Today, I am frustrated friends....my Mom had a possible covid exposure...we were around her too... but so far all are asymptomatic. I think getting her to do a covid test from afar is going to be hard.
So....praying on that.

Fasting, hmmm...good results with 1st two days of fasting 13/16 hrs... thinking that this could be worth the effort...

Aiming for 40 carbs or less ...except veggies I will allow a tad more.

So I have a question for those of you who do IM or Fasting or OMAD or some other very specific WOE.

Is this a WOE you intend to continue once you reach your target maintenance weight or is this just a short term WOE (Way of eating) to lose weight? Or is this just something you are trying for a little while to change things up?

Is the current WOE you are doing sustainable forever?

I ask because over my lifetime I have done a zillion different attempts and successes at losing weight. Most of them REALLY do work. But my issue has always been that none of them were sustainable. Of course each of us has to tailor the WOE to our own personal ability but to me, if it is not something you think you can do long term, you may be setting yourself up for short term success and long term failure.

Been there. Done that.

Met my Dec goal! 60 straight days of signing in since end of Oct (and may as well log food and activity while I am here anyway)

@ideas2 I have a feeling you and I could have some great, long discussions on a number of health related topics 😊 (I feel that way about many members here, come to think of it). Then again I can get super chatty and tend to write excessively long responses, so maybe it's just that!

This touches on a lot of rich subjects, I could reply for days perhaps. I'll try to keep this however brief I can! 🤪

I'll start with how so many people overdo it with high end cardio. It's actually a hard thing to avoid for anyone relatively new to establishing their cardio fitness.

For perspective, with the exception of world class caliber athletes, very well trained long distance enthusiasts who regularly do such things as marathons, century rides, triathlons, etc. have only 2-3 intense cardio workouts per week. By intense I mean anything in heart rate Zone 3 or above. Keep in mind that Zone 3 (and depending on how you calculate HR zones the lower part of Zone 4) is still "aerobic". So the rest of the runs over the week should be in Zone 2 or lower.

Zone 3 is a well established "grey area" that provides no fitness benefit over Zone 2, but does result in significantly faster fatigue and higher risk of injury. What that means is working in Zone 3 is a bit foolish since you're only going to perform less (due to fatigue) and risk injury for nothing. Absolutely no benefit over Zone 2. Fact.

Now let's talk about those efforts. Most people can't "run" in Zone 2, especially anyone in their first few months of regularly running. They simply don't have the overall strength and fitness to maintain a proper running gait without running their HR over into Zone 3+ after maybe 30 seconds to a minute or so. Whether that is the reason new runners can only "run" 2-3 times per week, or why people get injured within their first 6-12 months running even after completing C25k is really unique to the individual and could be debated every way. But clearly you can see with just this info what a new runner is up against by simply trying to run regularly, especially non-stop running. If they run at Zone 3 or higher more than 2-3 times per week they are doing too much and it will catch up in some way.

This doesn't just apply to running either. This applies to all cardio activities. I'm using running as an example as it is most readily identifiable with almost everyone, as anyone who has started running (and especially monitored HR) has personally observed.

That said, while Zone 3 is basically of no benefit given the risk, higher zones like 4 and 5 have tangible health benefits, but such development is premature unless you have already established a strong base of cardio fitness, at least 6 months but time is not the ruler here, it's more about when your body is ready. But 6 months to a year of regularly establishing good cardio fitness should work for the majority of people who are cleared by their doctor for such levels of activity.

Since this is long already I won't go into the details of Zone 4/5 benefits, but again any runs of Z3+ are considered intense workouts and should be limited to 2-3 times/week.

Also as FYI, Long Runs, or other such extra endurance efforts generally count against this allotment of intense workouts. These are part of specific endurance training like marathons, century rides, etc.

Damn, I didn't keep that short at all.