I openly admit I have made a few mistakes when it has come to my training. Up until the age of 30, I had never really taken exercise seriously, even though I trained like a demon when I was 20, I had it all wrong and viewed gym training as a means to compound my veritable anorexic attitude towards food. It was all about burning as many calories as I could with the depleted energy levels I was running on. My tank was empty, the training was non productive and only served in exacerbating my weight loss at the time.
If you have not already gathered, I suffer from an obsessive personality. Mostly I view it as a hinderance, it is all or nothing with me and there is rarely a grey area.
Despite it being a pain most of the time, it has served me well with the massive weight loss I have experienced. When I set my mind to the challenge my dogged determination will always keep me going. I could be rest assured of that even when times got really tough with the weight loss and those niggling feelings of doubt set in, I was always going to do it.
Running, running, running
Another side effect of my obsessive nature was the running. When I entered maintenance, I was running regularly and did so for the 2 years following. I accomplished some goals, completing my first 10k race and also a half marathon (a truly remarkable achievement and something I will cover off in more detail later.) I think I ran too much, distance running can be addictive and is notorious for knocking fat off your body like nothing else. It is cardio intensive and is fantastic for the heart, I know that when I was at the peak of my distance running I was clocking up 50+ miles a week and my resting heart rate was 49 beats per minute (compare that to the 90+ bpm I had when I was at my largest.) It is fantastic for cardio vascular conditioning but not so great for upper body strength. So my 2 year running stint saw me drop down to 140 pounds which I maintained for a year or so during that phase.
A break
During 2009 I stopped running, partly due to boredom of it and partly due to exhaustion. You hear it often from other runners, it is not sustainable and there are down times. Running is a psychological roller coaster, no matter whether you are feeling physically up for doing it or not, any kind of mental block and it won't happen. During an 8 month period I gained back 10 pounds and felt like my body healed after the miles and miles of training I had done. I dread to think the total mileage I had accrued over that 24 month period! Much of the weight gain was rehydration, no matter how much fluid you take on whilst doing high intensity cardio, I think you are always going to be slightly dehydrated. Gaining weight back was no problem, it was different than before. I felt in control and let my hair down a bit, safe in the knowledge that I was armed with the tools to redress the balance should I feel that it was getting out of control.
When you lose weight, it is always good to have a 'ceiling' weight that you reach, should you gain any back. I always said that 150 pounds would be my acceptable ceiling, anything past that and I would tighten my belt again (so to speak!) and apply some healthier stratgey to ensure I gained no more. It would not have been a problem to go over 150 but, historically, I know that I am more susceptible to weight gain and so always have that in the back of my mind. It worked well and come August 2009, I decided to start training once again. I took a holiday to a beautiful part of the UK that offers some rather impressive fells and peaks. I spent the holiday climbing, scaling 1800ft ascents and this was a pleasurable if not gruelling re entry to exercise. When I got home I jumped on my bike and started riding. I felt like I wanted to mix things up a bit and back off on the running for a while longer. The old runner in me soon made herself known and by October I had started pound the streets. I found that I gained my running fitness back remarkably quickly and was soon clocking up 10k runs. I was mindful, from experience, that 10k was more than adequate in terms of distance and so stuck to that, mixing in 2 bike rides a week to vary the training.
Once you have a base level of fitness, there is a wonderful little thing called muscle memory. It has been researched before and proven that muscles do remember training, even if you have been inactive for a long period of time. This means that, should you train and then give up, picking up exercise should be easier to do. Your body responds quickly.
Weight circuits - fat burning, strength gaining heaven
A friend of mine has trained his whole life and is in fantastic shape. He had always said to me that I should do weights. Now weight training has always bored me, I never really got into it and the few half hearted attempts I had made at it had always seen me jack it in after a few weeks. My friend introduced me to weight circuits, these essentially mix weights with cardio exercise.
I heard him out and had already seen the benefits he had gained from doing them, namely a fantastic physique and great balance with the cardio fitness. So he outlined a few circuits I could try and I devised my own plan. I liked the fact that I could incorporate my cardio into the circuits as that was my strong point and something I wanted to sustain.
Circuits really are fantastic. A year on and I am still doing them 3 -4 times a week. The beauty of circuits is that you can do them ANYWHERE. All you need is some free weights/ dumb bells, an exercise mat, a skipping rope and some space. I have developed my own training plan with them that means that I have slowly built up to a dumb bell weight where I am putting some resistance on my muscles, enough to give me some toning. Due to the fact that women do not have a lot of testeosterone coursing through the veins, we will never bulk up so do not worry about looking like a female Russian body builder. It is not possible, not unless you start taking steroids.
RESULTS
My upper body has changed beyond all recognition, it has taken a year of training but I love my shape now. My shoulders are broader, my posture is better, I have shape to my arms and my torso is more defined. No bulging bicpes but a much sleeker, stronger me :) I can even do 5 proper press ups! A first!
My next post will outline a circuit you can do at home and is not dissimilar to what I do now, give it a try.
Rainy xxx
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