I do not indulge upon, just dream about) to my pen/journal  fixation, it is clear that I can come across a bit unhinged at times.  Let me assure you that I have been cured of those afflictions and now sit in a place where I can at least look back at them and giggle.  Another gift that I have been given is learning that is ‘less is more’.  This is one that I hope to instill in you, as well.  This is tough for us type A folks because we are so extreme in all that we do.  If we are going to be an underwater basket weaver, we are going to be THE BEST underwater basket weaver there is.  Knowing me I’d learn how to do it with every possible type of reed available to weave and I’d understudy with a reedologist and I would complete an accredited course on basket weaving and become a certified weaver and—you get the point.  This is a perfect illustration as to why it was so important for me to learn the principle of ‘less is more’ before I became a walking symbol for destruction.

In the case of building muscle when you are lean, less is definitely more.  Or as I like to say, “Just a dab’ll do ya!”.  Give up the dreams of waking up tomorrow with shoulder caps so round you could hang your coat on them.  Walk away from the idea that in 12 weeks you’ll develop your glutes to the point that you could pick up your kids and carry them to the car while your hands are full.  These things are fallacies and because you believe that you can achieve them, you allow your desires to talk your head right out of common sense; because common sense would tell you if it was that easy, everyone would have them.  But you aren’t thinking like that right now.  You have visions of iron clad butt cheeks with tennis ball like caps separated by a rigid 6 pack…it’s scary in your mind right now.  So let’s get you back to reality, girl.  You’re out of control.

Gaining muscle takes time.  There I said it.  It takes time, lots of consistency and due diligence.  And honestly, if you don’t have any of that right now, keep doing what you’re doing until you do have time to do it fully.  (Essentially, if I keep you from thinking about how long it takes and you just keep doing it, you’ll get there without realizing it.  Wait til I tell you tomorrow that developing a tight body takes time, too.  You’ll really flip your lid then.)  Because it takes forever and a day (did I say that?), do not set aside times to specifically gain muscle and lose body fat like they used to back in the day.  You are going down a long dark road doing it that way.  Instead, let’s look at an alternative way to give you the shoulders and glutes you so desire.

YOU’VE GOT MY ATTENTION, NOW WHAT?

Wow.  Fiesty today, are we?  Ok, let’s get specific.

What you need to effectively build is a surplus of calories, ample rest and full recovery from effective workouts.  Since we have come to the conclusion that we are not going to be Arnold by the end of 12 weeks, it is not necessary for us to eat like him either.  An easy way to create a surplus sans calories is to do much less than before.  This means the only activity you would do during this period of time is lift.  No cardio, Zumba, pilates, power yoga or any other activity that makes you sweat.  Nothing.  And you would also rest more than you did before so you will create an even larger surplus of calories.  If you tell me that you cannot rest more because your life is go, go, go kind of busy, I will give you that look that says, “Well then you must not want to build right now then do you?”  Please refer back to Saturday when I said there is no whining and yes you have to do all that I say.  If you can’t cut your schedule down and rest, you can’t build right now.  All of this is important because you are not going to eat too much more than what you are right now maintaining.  At best you may go up 200 cals, but not much more than that so you can see why you becoming part of your couch is necessary.   We do not feed you more, we move you less.  It works really well without all the extra poundage that is incurred through traditional stuffing programs.

WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT?

For all age groups, a bit of paranoia is to be expected.   If you are used to doing cardio 5 days a week right now, going down to none may make you freak out a bit.  You may also be more anxious because you just lost your daily stress relief.  However, it is still a better alternative to the freak out you would have eating extra starches in a day with a steady weight gain on the scale.  That, my dear, is a harrowing experience.  And you can expect minimal weight gain.  Seriously, you should gain no more than 10 but 7 is optimal over the course of 12 weeks.

TWENTY SOMETHING:

You can expect…well…not much.  Your ability to build muscle at this age is like my ability to give you a straight answer without some kind of wisecrack—hard.  You are going to slog away at the weights like it’s your job and have very little to show for it.  Especially if you are curvy.  The curvier you are, the less muscle you will make.  Sorry.  Just accept it.  So why depress you with this?  To keep you from thinking you’re doing something wrong and thereby attempt every lifting program/ergogenic aid under the sun which will in turn screw up your body for your thirties.

THIRTY SOMETHING:

You can expect the world.  At this age, it is at your fingertips.  Hormonally you are ripe for the picking.  You make muscle easier, you have the beginnings of muscle maturity and you aren’t calling your girlfriend every five minutes anymore as to what she is wearing so there is this inner peace and patience about that helps you stay focused.  This is a great age.  Get in the gym now and never come out!

FORTY SOMETHING:

You can expect density.  You will not get “bigger” but what you have will be fuller.  This is the look we all really strive for.  You are past your prime of making muscle and now are on a hormonal decline.  I know that well known dr. type folk are coming out saying the contrary but they are talking about general public making some muscle.  I am talking about you, the lifting elite, making more muscle.  Very different.  It ain’t happening now without a major battle or you being genetically gifted out the wazoo.  But you are in the age of making nice, full shoulder caps without trying.  Not two oranges sitting atop your clavicles, but a subtle attractive fullness that comes from muscle maturity.  And boy do we have focus now at this age.  Not only are we not calling our girlfriends, we are lucky if we keep our phones on.  And rest is not an issue.  We’re in bed by 9.  Shame.

I will put numbers to all of this when I wrap this series up.  Next up, dieting.  What you can really expect and how long it takes to truly get that lean look.  I will end with a talk on skinny fat because it is a daunting place to be and someone needs to put that reality out there for some of you.  I will put the numbers in that post or the one right after it but I promise to give you something very concrete to walk away with.  If you are signed up on the blog, you are getting the numbers today.  That is an advantage of being signed up.  Hang tight, there’s more to come!  Woop woop!

…pounds that is.  And lots of them.

Building is a myth of epic proportions for women.  Not so much for men, but for women–oh yeah it is.  Whenever I talk to a woman who’s in a building phase, I normally stand there silent, in awe of what she thinks is going on vs. what really is going down.  Typically her trainer has her taking more pills than a senior in assisted living, eating enough food for a small army and lifting like a psycho while she “builds” this ginormous amount of muscle in 8 to 10 weeks.  On the surface, some of that is true.  You will build some muscle in that time period; but nowhere near the amount that you think you’re going to build if you are doing it naturally and you will be left wondering if the price was worth it.

I want to remind you that I am all about all natural before I go on any further.  I mean no fat burners or hormonal help in any way other than all natural sources.  I have no issues with things like creatine and bcaa’s but I will not even entertain the idea of anything else you can dream up that’s on the market today that serves as some type of precursor to testosterone or the like.  This makes a huge difference as you read on because I’m sure you are going to say in your head that this isn’t true and that you know of such and such who did so and so in 10 weeks and she looks amazing.  And then you find out she took xyz and that just killed this comparison.  And trust me; if she looked like that in 10 weeks, she was taking xyz.

As a coach, building in the traditional sense is a kiss of death.  If you tell me you want to take time to build, you are essentially telling me you are preparing yourself to walk the plank and end your fitness training right then and there.  Why the drama?  (Besides the fact that that is my middle name?) Read on…

WHAT IT IS

Building is a period of time where you lift heavy and eat in a caloric surplus to support your lifting.  Recovery is essential during this time in terms of both food and rest and ample attention needs to be paid to how much you are gaining weekly vs. how much you originally weighed so you are not just gaining fat during this time.  This is done through carefully increasing the amount of food that you eat over a period of time while watching the scale for major increases in weight.  Extra activity is cut back and becoming a hermit is a must.  Short of not shaving your legs anymore and letting your eyebrows grow out, you basically adopt a life of baseball hats and big sweatshirts.

TECHNICAL FACTS TO CHEW ON

Training:  Heavy.

Food:  A lot.  Like a wicka-lah.

Supplements:  Expensive. No seriously.  Don’t buy a house or condo before you embark on a building program.  You may not make the payments.

Rest:  Minimum 8 hours of sleep but really, you’ll need more than that.

THE FINE PRINT

Honestly, the program itself is not the thing that I want you to focus on.  You can find a great building program from some of the most notable names out there so there’s no need spending time quibbling those facts.  What I want to talk about is what you WON’T find on the web about building, being natural and being a woman.

First, if you are interested in a building program, you most likely have already gone through a dieting program of some kind and realized you ain’t got no muskel.  NONE.  If you did, you would not be so concerned with building.  You probably lost a good amount of body fat and realized that you were all lower body and no upper and you need take 12 weeks to “build some shoulders”.   This is pretty straight forward, just eat a little extra and lift a little heavier and you’ll be on your way to the new and improved you.  Only it doesn’t go down that way and the amount of weight you can gain in the first few weeks of building can send you into a tailspin that sets up the next 16 weeks of dieting to get it off.

Second, if you are natural and female and you spent the entire year lifting in a building phase, you’d be lucky if you put on 2 pounds of muscle.  Go read the titles of your average man’s magazine:  “Gain 5 pounds of muscle in a year!”, “Follow this protocol for the ultimate gains”, “Max gains in minimum time” and “Gain X pounds of muscle in 6 months”.  Now that’s for men…on the cover of a non-natural man’s magazine…that’s what they’d gain in a year…and they are genetically predisposed to gain muscle.  So stop and think about what this says about you…a female…who wants to build for 10 weeks…naturally…while you have the genetic disposition of a noodle.  So you put on say 10 pounds of weight only to gain less than a half pound of muscle.  Yeah…good luck with that.

Lastly, you have no idea what  you are about to take on emotionally.  This all sounds fine and dandy on paper, but when you put this into practice—you lose your mind.

• You eat more so you feel full.  Feeling full makes you feel fat.  It doesn’t make you fat, you just feel fat.

• You typically eat more carbohydrate than normal.  You don’t have to go crazy with it, but you have more ST than you normally would.  This means you carry more water and you will feel it all over.  Instantaneously your thighs are bigger.  In real life they aren’t, but as far as you’re concerned they just became water filled Lincoln logs.  You will think that everyone can see that you just swallowed a baby beluga and you are ready to deliver it at any second.

• Eating becomes a full time job and it begins to wear you down.  You will hate chewing, chicken and choices.  Everything seems the same and all you want is a break from eating another meal.

• You become stressed from the amount of pills you are swallowing.  Every meal is just another reminder of the pill sac sitting in your purse that you need to chug down sometime during the day and you look like you have a major illness when you’re out to lunch with a friend popping them all.

• Every time you go somewhere and run into someone who saw you when you were leaner, you say hi to them with a caveat attached:  “Hey girl, how are you?  I’m good.  I’m building right now.”  As in…that’s-why-I-am-in-a-baseball-cap-and-sweat-suit.  Soon you’ll just put a name tag on yourself and carry a picture of what you used to look like before you started building.  Really right now?

Once you are lean, stay lean.  Tomorrow we talk about what this really needs to look like for you to make it happen, how it varies by your age, how much you can truly gain before you are setting yourself up for failure and how to get around constantly making an excuse for how you look.  Cool?  Woop woop! )

I think one of the things that plague us as women is constantly wondering if what we are doing is enough.  Honestly, I could also go so far as to say it is just constantly wondering X and then you insert the fear here (x=if I’m good enough, if I’m the only one who…, if I’ll ever be…) but that’s been brought up here so I’m going to be more specific today in referring to if what we are doing measures up to “enough”.

The obvious question here is enough for what?  Enough for weight loss?  Enough for muscle gain?  And boy is this a tough question to have you answer just off the cuff.  If I ask you ‘enough for what’,  you will say in one breath that you want to get lean, add muscle, be more athletic and have 2 babies all before lunch time.  And I have learned not to be so silly as to say, “Which one means the most to you?”, because that question opens up a one hour dialogue about the meaning of life that you were not ready to answer thereby sending you into a tail spin (and me for a drink).   I’m not going to do that today so you can calm down and keep reading.  I am sure you did a nose dive under your table getting ready to rock back and forth in fetal position fearing one my probing moments with you (unless you’ve never spoken with me before and then you’re an innocent victim waiting to be had by one of my conversations. Hehe…) but I can assure you that is not the point of this.  Today is all about defining—but you know me…this may go further after that—and the next few posts are about the actual guidelines.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT HERE?

First, let me just say before I even begin to talk about what’s enough, no whining!  NONE.  I already know the texts, calls and emails are about to follow when I put this out here that ask me, “Do I really have to do all that?”  Yes.  You do.  Now knock it off.  What?  Do you think I’m writing for some sick sadist side of me that needs appeasing?  I’ll admit I have my days but for the love of all that’s holy I’d never put those days in print.  So, yes, you must do all to get what I am saying—if you are the genetically average.   If you have anything exceptional in your genes, then you need to “chew the meat and spit out the fat” as they say as to what pertains to you or not.  But other than that, there is no compromise.

Second, I am going to break this down by goal and within each goal I am going to further delineate it by age group.  For instance, I may give a general over view of what ‘building’ is and then go into what that looks like for a 40-50 year old, a 30-40 year old and a twenty something because it is dramatically different for all three.   If you are 45 and think you want to “build” like a 20 year old, you’re in for a big disappointment and most likely major weight gain in the process.  Our needs are different and need to be acknowledged as being different.

Lastly, I’m going to do this in a way that is very different from what you are probably used to seeing.  I promise to be somewhat technical, but I’m mostly going to be realistic.  Meaning that I want you to know what it really looks like to put these goals in action.   The burnout, the discipline required, the places you could awry, potential weight gain and other issues that crop up when we put this into effect.   They are way more important than any technical information and let me give you an idea of what this looks like:

Say I am talking about building muscle.  Most women think that you just lift heavy for 12 weeks and then you build a ton of muscle.  Seriously, I have people say I want to build my shoulders this winter.  Um…good luck with that.  It takes a whole lot more than a winter to build great shoulders.  But they’ve read somewhere that they need to eat X amount of calories more and set their lifting up in such a way that they get the max recovery and take advantage of the EPOC and so on.  Good info for sure and I will certainly have some of that info in there, as well, but I will also have a whole section called “Walking This Out”.  This section forces you to think about the emotional cost of gaining weight over the winter and all that comes with a building program.  It sounds romantic and fun when presented as this “amazing 12-week program to shape you”, it’s a whole other thing when you are at your holiday Christmas party up 10 pounds and feeling puffy.  At that point, you couldn’t care less about your shoulders and you are more worried that someone’s going to shoot your picture and put it in the company newsletter.

ARE YOU JUST GOING TO DEPRESS ME?

No!  Let me say this as nicely as I can… NO, now stop looking for an excuse to stop pursuing your goal!  Why are our New Year’s Resolutions never successful?  (Besides the fact that people bite off more than they can chew and the whole concept in and of itself is so cliché…) Because we do not count the cost ahead of time.  Some of us rush out into excitement and hop on the latest and greatest fad but that’s not normally the clean eating community.  For us it is more like whatever we choose we choose it because it is solving that current problem.  “If I just lose some body fat, I’ll be able to fit into my jeans and then I’ll be happy…”  But then in the middle of that quest, you realize that toting all your food around and not going to social functions made you more unhappy than the ten pounds you wanted to lose in the first place so you end up abandoning that goal in midstride.  For every goal you abandon, there is a closet in your mind that opens up and accepts that failure and piles it on top of all the others and then just when you need confidence the most—the door pops open and reminds you just how good you aren’t.  Let’s avoid that this year by knowing what we’re getting into when we set our goals and then putting the appropriate things in place to deal with the drawbacks.

For instance, in the case above we would talk about short term pain vs. long term gain.  What does it matter what people thought of you (and I really make you answer this and warning: it can be eye opening) and truth be told, you being 10 pounds up is still better than 80% of the office staff so why the worry.   When you think this through BEFORE you get to the party and BEFORE you put the goal in motion, it changes the entire situation and you are able to deal with it head on instead of being blindsided by it while holding a shrimp cocktail in your hand.

How about we get on with it already then?  Look forward to this being my next mini-series and I hope you enjoy.  I am not sure that I will start it tomorrow or Monday but you know if you are signed up on my blog or if you get me via RSS, you will be notified.   Until we meet again, start pondering ‘what’s the goal?’.  Cool?  WOOP WOOP!:o)

If you live in New England, I am sure you noticed that today is markedly different than last week’s balmy December weather.  We’ve gone from global warming to bun warming in less than a week with you sitting on your car engine to provide the bun warming.  It’s right about now that you start to question your resolve for “getting out for a good run”.  But then knowing that sends me into Dr. Mercola mode (you know, Chicken Little, the sky is falling, everything is going to make you flabby and so on) where I have to give you the ins and outs of using running as a means to sculpting a great body lest you go crazy and run yourself into the ground on a treadmill instead.   Using running as your only means of cardio can be done but in the long run it’s a lot of work and it doesn’t always pay off.   Depending on what kind of runner you are dictates what type of approach you should take to make or maintain your shape.  Read on…

(Is it bad that I have the space heater blowing directly on my legs right now as I type?  Brrrrr…)

Best heater ever.  I’m about medium well right now.  Almost done.

Plug and Chug

I read somewhere that the average woman runs a 9:30-10:00 min mile and in the running world, that’s not very fast.  And in the physique world, that’s not even cardio.  And I am not saying that to be mean, I am saying that to be honest.  You know if I let you go the whole winter doing that and knew it wasn’t going to get you anywhere, you’d be mad that I didn’t tell you.  So let’s unruffle the feathers here and get to changing your body, yes?  For instance, I have a favorite “walk spot” that I go to when I need to clear out my mind and if I’m really worked up over something I can find myself walking at a heinous pace.  Whenever this happens I always seem to pass someone on a ‘run’ by a good clip.  Now there is something wrong with that and although they’re most likely going to be on their run longer than I’ll be doing my walk, I’m still doing more work than them.  The take-home from this?  Make sure your run is challenging, first and foremost.  No puttering.

Second, if you’re slow, you’re slow.  Don’t try to go faster, you’ll most likely injure yourself but then you cannot run 5 days a week as your cardio—you’re going to have to mix that up.  You can either:  add in hills, cross train with another piece of cardio or add specific bouts of speed into the mix at specific times so that they are limited and controlled.   I’ll be honest; I’m never a fan of 5 days of running unless you are preparing for a marathon.  At that point I’ll cut you some slack otherwise mix it up.   See below for how to add controlled speed into the program.

Going Nowhere Fast

Have I mentioned lately that it’s cold?  And if you are not “all about the run” or getting ready for an event, chances are you have moved your run indoors.  If you want to do that that’s cool but there are some things you need to know if your body is the main reason why you run.

• Running on the treadmill is not the same as running outdoors.  Now I know that “runners” may know this because you are dramatically faster on a treadmill than you are outside but you may not think about this if you don’t care how fast you are.  When you run outside you propel yourself forward and engage more of the backside but when you run on a treadmill, you are just jumping up and down in place.  Not the same thing.

• Sprinting on a treadmill is bad news and sprinting on a treadmill on an incline is even badder.  Can I say that? Well, maybe not, but truly, it is worse because it completely changes your gait.  Why do you care?  Because cardio never ends for us; there is no place for injury or any time for program interruption.  Jack up your knee and you’re going to lose your mind.  You’re not a run nut so you won’t work out through pain, instead you’ll bring yourself down to chicken and green beans for your entire knee rehab and that’s crazy.

• But since you are on a treadmill, odds are that you can hop off and go do some really crazy stuff like plyos and cranks and then hop back on.  Or maybe you can do a triathlon in your gym by swimming first (elliptical w/arms), biking second (upright is better than recumbent) and then running third.  Going from one to the other can be challenging and you’ll have a better workout session because you are not just slogging through forty minutes on the treadmill alone.

Out and About

If it is all about you and the pavement and you are somewhat on the faster side, then these guidelines can help you to get somewhere in terms of your physique this winter:

• Sprint two days per week in your runs by adding anywhere from 400m to 800m speed work in your run.  I know, you have no idea what 400m looks like so let’s add 90 sec to 3 min speed surges to your run after you have been on the road for at least 10 min.  Add them in so that you can do at least 5 of them in your total run and leave at least 5 min on the run that you can use to cool down.

• Run one whole day at a pace 0:30 sec faster than usual.  This doesn’t sound like a lot until you actually do it and then you realize it’s a major challenge.  Added challenge:  add 60 sec surges in to this run.  You’ll be dying by the end but this is exactly what you want and need.

The Big Picture

What is this really all about?  Doing the same cardio, same time, same run route and same pace day in and day out is the best and fastest way to plateau on your physique goal.  If you really want to change your body or keep on changing your body you have to change your run or it will not help you—it will hurt you.  I know what you’re thinking…you don’t do the same run, there are days you go longer than others.  Yes, but it’s still the same run unless you have changed your pace dramatically. Out of 4 days of running, you have to have at least 2 of those runs make you pant harder than a dog hanging out a car window or you’re wasting your time.  However, if you are the polar opposite and every run you do is an Olympic tryout, then you must have 2 runs per week at a slightly easier pace to mix it up.  If you keep it stagnate, your body will, too.

Remember, what we are all about is longevity in the life of leanness.  And this series is about using the 5K to lose 5 pounds or more.  Overall, this journey is a marathon—not a sprint–and if you want a body that lasts and lasts while being lean, you have more factors to think about besides just the here and now.   If you’re stuck and need pointers, comment below and I’ll be happy to help you out.  Cool?  Woop woop!:o)

Previous Series Post

Honestly, you women are crazy.  Last night I was on the phone with Kas (former Tuesday blogger) chatting away just catching up when I casually mentioned that I was blogging again.  Well she nearly flipped her lid and yelled at me saying that I never told her and why was I holding out.  But wait it gets better…  She’s on the phone with me, clearly agitated that she is now strapped in by this call that we’re on because she wants to…yes, wait for it…hang up to go read what I wrote.  WHAT?  Why not just ask me while you have me on the phone?  Hahahaha!!  Needless to say, we got a good laugh over that but she still hung up on me to read my blogs.  Ummm…whatever.

I am not sure if it’s me or what but this just makes no sense!

But this is our life, ladies.  We do things that do not make a lot of sense a lot of the times thereby wasting precious time.  But what if there were some things out there that do not make a lot of sense but somehow are beneficial for us?  Would you do them then?  Probably not but it’s worth a try:

1. Eat more to break a plateau: No matter how much I try to convince people this works, they still treat me like a dude with a big poster on himself that claims the world is ending tomorrow.  If you find yourself lifting 3 to 5 days per week, doing cardio even more than that and eating next to nothing and your body fat loss has come to a hault—consider eating more before eating less.  See most of you start off dieting and training with parameters that you should have at the *end* of your dieting and training season—not at the beginning.  If your goal date is 12 weeks away and you are already starving to death doing endless cardio and lifting like a fool, you’ve got a long, wasteful road ahead of you.  There is no doubt that somewhere in there you will hit a plateau.  When that happens  EAT MORE…not less!  Let me explain what this looks like:  all clean food, over a set amount of time, at least 50% more of your present intake and then go back to your original diet.  You’ll drop right away and be shocked.
2. Go on vacation to lose weight: Say you are the girl above and not only are you stuck in a rut, you are also exhausted.  Here is a little known secret:  you lose weight when you sleep, not when you move.  So if you never sleep, you never lose.  This is for the girl right now who is reading this and is getting 4 to 6 hours of sleep/night and can’t figure out what is wrong.  A surefire way of knowing if this is you is if you decide to go on vacation and you come back 5 pounds lighter after fully enjoying yourself for the week—this was you.  Ladies, give your adrenals a break and go to bed.
3. Can’t stop cheating?  EAT THE TREAT!: Deprivation causes madness.  Hands down.  ‘The more you deny, the more you will try’ and it can become all consuming if you allow it to be.  What’s the answer?  Take the temptation out by scheduling the treat in the diet.  And don’t just schedule it.  BE OK WITH IT.  *KNOW* that it’s fine.  Know that you are allowed to have this thing and it’s not going to do any damage.  If you don’t know it on the heart level not just the mind level, you will continue to snack uncontrollably.  TAKE THE TEMPTATION OUT and you will knock it off!

I know it seems outrageous and sometimes even gloomy.  But hang in there…it really does work!

We will do just about anything over here to help you ladies see how destructive your behaviors can become if you are not careful.  Maintaining a great body with definition and tightness takes a healthy balance between workout, nutrition and emotional health.  Many talk about it but very few have it.  We have been where you are and know all of what you are going through—trust us.  It seems so simple but it really isn’t.

Keep checking in as we go through all the things that you need to do to make it through eating clean and clean dieting the healthy way.  THAT’s the difference here.  Ciao for now!  Woop woop!

I know you heard the saying “you are what you eat” but I am here to take it a bit further and say you are what you do, as well.

I think many of us sort of evolved down the same path to the way we eat and workout:  we wanted more out of our body and whatever we were doing at the time just didn’t cut it.  Like I mentioned in my last post, there are two types of weight gain out there and you would probably think then that there would be two types of weight loss, too, but no…there’s a bunch.  (There are also more types of weight gain but that really gives a good synopsis.)

Ok, so maybe you’re not running in the Olympics but some of you are racking up that kind of mileage without any “Olympic” results.

One of the ways I see all the time (and watch endless frustration with) is running to get a great body.  Now notice I did not say to lose weight.  You definitely can decide to get up tomorrow and start running and possibly lose some weight but the odds of you getting that body that you desire are slim and the risk you run with injury and overuse is quite high.  Running for a hot body without a concise plan is like heading to the bakery “to pick something up” for a party you’re going to later on—we all know that ends badly with bread tasting and cupcake snacking so let’s just be honest about it.  Go with a dessert already set in your mind, get in and get out or bring someone with you to bail you out when you go down hard.

Running is addictive to many women.  It’s easy, cheap, hard in the beginning so it is a great challenge, relaxing, rewarding and… *completely unsatisfying in the weight maintenance department* so the more we run, the more we have to.  We keep looking at the covers of the running magazines wondering why they have a hot body and we don’t although we log mile after mile after mile.  Yes, from the waist up you are getting there…from the waist down though you look like a Land O Lakes advertisement for their latest cheese product.  With cellulite and dimples abound, you run and run and run and run.  You have every color capris there is to own and you are an expert at tying your jacket around your waist.

But now you have solved that problem—or so you thought–because you became a savvy reader.  You started following the girls out there who have the hot bodies and began to mimic what they do.  You dropped your starches, cleaned up the diet, you lift now and yet, still…nothing.  Instead, you have no energy, you binge on carbs every 2 or 3 days because you just can’t take not eating them and you don’t know how to fit lifting into your schedule the way they do it.  What gives??

YOU HAVE AN IDENTITY CRISIS

• You are not a runner. You are a woman who enjoys using running as a means to getting the body that she desires.

• You are not a figure girl. You have no desire to get on stage—you want to run—but you want that body too.

• You are not your average consumer. You are willing to put in the work of eating clean and working out so following magazines that are telling you the same ole same ole like “top 10 superfoods” and so on is not helping much.

• You’re not a world class runner. You are quite competitive and have no desire to be the slowest runner out there but you are not a run-nut either.  You don’t own the latest heart rate monitor and you just want to enjoy your run.

Honestly, girl.  You need to know who you are so you can get what you want.  Taking pieces of everyone’s plans and trying to make them work is frustrating and unproductive.  I’m sure you’ve also noticed that the more you run the harder it is to lose weight.  So what does the running world say about that?  Run more.  Ummm…how’s that working for you?  Because at some point, you need to go to work.

We have much to develop over the next few weeks: nutrition, training, psychological warfare, supplements and so on.

Obviously this is an issue we need to really put on the table with some serious solutions for you.  This is one of the top questions I am asking no matter where I go.  Follow this series that I will talk about over the next few weeks and we’ll talk about taking off 5 pounds per 5K and tightening that bum.  Cool?

I’m looking forward to it!!  Woop woop!

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