Foam Rolling: Fitness Miracle or Fad?

Hmm, yes, the rolling pin was the tip-off that shenanigans were about to ensue. "Something bad was going to go down" indeed!

"Hurts so good!" "Absolute must-do!" "MIRACULOUS!!" It was that last one that got me and not just because it turned exercise into a religious experience on par with seeing the Virgin Mary in a pancake. For all my professed cynicism (not really, I'm like an eager puppy), I'm as interested in the next fitness "miracle" as the next girl. Twitter schooled me today. As is often the case with me in social mediums I don't understand, I was randomly eavesdropping on other people's conversations and came across several people singing the above praises of the foam roller. Personal Trainer Deb Roby even tweeted, "I teach all my clients to foam roll before a workout," adding that it is "magical*." Magical! Yes, this thing:

My first reaction was, "Really?!?" We have used foam rollers before, both in stretching and in actual workouts. The Gym Buddies and I even dedicated an entire month during the Core Performance for Women Great Fitness Experiment to getting intimate with this cheap piece of plastic (made even more awkward by the fact that our Y only has one roller basically making all of us sloppy seconds.) We were, to a woman, unimpressed. The tennis ball produced more of a good massage and muscle release although Gym Buddy Megan broke my heart and refused to share hers. Did I mention I love the tennis ball to get deep into my glutes (a la the piriformis-beleaguered MizFit)? It's probably all for the best we did not share the butt ball.

My second reaction to all the hype was, "Clearly I'm doing it wrong." After all, all those Twitter folks are way smarter than I am. (And I'm not being facetious - they really are a bunch of smart sugar-free flourless protein cookies.) But after watching this video tutorial, from Ryan at No More Bacon, where a girl (whose hair I deeply covet) demonstrates how to use a foam roller, I realized: I've totally been using the foam roller right. And it hasn't done a thing for me. Stymied! By a piece of bike-helmet foam!

What to do? Consult the experts of course! The CrossFit Nor'easter blog commands you to repeat, "“I want to roll everything! Rolling is good! Rolling is our pal!” Which I did. And then snickered. A lot. Because I'm immature like that. They add,

"Foam rollers offer many of the same benefits as a sports massage, without the big price tag. The foam roller not only stretches muscles and tendons but it also breaks down soft tissue adhesions and scar tissue. By using your own body weight and a cylindrical foam roller you can perform a self-massage or myofascial release, break up trigger points, and soothe tight fascia while increasing blood flow and circulation to the soft tissues."

Well, now I see my problem. First, I have never had a sports massage. (Confession: I've never had any massage ever because I have an irrational fear of being naked alone in a room with a stranger. On second thought, that fear seems totally rational.) So I have nothing to compare the beautiful torture of the foam roller with. Second, I have no idea what a myofascial release is. But it certainly sounds like something I would want - especially because then I would only have to get naked with myself! Ahem. The Nor'easters to the rescue again, quoting about.com:

"Myofascial release is a body work technique in which a practitioner uses gentle, sustained pressure on the soft tissues while applying traction to the fascia. This technique results in softening and lengthening (release) of the fascia and breaking down scar tissue or adhesions between skin, muscles and bones. Myofascial release has also been shown to relieve various muscle and joint pains such as IT band syndrome and shin splints as well as improving flexibility and range of motion."

Now I definitely want a piece of that! Google tells me that a fascia is "band of fibrous connective tissue separating or binding together muscles and organs." Obviously you would not want those to get overly tight (except perhaps in the bladder region and then, you know, all of us moms would like them to cinch back up like a paper bag if you please) and I hope I don't have scar tissue either.

Rachel Cosgrove (of this month's Experiment fame) is totally on the foam rolling bandwagon as well. At the end of each workout she instructs us to do "15 minutes of foam rolling" even on off days. We've ignored her advice. First there's the one diseased roller issue (although they're not that expensive so I suppose I could invest in one - marketing opportunity: anyone want to send me one for free? Either that or I could sew a cloth foam-roller condom and instruct the Gym Buddies not to wear shorts.) and second there's the whole disaffected problem. But after today, I am resolved to give the roller a second chance. Especially because I don't want to get to the end of this Experiment and wonder if my results could have been better had I done everything she told me to (which, for the record, I am doing everything else she instructs including drinking a nasty protein shake after my weight workouts, on the stretching mats even!).

The whole reason I didn't think much of the roller in the first place was it never felt like anything. People talk of screaming pain and crying and whatnot and all I got was a little shaky from having to hold myself up on my already-worked out arms for so long. Why don't I feel anything? Should I add weights? Help me to love the roller! - how can I make the foam roller work for me? Do you love the foam roller? Do you use it before or after a workout? Both? What benefits have you seen from it? Do you have to be injured to benefit from it?

*Deb has promised a whole week on her blog of posts dedicated to the wonder of the foam roller. I'm eagerly anticipating this!

It's Official: I'm Unchained From the Scale!

Attention, please: We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming of All Crazy All The Time to bring you an important announcement. This is not a test, I repeat, not a test.

TA-DA!

Those, my friends, are the batteries out of my scale, a.k.a. my Weight Watchers branded silver shackles! At first I was going to do something dramatic like take a video of me smashing my scale to bits or tossing it out of my window but the former seemed too wasteful for a frugal girl like me and the latter was simply too dangerous with as many children as I have running around my house. Oh, I'm not worried about hitting them - they move fast - but rather that they'd see mommy chucking things out the window and think all the appliances are fair game for defenestration. You may recall these are the same children that literally swung from my chandelier and ripped it right out of the ceiling.

So, the dramatic options exhausted, I went with practical. I took the batteries out and threw them away*. That way, if I ever want to weigh myself again I'll have to drive all the way to the store first and hopefully the ten intervening minutes will be enough for me to regain my senses.

Yes, I emptied out my garbage can before I took the pic - couldn't let you see the plethora of q-tips I use to clean out my earwax. I know you're not supposed to but it just feels so good! My friend Kacy on Facebook calls it an "eargasm".

What it boils down to is this: You guys were right. And I knew going in to it, writing that post about finding my "best" weight, that the first thing everyone would say to me is to chuck the scale. You've told me to do it before. So has my sister - hundreds of times, bless her heart. But you know how sometimes you don't really hear people until you're ready for their advice? I'm ready now. I can't obsess over a number I don't know, right?

This morning I did not weigh myself. At first I had a panic attack - yes, seriously - but I managed to calm down with yogic breathing and after about 10 minutes I felt fine. I think I'm finally figuring out that "fat" has everything to do with the state of my mind and very little to do with the state of my thighs.

Some of you suggested that I make a separate Great Fitness Experiment about ditching the scale but I think it's best to just roll it in with November and December's Rachel Cosgrove Experiment because 1) Got to keep going with this inertia - if I think about it too much I probably won't go through with it and 2) Rachel actually tells you not to weigh yourself while on her program. Yeah I know, I kinda forgot to mention that part when I was explaining all the "rules." Rachel's point is that this program is designed to build muscle and often people will gain weight (or not lose as much weight as they think they should be) as they gain muscle. In the book she asks if you would rather weigh 50 pounds more but fit into your dream jeans or weigh your dream weight but not fit into your jeans. You'd think it would be a no-brainer but she says you'd be amazed at how many women choose the latter option, their number is that important to them. I'm choosing the muscle option. (And I'd better be building some serious muscle because hoo-boy am I SORE. My butt is threatening to go on strike if I make it do any more lunges.)

In order to measure my lean mass, I had my body fat percentage taken at the beginning of the Experiment and I'll have it repeated at the end. I also took measurements of various body parts which I'll repeat at the end. I know these are still numbers but for some reason I don't get as attached to - or as emotionally involved with - these numbers. Probably because my biceps measurement doesn't fluctuate on a daily basis. I also have my jeans that I feel good in and can use as reality check when I need one. (Rachel calls those "thermometer jeans" - I suppose so you can measure your "hotness" by them.)

So thank you thank you thank you for your advice and your amazing patience with me as I worked through the mental stuff. This feels like the final big step I needed to take with Intuitive Eating. I'm free from the tyranny of the scale. And it feels good! (At least for now, I do anticipate some panic in the future, especially at that time of the month but I'll take it day by day.)

Have you ever been unable to do something that you knew you needed to - until one day the moment just arrived and suddenly it was fine? Do you have thermometer jeans? How would you answer the muscle vs. weight question?

*Okay, first I threw them in the garbage but then I remembered you are never supposed to throw batteries away because that's reallllyyyy bad for the environment and the last thing I need is an angry polar bear showing up at my door although that would help keep the kidlets from destroying various expensive household items but Child Services probably wouldn't appreciate the Wild Animal school of discipline so anyhow I fished the batteries back out of the garbage and instead put them in my husband's pile of paint cans and whatnot to take to the recycling center and then wrote the longest run-on sentence in the history of humankind just to make sure everyone knows that I did not, actually, add batteries to our landfill. The end.

October's Great Racing Experiment

Best running costume evah!! (Although it looks like a nightmare to run in)

I'm often asked if I get bored of doing Experiments, if I ever tire of looking for new ones or if blogging them ever gets tedious. My answer: Nope, not ever and I looooovvveee it! Truth to be told, I'd be doing my schizophrenic fitness thing whether or not anyone else wanted to read about it (although I'm sure glad that you do - it's so much more fun with company!). So hopefully you will forgive me for already starting October's Great Fitness Experiment without telling you about it.

Thus far, all 5 days of my Experiment has already found me sitting at the end of my treadmill having an adult tantrum. I'm ashamed to admit there were tears and a towel was thrown. Mercifully, Gym Buddy Megan snapped me out of it before I could really embarrass myself and told me sternly to get over myself already. Y'all, she used her mom voice on me. I had to shape up; I feared getting sent to time out. (She'd do it too.) So what would cause this kind of gym hysterics?

Running. Of course.

And not just any running! This year the Gym Buddies and I will be running Monster Dash. Two of my favorite passions combined: fitness and costumes! (Plus this race is known for its sick swag! Check out the finisher's medals!) Both Gym Buddy Megans are running the half marathon, Allison, Jeni and I are running the 10 miler and Krista is (probably) running the 5K. We've already stocked up on sparkly tutus, knee high Halloween socks and colored hairspray! I'm trying to talk them into fake facial tattoos. It's going to be a freakin' riot. So why the tears?

See, I've taken running for granted. It used to be one of those few athletic endeavors (after yoga and the circus arts) that came relatively easy to me. Oh not at the beginning it didn't - I began my foray into fitness by running up the hill next to my condo in Seattle in the predawn darkness, slowly and painfully - but eventually it seemed like one of those things that while I'll never be a pro at, I can at least do with some confidence. I could look someone in the eye and say "I'm a runner" and have them actually believe me. Most of the time.

But having the Jelly Bean 11 months ago (yes, it really has been that long!) has really thrown me off my running. You may recall when I was pregnant, I had to give up running around 6 months because of terrible hip flexor pain. That pain, which made it hard to even lift my legs much less do it repeatedly, continued for several months after she was born. (Side note: for those of you curious, I finally figured out the hip pain was from my abs being so weak. Once I stopped with the crazy ab routines - P90X, ahem - my hip pain completely went away! And I haven't had any problems since and have even been able to return to doing ab work.) All of this resulted in the farthest I'd run in about a year was maybe 3 miles.

The Monster Dash is ten miles.

At first I told myself I just wanted to finish. That I was just doing this for fun. But then my competitive streak took over - running 10 miles used to be a piece of cake, darnnit! - and while I don't plan on PR'ing, I'd like to stay under my goal time. That treadmill tantrum was because I'd only been able to maintain race pace for 6.8 miles. Today's run was better - nothing was thrown and the Gym Buddies didn't need to send me to bed early - but I'm still not confident I'll be able to run the race that I want. So, October's Great Fitness Experiment is to train for and run my first race post-partum. (And also to learn to chill the heck out and just enjoy the experience instead of making everything so hard for myself.)

September's Great Bootcamp Experiment went (and is still going, actually) fabulously! It's made me toilet sore at least once and our Smiley Trainer kicks my butt every single time. I love bootcamps and I think the best thing about them is their versatility. It's a different workout every week and you can shove practically any exercise under the umbrella of "bootcamp." Kettlebells! Bosu! Sprinting! TRX! Track drills! It's like a smorgasbord of fitness! You should definitely try one if you get the chance.

So - any of you signed up for fall races? Have you ever taken a particular ability for granted only to discover later that it doesn't come back as easily as you'd expected? Anyone else ever throw a gym tantrum?? (Please tell me I am not the only person who's done this!) Any tips for me on how to mellow out the crazy and just have fun with this?

High Intensity Bootcamp Report! [War Wounds]

When our trainer said he was going to use the TRX to whip us into shape, I didn't think he meant literally:

What I love about this picture:
1. ATTACK OF THE HUGE HAND! Run! Hide the children!

2. The fact that I am concentrating so hard - as evidenced by my durn-all-these-new-fangled-contraptions-and-their-tiny-buttons facial expression - and yet I still forgot to move the camera strap. Or suck in my stomach. You'd think I'd never used a digital camera before.

3. My awesome shower curtain. It's cleanliness and an education, all in one! Only downside is if my kids wander into the bathroom (as they are wont to do - privacy, whaaaa?) then I have to hide strategically. Thank goodness this is a Mercator projection map so South America is overly large!

4. Oh yeah - and my war wounds! First day of HIIT bootcamp and our trainer had us doing these squat-jump-swing things on the TRX. (Okay technically there's not supposed to be any swinging with the squat-jumping - I just can't help myself, it's too fun!) The TRX schooled me good and then slapped me around a bit for getting smart with it. Yes, there's a matching set of scrapes and bruises on the other side!

What do you think - is leaving marks the mark of a good workout? Do you have any battle scars from the gym you're particularly proud of? You've seen lots of my shower curtain - what does yours look like?

PS> If you are looking for more to read today, check out Leslie's article in Ladies Home Journal - she interviewed me on slide #8!

September's Great Fitness Experiment: Boot Camp

Oh this? Just a one-handed bar push up. No biggie. Couple more reps and you can go back to hanging by your knees. Pansies.

"Kettlebells..." That right there would have been enough to grab my attention but then he added, "IN THE POOL." It was as if someone had shouted "Fox just un-cancelled Firefly!" at Comic-Con. Awestruck silence filled the gym. I love kettlebells. I don't not love pools. (How's that for a ringing endorsement? It's the best you'll get out of me.) But whoever thought of kettlebells in the pool? Our boot camp instructor - who busts all drill-sergeant stereotypes by being super smiley and routinely saying things like "Isn't it a great day for planks?!" - was telling us about a new high-intensity boot camp class he was starting up.

The spell was shattered when Gym Buddy Allison asked, "Would we be in the deep end?" and Gym Buddy Megan answered her with, "Yeah but if you drop the 'bell, you have to dive down and bring it back up in your teeth." Man, I love those girls.

The Gym Buddies and I have been attending a boot camp class once a week for several years. Cycling through several different instructors, we thought we'd seen all permutations of the boot camp format. I dare you to find a type of push-up that we haven't tried (and yes I'm including the Victoria's Secret variety - when you've had as many children as we have, the girls need all the fluffing they can get). But one sample of the new HIIT boot camp - that's high intensity interval training, the latest and greatest of cardio fitness trends - and we were hooked. He made us sprint on the treadmill. WITHOUT TURNING IT ON. Try it - it's hard! (Unless you happen to own a manual treadmill and then I suppose you're used to it. You warrior.)

Normally I don't do classes for Experiments. For one thing it gets pricey; when you do a new fitness program every month, costs can really add up. For another, it makes it hard for any of you to follow along if you love pain as much as I do. But despite being a pretty solid self motivator - you don't do three years of fitness Experiments without being a little fanatical - sometimes even I need someone else to kick my butt for me. So for September's Great Fitness Experiment the Gym Buddies and I will be paying someone to get all Jillian up in our business. That is if Jillian said things like, "Don't high knees just feel awesome?! What a great day for high knees!"

Have you ever done a boot camp style class? HIIT workouts - love 'em or hate 'em (or just love to hate 'em)? Lastly, do you have a novel push up idea for us to try? We're putting together our next Gym Buddies video and we'd love to give you a shout-out on camera!

When Old People Attack: Swimming Experiment Results!

Things would have gone better for me had I had one of these caps, I know it!

Either you're a swimmer or you're not. False dichotomy though it may be, there is an easy test to see which camp you fall in. When someone tells you, "Let's swim half a mile." do you answer, "Sure! It only takes me 4 or 5 minutes to run a half mile so this should be a piece of cake!"? If so, you are not a swimmer. If you answer, "How far is a half mile? Like... 10 laps?" you are not a swimmer. If you even think, "Are goggles and a swim cap really mandatory? 'Cause the former make my eyes bulge like Marty Feldman and the latter is just ugly." then you are not a swimmer. (Although you are wicked good with your '80's movie trivia!)

If you just snap your goggles into place, jump into the pool with nary a whimper about the cold and start stroking, then you are a swimmer.

Our first pool workout for August's Great Fitness Experiment went swimmingly - you knew that was coming! - all the way up to the point where we actually got in the water. Our Y being, well, our Y, naturally there were no lanes open for actual swimming as they prefer to keep 99% of the pool available for elderly aquatics classes that oddly resemble square dancing in slow motion. So we were banished to the "leisure pool" where we did a pool workout that I got from Fitness magazine. It was ridiculously easy. We tried everything we could to get our hearts pumping but instead we ended up comparing our pedicures while sculling in random circles around the pool. (Gym Buddy Megan's toenails were a classic red, mine were a zombie-esque blue and Allison's were naked, poor thing. Knowledge you needed; you're welcome.)

If you will recall, the entire purpose of August's Swimming Experiment was to get Gym Buddy Allison ready for her very first triathlon, a sprint tri that included a half-mile open water swim. Clearly, pedi-sculling and otter-rolling over a beach ball (which is awesome fun, by the way) were not going to get us to that point. So we did what we had to do and started swimming some laps. In the 3-foot leisure pool. It only took three laps before the old folks attacked.

"You're not allowed to swim in the swimming pool!" yelled a white-haired gent without a trace of irony.

"Yeah," chimed in a woman who was obviously very invested in keeping her bouffant dry, "this is a LEISURE pool."

"Well I happen to find this very leisurely," Allison explained sweetly as we backstroked around them like some sort of rogue synchronized swimming team taking hostages.

The next day we were back in the pool again but for real this time. There was one lane open for lap swimming and we intended to use the heck out of it. No matter that it was already occupied by three other women which would make six of us in one lane. We optimistically snapped on our goggles (I borrowed mine from my eight-year-old - I'm Batman!) and plunged in.

"So... half a mile," I said. "How far is that exactly?"

"I dunno," Allison replied. "Let's ask the lifeguard."

"Do you mean a swimmer's mile or a land mile?" he asked in return.

Allison started to answer but I interrupted her with, "Whichever one is shorter."

After giving me a long considering look as if to decide whether to address me as an adult or the child I was acting like, he answered, "A swimmer's mile is 35 laps." (Another way to tell you are not a swimmer is to be unaware of the controversy surrounding how far a swimmer's mile actually is. There is calculus involved.)

We sighed with relief. "We can swim down this thing 35 times, no problem!" Allison chirped.

"You do know that a 'lap' means down and back, right?" he added.

No, sir. No we did not know that. (I must point out here that Megan did, in fact, know this but she was not there at this juncture and so it was just Allison and I, as clueless as one can be in Batman goggles.)

"Okay, we got this. We just have to swim down there 70 times!"

"No, wait," I pointed out, "we have to halve that!"

"So.... that's..." Crickets.

"Half of 70 is 35. And half of 30 is 15 plus 4 which is... 19!" I announced erroneously.

"I thought it was 18," Allison said, also wrong. (Why oh why did they have to pick an odd number?)

"Why didn't we just ask the lifeguard for a half a mile in the first place?"

"Well we can't ask him now. He already thinks we're idiots."

"We are idiots."

"Let's just start swimming and see how far we can get, ok?" Did I mention Allison only had two weeks to train for her triathlon? There's a reason the girl was getting antsy.

We made it four laps before we were clutching the side of the pool and gasping for breath. I will tell you this: In three years of trying every conceivable workout I have never been so close to vomiting as I was in that moment. There are workouts and then there is swimming. It was a gut-wrenchingly, head-to-toe achingly, can't-breathe-for-at-least-3-life-threatening-reasons brutal workout. For the first time I understood why people watch the Summer Olympics for events other than gymnastics.

I was ready to be done. But Megan was already off like a fish, ahead of us by 10 laps or so, and Allison was on a mission. We pressed on for the full half mile. (-ish, my counting got a little garbled. Turns out I can't even do basic math when my Batman goggles turn out to be complete duds and yet I have to drive home so I can't lose a contact thereby forcing me to swim with my head out of the water the entire time making me almost as ridiculous as the Bouffant Lady.)

The next day I was sore everywhere, just like several of you warned me I would be. The strangest part was that I was most sore right under each butt cheek, where my leg joins my derriere. Who knew I even had a muscle there?! The worst effect though was - heaven help me - the Gym Buddies freaking loved it. LOVED IT.

Sensing lap workouts long after August ends, I broke down and bought a decent pair of goggles. I still hate swimming. But I hate it a little less than I used to. Plus, I have to admire a workout that brutal. It never did get much easier for me - every swimming workout felt like choreographed drowning - but I did love how it made me feel when we finished.

As for Allison, despite having never swam in open water, girlfriend finished her tri under two hours and suffered nothing more serious than chocolate-covered cleavage thanks to a protein bar she was inexplicably storing down her top.

Which necessitated a little post-race clean up:

(Not pictured: my four-year-old son eating the protein bar off the ground while the rest of us were distracted congratulating her.)

She rocked the running and biking portions and, more importantly, got bit by the tri bug and is already planning her next one! Way to go, Al!!

Gym Buddy Megan and I (a.k.a. The Dry Ones) flanking our victorious girl!

So, any of you change your mind about swimming this month? Anyone else in the "I don't hate it but I'll never love it" club? What's your favorite Summer Olympics event to watch??

August's Great Fitness Experiment: The Experiment I Said I'd Never Do.

I said I'd never do it. (Of course, I also said I wasn't blogging anymore and apparently that means a one-month hiatus to my chatty self. I'm baaack. I don't know how frequently but I have to have somewhere to post the pictures you KNOW I'm going to take during my CIRCUS AERIAL CLASS next Tuesday!!) "It's too cold," I said. "It's too naked," I said. "I don't want to do an Experiment that requires aggressive bikini-line maintenance," I said. And before your mind goes to poles and lucite heels, I also said, "I hate breathing in that layer of wet chlorinated air and having to do my hair and having my skin dry out and..." I whine a lot.

For August's Great Fitness Experiment, the Gym Buddies and I are - oh yes - swimming. I would like to say this was not my idea. Gym Buddy Allison signed up to do her first Triathlon and in the spirit of helping her train, we are all going to be swimming with her. (Heaven knows I've made her do enough ridiculous Experiments that I owe her one.) Seeing as girlfriend already has quads that could snap a thighmaster - with Suzanne Sommers attached - she's ready for the bike and the run. The swim though?

None of the Gym Buddies, including myself, have swum a single lap in, oh, about 10 years. At first I had visions of 8th grade P.E. and veering wildly out of my lane until I collided with Jack-who-always-smelled-like-poo-even-in-the-water who then told me that I had "hit his special button" causing me to jump screaming out of the water before I could find out what his "special button" did. But then someone told me that in a Tri, you don't have to freestyle. (Why is it called Freestyle, when it is actually a very prescribed stroke? There is nothing free about it. Dog paddling - now that's "free style".) Apparently you can do whatever the heck it takes to get you out to the buoys and back without drowning or entangling yourself in all that nasty gunk that grows in the lakes here ("Crystal" Lake my heinie.)

Thanks to my parents who insisted that learning how to swim was a life skill, I know how to not drown. Between my still-adequate breast stroke and back stroke I know I can make it to one end and back again. Also, I hear they've invented these things called goggles that will help me not veer wildly across any lanes.

Plus: You get to pee in the lake. It's practically race-sanctioned behavior. If you don't do it, the fish will be disappointed. Now, Allison has not asked me to help her train for this particular part of her race but I want her to know that I am willing any time to go pee in the lake with her. Yes, we are that tight. Not to mention my kids will all want in on the action. (Which is a step up from the time my son peed on a PLASTIC tree in the middle of a packed amusement park because he didn't want to lose his place in line. Me? I pretended I didn't know him and strolled innocently in the other direction while grossed-out onlookers gasped "Where is his mother?!?!" In my defense, he'd already dropped trou and started peeing by the time I noticed his shenanigans so what was I to do? Cut him off midstream? Yeah, ok, that's not really a good defense.) Don't worry, I will not pee in the pool. I promise.

I've done a great job of convincing you that you want to do this one with us, haven't I? For those of you who want to play along at home, we will be doing this Fitness magazine aerobic/toning workout in the, ahem, leisure pool (doesn't that just scream pee??) at our Y every Monday. Wednesdays we will be swimming laps. To add a level of hilarity to our workout, the powers that be have decreed that only 1 lane is open for lap swimming every day. So all of us Gym Buddies will be sharing a lane (along with whatever regular we are horning in on). I see faces getting kicked. Lastly, we are going to go to a "Deep Water Power X" aerobic class that the girl at the front desk assured me is a real killer.

Who's in with me this month? Any of you done a tri? Any advice for all of us newbie swimmers? Any advice for Allison?

PS> Thanks to all of you who helped me decide what to wear for my big cover photo shoot! I ended up doing three different outfits - the pink jacket (with a white tank under & unzipped partially) combo, the blue v-neck tee and a green t-shirt that I bought that day in a fit of panic. The proofs all turned out WONDERFUL and I'll be posting some, along with more deets about the shoot shortly. I love you guys!!

Kicking the Scale Habit: What Does That Number Mean to You?

I don't know what is more disturbing - that Satan is on this woman's "to do" list or that the company advises you to mix deviled ham with peanut butter.

Eat when you're hungry. Stop when you're satiated. It sounds so simple. So why can't I do it?!? Then again Lindsay Lohan can't stay away from the booze even with that attractive SCRAM bracelet accessorizing every designer outfit so I suppose I'm not the only one that has difficulty with following basic instructions.

This past week has found me tantruming like a 3-year-old (terrible twos? Hardly. Three is much much worse. Trust me.) every time I have to eat. When I first started trying to follow Geneen Roth's food guidelines in earnest, I thought the "eat without distractions" rule would be my Bunker Hill. That guideline is cake compared to eating when I'm hungry. It turns out that Ms. Roth was right - when you eat with nothing but your own thoughts for company you learn a lot. Like, for instance, that I eat for every reason under the sun except hunger.

What does "hungry" feel like, anyhow? I honestly think I don't even know anymore. I've spent so many years ignoring it, disguising it, punishing it, focusing on it and otherwise being compulsive about it that my hunger is about as recognizable as Pamela Anderson pre-plastic surgery. After 13 days of literal navel gazing, I am getting better at recognizing the physical cues of growling stomach, saliva, light-headedness and grouchiness. But I don't trust them yet. Pavlov's dogs might as well live in my intestines, my body is so trained around food.

It's the mental cues to eat that are really tripping me up though. I didn't think that I was an emotional eater - being angry or depressed generally makes me not want to eat - but eating certainly makes me emotional. For me eating is not about sustenance. Food makes me righteous. (Spinach!) Or evil. (Mayo!) Disciplined. (Hot sauce!) Or weak. (Cheese!) Educated. (Whole grains!) Or stupid. (Whole grains!) Or schizophrenic. (Whole grains!) That's a lot of pressure to put on a sandwich, and it's not even a pannini. So you will understand that with all that background noise going on, it might be difficult to hear the "I'm full" message.

(Side note: When I was about 12, I came across a diet book for teenagers that was written in '70's. In it, the author advises teens to do as she does and listen for "a little bell" that will ring when you've had enough to eat. I've been waiting my whole life for that stupid bell to ring. It never has.)

What I have discovered is that I eat when I'm anxious. And when I'm tired. And especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed and avoidant. Hunger? Who needs hunger when I have a baby that cried - nay, screamed - the entire 1.5 hour car trip home and a bag of fruit snacks? I suppose I should be grateful as she kept me from falling asleep at the wheel. Of course it's her fault I was driving on 5 hours of sleep in the first place. I digress.

Fear. This is what it really boils down to for me: I'm afraid to feel hungry. I'm afraid that if I don't eat, I'll starve. I'm afraid that if I do eat, I'll eat everything in sight and never stop. And I'm afraid to trust Geneen Roth. She tells me that my body will let me know when and what and how to eat. This would be the same body that I have treated as an enemy, a thing to be conquered, mastered, and controlled my entire life. We're not exactly on great terms, my body and I. And now I'm supposed to trust it? What if my body decides it wants to be 500 pounds? She says I need to be okay with the possibility of gaining weight. I'm not.

This ambivalence has led me to not fully commit to the program. Yes I'm doing my best to follow the guidelines (although some days are better than others with that - especially the sitting down to eat part) but I'm not committed to trusting myself. Which is why I'm still weighing myself every day. Lots of you (lots and lots and lots of you) told me when I first started this Experiment that I need to ditch the scale. I haven't. Yet. I still have so much of myself tied up in that number. I hate to admit this but that number has the ability to absolutely wreck my day or make me feel awesome.

My only solace in this is that I'm not alone. Gym Buddy Jeni recently sent me this insightful e-mail:
"I also don't know what true hunger or satiety feels like. As a "dieter", we are trained to never let yourself get hungry because that's when you'll binge, right? And usually that is true, but it's been so long since I've allowed myself to be hungry. I think I've grown fearful of hunger. Like if I'm hungry that means I don't have enough and I don't want to be without food or something. When I was a kid we didn't have much money and we CERTAINLY didn't have money for non essential food items. So we would pig out on gross things like a block of cheese (like the BIG block of cheese), or syrup, or peanut butter from the jar, or chocolate sauce. Being hungry was the worst feeling as a kid and so now I think I have this subconcious fear that hunger=not having enough in your life, not just in my fridge. Does that make sense? I get very uncomfortable when I am hungry...and nervous. Like I have to eat right this SECOND! And, really, will I die if I don't eat my protein bar NOW...no. So I am struggling with that. And also with satiety like you said. Huh? You mean I can eat until I'm satisified and not until I'm stuffed!? But I secretly like the stuffed feeling. It means I've had all I can have AND its like a secret punishment too. For food weirdos like me, the after-binge feelings (guilt, shame, disgust) are actually things I crave sometimes because I WANT to feel that way about myself still. Is that just too effed up or what!? It's like I still sometimes feel like I am not "worthy" so even though I don't "binge" like I used to we all have those moments where you eat too much of whatever your eating and that feeling of fullness is so gross and yet so sought after. It's making me really reflect on what my body NEEDS! What does it need? I'm trying to filter what my BODY needs versus what my BRAIN needs when I am eating."

I should add: I think all of this is progress. It has to get worse before it can get better, right?

Anyone else afraid of their hunger? Do I really have to sledgehammer my scale for this Experiment to work? Really?? Do you weigh yourself every day too or have you managed to make the leap to no numbers (as explained by the delightful Mizfit)? If you do weigh yourself, are you able to think of the numbers as just "information" rather than a judgment? Would you eat deviled ham with peanut butter??

June's Great Fitness Experiment: Eating Like a Normal Person (Plus Pilates Experiment Results)

And this is why your mom told you not to swallow your gum.

Friday found me curled in the fetal position, succumbed to the dreaded body image double whammy. Chances are you've been there too. It's the one-two punch of ill-fitting clothes and an unexplained jump on the scale. The upper cross to my jaw was the arrival of an adorable workout skirt that I ordered in my usual size, only to discover it is uncomfortably tight through the hip/thigh area. The sucker punch to my stomach though was the overnight - and I kid you not - arrival of 6 pounds. I did the ugly cry (mad props to Oprah, by the way, for introducing that phrase into the lexicon); both my mascara and my nose did runneth mightily.

For some reason - and I don't blame the Pilates but more on that later - this month I've gained back every single pound I've lost since January. As you may recall (or not, I can't imagine you are nearly as interested in my weight as I am) since Jelly Bean was born, I have been losing steadily at about 1 pound... a month. Most diet plans say you can safely lose 1-2 pounds per week but no matter, as long as the numbers were trending down rather than up I could keep a lid on the Boy George histrionics. And then. All that hard work - 6 months of working out 6 days a week and recording every calorie and being way under my maintenance allotment (even without adding in the nursing calories) - was erased in just a few short weeks. The worst part? It was for no good reason. This is the part in the weight-loss movie where I shake my fist at the sky and scream BUT I AM DOING EVERYTHING RIGHT!!! According to MyPlate (you all were right - that really is the best calorie tracker), I should have been losing 2.5 pounds a week. For everyone who says that weight loss is simply a matter of calories in/calories out I offer myself up as a living rebuttal.

This tear-soaked weekend has lead me to two conclusions and I think they may surprise you.

1. I'm done dieting. I'm so tired of being wrecked every time the scale goes up. It's ridiculous and heart breaking and infuriating to me that I am 31 years old and am still in the thrall of this thinner-is-better ideal. The only thing I have lost with this manic devotion to weight loss would be my mind. Some people take a declaration of "I'm done dieting" to being tantamount to "I don't care about my health." For me, giving up dieting is embracing my health. I have to believe that my body wants to run faster than a speeding toddler, leap park benches in a single bound and heft heavy grocery bags with one arm.

2. I don't know how to eat normally. I've mentioned Geneen Roth's book Women, Food and God on here so many times in the past few weeks that you probably think I'm schilling for her (I'm not. And FCC - I bought the book myself.) but reading it made me realize that I am completely ignorant of basic facts about my body. What does hungry feel like to me? What does full feel like? Why do I want to crawl out of my skin with anxiety if I have to eat without any distractions? Why have all my recent binges - and I use that word loosely in this context - been brought on by whole wheat muffins, whole wheat bread and whole wheat pasta? Can I possibly be addicted to whole wheat?! (And also, why do I get the full-body shudders when seeing someone pull fabric through their teeth? Okay so this one doesn't have anything to do with the book but I've wondered about this for a long time. Nails on the chalkboard? No problemo. A toddler chewing on a washrag? You will find me rocking back and forth in the corner screaming with horror. I cannot be the only one who has this phobia, right?)

Ms. Roth has 7 guidelines for eating like a normal person. For the month of June, I am going to try to follow her guidelines for eating. Some of you may think this Experiment is a cop out but I'm telling you that I have never - and I'm including the time I went Primal - been so scared to do an Experiment. And I have never wanted so badly for an Experiment to work. Because I cannot - I will not - keep bawling my eyes out over my stupid weight.

Geneen Roth's 7 Guidelines for Eating

1. Eat when you are hungry. (You say duh, I say I have never eaten to hunger since I first knew what a diet was. I'm not even sure I know when I'm truly hungry! What if my body wants to eat every hour?)
2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. (Calm environment with 4 kids is asking a bit much but I'll do my best. I can at least sit down at the table as opposed to hunched over the counter or keyboard, per my usual.)
3. Eat without distractions. No TV, radio, computer, books or magazines. (I hate this guideline. HATE it. Which makes me think it's probably really important that I do it. Sigh.)
4. Eat what your body wants. (My body really likes to eat healthy. That won't be the hard part. This whole wheat thing though - that's going to be tricky.)
5. Eat until you're satisfied. (In the past, I eat until my allotted portion is finished whether or not I'm full. Just like I'm not sure if I can recognize hunger, I'm also not sure I can recognize satiety. Which is probably the whole point of guideline #3.)
6. Eat in full view of others. (Are you a secret eater? I am, sometimes. In my daily life I'm not but I do have episodes of secret eating that almost always follow eating at a party or with friends. I feel deprived that I can't eat all the rich food that my (skinny) friends do and then go home and eat an entire package of vegan chocolate. Nice.)
7. Eat with enjoyment. (WHAT? Since when is food enjoyable?? I'm the girl who still thinks that given the choice I'd take a pill for all my daily sustenance and avoid food altogether. And I hate this about me.)

So I wrote down these guidelines on a cute little card and tacked it to my fridge. For June's GFE, I'm going to try to eat. Like a normal person.

(For our workouts this month, the Gym Buddies have requested a return to Heavy Lifting. Which means we'll be doing CrossFit this month. It's a killer workout - it's one of the few past Experiments that we keep going back to over and over.)

Pilates Results
There appear to be two kinds of people in the fitness world, those who love Pilates and those who hate it. I am in the former camp but unfortunately most of the Gym Buddies are in the latter which meant I spent most of this month hundred-ing and scooping out my stomach by myself. For a girl who works out in no small part due to the social aspects, this was a serious blow.

A lot of the Gym Buddies' apathy has to do with the quality of the Pilates instruction, I think. The instructor and their willingness to teach and correct make a huge difference in how well Pilates works. I learned that I am NOT a good Pilates instructor. I hadn't intended to be one but due to the dearth of available classes at our gym and my unwillingness to pay for private lessons, it ended up being me trying to teach the Gym Buddies the Pilates technique out of books. That went very badly - and hilariously - so I take full responsibility for their non-love.

Fortunately for me, there are some great Pilates instructors out there who really know their stuff and three of them took pity on me and spent some time helping me out. For those of you in the Minneapolis area, Melissa Schenck, Ann Flynn and Jennie Berglund are excellent and dedicated instructors. When I got to take their classes, which wasn't often enough, they worked me out good and hard - I was SORE sore. (I won't mention by name the other instructors except to say that one class was so horrible we ended up walking out early. I only say this here to warn you that Pilates is not the kind of thing you can learn in a two-hour workshop one weekend.)

Melissa taught me probably the most valuable thing I learned from the whole Pilates Experiment: how to find a neutral spine. I've heard instructors talk about having a "neutral" spine or pelvis hundreds of times but it turns out that what I think is neutral is actually a huge curve in my lower back (think Keri Strug after landing her one-legged vault). I blame gymnastics. And the six-fingered man. At any rate, she taught me how to lay on my back and put my hands in a diamond shape with my thumbs on my belly button and my index fingers right on top of my pubic bone. When my hands are flat, my spine is neutral. When my thumbs are higher, I'm arching my back (a no-no in everything from Pilates to weight lifting). And when my index fingers are higher, my spine is "imprinted" or pushed into the floor - a position good for protecting your back when your abs are weak. (And yes I actually had to lift my head and look at my hands to see what position they were in.) Knowing how to put your spine into neutral is important for doing any kind of ab work but even better, standing with a neutral spine makes you look 10 pounds thinner instantly!

Melissa also did a killer workout with Gym Buddy Megan and I on the Reformer. That shoulder workout rivaled anything CrossFit or P90X has thrown at us. I would love to do more on the Reformer in the future - it seems like a great fitness tool. Gotta save up first though as that thing ain't cheap. Ann introduced me to a device called a Core Pole - a big metal pole with resistance bands attached to it - that can be used to simulate a lot of the moves done on the Reformer, especially when you add a Swiss ball. Her classes also made me Good Sore (plus I got to tell people I was going to my Pole class - awesome.) Lastly, Jennie (also known as Turbo Jennie when she's in round-housing mode) teaches a class called PiYo, a blend of Pilates and Yoga moves. The class is fast paced and challenging and the leg-butt routine was so hard that it took an entire week for me to stop walking like I had a Core Pole jammed up my heinie.

My verdict: Pilates can be a fantastic workout with the right instructor. Doing it from videos and/or books without prior instruction probably won't give you good results. It's worth the time and money to find a really good teacher.

Hold me, I'm scared!
Who's getting down with me with the Guidelines for June's GFE? Can I really learn how to eat like a normal human?? Anyone have any experience with wheat addiction (i.e. Am I crazy to think I'm addicted to wheat?)? Can you tell when you are hungry and when you are full? Pilates: Are you a lover or a hater? Wanna do CrossFit with us this month?

Pilates: May's Great Fitness Experiment Plus Experiment Results

Admit it: Larry King is living out your dream right here.

Larry King is my fitness muse. (There's 6 words I bet you never thought you'd read.) This month found me breaking up with my cute new workout and before the ink was even dry on the gym schedule I already had my eye on a new young thing. Why? Because when you've been married 7 times - or tried 70 different workouts - what's one more? Life's too short for bad workouts. Plus, while I've never actually tested out this theory, I think I would totally rock a bow tie.

April's Great Fitness Experiment Results
There just isn't a delicate way to say it so I'm just going to come out with it: Core Performance for Women was a pain in the arse. Both literally and figuratively. The former pain in said butt cheeks was the upside of the month. The latter pain meant that it was pretty much the only upside. This workout was boring, repetitive, too easy, unbalanced and oddly non-sweaty. The only way I can reconcile Mr. Vestergren's credentials with our Experiment is to think that it would have been different had he been instructing us. Maybe we were just doing it wrong?

Several theories were bandied about over the course of the month - there was an awful lot of time for theory bandying as the workouts never left us breathless - including the printer accidentally omitting pages from the book, it being a type of physical therapy/injury rehab or the workout actually being meant as a supplement to a real workout. This was disappointing as when I first read the book I was very excited about his theories and the program. Unfortunately the workouts did not live up to the hype. I find it really hard to believe that the athletes he is paid to train, like the U.S. women's soccer team, actually do what is described in the book.

Enough negativity though - the bright spot was that there were some novel moves and the few that worked really worked. Especially in our butts. He has a warrior-three-to-standing-row-using-a-band move that will have your butt, hamstrings and back screaming for mercy. And his curtsy lunges on the slider made Gym Buddy Krista's inner thighs so sore that she called Suzanne Sommers to brag. His theory, that movements need to be driven by our gluteal muscles rather than pulled by our quads, seems solid as Gym Buddy Megan and I decided that we really could feel a difference in our running form when we focused on contracting our butts. (I'll leave it to your imagination as to exactly what we looked like running around the track clenching our heinies.)

As for results, well, there were none. Nobody made any fitness gains or lost any weight or body fat. In fact, we all felt like we lost some muscle this month because there were so many body parts he never works. Like, oh, your biceps and triceps. (Do soccer players not need their arms? I know they can't use their hands but surely arms would come in handy - at the very least for grabbing an opposing chick by her ponytail and throwing her to the ground.) It didn't help that the workouts were so repetitive, weird and boring that after 3 weeks on the most advanced level we decided we couldn't take one more week of it and switched to CrossFit for the last seven days of April. I think we made more progress in that one week than we did in the previous three.

May's Great Fitness Experiment: Pilates
My failed fling with Core Performance sent me running into the arms of a more staid, more reliable workout - and one that oddly enough I have never done an Experiment on in all my years of Experimenting. Everyone say hello to my new workout Pilates! I know it's a little awkward for those of you who were friends with my old workouts but I'm not asking you to choose sides or anything, just give the new one a chance and she'll wow you with her toned core and balletic posture.

Joseph Pilates, the inventor of the eponymous program, famously said "In ten sessions you will feel the difference, in twenty you will see the difference and in thirty you will have a whole new body." He originally invented Pilates as a way to keep fit with the limited resources allowed him as a prisoner of war in World War I. His program was so successful that he taught it to his fellow prisoners and is credited with saving his camp from the influenza outbreak of 1918. (Random history fact: The flu pandemic of 1918 killed more people worldwide than any other natural or manmade disaster in history.) After the war he developed his techniques in to the hugely popular mat program that most of us know today thanks to Daisy Fuentes, who used to be an actress or something but now is only known for hawking billions of Windsor Pilates DVDs on late night infomercials. (Full disclosure: I bought the entire Windsor Pilates set one late late night after my first son was born. I am SUCH a sucker for a good infomercial. My favorite aisle ever is the "As Seen on TV aisle" at the grocery store and I don't even watch TV!)

Pilates is also associated with the Reformer, a machine that looks like a cross between a torture rack and a hospital bed in a psych ward. During our Experiment this month we will be trying both mat and reformer workouts. Of the two, according to Pilates himself, the mat workout is the gold standard and the Reformer is for people who can't handle the mat - a fact I find very interesting considering how crazy expensive Reformer lessons are.

For this month, in an effort to do the best Pilates Experiment I can, I will be doing only Pilates and no other strength training. I'm going to do at least 20 workouts (I'd better "see the difference"!) and am hoping to get close to 30 as I'd really like that "whole new body" behind door number 3. I'm hoping it's Kate Beckinsale's. Two of the Gym Buddies are not down with giving up weight lifting - they're already feeling weak thanks to last month's wussy workout - so they will be our control group. We will be keeping all our cardio (dance, turbo kick, running etc.) the same.

Any of you do Pilates regularly? Do you think it can take the place of a good weights workout? (Incidentally, for those of you who will suggest we do both, the book I am using says that this is a mistake because traditional weight workouts create "bulky stiff muscles" that constrain healthy bodies.) Have you seen big results from this program? Anyone else want in on this one with me??

PS> For those of you following along at home, we are using "The Pilates Body" by Brooke Siler as our primer and we will be attending 3 Pilates classes a week in our gym.

Core Performance: April's Great Fitness Experiment and March's Results (Giveaway Post!!)

Embarrassment: My armpits are hairy. Part of it is because I am porcelain pale (that's the nice person way of saying my friends call me Casper) with raven hair and while that sounds like a winning combo in romance novels, it's more about 5 o'clock shadows - on my legs - in real life. But me and my trusty razor have usually been able to keep my hirsuteness in check. That is, until P90X. That's right, people. P90X made my armpits hairier. Okay, to be precise P90X didn't increase my actual hair but thanks to my newly muscular shoulders, my pits are really difficult to shave! (Shout out to Jen Sinkler of Survival of the Fittest who also noticed this phenomenon in her curvier pits.)

Hairy pits aside - and I will extend my apologies now to all my Gym Buddies, Turbo friends and everyone else who has to see me in a tank top these days - let's get right to the results of P90X. The program is written to be done for 90 days (hence the "90" in the title) but if you are good at counting you'll notice we only did it for 60.

In the Gym
Complaint 1: We got bored. The first month you rotate through 6 different workouts. The second month they sub in two new workouts but you keep 4 the same. The third month is just all 8 workouts repeated. These workouts were definitely challenging - the Core Synergystics one made me so Toilet Sore that I almost had to install a handicapped bar in my bathroom - but the same 8 workouts for 90 straight days? Boring. And in our world where a new fun workout comes out every week, there simply is no reason in my mind to repeat the same thing over and over.

Complaint 2: Very little cardio. Some of you will see this as a plus but Tony and the gang don't seem to think much of cardio. I'm not saying I want endless treadmill runs but the Kenpo (stylized kick boxing) routine was the only actual cardio workout and that's done once a week. The plyometrics workout got our heart rates up but our leg muscles failed long before our lungs did.

Complaint 3: Oh my aching wrists! Between all the pull-ups and push-ups, my already computer-compromised wrists are toast. Other Gym Buddies complained of knee pain from all the lunges.

Complaint 4: I expect to get nailed for this one in the comments but Gym Buddy Megan and I agreed: it made our shoulders too bulky. I love to be strong (LOVE it) but I also like fitting in my shirts. P90X almost made me have an Incredible Hulk-esque wardrobe malfunction. In church. Surely there is a way to get the nice definition and the strength without the bulk? (And because I know you are all curious now, you can flash back to this post to see what my shoulders look like right now. They're not huge huge. They just make my shirts tight.)

Compliments: I loved the new weight lifting moves. Tony has some seriously creative juices because he has 6 different moves to work your biceps alone. We will definitely be incorporating some of these into future routines. I also loved my new strength. I started the program able to kinda eke out one pull up. I can now do two pull-ups and two chin-ups! This thrills me. Unabashedly.

Conclusions
P90X made no difference at all in my weight. I lost 1 pound last month and regained it this month. Of course this is not the fault of the workout. Like I said in my one-month review, 90% of my weight loss happens in the kitchen and I can't hardly expect to be losing weight while I'm snarfing down cinnamon rolls. Totally my bad and I know it. Yes, I still have 5 pounds to go to get to my "nursing weight" and yes I'm still really depressed about that. Feel free to chide me - or enlighten me - in the comments. I really really need to let this weight thing go. It's making me nuts. (Side note: This is further evidence that eating vegan does not automatically translate to weight loss. There's plenty of fattening (yet delish!) vegan desserts out there!)

On the dietary front - because if you'll recall, March's GFE was actually the Okinawa Program - things went a little better. It turns out I really enjoy eating like the Okinawans. I find the food delicious and I love their emphasis on whole grains. I feel really good eating this way and it meshes quite well with my baby-imposed dairy restrictions. The problem was my old nemesis Mr. Satan, er, Sugar. The Okinawan Program recommends 1-3 servings of sweets per week. I did that per day. Sigh.

April's Great Fitness Experiment
Back in January I reviewed a book called Core Performance Women by Mark Verstegen and Peter Williams. Basically this is a workout centered around making amorous advances on a foam roller - what's not to love about that? Actually, the reason I'm excited to try out this program is because it is written by a seasoned professional athletic trainer (Verstegen) for women athletes. Verstegen has both a dietary and exercise component but as the former is rather uninspired (though very solid) - think the 100s of articles you've read this month alone about lean protein, healthy fat and whole carbs - we'll be focusing mostly on the workouts. For those of you who don't own a copy of the book, the Core Performance website has a TON of free exercises, fitness videos and recipes so while you won't be able to play along with the Gym Buddies and I exactly, you can certainly try out his techniques. Just be sure to sterilize the foam roller when you're finished. (P.S. Men are not left out! While this particular book is written for women, his previous ones were written for men and his main site has plenty of info for the dudes as well as the chicks.)

Giveaway!
One of the comments I get most often on my Great Fitness Experiments is "Well that's all fine and dandy for you already fit folk but I'm just starting out! I can't keep up with that!" While I think that most Experiments can be scaled down for beginners, I do understand how intimidating health and fitness can be when you are starting from ground zero. GFE reader and certified Beachbody coach Elizabeth Demeusey has stepped in with a very generous offer specifically for all of you just getting into fitness. Beachbody's Slim in Six (you may have seen the omnipresent infomercials?) program is designed to help people get started on the path to better health. With Elizabeth's coaching and the Slim in Six program, you'll have a great transition into fitness.

Since Elizabeth wanted to specifically offer this product to fitness newbies, instead of using the random number generator to pick the winner (like I usually do), she would like you to leave a short comment explaining why you need this and I will select the winner based on need. So tell us: What goals are you looking to accomplish? Are you looking to lose weight? Improve your blood pressure or cholesterol? Avoid the family curse of diabetes? Elizabeth adds, " I would like to encourage only people to enter who really, really need to get serious about their health and not just people who are curious about watching the DVD." The winner will get to choose between the Slim in Six package or, if they'd prefer, Kathy Ireland's program for people battling type 2 diabetes.

Your Turn
Any other thoughts to add about P90X? Anybody try the Okinawan Program? And, Who's in with me for April's Core Performance for Women? Be sure to leave a comment telling me why you need a health transformation to enter the giveaway!

Anybody else notice the more muscular they get, the harder their pits are to shave?

March's Great Fitness Experiment: Eat Like an Okinawan Centenarian

Not all Japanese trends are worth following... um, ew.

Kickin' it old (as in grade) school style, today is opposite day here at GFE. And what is the exact opposite of me, a high-strung neurotic cynical young (I can still say that right?) American mom? How about a mellow, cheerful Okinawan centenarian!

This month, my Great Fitness Experiment is my first dietary Experiment since my therapist banned me from food Experiments after my spectacular meltdown on The Primal Blueprint*, round 2. But my therapist went to prison - to work, not to be incarcerated - and I have poundage to lose so I'm bringing it back. Actually the real reason I picked this Experiment was because this diet/lifestyle best approximates how I prefer to eat on my own. So rather than try to completely overhaul my entire dietary personality like I did when I went Paleo, I'm trying to work with my natural inclinations. And if I get to live to be a wise-cracking yoga-practicing centenarian then even better!

A couple of months ago I read The Okinawa Program by Bradley J. Willcox, M.D., D. Craig Willcox, Ph.D., and Makoto Suzuki, M.D. It was life changing for me. Well it was mind changing and I'm hoping it will be life changing. Drs. Willcox and Suzuki went to the Japanese island of Okinawa and conducted the longest study of the world's longest lived people to try and discover the secrets to their health and happiness - emphasis on the latter because these elders are no addled wheelchair-bound retirement home-sitting oldsters. Unlike most aging populations, these guys and gals stay spry - and hilarious - well past 100 years old.

This is Not a Diet
Every diet these days starts out by telling you it is not a diet. "Lifestyle" is the new word for "diet" because it isn't cool to diet these days, which is a bummer since thin is still definitely in. But the Okinawa Program really isn't a diet. For a book that purports to be about food, about 3/4 of it talks about other lifestyle factors like managing stress, the importance of gardening, building loving relationships, meditation, optimism and exercise among other things. Even their "diet plan" comes with weekly prescriptions to improve your whole person and not just your waistline. For the sake of condensing a very dense 500-ish page book into a 500 word blog post, I am just going to talk about the food. Although I do highly recommend reading the whole book (and no FTC, I was not given this book for free to review. I have no relationship with the authors or any company or anything about anything.).

Nuchi Gusui
One of the benefits of living past the century mark is how much time you have to make up pithy sayings, of which there are many in this book. The first - nuchi gusui - embodies the Okinawan philosophy about food and means to eat your food as if it is a source of healing power. I love this. I spend so much time in my life worrying about food, hating food, feeling guilty about food, loving food too much and just generally thinking about food that if the only thing I accomplish this month is this paradigm shift to thinking of food in terms of its healing powers, then I will consider this month's Experiment a success.

The basic principles of elder eating (that would be eating like the elders, not eating your elders all you Donner Party smart alecks) focus on vegetables, whole grains and fish. (Give it up for the vegaquarians!) With at least 50% of your recommended calories coming from whole grains, low carb this is not. They also recommend only eating 10-20% of your calories from protein, pointing out that every gram of protein you eat forces your body to excrete 1-2 mg of calcium. Fats are capped at about 30% of your daily calories with an emphasis on healthy Omega-3 fats. There is lots of super cool research to back up these ratios that I'm dying to tell you about but, again, brevity is a virtue.

The book lists 9 principles of how to eat like an Okinawan**. They are, briefly:
1. Eat ten vegetables and fruits a day
2. Eat ten whole grains a day
3. Eat three calcium foods a day (note: Okinawans don't really eat dairy which works out well for me as I can't have dairy thanks to the Jelly Bean - who is doing MUCH better on her dairy free milk (oh the irony!) diet, thank the stars. Rather calcium-rich foods like leafy greens, soy, seaweed and calcium fortified juices and non-dairy milks are recommended.)
4. Eat three flavonoid foods daily. (note: The book provides a very long list of flavonoid rich foods but the top winners are all kinds of soy foods, vegetables, fruits, tea, beans and lentils.)
5. Eat two Omega-3 foods daily (pretty much just fish, here.)
6. Drink fresh water and tea daily. (note: Per my LDS religion, I will not be drinking tea but will be sticking to just herbals teas and water.)
7. Hara Hachi Bu. Another little Japanese saying that gets thrown around a lot in this book, hara hachi bu means to "eat until you are 80% full." So watch your portion sizes and numbers. The doctors recommend minimizing your animal food consumption, limiting meat (although it should be noted that the Okinawans are not true vegetarians as they will eat meat, although just 1 serving a week) and eggs (7 or less/week). Sweets are recommended to 1-3 servings/week.
8. Drink alcohol in moderation or not at all. Thanks to my religion, I've got this one nailed! True story: I've never had so much as a taste of alcohol my entire life. And I don't feel one bit bad about that.
9. Consider taking vitamins and minerals as a supplement.

The book includes a 4-week "get started" plan that includes menus, recipes and weekly homework assignments designed to get you to leave your Western hurryhurryrushrush mentality behind and bring a little zen into your life. This is what I will be working from this month. I plan to do the mental components as well as the physical!

As I explained yesterday, for the exercise portion of this Experiment we will be doing the second phase of the P90X program.

My Worries
Despite my initial enthusiasm for this plan - you should see the research on this baby! - I do have a few concerns. First, that's a lot of fish to be eating. Do Okinawans not worry about mercury contamination? Second, I don't do well with processed soy (i.e. you don't want to Turbo next to me if I had a soy burger for lunch) and since my thyroid has been hinky in the past I am a little worried about all that soy. Third, only 1-3 sweets a WEEK? Riiiight.

Any of you tried this program? Anyone in on this Experiment with me? (For the record, I don't think I've managed to convince any of the Gym Buddies to try this one with me so I might be reviewing this one solo!)

*Again, I would like to make it clear that I am in no way knocking the Primal Blueprint or the Paleo diet. These work well for many people and I have lots of good friends who are Neanderthals;)

**There has been some confusion about "how can they eat that much food?!" - the answer is in the serving sizes. They eat leeetle servings. Check out the comments below for more elaboration on this.

P90X Experiment Results Are In!

I bet MacGyver did P90X. Just sayin'

It's a good thing that our YMCA recently replaced the carpeting on the gym floor (I will leave you to ponder why there is carpet on the gym floor at all) because if it's one thing P90X did well, it was make me eat carpet. I did dive bomber push ups to failure - proven by the fact that the last one saw my arms give out and I had a close shave with a carpet burned nose. I did abs - gloriously titled The Ab Ripper Workout, not because you will get ripped abs from doing it but because it feels like your abs are being ripped out of your body - until I collapsed into the comforting embrace of the cushion-less carpet. And then after the 3 weeks of intense workouts were finished and we were on our "recovery week" filled with light cardio, stretching and yoga, I attempted a chaturanga "run" (alternate knees to elbows while hovering 3 inches above the floor) and yet again turfed it face first into the purply bluish gray (with some red speckles - to hide the blood!) carpet. My only consolation was on that last one Gym Buddy Allison ate it too and we then proceeded to laugh ourselves silly. Oh, and that same workout I snapped myself across the butt with a resistance band gone rogue.

So you will understand why I thought the "P" in P90X stood for pain. It does not. Nor does it stand for perfect, push up, polyester (wha?) or performance - all guesses bandied about this month as we tried to separate the fact from the infomercial hype. The P apparently stands for "program" - how anticlimactic! - although ChaCha begs to disagree. (Updated: Azusmom just alerted me to the fact that the P actually stands for "power.") The 90 is for 90 days. And the X? Xtreme of course!

What I Liked
The workouts were tough and there was plenty of variation from week to week. We always got a good sweat, even from the yoga. In fact, the workout that made me Toilet Sore - that's Gym Buddy parlance for when you get so sore you have to use both hands to lower yourself onto the toilet and even then you just end up falling the last few inches - was the Core Synergistics program and that was supposed to be a rest workout. I was gimpy for four days afterward.

In addition to challenging workouts there were a lot of innovative moves. I've gotten to a point now where I feel like I have done it all (except for aerial dancing - which I'm still dying to do so please call me Circus People!) but P90X had lots of stuff I'd never tried before. They even found a way to make lunges new - it's called the Sneaky Lunge and it's straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

As you can tell, there was a lot of opportunity for fun. Tony Horton, the inventor of P90X and the main instructor on all the videos is a freakin' riot. There aren't many people who can keep me entertained during a home workout but him and his "fancy hands" cracked me up. Were we to ever meet, he and I would be workout BFFs, I just know it.

What I Didn't Like
Similar to CrossFit and other heavy on the lifting programs, P90X is very joint intensive. By the end of week two, my wrists were killing me from all the various push ups and each of the Gym Buddies ended up with a tweaked knee, painful elbows or a stressed shoulder. In addition to the weights, the cardio, especially the Plyometrics workout, involves a lot (A LOT) of jumping up and down. So there were rolled ankles, foot pain and other impact related aches. Nothing serious for any of us but I'm just saying if you have a trick knee (you know who you are!!) or other existing joint issue, this might exacerbate it.

My only other complaint is all the hype. It's similar in tone, intensity and workout style to several other existing workouts (CrossFit most notably) and so it seems that the primary way they set themselves apart is by a lot of Xtreme rhetoric. Oh yeah and black-and-white muscle glamor shots.

Results
The rockstar of the group this month was Gym Buddy Megan (fitting, as it was her Christmas present we were all horning in on after all). She lost an inch off of every body part and dropped six pounds. She bought a new bikini to celebrate! My results, on the other hand, were a little ambiguous. I know I got stronger. I can still only do one pull up but now I cheat less with the jumping. Push ups, pull ups, squats and even my baby-worn abs are all noticeably stronger performance-wise. My other excitement was a pair of pre-baby jeans that I couldn't even wedge myself into with a shoehorn at the beginning of the month now not only fit but are actually a bit loose (just in the waist - nothing is ever loose on my legs, give it up for athletic thighs!). And yet the scale only went down a pound. But perhaps I was building muscle? All my measurements are exactly the same, even the waist. So maybe my jeans just got stretched out from all the trying on. At any rate, I am pleased. Between last month and this month my LASTTENPOUNDS has now been downgraded (and decapitalized) to my lastfivepounds, not bad for almost 4 months post partum.

March's Great Fitness Experiment
One point that was really driven home to me this month is the importance of nutrition. I can kill myself in the gym and make all the sweet, sweet love to the carpet I want and yet if my food is off, I won't lose an ounce. Between having to go nearly vegan again and dealing with the feelings of deprivation that come with that and the frightening hunger that comes with lactating, I have been eating more than I should. I haven't really gone crazy with the junk food but OD'ing on nut butter (my new food crush: I Love Peanut Butter's dark chocolate dreams - it's vegan and pretty much the only chocolate left to me) will still pack on the pounds. For me the magic ratio seems to be about 80% nutrition and 20% exercise.

As P90X is a 90 day program and we have only completed the first month, we are going to continue on with their workouts for March. Therefore March's Great Fitness Experiment will be a dietary one. Tune in tomorrow to hear all about it!

Gym Buddy Opinions
I'm a neurotic mess so thank goodness for the Gym Buddies and their opinions! (See Sensei Don's comprehensive review for a much-need male perspective! Finally, a Gym Buddy who doesn't pee when they jump!)

Gym Buddy Megan: In general, I have been happy with the program. I definitely feel stronger (even if I still can't quite do a pull-up) and have been happy to focus on weights since I'm usually since a cardio-happy girl. And, I actually noticed a difference when I ran yesterday - haven't run in a number of weeks and I did 3 miles quite a bit faster than "usual" and still had plenty of gas in the tank. I like the fact that we did a different work out everyday of the week and we get to change it up just as I was starting to get bored. Although, the Yoga workout gets a big YAWN from me...BO-RING!! (Charlotte's note: true story about the yoga. Sorry, Tony.) The workouts certainly made me sore, but they weren't as bad as I was expecting (especially the Plyo workout that I heard horror stories about), but maybe that's because we're all just so fit to begin with!! And, I'm happy I got to workout with my gym buddies and my hubby, because as much as Tony Horton makes me giggle, I think I would have tired of him quickly if I had to listen to him every day. I just finished the Core Synergistics workout and it was a doozy!

Gym Buddy Allison: I liked the workouts. I didn't get bored from them and they gave me enough of a push. It wasn't as hard as expected but was hard enough considering the pull ups, hindu push ups(??) and a couple others!!

Gym Buddy Jeni: I only did two sessions with you and one I only completed half way but here are my thoughts...of the two sessions that I did with you I have incorporated those moves into my normal lifting and strength training routine. I love to pull up sections and never would've thought of doing those myself and I loved (and hated), the wall sits. I think it did a great job of engaging the large and small muscles at the same time which lead to bigger calorie burns and more muscle fatigue, which I think is good, right?!?! I would love to regularly do the P90X with you guys or I;d at least like to learn a few new moves to incoporate. It's HARD though. I don't have to tell you that!

Gym Buddy Daria: I have liked the workouts. [...] It was REALLY nice for me to start doing weights since I haven't used weights in a year. Yikes! So I have definitely felt stronger. I also like the change from day to day. I can now run for 25minutes with no break! 2.5 miles! Yippee!

Sensei Don:

I have been really enjoying the P90X. In general, it is a really well rounded exercise program that is a good compliment to my other athletic endeavors (Karate-do, triathlons). I am finding that my balance, mobility, flexibility and energy level have all improved although this is a largely subjective evaluation. In real terms I have increased the repetitions, weight or both for almost every exercise. I have upped the ante on the plyometrics by wearing a 30 lb weight vest in week 3 (Charlotte's note: For the love of little green apples, Don!). This is a significant improvement since the first time I did plyo I was only able to keep up at the "minimum level" - meaning I didn't do any moves at double-time and did not do the same number of reps as the video showed. Below are some pros and cons to the program as I see it:

Pros:

• It is a flexible program - can be customized for your personal schedule and desired level of intensity
• There is a wide variety of exercises that target areas that may be neglected by otehr routines. A good example is the set of muscles (arms and legs) used in side-to-side movemement. Lateral jumps, raises and lunges build strength in areas often under-exercised in running and cycling which are almost completely linear in nature. In individuals who only do running it is common for the adductors, abductors and side glutes to be diproportionately weak compared to the quads and rear glutes. P90X even goes so far as to focus on the calf muscles at three different angles to cover the complete muscle group
• The P90X program has had a social effect for me and others I've observed. It is a program that you can do together with someone. Even if you work out alone, there is a common language and experience that facilitates comradere among P90Xers. This element, I think, brings more motivation and discipline than a self-designed, self-directed exercise program knowing that your friends and others are doing the same workout. It can bring out the supportive and/or competitive elements that can help individuals push through the physical and psychological challenges of intense training.

Cons:

• The prorgam cannot be done properly without key pieces of equipment. Specifically, access to a pull-up bar is an obstacle to some - especially while traveling for business. The use of a band does not sufficiently cover for this since you still need a sturdy and safe way to attach the band to a ceiling/ door/ etc. Hotel rooms and hotel workout facilities rarely accommodate this.
• The X Stretch is very elementary. There is not a thorough explanation on the types of stretching beyond static and ballistic. There are more advanced stretching methods available that are known to produce faster results especially if your goal is dynamic flexibility (i.e. greater range of motion while moving/ engaging the muscle groups) which is the case for most athletes.
• Tony spends a lot of time at the beginning of each warm-up doing static stretching. My understanding is that current research advises against this; that it does not prevent injury and actually can decrease performance.
• Tony can be very annoying during the videos - but you can play the video with just the music and time indicators

How did it go for you this month? Anyone else do P90X? Have you ever been Toilet Sore? What's your magic nutrition/exercise ratio?