My Book Cover is Here! (And It's Funny!)

I'm not just excited, I'm Richard-Simmons excited!!

Great news: I just found out (thanks to several of you astute readers!) that my book is available for pre-order on Amazon! Woohoooo! I can't even tell you how amazing it feels to write that sentence. This process has taken nearly two years but it's finally happening. And seeing the cover, up there, with all those other real books and real authors made it feel really real. (Ok, so part of me still won't believe it until I'm holding it in my sweaty little hands but I'm visceral like that).

Wanna see it? Click here to check me out in all my nerd glory (you can take the girl out of the lab but you can't get her out of the beaker...) and while you're there you can also pre-order The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything!

What you get:
If you order right now you get a free shamwow juicer ab roller with every book! Kidding. But you do get it for $10.08. If you wait to buy it until it comes out (pub date is still Dec. 1st from what I understand) then the price will go back up to $14.98. So save 5$ and pre-order now!

In the book I break down all the Experiments I did for the first year of writing this blog. While they are the same Experiments you already read about (if you've been with me that long and boy howdy do I love you for sticking around! Remember when my blog was all black with white text and I was an awkward Goth with orange hair??) but in the book I detail the theory behind each workout, the workout itself, what shenanigans ensued in the gym and all the crazy going on out of the gym along with my conclusions.

Bonus: I include either a highlight (hilarious story that never made it into a blog post) or lowlight (hilarious and embarrassing story that never made it into a blog post) of every Experiment, including the absolute lowest moment of my exercise addiction. And no, I never wrote about it on here because I was too ashamed of it at the time.

In between each Experiment are personal essays excerpted from this blog that favorites of mine.

To all of you who have cheered me on each step of the way, I cannot tell you how much that has meant to me. To all of you have already pre-ordered my book (Hi, mom!) I am amazed and unbelievably grateful. My only goal in this is to sell enough copies that they give me the privilege of writing another book so thank you for helping my dream come true. I could not do it without you guys!!! (Or my exclamation key!!!!!)

PS> For those of you wondering what I'm reading these days: Just finished both of Sloane Crosleys books of essays - thanks to those of you who recommended her to me, she's amazing and I totally recommend her! I also recommend Shanghai Girls (fiction) and On Hitler's Mountain (non-fic). I'm currently in the middle of Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories and it is blowing my mind. It is a research junkies dream!

What are you reading right now? Got any more recs for me??

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I Have Chia Seeds! Now What?

Crunchy. Bland. A cross between birdseed and the neon orange salmon roe they roll sushi in. (Question: those eggs are dyed right? Salmon can't possibly have neon orange eggs can they?? Or do they just make them that color so they're easier to spot when all 200 of them get caught in your teeth? That's really kind of nice of them, now that I think of it. Thank you, salmon-egg-dyers of the world!) Anyhow, crunchy salmon eggs - that's pretty much what chia seeds taste like. So why am I throwing back handfuls of these seeds like Sookie slams margaritas?

1. I got them cheap. (Thanks to Gym Buddy Allison who is such a super bargain shopper that her entire basement is full of hundreds of Sobe drinks that she got for FREE. Seriously, a whole pound of chia seeds plus a bag of cinnamon bears cost me 1$)

2. They are the Holy Grail of health nuts. Er, seeds. If you've been 'round these parts long enough then you too have heard the campfire tales of the elusive chia seed with it's plant-sourced Omega-3's and tapioca-like gelling abilities. Before we continue any farther, we are indeed talking about these chia seeds:


Oh yes, the kind you used to grow green hair on clay heads as a kid is actually a super-duper nutrient dense seed. Not only are they the richest plant source of omega-3 fatty acids (they kick flax seed's butt so bad MMA fighters take notes) but they also have a ton of fiber, protein and such a stellar nutrient profile that legend has they cure everything from runner's leg cramps to gout. However, like all truly great health foods, it is ridiculously difficult to find. (Related tangent: I once asked my local grocer if he had any purslane - greens known for their omega-3 fatty acids - and he replied, "You mean the new designer purse line at Target?" Setting aside the obvious question of why my burly, male, mid-50's grocer would follow designer purse lines at Target, the reason I was asking about the plant is because chickweed (as it is also known) grows practically everywhere - except in my yard. My neighbor however has an abundant supply in the cracks of his driveway. You should have seen his face the morning he walked out to start his car and found all of my kids and I eating the weeds that grow in his driveway. He didn't know whether to call the cops or sit down and try a bite. So obviously I needed to try and find a more reliable - and less car oil drenched - source. Sadly, I never did.)

Chia seeds first landed on my radar a couple of years ago when some of my favorite bloggers started mixing them into smoothies and puddings and whatnot. I love me a good food fad! So I immediately set out to find them. Nowhere in Minnesota carries them. Not even the Whole Foods that I drove 45 minutes just for this one item. (Environment be darned, this is my health we're talking about! Oh, wait...) The endless searching made them take on mythic proportions in my mind. Oh if only I had chia seeds, I rhapsodized, not only would I poop rainbows and unicorns (owie!) but they'd be smarter, less ADHD unicorns! (Weirdly, chia seeds are being touted as a natural cure for ADHD - somebody alert Lindsay Lohan!)

And now I have some. And they taste like birdseed. And the bag is mocking me. Because all I can think to do with them is find some of that magic paste and use it to glue the seeds to Jelly Bean's adorable little head and see if I can't get her to grow some decent hair after her next bath. (I finally get a girl and she still has naught but duck fluff covering her pate! It's adorable duck fluff but still, how am I supposed to give her Shirley Temple curls with fluff?)

Ah, but she is so stinkin' cute even with the crazy hair!

Have you tried chia seeds? Do you love them? Help me! What do I do with chia seeds now that I have them? What random ingredient have you gone on a crazy goose chase trying to find? You ever have a chia pet?

Her calves are hot as hell...

Cute girls with strong legs

Calf raises

Ask AbFitt...Body effects

It can take time for changes from eating, supplementing and exercise to show up on your body.


Q. When you take a supplement or you diet, or when you exercise or skip workouts, how long does it take for what you do to show up on your body?

A. There’s no absolute answer as to how soon you can see changes in your body from how you eat or from exercise. That’s because so many factors are involved, and it also depends on how you are gauging a change.

Monitoring weight loss on a scale

If you eat an entire watermelon and step on the scale later that day, it may look as if you’ve gained 5 pounds. In reality, you haven’t gained fat, since a watermelon doesn’t have many calories. The scale increase is a reflection of the extra water and fiber you’ve consumed, not fat gain. (And that water and fiber will pass right through you, which is why consuming lots of fruits and vegetables ultimately helps you lose body fat.)

Conversely, if you go on a three-hour bike ride and step on the scale at the end of the day and find yourself 3 pounds lighter, that’s a water-weight loss, not 3 pounds of fat that you’ve burned off during the ride. Your ride may have burned about 450 calories per hour, or around 1,350 calories, which is the equivalent of less than a half-pound of body fat. The extra weight is simply water loss from sweating and depleting some of your glycogen, or stored carbohydrates in your muscles. If you went on long rides every day for a month, you’d see more permanent fat loss, since the calorie burn from every ride would add up

Diets where you follow a very low-calorie diet, or eliminate or drastically cut down on carbs, lead to extra water loss. It may appear as if you’ve lost 5 or more pounds in a week, but that’s mostly water weight, not pure fat loss. (I’ve written more about water-weight loss here.)

For these and other reasons, judging by scale weight can be tricky, and it’s better to look at weight ranges over time. Your body may fluctuate a few pounds in both directions daily due to food and liquid intake and exercise, but if the general range drops over time, you’ll know that you’ve lost a few pounds of fat as well.

The general recommendation is that one-half to 2 pounds of body weight lost per week from dieting or from dieting and exercise is a safe and achievable amount. Weight loss (or fat loss) from exercise alone may hover at the lower end of this range, or it might be even slower. And it all depends on how many calories you burn over the week.

The key thing to remember is that it takes time to see measurable differences in fat loss, especially when you exercise. But if you are doing regular cardio workouts, fat loss is happening even when it’s not immediately evident in terms of inches lost. Be patient and stick to your healthful eating and exercise plan. Over time, you will notice a difference. (I’ve written more about that here.)

Gaining fat or muscle

Gaining pounds of fat or muscle is also not so immediate. If you ate an entire chocolate cake in one day beyond your normal food intake, you are unlikely to pack on 5 pounds of body fat in one day. Typically, the body self-regulates, leading you to eat dramatically less the following day. Over a week, your calorie intake may end up being fairly balanced and your weight may stay stable, or you may gain less than you would expect from one or two days of overeating.

Of course, different people have different abilities to absorb and burn the foods they eat and to self-regulate after overeating. Exercise may be key to managing overeating: There’s evidence that a trained exerciser may be better able to burn, rather than store, excess fat that they eat than a sedentary person.

Building muscle takes time. Some people attribute weight gain after starting an exercise program, or their failure to lose weight, to the fact that they are building muscle. This is probably not the case for most. Here’s why:

In the initial few weeks of a resistance-training program, you can get measurably stronger, but you will not hypertrophy, or gain more muscle, until weeks or months later. And even then, it takes eating more calories than you burn off each day and lifting very heavy weights (not just 5-pound dumbbells) to trigger the anabolic muscle-building process. (That’s why body builders spend hours in the gym and often supplement with extra calories in the form of bars or shakes.)

Body changes from exercise

Most exercise and weight loss studies have participants follow a program for at least 10 or 12 weeks to be able to detect body fat, strength, power, weight or other differences from a plan. The longer one follows a program, whether it’s a diet or exercise plan, the greater those changes will be.

We live in a culture of quick fixes, but when it comes to the body, quick fixes are rarely possible and almost never permanent. So, rather than ask yourself, “How fast?” train yourself to envision how long you will be able to enjoy continued improvements in your health and your body shape by living a healthy lifestyle. Learn to love the workout, the results will follow.



Do you have a fitness or weight-loss question for AbFitt? Send e-mail to AbFitt@mail.com Please include Ask AbFitt in the subject line. Our experts respond to one question each week. We regret that we cannot provide a personalized response to every submission.