BuffedWildCat’s BodyBlog

I wish I had time to keep this up better but I just don’t (for now).  So to all those interested…

I keep pictures on MySpace if any of you are interested.  I also keep a more updated blog on MySpace.  I would do the same thing here but honestly I’m just too busy to keep up more than one website.  I can barely get enough time to get on the computer as it is these days then even when I do, I’m usually interrupted too many times by my 3 yr old.  It’s just tough getting any personal time when you have a 3 yr old and an infant, heh.  I’d love to catch up here but I just don’t have the time, keeping up one website is difficult enough so for now, until my kids get older and I get more time, my blog here (and uploading of any photos), will have to take a back seat, as in, it’s not very high on my priority list.  Anyhoo…  but thanks so much to everyone who has visited my BodySpace and left comments, I really appreciate it!

Still trying to get pregnant, coming up on try #3.  I still can’t get over that it’s taking me this long to get pregnant when I got pregnant the first time on the very first try.  But anyhoo… hopefully it’ll happen soon, there are several reasons why I want to be pregnant now as opposed to later.  One of the biggest reasons is because I want to have child #2 before child #1 turns 4 (he’s coming up on 2 1/2 right now) cause once child #1 turns 4, I’m wanting to do a lot more with him as far as getting him involved in different activities.  And I really don’t want to be trying to take care of an infant, with the breastfeeding and all, while trying to tote around a 4 yr old and do things with him.  I think it would be much easier to have a ONE year old while doing things with the 4 yr old.  Past experience tells me that I won’t feel like doing ANYTHING but sleeping during at least the first 6 months of child #2’s life, the breastfeeding is just a killer.  I’m the only one who can feed the infant and infants eat every 2-3 hours so every 2-3 hours I’ve got an infant on my breast, makes it difficult to get much quality sleep at a time.  So anyway, that’s that, as far as my training and diet goes, I’m still weight training 4 times a week, two day split, so hitting all upper body muscles twice a week, usually.  Still skating once a week, I’m now taking my son skating once a week too.  I want to give him the opportunity that I didn’t have, to become a good skater.  He also walks pigeon-toed, so putting skates on him will help since he has to keep his feet pointed forward to go anywhere.  My diet, well, not much of a diet, just eating really.  I am still tracking everything I put into my mouth on fitday, that will always be the case.  So since Nov 1st I’ve averaged 2350 calories and my weight is staying at 142 lbs, works for me, as even at 142 lbs I am pretty pleased with the amount of muscle definition I have (see Sept pics).  So I will just keep doing what I’m doing, once I get pregnant is when the challenge will begin, or I should say about a month AFTER I get pregnant, as that was about the time I really started FEELING pregnant the first time, with all the fatigue and what not, then it became more challenging for me to get thru my workouts.  That’s all for now, will keep you posted. 

To get pregnant again.  So I went off my diet about a week ago now.  Heck even before that though I had let up on it due to my trips out of town to visit with family.  So I probably gained some fat during that time (actually I KNOW I did) and then didn’t go back to my diet long enough to lose it all again.  So anyway, that brings me up to now.  I am now a "fattie" at 22% body fat, heh.  I guess that’s okay for now since winter is approaching and now my new goal is to get pregnant and then to have a healthy pregnancy and baby.  So I won’t worry so much about muscle definition, for a while anyway.  About a month after I have the baby though, IT’S ON!!  Yet again, hehe.  So anyway, that’s the update.  Mainly, besides the goal of having a healthy pregnancy and baby, my goal is to NOT GAIN over 35 lbs.  I gained 33 lbs with the first pregnancy and I really didn’t watch it much, I mean I did, some, but not as much as I should have.  So this time I am going to try harder to not eat too much, and to be especially careful of not eating too much junk, I think I ate far too much of it the first time.  So anyway, I have one more week before I should ovulate so that gives me another week to try and keep my calories steady to see what my weight does so that I will know where to keep them during my pregnancy.  One only needs (if I remember correctly) about an extra 200-300 calories for pregnancy.  So my goal is to find out what my maintenance calories are at my current weight, about 141-142 lbs and then to make sure I don’t eat more than about 200 extra over my maintenance.  And I may, I’m thinking about it, start a journal here so that others can follow along with my workouts and diet during my pregnancy.  Somebody may be able to learn from me plus it will help keep me motivated as it gets particularly difficult when you’re pregnant to stay motivated.

Great article I’d like to share here:  http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

This article explains things that I already knew, things I’ve personally observed, experienced, and read about from various sources, it’s nice to see that the rest of the world is finally catching up.  Page 5 is my favorite:

The key is that among the many things regulated in this homeostatic system—along with blood pressure and blood sugar, body temperature, respiration, etc.—is the amount of fat we carry. From this biological or homeostatic perspective, lean people are not those who have the willpower to exercise more and eat less. They are people whose bodies are programmed to send the calories they consume to the muscles to be burned rather than to the fat tissue to be stored—the Lance Armstrongs of the world. The rest of us tend to go the other way, shunting off calories to fat tissue, where they accumulate to excess. This shunting of calories toward fat cells to be stored or toward the muscles to be burned is a phenomenon known as fuel partitioning.

The job of determining how fuels (glucose and fatty acids) will be used, whether we will store them as fat or burn them for energy, is carried out primarily by the hormone insulin in concert with an enzyme known technically as lipoprotein lipase—LPL, for short. (Sex hormones also interact with LPL, which is why men and women fatten differently.)

In the eighties, biochemists and physiologists worked out how LPL responds to exercise. They found that during a workout, LPL activity increases in muscle tissue, and so our muscle cells suck up fatty acids to use for fuel. Then, when we’re done exercising, LPL activity in the muscle tissue tapers off and LPL activity in our fat tissue spikes, pulling calories into fat cells. This works to return to the fat cells any fat they might have had to surrender—homeostasis, in other words. The more rigorous the exercise, and the more fat lost from our fat tissue, the greater the subsequent increase in LPL activity in the fat cells. Thus, post-workout, we get hungry: Our fat tissue is devoting itself to restoring calories as fat, depriving other tissues and organs of the fuel they need and triggering a compensatory impulse to eat. The feeling of hunger is the brain’s way of trying to satisfy the demands of the body. Just as sweating makes us thirsty, burning off calories makes us hungry.

This research has never been controversial. It’s simply been considered irrelevant by authorities, all too often lean, who have been dead set on blaming fatness on some combination of gluttony, sloth, and perhaps a little genetic predisposition thrown in on the side. But contemplating the means by which we might lose weight without considering the hormonal regulation of fat tissue is like wondering why children grow taller without considering the role of growth hormones. Or, for that matter, like trying to explain the record-breaking triumphs of modern athletes—Barry Bonds, say—and never considering the possibility that steroid hormones (or human growth hormone or insulin) might be involved.

If it’s biology, and not a lack of willpower, that explains why exercise fails so many of us as a weight-loss tool, then we can still find reason for optimism. Since insulin is the primary hormone affecting the activity of LPL on our cells, it’s not surprising that insulin is the primary regulator of how fat we get. “Fat is mobilized [from fat tissue] when insulin secretion diminishes,” the American Medical Association Council on Foods and Nutrition explained back in 1974, before this fact, too, was deemed irrelevant to the question of why we gain weight or the means to lose it. Because insulin determines fat accumulation, it’s quite possible that we get fat not because we eat too much or exercise too little but because we secrete too much insulin or because our insulin levels remain elevated far longer than might be ideal.

To be sure, this is the same logic that leads to other unconventional ideas. As it turns out, it’s carbohydrates—particularly easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars—that primarily stimulate insulin secretion. “Carbohydrates is driving insulin is driving fat,” as George Cahill Jr., a retired Harvard professor of medicine and expert on insulin, recently phrased it for me. So maybe if we eat fewer carbohydrates—in particular the easily digestible simple carbohydrates and sugars—we might lose considerable fat or at least not gain any more, whether we exercise or not. This would explain the slew of recent clinical trials demonstrating that dieters who restrict carbohydrates but not calories invariably lose more weight than dieters who restrict calories but not necessarily carbohydrates. Put simply, it’s quite possible that the foods—potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, pastries, sweets, soda, and beer—that our parents always thought were fattening (back when the medical specialists treating obesity believed that exercise made us hungry) really are fattening. And so if we avoid these foods specifically, we may find our weights more in line with our desires.

As for those people who insist that exercise has been the key to their weight-loss programs, the one thing we’d have to wonder is whether they changed their diets as well. Rare is the person who decides the time has come to lose weight and doesn’t also decide perhaps it’s time to eat fewer sweets, drink less beer, switch to diet soda, and maybe curtail the kind of carb-rich snacks—the potato chips and the candy bars—that might be singularly responsible for driving up their insulin and so their fat.

For the rest of us, it may be time to take a scientific or biological view of our excesses rather than a biblical one. The benefits of exercise include the joys of virtuousness. I worked out today, therefore I can eat fattening foods to my heart’s content. But maybe the causality is reversed here too. Maybe it’s because we eat foods that fatten us that the workout becomes a necessity, the best we can do in the battle against our own fat tissue.

Today I out lifted both my stepsons (ages 17 & 19) AND surpassed my pre-pregnancy strength by pushing up 55 lb dumbbells for 10 reps on flat bench!!  YAY!!  I’m so happy!

So I’ve been on a mission since Aug 28, 2006 to gain back the strength I lost during my pregnancy and of course, being the impatient person that I am especially when it comes to strength & fitness, I thought my strength was coming back WAY TOO SLOWLY.  Well, as it turns out, it IS coming back quick!
Tonight I decided to look back in my journal to see what my lifts were back when I started this mission and lo and behold but I’ve gained back almost 15 lbs on my lifts in 4 months!  Now at first, I didn’t really know if that was good or not, I mean it sounded good, but it wasn’t until I started doing the math that I realized it IS REALLY GOOD!  I got to thinking, whilst doing my cardio, (what else can you do while doing your boring cardio anyway, heh) that I know for a fact that when I very first started lifting weights back in March 2000, that I was only pushing up 15 lb dumbbells on flat bench (eeeek, I shudder to think that I was ever such a weakling!) and by April of 2004, I was pushing up 55 lb dumbbells.  Sooo, if you do the math, it took me 4 YEARS to acquire 40 lbs of strength, which is 10 lbs a YEAR, which is LESS THAN 1 LB A MONTH!!  YEESH!  Yet I just gained almost 15 lbs of strength (somewhere between 10-15 lbs) in 4 MONTHS, not YEARS, but MONTHS.  So yeah, that IS AWESOME, that’s around 3 lbs a month!  So now I’m all happy. ~grin~  I really needed that kind of motivation.  Heck, EVERYBODY could use that kind of motivation once in a while!  So anyway, I just wanted to share.  I’m hoping this great muscle memory trend continues cause I still have 10 more lbs of strength to gain back before I’m back to where I was pre-pregnancy.

After a number of years in which almost no deaths were caused by heart attacks during marathons, at least six runners have died in 2006. Some physicians, including Dr. Arthur Siegel, author of numerous studies of Boston Marathon racers, believe that the extended races put the heart at risk.

A new study by Dr. Siegel and colleagues examined 60 Boston Marathon entrants. The runners showed normal cardiac function before the marathon.

But 20 minutes after finishing, 60 percent of the group had elevated levels of troponin (a protein that shows up in the blood when the heart is traumatized), and 40 percent had levels high enough to indicate the destruction of heart muscle cells. Many also showed noticeable changes in heart rhythms.

Another study, from Germany, showed that as many as one-third of middle-aged male marathoners may have higher than expected calcium plaque deposits in their arteries, putting them at a greater risk for heart attack. Just over 20 percent of a control group of non-runners had comparable calcium plaque buildup.

Dr. Mercola’s Comment:

You may recall the sad story of Grete Waitz, the nine-time champion of the New York City marathon and Olympic medal-winner, whose career as a runner may have played a huge hand in her continuing struggle to fight cancer. You might also remember Jim Fixx, a marathoner and author of "The Complete Book of Running," who died some two decades ago of a heart attack at the age of 52 — while he was running.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am a major fan of exercising and have been an active runner for nearly 40 years. However, I just don’t want people to make the same mistake I made when I started my exercise program.

It is very easy to get caught up in the philosophy that if a little bit is good then more is even better. Unfortunately, this logic rarely is true, and with exercise, I believe there is compelling evidence to suggest otherwise.

Exercise is a form of destructive stress and it tears your body down. But we absolutely need it to rebuild and repair because your body is in a constant flux or dynamic of repairing and rebuilding.

However, what most people fail to understand is that it is easy to overdo exercise. Although it is common knowledge that too much of a good thing can be harmful for you, exercise is clearly no exception to this rule. The vast majority of people in this country are severely underexercised, but it is possible to overdo it and actually harm yourself.

What you really need is a combination of endurance and anaerobic sprinting or strengthening exercises that help to increase the instantaneous and dramatic demands on your cardiovascular system and prevent heart attacks.

Just one more reason, among many, for treating exercise like a drug that must be prescribed precisely to do the most good.

On Vital Votes, reader Judy from Albuquerque, New Mexico argues in favor of moderation:

"I feel that everything we do must be done in moderation. That includes exercise. It stand to reason that if you exercise to the extreme, you will deplete your energy reserves and will soon be run-down. In this state, it is easy for diseases to get a foothold. That is a real no brainer. We also need to remember that we are all different. What is extreme for me may be moderate for someone else. Listen to your body and do what feels right for you — not someone else, even if that someone else is an ‘expert’."

Other responses to this article can be viewed at Vital Votes, and you can add your own thoughts or vote on comments by first registering at Vital Votes.

©Copyright 2006 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.

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