Tammy's journal

[DumBelle]

Let me know when you do that workout. I'm always interested as to peoples comments after doing that.

Really kicks your butt that's for sure.

[Tammy]

Gave that workout a go yesterday, didn't use any weight except on calf raises and walking lunges except for the bar as I am only just getting back into it and am very weary of injury again, just couldnt handle going through what Ive just been through again any time soon. Didn't really feel it at the time apart from getting very wobble - totally different workout from what I am used to. But today! OH MY GOD!!! it is a totally different story, my ass is soooooo sore! (as are my quads) feels brilliant, like I have actually done something. Only did three sets will try and do it twice next week for four sets each. Thanks for the tips and advice definitely thinks my body needs a little bit of spice as it just does not seem to want to respond to anything, although I think I may be on the right track now (hopefully) Think after something major happens to you, your body just doesn't want any more changes. (it takes me a lot of work - cardio etc to decrease my body fat) thats just the way my body is I guess, so it is all the more satisfying when I achieve it as I know i have really had to work for it. Once I am there then it is not that hard at all to maintain for me. If you've got any other tips for someone who finds it extra hard to shed fat even when eating clean etc I would love to hear of them. I have been given a diet from a nutritionist to follow who has a lot of experience tin the area and have quite a few supplements to take, a multi vit, vitamin c, flax seed oil capsules, glutamine and glucosamine & chondritin. She seems to think that it is def female hormones that cause my body to distribute fat the way it is (bottom heavy compared to my top half) and also cortisol, primarily due to a highly stressful year last year, where I was working almost full time as well as studying full time as well and averaging no more than 4-5 hours sleep a night. Did this for almost the entire year before I completely burnt out, kept training on an obvious injuru which I probably made worse as my body just wanted to hjold onto fat round the hip area etc to protect it. Live and learn. Very interested in you theries and if you have any more that will help me loose my ass and thighs and help me fit into the 4 pairs of size 10 jeans that are hanging in my wardrobe cos they are to tight to fit at the moment I will happily be a guinea pig!!! am open to suggestions!!!!! good luck with your quest also to fit into those size 10 pants. Know what you mean about feeling heavy set, when you carry a bit more muscle that the average female, you def don't want to have too much on top of it! I know that we will both reach our goals!!!!

[DumBelle]

Hi,

I'm really glad that you remembered what you worked out the day before lol. When somebody suggested high reps to me, I thought they just would not do the trick. However, basically you have two types of muscle, slow twitch and fast twitch, and when you work on less reps and high weights, the slow twitch doesn't really get much of a workout. You have 50:50 slow and fast twitch muscle in your body so it's good to give both types your attention in your workouts. The slow muscles contain more mitochondria and myoglobin which make them more efficient at using oxygen to generate ATP without lactate acid build up.

So consequently when you work the slow twitch, you will really feel it the day after, but at the time because they are the muscle for endurance, you can keep going a lot longer than you would if you just exercised the slower twitch type. The slow twitch muscle also hold less glycogen, so they have to tap into fat stores a little more quickly than the fast twitch type. So as you will be surmising by now for the vast majority of that workout your fat burning and you may feel just mild fatigue at the time but the day after is when you KNOW you did something different.

The key to fat loss is never to let your body know what your gonna do next really. Your body adapts to what your doing so effectively you have to really chop and change things a lot when you feel something is not working for you and your not feeling the day after like you really worked out. So eventually after doing even this type of workout your lower body will adapt, and that is the time to change to low reps and high weight.

Same with upper body.

I don't know about you but when I am done with that workout, my legs feel very heavy and I think thats because as you squat and lunge so much, the blood is being pumped into the legs and the muscles get a good pump also. It's better for injuries because the increase in circulation and dilation of veins and capillaries means more blood getting to the tissue that doesnt normally get much. I.e. ligament and cartilage.

You sound like me in that your sleep is what is causing your high cortisol levels. That is why any type of stress (mental) is not good. Even worrying about why your not losing fat is going to be a stress in itself. You have to find the fine line between doing enough to effect fat loss and doing too much and raising cortisol levels too high which has a negative effect on fat loss and as you'll have discovered, cause your body to hold onto it. Thats why rest and good quality of sleep is the best thing you can do. 8 hours a night and also dont nap for more than an hour during the day as this detracts from your sleep at night. Don't underestimate the value of a decent nights rest. I've always done my workouts in the evenings for the last few years and it seems to halt my fat loss because at a time of day when your cortisol levels should be dropping, you workout hard and it raises them very high. When I worked out in the mornings in my 20's I never had a problem with fat loss, so I'll be switching to that next week when I start to workout again.

There are some good supplements for getting good sleep. 5HT is one of them. Also, having a large portion of protein at dinner and then a very small potato (baked-I do mine in the oven in a large batch and then refridgerate them and warm them before I eat em) will actually cause a rise in seratonin and you'll feel sleepy and once in that pattern, you'll find you also feel more balanced mentally. Don't eat protein with the potato last thing but you can put a little healthy butter on it. Thats 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 butter creamed together. That'll slow the absorption of the potato down a little and the effect will last a little longer.

Often I have found that I have eaten TOO clean and by this I mean, I have eaten in a way that I could not possibly get the calorie levels up to what they need to be to gain and I have actually been working out so hard that I've been reducing muscle. That is not a good thing unless you intend to do cardio every day. So the main thing for me since I had a fitness assesment last year was to try and get the food down--as long as it is healthy natural food not processed, and eat normally and just avoid adding sugar or salt to my food. I have cut out artificial sweeteners as I read that when your trying to lose fat, the liver needs to be functioning well, and that artificial sweeteners are liver toxic. So I cut those. You'll find your taste buds are better off getting used to life without natural sugars or added white sugar anyway. Always drinking lots of water helps too especially if your working out real hard out.

For me though, eating healthy as opposed to clean, sleeping well and productive exercise and good rest after is probably something that will get you results anytime. I'm by no means in shape, but I think it is because I have become so frustrated in the past I have done drastic things and this has hurt my metabolism more than helped it.

Whats important is growth of lean tissue and for that you need to work out productively and the rest well. You'll find once that is occuring your siet will follow suit anyway and you'll eat better automatically.

What's more I think you'll know at each meal what your body needs food wise and the trick always with diet is the same as with exercise. Variety of food and variety of calories per day to always keep your body guessing. That way it doesnt know your on diet and is not gonna shut down and complain about it or try to hold onto fat.

Say 4-6 low calorie low carb (eating low glycemic carbs=1gram per 1lb of muscle tissue) days and then a day or two of high carb/low fat will certainly throw your body off the track.

If I can think of anything else I'll come along and post it. Don't do the above workout until your legs have fully recovered if you have had an injury. Give your ligaments and bone etc time to recover--they take longer than muscle to come around.

[DumBelle]

I've always done my workouts in the evenings for the last few years and it seems to halt my fat loss because at a time of day when your cortisol levels should be dropping, you workout hard and it raises them very high. When I worked out in the mornings in my 20's I never had a problem with fat loss, so I'll be switching to that next week when I start to workout again.

Reason you should go with this lowered cortisol towards evening is that cortisol being high will disrupt sleep. Your sleep will be less quality and also, when cortisol levels are too high, GH and test ot other hormones for growth, are suppressed. So you can see pretty quickly that a good nights rest is essential to fat loss as the sex hormones reduce fat stores and cortisol raises fat store levels. This means that sometimes if your stressed already working out at the end of the day can detract from that. Make sure if you do workout at night that it is way before 6pm. Even then I think morning workouts are best as thats naturally where cortisol is high anyway. Of course comeone is bound to say they worked out at night and grew like a mushroom here, but if your a stressed person (mentally) and work a lot and are a light sleeper, then tweaking this is more important. Take ZMA at night and this will help. Also Vitamin C in 1000mg last thing will lower cortisol. (ZMA is Zinc, Magnesium and B6).

Also take about 3 grams (3000mg) Vitamin C after a workout will help to lower cortisol levels. You naturally have a higher demand for that when working out heavy so don't be worried about overdosing.

[Tammy]

I drink heaps and heaps of water DUmBelle, but probably have drunken way too many diet soft drinks in the past and at present so as of Monday I am cutting back! Had none yesterday, a record for me I think, as looking back I would definitely have at least one each day. Am going to try just having 3-4 per week to start with and then cut down until I start treating them as I would normal soft drink - an absolute TREAT!!! so we'll see how that helps things out as well. As when I was at my chiropractor (who is not exactly a functional chiropractor) she said I showed up that my liver was struggling and that it could be a result of lots of artificial sweetener especially from diet soft drinks!!

[Tammy]

Training

Saturday

Did an hour walk and played a game of netball , the first in two years. Am normally a goal shoot, but had a half at centre, and surprisingly this didn't affect my hips at all - need less to say I was so stoked. Food was as per last post. Food will always be the same, bar a switch at afternoon tea between half an HPLC bar with a kiwifruit and a diet yoghurt with 15g protein powder and 12 almonds. So won't post food unless i go off track!!

Sunday training

Just went for a light one hour walk, very sore calfs and bum from the strenuous game of netball! Oh and had 2 jet planes and 75g of fudge!!! (oops - oh well first deviation from the diet all week!)

MONDAY

6am 20min jog and 30minutes on bike

1pm WEIGHTS

Deadlifts 50kg x 8 (4 sets)

seated row 80lb x 8 (4 sets)

lat pull dns 80lb x 8 (4 sets)

DB row 13kg x 8 (3 sets)

11kg x 10 (1 set)

supplements daily are 2000mg of vit c, 1 x multi vit, 2 x high stress vit b formula, 3 x flax seed oil capsules, glucosamine and chondritin, glutamine (5g daily) and ZMA 4 capsules at night

Feel like a walking supplement shop, bu have had no hip pain for a long time now and have heaps of energy, so whether it is all necessary or not I don't know, but hopefully it will help balance out my hormones so that my body fat becomes more evenly distributed.

Body fat testing tonight - will keep you posted hopefully i have had a decrease.

[DumBelle]

Carbonated drinks are not good for bone density either. The excess phosphorous from them can cause bone and calcium loss.

I used to drink a lot of the calorie free drinks with artificial sweetners in them but it's actually worse than drinking a beverage with real sugar in.

Your better off drinking very diluted, no sugar added fresh fruit juice than carbonated drinks.

No sugar cranberry (not artificially sweetned) watered down with filtered water is actually good for your liver and kidneys and detoxifies. Or even water with a little fresh squeezed lemon.

If you cannot stomach drinking plain water all the time there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing this and just slightly flavoring your water as opposed to drinking artificially sweetened drinks.

[Tammy]

normally i love water, but sometimes you have days where you just feel like you need something else!! so those diluted solutions should help, will try them when get the craving for a diet coke etc. Not having the sweeteners has got to be good for you, have definitely overdosed on them in the last few years i think, if nothing else it will save me some coin to spend on something else!!!

[DumBelle]

Well..doesnt save me money. Not the Cranberry juice anyways. Lemons are cheaper though. I buy a litre of 100% crushed cranberry juice from the Health Food Store for $23.95. But that is very concentrated juice and your meant to water it down. I don't get the Ocean Spray stuff as that is sweetened and the unsweetend "Lite" version has artificial sweeteners in.

A good slimming drink to make is 1 litre 100% unsweetened organic apple juice.

1 tsp Live Manuka Honey

3 Tbs Live Apple Cider Vinegar

1 tsp Cinnamon Powder.

Shake it up and then add water as needed.

Cinnamon is good because it keep your blood sugar levels steady. You can add more cinnamon, but I don't add much more as it can be quite spicy.

[DumBelle]

All those drinks are real good if your starting with a bladder infection or cystitis too. Cinnamon will kill e.coli bacteria so if you drink it when you have problems in stomach or bladder it will help enormously. Always better to try before anti biotics. Add more cinnamon when your using it as a medicine.

[DumBelle]

I forgot to say that the cloudy apple juice type is best as are fresh apples as they have stacks of pectin in and pectin detoxifies and even helps to remove toxic metals such as lead from your body.

They are concentrates though so you need to water them down heaps. That drink I just suggested would probably last you a week in the fridge.

[Tammy]

Wednesday

6am 30min walk and 20 minute cross trainer

1pm SHOULDERS

DB frontal raise

5kg x 12

6kg x 10

6kg x 10

6kg x 10

DB Shoulder press

11kg x 12

13kg x 8

11kg x 10

11kg x 10

DB Lat raise (6 mod-heavy/6 light reps - single sides at a time)

8kg/4kg for 4 sets as outlined above

BO DB flyes

4kg x 12

5kg x 10

6kg x 8

5kg x 10

Food

7:30am

1/2c rolled oats (raw)

30g horleys ripped factors

100g watties lite peaches

10am 85g greenseas tuna in springwater (pouch)

3 x cornthins

12:30pm

150g chicken breast

1.5c broccoli

200g pumpkin

Post workout protein shake

3pm

1/2 HPLC bar

1 fruit jube (oops couldn't say no!!)

Tea will be

6pm 150g venison

3c broccoli, courgettes, mushrooms, cauliflower

100g pumpkin

8pm

1 x jarrah hot chocolate

100g pumpkin

+ a cupboard full of various supplements, vitamins etc LOL

[jono]

looking good.. do you notice a difference at all if you dont take the vitimins ?

i find if i dont take mine.. i feel real down and sad all the time lol. but when im taking them im always happy.

[Marcus]

Haha maybe there's more than just vitamins in those pills!! :grin:

[jono]

Haha maybe there's more than just vitamins in those pills!! :grin:

lol! :grin: nah i looked it up.. btw what im taking about is magnessium, zinc and b6 (zma) i buy them seperatly.. honestly i feel happy all the time when i takt em, and i sleep better

[Tammy]

well i have only been taking them for 2 weeks, normally whenever I have vitamins, supplements etc I forget to take them, but have been very dedicated this time!!! Have heaps of energy and am getting my strength back quite quickly. AM sleeping heaps better too, over the time i had all the really major injury problems and most of last year i didn't sleep at all, now I am getting at least 8 hours solid sleep and man it feels fantastic to not go through the day feeling exhausted. My concentration is heaps better too. That ZMA stuff is brilliant. If all this helps me loose my arse and get my abs back id recommend them to anyone! LOL

[Tammy]

my weights look pathetic next to your tho jono, ur a machine LOL

[jono]

my weights look pathetic next to your tho jono, ur a machine LOL

lol! thx.

but don't be so hard on yourself, im sure you will reach your goals, and more

[DumBelle]

ZMA helps me a great deal also. I don't get a lot of foods with the B vitamins in at times. They are the vitamins you need to ward off depression. Those and a good hit of seratonin every night.

Have you ever read a book titled 'Potatoes not Prozac.' B vitamins are one of the recommended supplements.

As a side line, it's good that B6 helps to reduce water retension. lol.

I have the Red Seal tabs which are pretty cheap from the supermarket with B6, Zinc and Magnesium. About $7...

[Tammy]

I am very determined to reach al my goals, as I am totally sick of not fitting my jeans (and there are quite a few pairs sitting in the wardrobe). Am totally sick of this as* that doesn't seem to shrink!!! (Girl problems I know)

[DumBelle]

I hate that time of month... lol. Just got over it actually. But jono copped it a little.

Hehe.

Don't worry all will be fine in a few days.

[Tammy]

Well have been on holiday up in Taupo/Hamilton for the last week and it was very relaxing and did more maintenance training and lots of walking. Anyway back into it today with a vengeance.

Diet (same as it always is) + one can of diet coke (the first in ten days!!)

6am cardio - 60minutes

100 sit ups on Swiss Ball

weights @ 1pm (CHEST)

Bench Press

15 x 30kg

10 x 35kg

8 x 37.5kg

10 x 35kg

Incline DB Press

8 x 15kg

6 x 15kg

10 x 13kg

10 x 13kg

Flat DB Flyes supersetted with 10-15 pressups

10 x 10kg

10 x 10kg

10 x 10kg

10 x 10kg

[Tammy]

Oh just in case you're all interested I have lost 1.5kg in the last 3 weeks. Put on 0.5kg after the 1st week and have lost 2kg since then. Am now down to 66kg, and have lost a couple of cm of the chest (last place a girl really wants it to go from!!!), 1cm off the hips and 4cm from my waist. So the clothes are starting to feel a little bit more comfortable and I am a lot happier. Bring on being able to fit into all my old jeans I say.

[Growth]

Well done, awesome work.

[DumBelle]

Hi Tammy,

Glad to hear you took a break and congrats on the gains and losses.