The problem Sasha has is that she is training for a half a marathon so running 3-4 miles isn’t going to cut it, she needs to train her body to process the lactic acid and her lungs/heart to provide oxygen and energy for 13 miles so she needs to run much longer. I disagree with Steve a bit that I think running has its place and training your body to process lactic acid and provide oxygen/energy for long distance exercise. But it should be a supplement to your routine rather than a main crux. I agree with him that High Intensity Interval Training works better as a main focal point.

If you are trying to burn off a few extra pounds of subcutaneous fat then I’d recommend doing your body sculpting class a few days a week and then throwing 30 minutes of high intensity cardio on top of that. Get your heart rate up to around 150ish range for 20-30 minutes. Elliptical would be great or if you only have access to a treadmill try to do the interval training setting where you run hard for a few minutes then a light jog for a few more. I hate treadmills so I do it outside personally but I live in New England so that makes this tough right now. If you want to burn off visceral fat (the fat around your organs that gives you a “beer belly”) then long distance running seems to be a better choice. Studies have shown that running 17 miles or more a week burns visceral fat more efficiently than running only 12ish miles or walking 17 miles.

The important thing to remember is if you have a certain goal in mind then work specifically towards that goal. If you want to run a half marathon like Sasha then you keep running. If you want to win a pull-up contest, you do pull-ups. If you want to deadlift 600 pounds then you do a ton of deadlifts. A lot of fitness experts and personal trainers will give you a litany of other exercises to do that are totally superfluous. I can go in and say I want to bench press 300 pounds and I’ll do a few sets of bench presses but then they have me to tricep dips and pectoral flys and what not. That stuff will help strengthen your triceps or pecs but if you really want to bench 300 pounds then you keep benching and work on your form doing your specific goal and that’s the road of least resistance to your goal.

well, not anymore!
(thanks again bethy; though my anon post isn’t up yet, but will be in time…)

thanks bethy :)

I think the problem is that I do either or. Either food diary and minimal working out, or lots o’ working out but no food diary. But since I just lost my job on account of my blog (and the fact that I leaked the address to who I thought was a trusted individual), I might be having the time to do both…

OK, seriously, how long have you been working out Bethy and what sort of workouts are you doing. If you are simply running, depending on your diet you may only have a minor calorie deficit. I mentioned this in an earlier post concerning Sasha’s work-outs . When you run/jog, your heart rate goes up and your metabolism gets cranked into overdrive to provide energy for working muscles. However, once you’re done running, your body doesn’t need all this excess energy any longer so your metabolism drops back down to your baseline metabolism. So the calories you burn running is it, what your heart monitor/calorie counter is pretty much it.

The reason resistance training is more effective at long term caloric deficits is because when you lift/push weights, you are creating microtears in the muscle fibers that your body has to repair using the amino acids it normally produces and you ingest from protein. Your metabolism will increase just like when you run so you have more energy but your body must repair all the microtears so your metabolism will stay in a raised state for much longer, sometimes as much as 48 hours after. This is why they recommend you do resistance training only 2-3 times a week; it allows your body to fully repair itself. I personally think it is good advice for newer lifters but once your body adapts to repairing itself regularly, you can do it more often. I do full body workouts 4 times a week now, most of the time on back to back days even, but I never push myself to failure.

That last part is the key. If you are pushing yourself to failure, it means either you body is totally sapped of energy, your body has produced so much lactic acid that the muscle simply fails, or your have torn the muscles fibers so much that the muscle fails as well. The last two are bad because lactic acid prevents the growth and repair of muscle tissue and unless you want to add mass (like a body builder), pushing the muscles to that state of disrepair is of little benefit. If you are looking to strength train, I recommend following the Grease the Groove method. Listen to Pavel, he is the Man.
http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/69/
Low reps, high number of sets at a challenging but not max weight. Ups your metabolism but doesn’t leave you crippled. Strength is not necessarily based upon raw muscle tissue. It’s the nervous system’s ability to tell a muscle to contract and relax properly and if you can control muscle tension, you can gain strength without needing to add bulk. I think this is something you ladies would appreciate.

Alcohol screws up your metabolism because not only is it empty calories but if your metabolism is cranked up from a workout, it is brought to a screeching halt. As you can imagine, this messes up your bodies muscle repairing efforts and if you have too much to drink, you are going to wake up sore the next day. I’m not even sure if this actually works but something I used to drink a lot, I would do some sort of exercise when I got home to try to jumpstart my metabolism again. This won’t sober you up (only time and a healthy liver can rid your bloodstream of alcohol) and it won’t make much of a dent into the empty calories you consumed but if it gets your metabolism back up to at least a normal level, it minimizes the damages.

That’s the best advice I can give without more details Bethy. If anyone has any questions, I’m open to taking emails if some system could be worked out without me publishing my email address online. And if any of you ladies still think I’m a genuis and live in the Boston area, don’t be shy :o).

Or maybe it’s all the carbernet. Care to weigh in Joe?

When you take the step to becoming a vegan, you are cutting out most of the complete protein sources, meaning you are going to have to mix and match your proteins more so they you have an adequate amount of each EAA. The reason soy is a stable of a lot of vegan diets is because it is one of the few plant based complete proteins. However, it is lacking a bit in methionine. A lot of people claim that soy has no methionine, making it a non-complete protein but this is incorrect. The levels of methionine are lower than the other EAA found in soy but they are not absent. You can overcome this issue by eating plants that are high in methionine like spinach, potatoes, or corn. When you meet with the nutritionist, I’m sure they will give you all sorts of information on this but if they don’t, find out which EAA each food you plan on regularly consuming is lacking and off-set those. Eating 75-85 grams of protein should be more than enough for you unless you are trying to bulk up but if you are lacking in one or more essential amino acids, a lot of that protein will go to waste and that is when your body will trick itself into starvation because you are destroying muscle tissue while exercising and your body doesn’t have the sources to repair it.