Exercise, Exercise ... Come On Everybody Do Your Exercise
I've actually started exercising. Weight training. It feels really good to use my muscles. I'm also doing 35+ minutes a day on the Gazelle. It would really make me happy to lose all the weight I gained while on medication. We'll see how long it takes.
One of the myths about weight training is that women who lift weights will end up looking like female weightlifters. Not so. In most cases, not possible. To build muscle like that you have to train for hours a day and eat a very specific type of diet. Oh... and you also have to be genetically predisposed to building muscle like that. Not everyone can look like Arnold Schwarzenegger simply because they're not Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Another myth about weight training is the concept of "muscle toning." There's no such thing. Muscle can only atrophy, build, or stay the same (on second thought, it really doesn't stay the same -- it either atrophies or builds. Muscle can't really build if you don't exhaust the muscle. What builds muscle is working the muscle to exhaustion. This creates tiny tears in the muscle, which the body then repairs -- stronger. The catch here is that if you don't take in enough protein, the muscle can't repair properly.
A third myth about exercise is that the only way to burn fat is to do aerobic exercise. Yes, aerobic exercise burns calories and, thus, fat. (It's also necessary for exercising the heart and lungs.) But you only burn calories while you're actually doing the exercise. The beauty of building larger muscles is that muscle burns calories just by existing. So you burn more calories 24 hours a day when you build larger muscles.
Yet another myth about weight training is that you can "spot" exercise. Nope. Much as we'd like to think that we'll lose fat around our bellies if we do crunches, that just isn't so. That's not to say you shouldn't do crunches -- but you need to exercise all your muscles (especially the large muscle groups) in order to lose weight. The crunches will have been worth the effort when you've lost a large percentage of the fat that covers up your muscles. In other words, the only way to get a flat tummy or washboard abs is to lower your overall percentage of body fat ... and build those muscles so they look nice.
Learning is curse sometimes.
Gabby and Her Rice Box
We've given Gabby her rice box back. It took her a couple of days to figure out what it is (she doesn't see so well). But it's wonderful to see Gabby's glee at nosing through and digging madly in the rice. Makes me forgive all the poop on the door jamb.
--Mary
