A Woman’s Maximum Heart Rate-

Like everything else that fits men but doesn’t quite apply to women, they now have a study that suggests the figure to use for getting our maximum heart rate should be “206” not 220 like it is for a man. We also subtract 88% of our age vs. subtracting 80% as was the formula up until now. So if you are a woman 50 yrs. old, you would figure 88% of that. Take that figure and subtract it from the 206, and that would be your maximum heart rate. (Obviously not everyone is the same. This is just meant to be a guideline). Then for maximum efficiency during a workout, you would want to build to 70 to 80% of your maximum heart rate. Since I have been so sedentary for so long, I feel happy to get to 60% while I am just beginning to get back in action. Starting an exercise regimen won’t help if I have a heart attack in the process. LOL

The Importance of Walking

I received this in my email and thought you might get a kick out of it. Since my emphasis has been on exercise lately, I thought it appropriate. enjoy=)

The Importance of Walking

>>>Walking can add minutes to your life.
>>> This enables you at 85 years old
>>> to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing
>>> home at $7000 per month. This is my reason. DWB

>>> My grandpa started walking
>>> five miles a day when he was 60.
>>> Now he’s 97 years old
>>> and we don’t know where he is.
>>>
>>> I like long walks,
>>> especially when they are taken
>>> by people who annoy me.

>>> The only reason I would take up walking
>>> is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
>>>
>>> I have to walk early in the morning,
>>> before my brain figures out what I’m doing..
>>>
>>> I joined a health club last year,
>>> spent about 400 bucks.
>>> Haven’t lost a pound.
>>> Apparently you have to go there.
>>>
>>> Every time I hear the dirty word ‘exercise’,
>>> I wash my mouth out with chocolate.
>>>
>>> The advantage of exercising every day
>>> is so when you die, they’ll say,
>>> ‘Well, she looks good doesn’t she.’
>>>
>>> If you are going to try cross-country skiing,
>>> start with a small country.
>>>
>>> I know I got a lot of exercise
>>> the last few years,……
>>> just getting over the hill.

>>> We all get heavier as we get older,
>>> because there’s a lot more information in our heads.
>>> That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
>>>
>>>>>>> AND

>>> Every time I start thinking too much
>>> about how I look,
>>> I just find a Happy Hour
>>> and by the time I leave,
>>> I look just fine.
>>>
>>> You could run this over to your friends
>>> But just e-mail it to them
>>>>>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>> If you don’t forward
>> this to 1 of your friends within
>>>>the next 5 minutes your belly
>>>>button will unscrew and your
>>>>butt will fall off.
>>>>Really…. It’s true Ha! Ha! Ha!

Looking Forward To Exercise?

Really, such a strange feeling, but I actually look forward to exercising now! I can’t believe it! I have fought the idea of exercise for so long this is so odd to be excited about it.

The Senior Center is closed on Sundays, so Sunday is basically a “rest” day whether you need it or not. That is fine with me as I’m usually busy with church until around noon, and then I like to spend Sundays doing things I normally don’t take time for during the week.

I must confess that I ate like a pig yesterday, cleaning the last of the potato salad and the last of the fettuccine alfredo out of the refrigerator. Don’t even want to think about what that cost me calorie-wise, but now they are gone so I don’t have to worry about reaching for them anymore. I have gotten a lot better about eating more fruit, etc. I love this time of year when watermelon, blueberries, and strawberries are plentiful. They make such a great additive to my yogurt. Cheap grapes and 94% fat-free popcorn are taking over the “snack” spots.

Today I need to take my measurements. I realized over the weekend I hadn’t done that yet, and I know how encouraging it can be if you’ve lost inches, even if you haven’t lost any weight. Wouldn’t you be happy to lose 10 inches off your waist even if you hadn’t lost a pound? LOL. That would work for me!

On My Quest For Exercise…

I did make it by the senior center and it’s really nice. Of course the day I went they weren’t accepting applications and I couldn’t do anything but tour because their “membership card machine” was not working. LOL. I love the idea of swimming, but it looks like a lot of rules for swimming, laps etc. I guess I’ll just have to find out the hard way what all of them are.

The fitness room is really nice. They don’t hold any classes, but there is a lot of equipment and a lot of variation. In the meantime, while waiting for my chance to make it back to the center, I have been a worker bee at a church “flea market” and have picked up a couple of Pilates videos. Just like my old ones that seemed to get lost in the move, these to were donated “unopened”. LOL.

Still Working On Getting Sexier and Skinnier

My cats? LOL

Yes, even though I haven’t been very good about keeping up here, I am still working on getting Older, Sexier, and Skinnier. I’m just not doing it very fast. LOL. Actually I have been losing some weight lately, through no fault of my own. I’ve been losing it because of something I have always known. Because I am moving my body! I am working outside of the computer more. I am participating more in life. Which means I am not sitting on my butt. You know what this means don’t you?

We’re back to freakin’ exercise! Grazing, as they call it when you’re home working all day, and you keep wondering out to the kitchen putting things in your mouth, has never really been a problem, but when I eat, I eat pretty good. Even that would have worked ok if I ever did anything physical, but I don’t. I keep promising myself I’m going to start scheduling it in in the mornings so I get it out of the way, but by the time it’s light I’m already too wrapped up in what I’m doing, and I just don’t do it. Sound at all familiar? LOL. What I have done is join more things at my church, volunteered at a foreclosure center, and actually started living life again. That in itself is burning a lot more calories and fat than I have in the last almost 2 yrs., and I enjoy it. Maybe that was the answer all the time. The only exercise I like is something like volleyball or basketball. It’s kind of hard to find a bunch of fat old ladies like me willing to play. LOL. So this will do for now, and as I get in better shape who knows? Maybe I will be more apt to go for a walk now and then.

Weight Loss and New Year’s Resolutions

Sooo True

It’s getting to be that time of year again. The time where we once again set out to make our weight loss resolutions for the New Year. Do you ever wonder why they don’t stick? We start out so motivated, and then it doesn’t take long, we’re back to our same old bad habits. This morning I read an article from someone who had a totally different approach that may be much more helpful than the same old stuff.

We all already know it takes 21 days to break an old habit or start a new one. That’s no big weight loss secret for those of us who have been around the diet world for any length of time. It’s also hard work to incorporate new habits and get rid of the old. It’s very easy to backslide.

What if this year we took a different approach? What if this year instead of setting a weight loss New Year’s resolution to lose 50 lbs., we set a positive goal? Following the old “Turn It Into Something Good”, what if we laid out a plan like we would, say, if we were buying a car or something? If we were going to buy a certain car, we would figure how much it was going to cost and set that as our goal. Then we would figure how much out of each paycheck we would have to save (or how much we would be able to save) and how long it would be before we could go pay for it.

So what if we started on our weight loss goal this way. I have 50 lbs. to lose. They say I should be able to lose 2lbs. a week to be healthy. That would be 25 weeks from the 1st of January 2010. That takes me to June 25th, 2010. Hey, that’s just in time for the hot weather here. Perfect!

So my goal is to lose 50 lbs. and fit into my size 12 jeans and be able to wear a tank top by June 25th, 2010. Next is to figure the steps to get there. I think I would start out with 1 thing at a time. For the 1st week I’ll cut out sugar. Been doing a little of the Christmas snacking, so that is a necessity. The next week I’ll keep the “cut out sugar” and add “start some small type of exercise“. Maybe parking clear at the other end of the parking lot when I go to the store and walk fast from the car to the store, and from the store to the car. Just enough to get that heart beat up.

Then the 3rd week, I’ll cut out the sugar, park way far away (or start walking a little in the morning by my house) and add eating 1 fruit per day (because lately I haven’t been eating any). See how easy it would be to lay out a whole 25 week plan? You just keep building on the week before. You may not lose 2 lbs. the first week or the second, but you may lose 5 in the 3rd. Or the 1 step may be to not only weigh yourself, but to measure for those times when you don’t lose any weight, but you lose inches.

I could see how this could work. We all know what we’re doing wrong and we all know what we need to improve on. Talk about a personalized plan! It’s not rocket science. LOL. My pics are already up. I’m ready to give this a shot. Between just doing what I know, and drawing up a plan, I may just be ready to be older, sexier, and skinnier in 201o!

What Really Works for Weight Loss?

If it was out of the bag?

What really works for weight loss? No this isn’t going to be some sales blog for all my products, etc. I know what works, the same old sage advice “Diet and Exercise”, but what if you know what works, but you just can’t make yourself “do it”? That’s where I’m at. I just don’t have the motivation and some of the stuff I’ve done in the past doesn’t work as well now that I’m older and “post menopausal”. LOL.

I was getting in and out of the shower today and was looking at my body. I know, don’t hate, and I don’t. I just don’t like very much and it doesn’t feel as good as it did when I weighed what I am supposed to. I remembered how flabbergasted I was when I saw the picture of Oprah pulling 65 pounds of fat behind her in the wagon as a representative of all the weight she had lost this particular time. That led me to remember a WeightWatchers leader mentioning about getting a pound of fat and take it home and play with it, feel it, look at it. Yuck! So I was thinking how ugly that 65 pounds of fat would have been if Oprah had unleashed it in the red wagon instead of having it all neatly packed into the bag.

I’m thinking I’m really tired of making the same old resolutions this year that end up not being kept (doesn’t say much for my integrity does it? LOL). I think this year I’ll make a resolution to get more motivated by buying a couple pounds of fat. I can see a roll of fat that runs under my boobs across the front and then it kind of indents, and then the big belly fat below that if I was 30 yrs. younger someone may mistake for a small child growing inside. LOL. But my skin is sort of like the bag around the fat in Oprah’s red wagon. It keeps it somewhat contained. I think it’s time to unleash it and see what it’s really like, figuratively speaking of course. See if that works any better than anything else I’ve tried to stay motivated. Desperate times call for desperate measures. LOL.

Anyone else with any new ideas for staying motivated to lose weight in the new year? I’d love liposuction, but then that would lead to plastic surgery, and then, OMG where does it end?

Oh, speaking of losing weight and good food, I added a link to a food blog today. There is a beautiful recipe for Christmas pudding on there, that if you’ve ever wanted to try it or even see that it’s a real food, this is the place! A ton of recipes. Not all “diet friendly”, but I know how to substitute for most things. Like I said, I know what works, I just may not always do it. LOL.

Happy Holidays everybody, what ever that is for you, and Merry Christmas, Happy New Year for me.

Is There Really Any Weight Loss New “News”?

Is there really any new news about weight loss? When your as old as I am (fairly old) and you’ve been dieting your whole life on almost any diet that comes along, you still end up looking for that one new weight loss secret. While I realize weight loss is a super lucrative business to be in, I get tired of reading the same old tips, the same old advice (even if it does work. LOL). “Diet and exercise, diet and exercise.” Blah, blah, blah. LOL.

So when I see new things in the news about weight loss, I feel the need to share it since I don’t think a lot of it gets it’s share of media attention, unless of course you’re taking the weight loss miracle drug like Meridia.  If you haven’t heard the latest, I think it’s funnier than heck that they did studies to show Meridia improved risks to the heart, and it actually proved the opposite. Now the FDA is looking into it. I have one question. Why weren’t these studies done before they started giving it to everyone who could pay for it?

On a “I’m so confused” note, they are doing gastric surgery on morbidly obese teens now. I’ve always thought gastric surgery was like a “last resort” type thing and that it was actually pretty dangerous. Now they’re doing it to our teens instead of the parents doing they’re jobs and teaching kids about proper nutrition. On the other hand, studies show that it has improved their health substantially. So, what are you gonna do? Supposedly the improved health by the substantial weight loss outweighs the risks. Since morbid obesity is so dangerous to health and I would hate to see any child die as a result of it, I suppose if it was one of my children I’d probably look into it. I want to know why no one seems to have linked the fact that we no longer require PE in most of high school and teen obesity is on the rise. Oh yeah. Nobody makes money if every one exercises and learned proper nutrition in health class. LOL.

We all get it that no one diet works for everyone. No matter how good WeightWatchers has been to me, or how much I loved the Whipped Cream and Martini diet, it may not work with you. According to ScienceDaily, researchers have been studying the different diets vs. different genes and may soon be able to tell us from a simple blood test which diet would be most effective for us based on our gene make-up. I think that would be pretty cool. No more frustration going through 20 different diets trying to find one that actually works. Just take a blood test, get on the right type of diet, and zip…weight loss. Of course you still have to stick to the diet, but I still think it’s pretty cool news.

And now on the side of “medicine that contradicts itself once again”. Another new diet has hit the scene and teaches just the opposite of what we always thought about weight loss. Everybody says “if you starve yourself or cut way back on certain fats, your body will actually hoard fatstores and you gain weight“. That’s why “those in the know” are now touting eating more and losing weight, but this is totally different.

From the LemonDrop.com in the UK, the idea behind the Alternative-Day Diet is, as it sounds. There’s no calorie counting or meal plans. Dieters must simply eat a small amount one day (up to 50 per cent of your normal intake) and the next eat whatever you like.

As unlikely as it sounds, apparently a “skinny” gene is triggered by the feast to famine scenario and encourages the body to burn fat. It was Dr Mark Mattson, an America neuroscientist, who first made the breakthrough in 2003, when he discovered that rats on a low calorie diet experienced no ill effects when eating normally every other day. Now Krista Varady, an assistant professor of kinesiology and nutrition at the University of Illinois, has published the results of a ten-week trial involving 16 patients, all weighing over 14 stones (however much that is in pounds. Evidently quite a bit).

By eating 20 per cent of their normal intake one day and a regular healthy diet the next, they each lost between 10lb and 30lb. Dr James Johnson, author of The Alternate-Day Diet, has been using the method for five years. He told the Daily Mail: “I’ve always been a bit overweight. When I first started, I lost 35lb in 11 weeks.

This would back up the theory I had read years ago that if you get stuck on a plateau while on WeightWatchers, take a day or two  off and eat what ever you want. Then when you went back on the diet your metabolism would get a new kickstart.

That’s about all I have for you today.  Hope everyone’s getting plenty of exercise running store to store. You are parking far away aren’t you?

When Diet and Exercise Go A Bit Too Far

Madonna Now

I’m not a big one for following celebrities or pop-culture. I rarely pay attention unless something really special happens and it hits the regular news vs. a magazine or one of those channels like TMZ. I hadn’t really heard much about Madonna since she adopted her last child and I guess I thought she was just a lot less active, kind of grew up and into Mamahood. It turns out I just don’t read the right stuff.

Something that caught my attention this morning though is all the hub-bub on whether she’s healthy or not. As I dug into the story, I was really taken aback by the picture of her. My God, and some people (men) think this is beautiful. Her trainer says she “looks like a 19 year old”. I’ll tell you what, if one of my daughters looked like this I would be taking them to the closest shrink. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

Which leads me to the next question. How does she hold onto a 22 year old boyfriend looking like that? I remember when she looked voluptuous, and make up takes care of the rest, but this? She’s over 50 and this looks like going on 90. He must be in it for the money.

I know that a there are a lot of body-building women that would give Atlas a run for his money, but personally I’ve never found that attractive. They end up with no boobs, a body hard as rock, how does someone enjoy cuddling up to that?

I guess this is the flip side of being fat. I don’t find that attractive either, and I guess I would be a poster child for what not to do to keep fit and healthy. I’m glad to know there’s a happy medium for us regular folks. Maybe I’m just a little jealous. I would love to be in the position that people actually told me I needed to gain some weight. LOL

Am I My Mother?

My mother is 78 yrs. old and her favorite forms of exercise are eating and watching TV. She gave up on herself years ago, has gone through some pretty unhealthy times, and is ready to go home to the Lord anytime he’s willing to take her. Like me she has no desire to exercise, although at least I realize some movement is necessary. If she had her way she would never move at all. I quit taking her in her meals etc. as going to the kitchen was the only exercise she got. It wasn’t far from her chair to the kitchen, but she made the trip several times so at least she was doing something.

We’ve been staying in a hotel recently and the ice machine and dining area are both quite a little distance away. We walk over to the dining area every morning for breakfast, me walking slightly ahead leading the way, her in her walker. She quit putting ice in her water. Too far to walk. Finally yesterday I saw her heading for ice and followed behind her. She did just fine. Coming back however, knowing I was there, she’d pause for a moment and then made a point of letting me know her legs get tired. I don’t know why after all these years she hasn’t gotten it that something like that is just an invitation for me to tell her she needs to move more.

All my life my mother has said she didn’t want to be like my grandmother, who used to sit by the broadband radio listening to police calls all the time, rarely venturing out of her apartment. Now she admits that although she said that, she has actually gotten worse than her mother was. Now as I look at my mother I find myself thinking the same thing. I don’t want to be like her, lazy, fat, no life. I want to “live ’till I die”.

I either fractured my back or tore some muscles in it when we were moving. Oh my gosh, such pain. It’s starting to feel much better after almost 2 weeks, but I realize the most painful time is when I get up out of bed. While I realize many of us get stiff as we get older, making the onset of movement a bit painful, I don’t think that is the problem I’m having. The problem I’m having is the extra weight in my tummy pulling on my back as I lay on my side to sleep.

I’ve heard it said of men that have large stomachs when they see a doctor about lower back pain. Many are told most of the pain would go away if they just lost their tummies. I have no reason to think my tummy is any different. So, while I have always said that I wanted to be a “sexy” senior, for health concerns hitting home it’s about time I decided if I want to be like my mother and miserable, or more like a ‘cougar’, you know, one of those older women that look so good and are so active they go with younger men just to have someone who can keep up. LOL. I think right now I’m heading in the wrong direction.