Finding balance

When you have any bariatric surgery there is a certain type of diet you're supposed to follow. For the rest of your life. It's mostly protein, because in theory we're limited in the amount we can eat. And after going through all that it takes to have that surgery and then recover from it you're usually motivated to do the "right thing" as far as diet is concerned. And then there is the age old myth that carbs are evil, especially when losing weight. I suppose that works for a lot of people, but not for me. Especially spending time in the gym every day. And that is where I'm having a problem finding balance.

I know that I need to eat a bit more if I'm going to build muscle and workout every day. I certainly discovered that today. Towards the end of my workout I got a serious case of the shakes. Completely lost every ounce of energy I had and really didn't feel very good. I know that it was because of my diet. There is a reason that people who exercise every day, especially weight lifters, eat so damn much. I certainly can't eat what many of them do, nor do I need to, but it certainly seems I need to eat more that I do. My issue is that I love the "bad" carbs. Pasta, breads, chips and other things that go crunch. I know you can get some carbs from vegetable, I hate vegetables. I doubt I could ever force myself to eat enough of them to get the carbs I need. Protein isn't a problem. I love meat and eggs and all that. I just need to make sure I'm eating enough but not too much. That's a challenge. The problem is that I want to lose weight but I also want to build muscle. I'm finding this a bit challenging.

I have learned over the last two years that even with surgery I need an excessive amount of activity every day to keep dropping inches. I can't do that when I feel tired and hungry. My body holds onto pounds if I eat enough to have that energy and not feel tired. It's a quandary. One I'm trying to figure out. I have slowed my workouts a bit and changed things up. No more "overtraining" for me. I hope. Being fat an unhealthy is so much easier. Not worrying or even thinking about what you're eating and avoiding exercise like a cat avoids water is simple. What I'm doing, not so much. It's a daily struggle. I'm thinking about going back to using protein powder. I loathe the stuff but I think it may help me find that balance I need. If only I can find one that I don't have to choke down. Apparently I need to do something different.

Changed the color and layout

Please let me know what you think. I personally like the dark colors but I think it makes it a little harder to read so I lightened things up a little. The other option is red.

Too many days off. Or was it.

After almost three months of hitting the gym atleast 5 days a week, I took several days off and went to the beach with the family. We ate bad food. We sat around the fire. We ate more bad food. And now I can certainly feel it. Gained back a few pounds. Mostly water I think, from the bad food and salt. Ugggg. I feel slow, no energy, just yucky. And I'm realizing this was the norm before I started working out. On the other hand, my muscles needed some time off.  I've read many different articles about "over training" and "rest days". The internet is filled with them (see links at bottom of page). What I didn't realize is that I was doing exactly that. Whent back to the gym yesterday, after too many days off, and all my lifts went up. I didn't hurt every time I picked something up, had more stamina and was generally stronger. I benched 225 for the first time since high school, and it was easy.

The universal symptoms of OTS are performance decline and persistent fatigue. These are present in every case. There is a long list of other symptoms that are present in many but not all cases. These include depression, irritability, loss of motivation, insomnia, and changes in resting heart rate. Because there is no single symptom that can be used to make a definitive diagnosis of OTS, it is notoriously difficult to diagnose.

Here are 7 symptoms of overtraining taken from an article on http://www.builtlean.com/

Overtraining Symptom #1: Lack of Motivation
Lost all drive and motivation to train, or really perform any physical activity? Your body is telling you that you need to rest and recover because you are doing too much.

Overtraining Symptom #2: You Feel Especially Sore Following a Big Workout
Highly dependent on nutrition, if you’re eating enough while training hard but still feel intense soreness after your workouts, there is a chance overtraining has set in. Different than the usual soreness from training, it will linger for a few extra days and might be a little more painful.

As most newbies often do too much too fast, overtraining is common in beginners. Remember the first time you trained your arms and you couldn’t wash your hair for a week? Or how about the first time you did legs and dreaded walking up stairs for a week?

Overtraining Symptom #3: You Stop Seeing Results
Believe it or not, working out too much can actually cause you to lose muscle and gain fat! If it was as simple as energy balance (burning more than you consume) then the more you train the better. The problem is that hormones play a large role in the equation.

Overtraining causes your body to produce inadequate amounts of testosterone (bad for the ladies too) while producing higher levels of cortisol. The problem for both men and women is that your body increases both insulin resistance and fat deposition. We are training to get strong and lean, right?

Overtraining Symptom #4: You Become Restless and Lose Focus

(I experienced this one big time)

Typically found in strength or power athletes or those who train with high intensity intervals, what happens is your sympathetic nervous system goes into overdrive, causing hyperexcitability, restlessness, and inability to focus.

This restlessness makes it even harder to recover as I can’t stress enough how important sleep is for recovery and consistent gains.

Overtraining Symptom #5: You Feel Sluggish All Day
Another effect of overtraining the sympathetic nervous system, this often happens with endurance athletes. Again, the result of decreased testosterone and increased cortisol levels, in some cases causes debilitating fatigue that feels like you’ve come down with a cold.

I typically recommend intense workouts of shorter duration due to the effects of long duration endurance training. Just because you are physically able to run 10 or more miles each week doesn’t mean that you have to.

Overtraining Symptom #6: Chronic Soreness in Your Joints, Bones and Limbs
Post workout soreness in the form of DOMS (delayed onset muscle fatigue) is normal, but if you experience intense and prolonged soreness, you may have done too much. Basically, if it feels like you got run over by a bus, you should cut back on your volume or intensity.

Overtraining Symptom #7: You’re Sick More Often
Very often caused by a combination of things such as lack of sleep, poor diet, not enough activity and mental stress, if you think you are on point with all of these things and still find yourself getting ill, it may be due to overtraining.
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I certainly experienced the insomnia aspect. And the fatigue. Though I'm feeling fatigue now, but I know that is from crap food, poor sleep and stress. Who ever called it vacation must not have had children. 

If sufficient rest is not included in a training program then regeneration cannot occur and performance plateaus. If this imbalance between excess training and inadequate rest persists then performance will decline. Overtraining can best be defined as the state where the athlete has been repeatedly stressed by training to the point where rest is no longer adequate to allow for recovery. The "overtraining syndrome" is the name given to the collection of emotional, behavioral, and physical symptoms due to overtraining that has persisted for weeks to months. Athletes and coaches also know it as "burnout" or "staleness." This is different from the day to day variation in performance and post exercise tiredness that is common in conditioned athletes. Overtraining is marked by cumulative exhaustion that persists even after recovery periods.

Getting myself to the gym seemed to be getting harder and harder. Or I should say, being productive there was becoming harder and harder. I simply didn't have the drive to do much on some days and my body was so tired that I was lifting less instead of more. Not terribly productive. And something I'm currently changing. I don't want to lose the motivation and I don't want my time to be counterproductive. Personally I didn't think I was doing enough for it to be an issue, but my body tells me differently. As did my time in the gym yesterday. I not only felt stronger, I was stronger.

I'm thinking about trying something like this. Though I do a 15 minute "cardio" warm up every day I go. Though this type of schedule would be ideal for me as I generally don't make it to the gym on Saturdays. 

Day 1: Weights

Day 2: Weights & cardio

Day 3: Cardio only

Day 4: Weights & cardio

Day 5: Weights & cardio

Day 6: Weights

Day 7: Full rest

I need to work in more pool time, up the cardio, work on more stretching and core exercises and try to not burn myself out again. There are (apparently) two important factors in preventing overtraining and burnout. Allow for adequate recovery time in between exercise sessions and ensure variety in your exercises, and training techniques. I've really been ignoring both of those. I tend to find a routine I like and stick with it. I need to change that up. What can I say, it's an ongoing experiment and I'm learning as I go. 

Sources:

• http://running.competitor.com/2013/09/training/what-is-overtraining_32897
• http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/overtraining.html
• Top 7 Overtraining Symptoms
 by Stephen Bergeron, CSCS, CPT | June 5, 2012 | Updated: February 9, 2013 
• http://www.muscleforlife.com/8-signs-of-overtraining/
• http://www.active.com/health/articles/what-is-overtraining
• http://www.mensfitness.com/training/build-muscle/12-signs-youre-overtraining
• http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/rswan6.htm
• http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/topicoftheweek87.htm
• http://www.mensfitness.com/training/build-muscle/7-ways-to-avoid-overtraining-forever?page=2
• http://running.competitor.com/2014/07/training/four-tactics-for-avoiding-overtraining_20055

Check your ego.

If you want to have a few good laughs at the expense of others, do a Youtube search for "ego lifting". I think it's one of the largest contributing factors to gym injuries. It's probably also one of the biggest reasons people stop going to the gym. Their ego that is. We see other people doing something or lifting something and then we decide we can do it too. Many times we can't. For various different reasons. But sometimes we try anyway. And then we get hurt or we get discouraged and we don't go back the next day. Or we can't. So it's usually best to leave the ego at the door.

Having said that, sometimes (and only sometimes) it can help. I don't go to the gym to impress anyone, I don't care what other people think, the only person I'm in a competition with is myself. But, sometimes I look around and think "if they can do it then I should be able to do it". I suppose it's a form of motivation. And occasionally it pushes me just a little. Encourages me to put on a little more weight, do one more rep, or even try something new.

Seated leg press machine

My gym being what it is doesn't have a huge variety of equipment. I have access to two different types of leg press machines. One is of the seated variety and only has 395 pounds of weight on it. Yesterday I let my ego get the better of me, maxed it out and did 4 sets of 25. To my astonishment it was actually kind of easy. So today I finally decided to use the other machine. It takes free weights and can hold up to 1000 pounds. A bit more of a challenge.

Now I'm not really one for "maxing out" but I really wanted to see just what I could push. 315 was easy, so was 405. Stacked on some more plates and tried again. 585 made me grunt but still managed 12. I actually made it to 810 pounds. And boy can I feel it. My legs haven't felt like this in years. And I like it. I'm not sure why I did it, curiosity mostly, with a dash of ego. The ego is what drove me to keep pushing after about 600 pounds. On the plus side, I know my body and I know when to stop. I think that's the important thing. Ego is fine, to a point. You cross that point and enter the land of injury.

The other kind

What's your motivation?

Growing up I always thought I was really fat. I was constantly told it was true. Now when I look back, sure, I was chubby at times, but never really fat. For a few years I was in pretty damn good shape. And then I suddenly wasn't. I've written about all the reasons for that so I won't go over it again. I will say that it really snuck up on me. One day I suddenly weighed almost 600 pounds and honestly had no idea how the hell it happened. And then I noticed my daughter was following in my and her mother's footsteps. Our children learn everything from us. The good and the bad. I started to notice that my daughter was lazy, that she focussed on food. Not good food, just food. When I would go to the store she would demand a treat, and I would get it. And I would get me two, or three. I couldn't walk through a store and needed to use the electric carts, she wouldn't walk through a store and demanded to ride in the cart. I noticed that she would rather sit and watch television all day, or play on her computer, just like daddy. It hit me like a cannonball to the head. And it became part of my motivation.

My oldest daughter is 16. She weighs 300 pounds. She's heading down the same road her mother and I took. She's at high risk for developing diabetes and other health issues. At 16. She's learned from our examples. She is part of my motivation. I want to lead by example. I can't tell her to get off her ass while I sit on mine. I can't tell her to go to the gym and not do the same. I have never been a fan of the "do as I say not as I do" routine. There are plenty of reasons to exercise, there are many reasons I exercise, but my children are the motivation that keeps me going back day after day. My youngest isn't yet 2, I want to set a better example for him than I have for the other three.

I often think that parents don't realize just how much their actions and choices are emulated by their children. We may think it's cute when Junior repeats a bad word, we don't notice when they copy our eating habits. We love to talk about how a child looks just like a parent, we don't comment when they copy shitty behaviour. We like to make "mini me's" because it makes us feel special as parents, we rarely take the time for introspection and wondering if creating another "me" is a good thing.

We exist in a society and a time that makes obesity easy. For all the lip service about "being active" and "eating healthy" we really encourage the opposite. Fast food on every corner. Stores full of processed foods. Moving sidewalks. Want to ride a bike? Make sure your life insurance is paid up. Most cities in this country have crappy mass transit, so we drive. 250 channels of television, smart phones, social media. It's all easy. Getting off your butt and sweating, that's hard. When you live with depression it's even harder. But watching your children get fat, made fun of, ostracized, that makes for a good wakeup call. It's easy to be lazy, to eat crap food, to sit around and do nothing. At least for a while. Until you step on the scale one day and it bounces off 600. Until you realize your children are heading in the same direction. Until you finally realize there really aren't any valid reasons not do it.

The gym that I belong to has members from 16 to 90 something. I see these old people come in, day after day, to do something. I look at them and think, if they can do it anyone can do it. If you can push your walker from spot to spot I can certainly move my fat ass. You're missing a leg and I'm whining about knee pain. You've had three heart attacks and I'm bitching about how early it is. And they tell me that I'm the one that motivates them. I find that ironic.