I don't think that I'm competitive. I played sports in school, but on fun leagues in the summer, not through the school. I stopped playing in college because I wasn't competitive enough to get onto a team. Oh I thought I wanted to play fastpitch softball in high school. I went to the gym for tryouts and was intimidated. I ended up staying a few weeks to become a 'trainer' for the team, but that too ended a few weeks later. Part of it was social anxiety, part of it was a lack of competitiveness and part was a lack of confidence.
When I started working out with Pete at the gym I thought he was nuts. He would run for 6 miles after working all day. It would take him 60-120 minutes some days, but he did it. No way in hell was I going to work out that long. Thankyouverymuch. I got on the treadmill or elliptical, did my 40 minutes and however much distance that got me and I stopped. Then Pete went through the band surgery and he was armed with a Polar Heart Rate Monitor. This time he didn't leave the gym until he had 1000=1500 calories burned some days. He was N.U.T.S!!!!
Why am I telling you this? Well as you can tell by the numbers in the titles, I'm not losing weight. I'm frustrated as hell. Before surgery I was running and working out with Body Pump like I am now and I was losing 1-2 pounds a week. I was watching what I ate and drinking lots of water and doing all the same things. However, I can't seem to lose weight no matter how I try.
I went to the gym Saturday and ran 4.35 miles in 60 minutes. It felt awesome. I did a mile jogging, second mile was intervals, third mile jogging, fourth mile intervals. But I only burned about 600 calories. I had a nagging feeling, but didn't talk about it. Sunday Pete wanted to spend about 50 minutes at the gym because he has a healing blister and can't do much cardio. I ended up spending 70 minutes on the treadmill and doing 4.6 miles; burning 800 calories.
I felt like a failure you guys. Seriously. I told Pete that I'm starting to feel like a failure if I'm not burning 1000 calories at the gym at least 5 times a week. But that's exactly the life that I kept telling people that I couldn't sustain before surgery. I can't seem to reconcile this in my head. I know that I'm not failing because clothes are fitting better. Yet the scale is such this albatross around my neck and I can't seem to shake it. So much so that I called my doctor and asked to move up my next fill to next week.
In the mean time I am going to start doing a couple of things. I'm going to roughly log my calories. Roughly meaning, I'm going to sit at the end of the night and calculate what I ate and about how many calories, not attempt to log every bite because I know that does not work for me and I can't have more failure. I'm also going to make a concerted effort to get my hear rate in zone 4 (calorie burn) while working out.
Zone 4 is actually above your Anaerobic Threshold - where your body stops burning calories and fat, and only burns simple sugars (energy) in your body. Have you considered a calorie test? I think you'd need to know how many calories your body burns (at rest) in order to know how many to eat and what your "true deficit" is? It sounds like there's some info you need in order to keep moving forward in your weight-loss. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteHere's some info about your "heart rate zones" - http://www.brianmac.co.uk/hrm1.htm