The workout logs for weeks 8 & 9 are here! During both weeks our activity was the same so I made one log for both. The newest piece you will notice in the workout log is the tabata challenge being changed to a drafting challenge. The more people you run with the harder this challenge is, or maybe it is the less people you run with the harder it is! Either way drafting is a fun way to learn how to pace yourself and build up quick endurance to give yourself short passing bursts! Both are great ways to maintain a steady and competitive edge when running a race.
I Swear I Am Doing Everything Right But I Am Not Losing Any Weight! WHY?!?
First off review my blog on motivational goal setting and lets make sure we are focusing our attention on actual goals and not using the "Scale of Doom" to determine our success. That being said, the scale is a tool and I fully understand the frustration one feels when using a tool that seems to be saying, "hey, you are making absolutely no progress even with all the hard work you are putting in."
Truth is, you can do everything right and still not lose weight. So, what are some reasons for this phenomenon?
7 Reason Why You May Not Be Losing Weight
1. You are eating right but you are still eating too much. Underestimation of calories and portions is one of the biggest detriments people face as they try and lose fat. What you are eating may be healthy but the portions may be incorrect. Or, what you are eating may seem healthy but it really is not. If your diet consists of packaged and processed foods I can almost guarantee that you are underestimating the calories and portion sizes and doing yourself more harm than good.
Learn what portion sizes are. For example a serving of fruits and veggies is typically only a half cup to a cup. This means a full apple or banana accounts for two servings. A full avocado accounts for four servings! And, did you know that eight grapes is one serving? Do your homework and learn what your serving sizes are, especially when you are looking at packaged an processed foods.
In doing this a lot of you may actually find that your problem is not eating to much but it is in fact eating too little. Maintaining a food journal and maintaining your knowledge of your calorie and nutrient intake daily is one of the best ways to ensure you do in fact lose fat. I highly recommend using SparkPeople.com to help you with this goal. However, your food journal is only as good as your ability to be truthful with it. You must report accurately and that requires you to know serving/portion sizes and admit when you have ate too much or too little for the day. This is the only way you can learn how to correct your nutrition habits and affect change in your body.
2. You are overestimating your calorie burn. Those machines at the gym are notorious for overestimating your calorie burn. Not too mention our own ability to think we are pushing a level 9-10 when in fact it is only a 6-7 and thereby calculating our calorie burn to be higher than it actual is. A great way to ensure you are estimating your calorie burn is to invest in a heart rate monitor.
As your own personal fitness level increases so will the rate at which you burn calories. In other words, the better you do the more you will need to do in order to burn the same calories. This goes for everyone at all levels of fitness. Changing up your routine and providing new challenges will continual stimulate your body to work harder and burn more.
3. You do not have enough muscle. The skeletal muscle in your body accounts for 6% of your calorie burn daily at rest. Which, in a small way means that the more muscle you have the more calories you are burning at rest. However, this burn during rest is NOT why muscle is so important. Where muscle plays its most crucial role is after a workout. The more muscle you have the more calories your body burns right after a work out. The recovery period is the key here, it takes time and energy for the muscles to return to a resting levels. The muscles have to rebuild their energy stores and they typically do this by burning fat! This means the more muscle you have the more fat you will burn for longer periods AFTER your workout.
Women tend to think that they should not focus on weight lifting or muscle building, they do not want to bulk up. However, women are not built to bulk up. Our muscle definition will be in the form of long and lean not big and strong. We simply do not produce enough testosterone as males do making it impossible for women to gain huge amounts of muscle mass simply by touching weights. So take those images of bodybuilding women out of your head, the majority of those women (unfortunately) are taking anabolic steroids to reach such a state.
Last but not least if you do not add muscle and only focus on nutrition and cardio for fat loss you will soon find your body using your muscle for energy as well as the fat. This means you will deplete your muscle fibers and tissues leading to a greater potential to cause injury during your cardio sessions. Do not be scared of weight either. Light weights are not where you should focus, fatigue your muscles! Muscle responds to resistance and if there is no resistance well, you are just wasting your time.
4. Stress. Mental, emotional, physical, environmental, dietary, toxins and other forms of stress will converge to place all sorts of demands on your body. If gone unchecked these stressors can lead to all kinds of dysfunctions and chronic diseases - one of the biggest things they can cause is weight gain.
The body itself does not differentiate between your stressors, it just knows it as stress. Stress triggers your fight or flight response which makes your body produce cortisol. Cortisol destroys muscle, causes insulin imbalance and tells your body to store fat. Back in the cave days when stress was a matter of survival this was no big deal. Now however we can find stress from just a stack of papers on our desk or a looming phone call. So, take a moment to figure out what you can do to de-stress your life because stress could be one of the biggest players blocking you from fat loss, especially when you feel you are doing everything else right.
5. Lack of sleep. Guess what chronic levels of lack of sleep produce? Yep, cortisol. As stated above cortisol destroys muscle, causes insulin imbalance and tells your body to store fat. So get your beauty sleep, seriously, lack of could be exactly what is causing everything to run amiss in your fat loss program.
6. Insulin imbalance. Lack of exercise and/or eating high glycemic foods (non-whole grain carbs like rice, bread, potatoes, pasta and pretty much all packaged and processed foods) drives glucose up rapidly and with this goes an increase in insulin. Most of us are in this category currently and don't even know it. This insulin increase is a disrupts your bodies ability to remove sugars from the blood stream and places it in your cells instead. Insulin sends signals to the brain to increase fat storage.
Eliminate processed foods that are crammed full of added "bad" carbs and try ensure the carbs you get are natural, whole grain, whole fiber items (long grain wild brown rice, whole grain pasta and breads and NO MORE packaged/processed foods). Also, try and remember that fruits and veggies are full of carbs. 50-60% of your plate should come from carbs - and of this percentage of carbs 70-80% should be veggies and fruits where as 10-20% should be natural whole grains.
7. You are too medicated. Pills for hormone imbalance, diabetes, depression, chronic illness, birth control, etc., etc., etc. Your medicine cabinet can be holding you back. Find out what you are taking and what types of things it may be doing to your body. You can work around the pills but if you are unaware of what they are doing you may be even more unaware of the battle they are presenting you.
Whatever the cause for your lack of fat loss DON'T GIVE UP!!!
The benefits of making good nutritional choices and becoming physically fit far outweigh the scale not showing you a number you want to see. Remember, healthy and happy are not a number, they are a real feeling that comes from within and can be shared with all.
Set motivational goals that are SMART and you will find the success you seek! Promise!
~TigressSky~
I Swear I Am Doing Everything Right But I Am Not Losing Any Weight! WHY?!?
First off review my blog on motivational goal setting and lets make sure we are focusing our attention on actual goals and not using the "Scale of Doom" to determine our success. That being said, the scale is a tool and I fully understand the frustration one feels when using a tool that seems to be saying, "hey, you are making absolutely no progress even with all the hard work you are putting in."
Truth is, you can do everything right and still not lose weight. So, what are some reasons for this phenomenon?
1. You are eating right but you are still eating too much. Underestimation of calories and portions is one of the biggest detriments people face as they try and lose fat. What you are eating may be healthy but the portions may be incorrect. Or, what you are eating may seem healthy but it really is not. If your diet consists of packaged and processed foods I can almost guarantee that you are underestimating the calories and portion sizes and doing yourself more harm than good.Learn what portion sizes are. For example a serving of fruits and veggies is typically only a half cup to a cup. This means a full apple or banana accounts for two servings. A full avocado accounts for four servings! And, did you know that eight grapes is one serving? Do your homework and learn what your serving sizes are, especially when you are looking at packaged an processed foods.
In doing this a lot of you may actually find that your problem is not eating to much but it is in fact eating too little. Maintaining a food journal and maintaining your knowledge of your calorie and nutrient intake daily is one of the best ways to ensure you do in fact lose fat. I highly recommend using SparkPeople.com to help you with this goal. However, your food journal is only as good as your ability to be truthful with it. You must report accurately and that requires you to know serving/portion sizes and admit when you have ate too much or too little for the day. This is the only way you can learn how to correct your nutrition habits and affect change in your body.
2. You are overestimating your calorie burn. Those machines at the gym are notorious for overestimating your calorie burn. Not too mention our own ability to think we are pushing a level 9-10 when in fact it is only a 6-7 and thereby calculating our calorie burn to be higher than it actual is. A great way to ensure you are estimating your calorie burn is to invest in a heart rate monitor.
As your own personal fitness level increases so will the rate at which you burn calories. In other words, the better you do the more you will need to do in order to burn the same calories. This goes for everyone at all levels of fitness. Changing up your routine and providing new challenges will continual stimulate your body to work harder and burn more.
3. You do not have enough muscle. The skeletal muscle in your body accounts for 6% of your calorie burn daily at rest. Which, in a small way means that the more muscle you have the more calories you are burning at rest. However, this burn during rest is NOT why muscle is so important. Where muscle plays its most crucial role is after a workout. The more muscle you have the more calories your body burns right after a work out. The recovery period is the key here, it takes time and energy for the muscles to return to a resting levels. The muscles have to rebuild their energy stores and they typically do this by burning fat! This means the more muscle you have the more fat you will burn for longer periods AFTER your workout.
Women tend to think that they should not focus on weight lifting or muscle building, they do not want to bulk up. However, women are not built to bulk up. Our muscle definition will be in the form of long and lean not big and strong. We simply do not produce enough testosterone as males do making it impossible for women to gain huge amounts of muscle mass simply by touching weights. So take those images of bodybuilding women out of your head, the majority of those women (unfortunately) are taking anabolic steroids to reach such a state.
Last but not least if you do not add muscle and only focus on nutrition and cardio for fat loss you will soon find your body using your muscle for energy as well as the fat. This means you will deplete your muscle fibers and tissues leading to a greater potential to cause injury during your cardio sessions. Do not be scared of weight either. Light weights are not where you should focus, fatigue your muscles! Muscle responds to resistance and if there is no resistance well, you are just wasting your time.
4. Stress. Mental, emotional, physical, environmental, dietary, toxins and other forms of stress will converge to place all sorts of demands on your body. If gone unchecked these stressors can lead to all kinds of dysfunctions and chronic diseases - one of the biggest things they can cause is weight gain.
The body itself does not differentiate between your stressors, it just knows it as stress. Stress triggers your fight or flight response which makes your body produce cortisol. Cortisol destroys muscle, causes insulin imbalance and tells your body to store fat. Back in the cave days when stress was a matter of survival this was no big deal. Now however we can find stress from just a stack of papers on our desk or a looming phone call. So, take a moment to figure out what you can do to de-stress your life because stress could be one of the biggest players blocking you from fat loss, especially when you feel you are doing everything else right.
5. Lack of sleep. Guess what chronic levels of lack of sleep produce? Yep, cortisol. As stated above cortisol destroys muscle, causes insulin imbalance and tells your body to store fat. So get your beauty sleep, seriously, lack of could be exactly what is causing everything to run amiss in your fat loss program.
6. Insulin imbalance. Lack of exercise and/or eating high glycemic foods (non-whole grain carbs like rice, bread, potatoes, pasta and pretty much all packaged and processed foods) drives glucose up rapidly and with this goes an increase in insulin. Most of us are in this category currently and don't even know it. This insulin increase is a disrupts your bodies ability to remove sugars from the blood stream and places it in your cells instead. Insulin sends signals to the brain to increase fat storage.
Eliminate processed foods that are crammed full of added "bad" carbs and try ensure the carbs you get are natural, whole grain, whole fiber items (long grain wild brown rice, whole grain pasta and breads and NO MORE packaged/processed foods). Also, try and remember that fruits and veggies are full of carbs. 50-60% of your plate should come from carbs - and of this percentage of carbs 70-80% should be veggies and fruits where as 10-20% should be natural whole grains.
7. You are too medicated. Pills for hormone imbalance, diabetes, depression, chronic illness, birth control, etc., etc., etc. Your medicine cabinet can be holding you back. Find out what you are taking and what types of things it may be doing to your body. You can work around the pills but if you are unaware of what they are doing you may be even more unaware of the battle they are presenting you.
Whatever the cause for your lack of fat loss DON'T GIVE UP!!!The benefits of making good nutritional choices and becoming physically fit far outweigh the scale not showing you a number you want to see. Remember, healthy and happy are not a number, they are a real feeling that comes from within and can be shared with all.
Set motivational goals that are SMART and you will find the success you seek! Promise!
~TigressSky~
