Fit Communications

My plan for today was to post a summary of how I’ve changed in the past 18 months. Then I spoke to the neurosurgeon’s nurse and learned, in brief, the results of the x-rays and MRI performed last week.

It could be worse–I mean, I could have a tumor or something. The results in brief: I have a bulging disc I didn’t have before, though how in the world I injured it, I don’t know. The first injury–to the disc at L5/S1–occurred in 1986 or ‘87, and if I went back to my workout logs, I could pinpoint the day. I was deadlifting without adequate warmup after a deadlifting hiatus of about six months. Don’t try that at home, folks.

The new disc problem was a surprise.

The fact that I’ve got some degenerative stuff going on (another word for osteoarthritis, or "wear and tear") wasn’t a surprise. So that’s number two.

Number three: I’ve also got some narrowing in the lumbar spine (lumbar spinal stenosis). In a word, there’s not as much room for my spinal cord as there should be.

I won’t panic till I hear what the doc says, but surgery may be needed at some point.

I permitted myself four Hershey kisses and a small chocolate heart. Figured a proper pity-party needed a modicum of chocolate.

More later, after I speak with the neurosurgeon on April 1.

Ready for the good news?

On Sept. 15, 2003, I weighed more than ever before–162 pounds, to be shockingly precise. My best guesstimate is that my body composition was about 37 percent fat (gak!), which means I had about 102 pounds of lean body mass (LBM). I was wearing size 14 trousers, and I could no longer squeeze into my size 12 Rider jeans, which have the virtue of running large.

I began a "diet" (Atkins–shudder) and talked my friend Anne into joining Curves with me. Even then Curves seemed awfully wussy for a former bodybuilder, but hey, it was a workout of sorts, and the 30-minute duration appealed to me. About the same time my husband and I began the habit of taking four of our dogs for a 30-minute walk each morning.

By the end of November I’d lost about 10 pounds of fat. By the middle of May I was thoroughly bored with Curves, talked my friend into joining a "real gym," and had lost only about another five pounds.

Along the way, I had punted Atkins. I wasn’t hungry, but I couldn’t sustain even thrice-weekly Curves workouts and daily walks on restricted carbs.

I hadn’t wised up about food yet, however. I still refused to count calories, but I shifted to the South Beach diet.

Last spring was tough, as my father was dying of cancer. My weight stayed pretty much stable throughout the painful process of his death, and I managed to get in the gym about twice a week.

Once I began to emerge from the grief, I started hitting the weights harder and increasing the cardio portion of my workout.

I began 2005 weighing around 145, with a LBM of 109. That means my bodyfat had dropped to about 25 percent. I’d lost 24 pounds of fat and (re)gained 7 pounds of muscle.

By that time my focus had shifted entirely to 1) eating healthy, 2) controlling portion size, and 3) exercising a lot. In late January I started counting calories and doing the zig-zag thing: mild caloric reduction (1,800 to 1,900 kcals daily) for three days, maintenance eating for a day, then back to three days of mild caloric reduction.

Zowie, Batman, did that do the trick. On Jan. 29 I weighed 145; on Feb. 17 I weighed just shy of 140; on March 17 I weighed 135.4 (where I’m currently sitting). My bodyfat is about 19 percent, with my LBM holding steady at 109.

I’m wearing size 8 trousers and size 6 jeans (generous cut, remember?). I have an entire closetful of clothes I bought years ago and can finally wear again. Did I mention that I have tons of energy and feel absolutely terrific (with the exception of the occasional back back-pain day)?

If you want more detail, here’s the routine:

*six days a week, walk dogs 30 minutes

*two to three days a week, work out intensely with weights, 30 to 45 minutes

*two to three days a week, work out intensely on elliptical trainer, 30 to 50 minutes, at 80 to 85 percent of maximum heart rate (calculating max with the 220 minus age formula)

*one day a week, body pump class, 60 minutes

*calorie zig-zag as indicated above, focusing on plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole-grain carbs, low-fat dairy, lean meat, and limited amounts of whatever else I want to eat and can squeeze into my allotted calories for the day.

Jeez, what a lengthy post.

One of the forms I filled out for my doctor’s appointment today asked whether I had experienced weight loss or gain. I explained that I’d lost 20+ pounds over the past 18 months (going from 162 to my current 137) but that it was by design, not accident.

During my visit, the doc asked me, “Which diet did you use to lose the weight?”

That’s one I’ve heard a lot lately, and although there’s a quick, simple answer, hearing the question makes me want to launch into a philosophical discussion. The quick, simple answer is “Healthy food choices, portion control, and lots of exercise.”

Note that those three ingredients are long-term strategies, whereas “going on a diet” is a short-term fix. That’s the substance of the philosophical discussion.

I feel like an evangelist who wants to spread the word: don’t “go on a diet”; learn how to eat, and start moving your body. Read Walter Willett, join a gym, start your meal with a sald, put less on your plate than you used to, stop eating sooner, and learn how to distinguish true hunger from the desire to taste tasty stuff. There. That should hold me for a while.

Saw the neurosurgeon today–the same man who diagnosed my bulging disc between L5 and S1 in 1986 or ‘87–to find out what’s up with my lower-back pain. Some days are great; others not so great. In any case, I’m going for an MRI this afternoon. It’ll be a relief to find out what’s going on.

While I waited, the doctor’s nurse scheduled the MRI at another facility. I heard her ask the MRI person, "What weight can it accommodate?" When she got off the phone, she said, "I wasn’t asking because of your weight." [I'm currently 137.] "I was just curious because some facilities have new larger-sized MRIs that can accommodate people up to 450 pounds."

I said, "I’ll bet that wasn’t the case 20 years ago." She agreed it wasn’t.

On the bright side, my blood pressure is great: 110 over 63. I’ll keep you posted on the MRI results.

Apropos of weighing 450 pounds, here’s an AP story on MSNBC.com about whether adults need–or are likely to attempt–the amount of exercise proposed by the latest federal health guidelines:

90 minutes of exercise a day? Not likely …

Sixty to 90 minutes of exercise? Every day? That’s what the government
now suggests. But experts say most folks won’t consider that and add
that the recommendation for 30 minutes a day is enough for most.

Brilliant concept: "experts" agree that the amount of exercise one requires is partly determined by how much one weighs. The fatter you are, the more you need.

The article includes some intriguing charts showing the dramatic rise in the percentages of Americans who are overweight or obese now and in 1960. I should have copies made for all the people I’ve heard recently suggesting that the obesity epidemic is caused by "genetics." Yes, genetic components play a part. But our genetics haven’t changed in 45 years.

I am late in discovering that March is National Nutrition Month, at least on the calendars of members of the American Dietetic Association.

On its nutrition month page, the ADA offers a variety of info, including the pdf file "Healthy Eating on the Run: A Month of Tips."

Some of the suggestions are a bit obvious (e.g., "Try a side salad instead of fries"), but on the whole, they’re decent tips.

Also: thanks to Kris for posting a link to 45 of the smartest diet tips ever, from MSN.

How cool: the University of Missouri at Columbia is doing some cutting-edge health promotion with its students, via a course that explores the consequences of a sedentary life.

Here’s a description from the AP story posted on MSNBC.com:

The course–apparently one of the first in
the country–will explore how lack of exercise contributes to obesity
and unhealthy aging, marked by heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes,
cancer, muscle wasting, frailty, and dementia. The course also will look
at the consequences for public policy.

Here’s the article: New course helps freshmen beat extra pounds

I like the fact that students will not only pick up useful skills but also learn about the effect of public policy on personal behavior. Addressing the obesity epidemic is going to take a lot more than the current focus on personal responsibility. Yes, that’s essential, but pushing that as the sole solution hasn’t worked. Individuals, schools, community groups, churches, and government can all play a significant part.

I haven’t felt very talkative (should that be blogative?) lately. My apologies.

Workouts are going well, bodyfat is going down, and I feel generally terrific. I keep getting comments about how much “energy” I have–from various sources. So I must be doing something energetic-looking. Fidgeting? Wiggling? Jumping up and down?

The enhanced energy level is making me want to add–though cautiously, very cautiously–more exercise. I’m already occasionally adding an additional day of cardio (the intense kind–not the routine 30 minutes’ walk through the neighborhood with dogs at 5 a.m.), and I’m thinking of adding a fourth weight workout per week. If I do, the number of sets will be ridiculously low: maybe eight to 10. On a typical weights day I’m currently doing only 12 to 14 sets. Not many by volume-training standards.

In the past I’ve slipped into overtraining when I went great guns, but I hope now I’m old enough to figure out what’s happening if I do get excessive.

I’m intrigued by Ian King’s book Get Buffed (yes, silly title but a boatload of information) and his take on the number of sets one should perform. There’s no easy answer, but many factors influence the decision, e.g., one’s age, how active or sedentary one’s job is, how much life stress one has, and how much rest one is getting.

Well, this one has a sedentary desk job, but she has a fair amount of life stress, is no longer a spring chicken, and doesn’t always get as much sleep as she wants. I can do 20+ sets per workout, but within a week or two, my mood is crap and my motivation is gone. When I do a dozen sets per workout, I improve or maintain my strength levels and am eager to get to the gym. That seems to be the magic number for me at this stage of life, with a full-time job, commitments to four separate singing groups, half a dozen dogs, and so on.

The moral of the story is, when you’re losing interest in the gym and think you ought to be doing more, you might need to take a weeklong layoff, then come back to the gym and start doing less.

Nice dense bones. You know you want ‘em.

Keep doing your weight-bearing exercise, get your dietary calcium (through low-fat dairy if you can tolerate it, otherwise through almonds, kale, broccoli, bok choy, soybeans, etc.) and your vitamin D, and get a bone-density test if you’re female and approaching or past menopause.

The National Osteoporosis Foundation has some good info on prevention and treatment of osteoporosis, and I just discovered that you can download pdf versions of its quarterly publication. There’s some good info there. On the same page, you can sign up for NOF’s bone-health updates via e-mail.

A reader wonders how long it should take to start seeing effects from body pump.

Good question, given the claims made on the body pump portion of the Les Mills website, to wit:

BODYPUMP®is proven to be "the world’s fastest way to get in shape" by
research which has confirmed higher than expected fat-burning effects
alongside endurance, strength and ‘wellness’ benefits.

Well, hmmmm. A quick look over the website does not reveal the findings or the source of this research. My opinion–worth every cent you’re paying for it–is that all exercise is beneficial, but no specific form deserves to be called "the world’s fastest way to get in shape" for every individual. Weight-training is certainly the fastest way to build muscle, but body pump’s high reps are going to enhance muscular endurance more than stimulate size.

(You say you don’t want size because you’re a woman and just want beautiful curves? Beautiful curves are made of muscle. No such thing as "toning." It’s all muscle building. Besides–unless you’re a genetic freak [a term I use with affection] or on gear, you ain’t gonna build any size you don’t want. Those of us who want more muscle have to work awfully hard for minor gains.)

So I guess it depends what you’re looking for–and what kind of shape you’re in when you start the class. I do body pump for the sake of variety and because staying in constant motion for an hour burns calories. In other words, I see it more as a fat burner than a muscle builder. My other days in the gym are for building size with free weights and machines; body-pump day is a fun and shorter workout than usual, and because it involves high reps, it stimulates my muscles in a different way.

Can’t find my copy of Fred Hatfield’s Power: A Scientific Approach, but Dr. Squat says that although the biggest size gains are stimulated by low reps and medium reps, certain portions of the muscle cell are turned on, so to speak, by very high reps.

I still haven’t answered the question, have I? Short answer is that the body begins to respond immediately to whatever stimulus it gets. If one is new to weight training (and manages to avoid injury and is taught good form), gains are rapid. The leaner one is, the easier it is to observe those gains. I’d say give it three months to start noticing significant visual changes. But I’ll bet you start feeling more energetic within a few weeks.

While catching up on the National Strength and Conditioning Association website, I came across an interesting study intended to answer an age-old question: are multiple sets better than single sets?

Here’s a blurb from the press release:

It has been documented that in untrained individuals, a single-set training program helps maintain strength gains. However, once trained, will a single-set help maintain the same strength?

No, according to a recent study published by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) in its Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (November 2004). In fact, while using single-set training, the study finds that strength actually decreases in postmenopausal women. Researchers from the University of Erlangen, Germany found that in pre-trained subjects, multiple-set training continues to work at increasing strength, while single-set training not only does not maintain strength, but decreases it.

You could be excused for wondering whether this applies to those who are not postmenopausal women.

Also, I’d have to see the full article to know what kind of training these women were doing in their single sets. Working to failure or not? Using heavy or moderate weights?

So without seeing the journal (available online to members only), I’m not willing to venture an opinion. Like most of the rest of you, I’ll keep doing my multiple sets. On the other hand, if I have only 20 minutes to spare and have to choose between not working out and doing just one set of each movement, I’m going to opt for B.