delipidation Member

Walking along the railroad track which was the shortest way to work, I saw where a tree had fallen against the control wires. I did some research to find out which railroad company owned that stretch of track, called them to let them know, and thought nothing further of it. A couple of weeks later I happened to encounter…

Yep. The house at the ranch where I spent several summers as a youngster had three rooms and a path.

Exercise is only tangentially about weight loss. We lose weight by burning more calories than we consume. Exercise is about health and well-being (and strength, and endurance, and whatever else your particular form of exercise brings with it). Eating at a 500-calorie daily deficit will lead to the loss of about a pound per…

We have the Bayou Fitness equivalent. We bought a refurbished model several years back after researching several of the options then available and concluding that it gave us the most accessories for the lowest expenditure; a lot has changed since then, so YMMV. For a while it was my daily workout device; these days I use…

I think of rebounding more in terms of keeping the lymphatic system moving, plus some core strength, although I did observe that my uphill walking speed improved dramatically, while breathing easier, in the month after we bought ours. We have a JumpSport 370, and like the bungees way better than any of the steel-spring…

+1. "Suck," in my case, meant that the blood thinners made me bleed profusely every time I even nicked myself, and bruise all over for no discernible reason. Then there's peripheral edema -- but hey, that's all behind me now. One of my siblings did note that the primary side effect of that blood thinner, in my case, was…

You and I are fairly close in weight (I'm about 205) and goals (recomp by losing fat and gaining strength), although judging from your profile picture I'm probably somewhere north of twice your age. You'll get advice all across the continuum on your question, but you could do a lot worse than just eat at the maintenance…

I use Walkroid. Accurate, runs as a service in the background (even behind the lock screen), doesn't chew up the battery -- just a well-behaved app that does what it's supposed to .

Exercise: lifting weights and rebounding, for both muscular and skeletal strength. Walking, because we're made to walk. I have a standing desk, but standing is actually more difficult in many ways than walking, so I take quick breaks between meetings to knock out a quick quarter-mile on the treadmill or half-mile on the…

Yes, when you burn more, eat more: that's where "feeding the muscle" comes into the equation. Even though the net calorie balance remains the same, there's a huge metabolic difference between eating 2150 calories and sitting around all day, as opposed to eating 2650 calories and burning 500 of them, or even better, eating…

Well, I haven't yet. I'm building some muscle, but not losing much fat as yet. Fortunately we're finally getting into a season here in the Great NorthWet in which I should in theory be able to do some more bicycling, which seems to be a fairly effective form of both cardio and fat-burning for me. This just seems to be a…

+1 on the suggestions upthread about planning your day ahead of time. Some days, though, get away from us so fast that the planning just doesn't happen in the morning. A fallback position for me is to at least enter everything before eating or snacking. Taking things in that order (enter / adjust / eat) allows me to do…

Welcome, prizmaa! Yes, it does seem to be kind of a slow group. Maybe folks are just busy elsewhere, but it would be useful to hear more of what is and isn't working for folks in the specific context of fat-burning, since MFP is so weight-oriented.

My parents' generation was big on butter during the post-war years, and both of them have the heart attacks to show for it. I've never cared much for butter myself -- it leaves a rancid aftertaste that it seems like I should be able to wash out of my mustache, but never can. I prefer Smart Balance: good flavor, no rancid…

The calculations are correct for the Karvonen approach. As others have noted, over time your heart rate will tend to fluctuate less as the heart muscle strengthens, so you might want to recalibrate the maximum and minimum numbers from time to time.

+1. I'd also suggest that the before-and-after pictures in http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2011/07/21/meet-staci-your-new-powerlifting-super-hero/ speak volumes: strong is beautiful, and doesn't look like the last picture above.

I used to commute by bicycle to my job as a truck driver, so on any given day I got to spend some time as both the smallest and largest vehicle on the road. It was a delivery truck, so I frequently had to drive slowly up a steep grade or while looking for a house, but I found it interesting that the car drivers responded…

As one who rides for transportation rather than leisure, I avoid bike paths for three reasons. First, as others have pointed out, paths are generally poorly integrated with the road system, so they don't always go where the roads go. Second, and a corollary of the first, the intersections between bike paths and roads are…

Everybody's heart is different. I'm a cyclist rather than a runner, these days, but the same principles apply. I try to take a "calibration ride" once a year, after I get enough miles under me that my heart rate stabilizes a bit (early in the season it bounces all over the place with next to no exertion). What I'm after,…

I ride an actual recumbent bike (not an indoor trainer) and have gotten my heart rate up to 185 on a steep hill. For more normal riding purposes, I have my heart-rate meter set to beep below 119 (50% effort, Karvonen calculation) and above 158 (80% effort). It usually takes me a half-mile or so to get above the lower…

The Accu-Measure Fitness 3000 (http://www.accumeasurefitness.com/products/index.html, about $20) is nice because it clicks when a certain pressure is achieved. This avoids the mistaken impression that you're losing fat when in fact you're just squeezing harder. You just slide the pointer over, grab the right spot, squeeze…

What I do is reframe the discussion a bit: I don't need to be lighter, I need to be stronger. To do that I need to feed my muscles with food they can use, then exercise to build those muscles. That will burn fat, which is less dense than muscle, so yes, my appearance will change, but not necessarily my weight. At present…

Just drink lots of fluids, starting now. The better hydrated you are, the less the loss of a pint of blood will affect you. Then drink lots more fluids afterwards. Eat normally. Avoid heavy lifting with that arm for five hours. If there's any bruising at the donation site on your arm, put a little ice on it and avoid heavy…

I was diagnosed with food sensitivities somewhere around 1980. I generally avoid the foods that I need to, but once every couple of years I need to reboot my immune system. My elimination diet isn't especially complicated -- just rice, with which I've never had any problems. Rice cakes, long-grain, short-grain, mochi, you…

+1. And martial arts are good exercise! :) But the key thing is that engaging in a strenuous activity that forces you to train your responses to stressful situations in the dojo will build your confidence when you encounter stressful situations elsewhere in your life (and it should be noted that most of them do not involve…

Yep, got that. I was responding more to some of the other participants in the thread. By the way, as others have noted, your transformation is visible, dramatic and encouraging! And I'll bet sleeping soundly through the night, once that started happening, was a significant factor in taking that transformation as far as…

It should probably be noted that sleep apnea isn't always related to weight. A family member who had a heart attack in his mid-70s, who took the doctors' advice seriously and spends 45 minutes a day on the treadmill, eats real food and has been slim, trim and energetic for all of the intervening 18 years, still has to use…

My goals are all around reducing body fat and rehabbing a couple of damaged joints (one shoulder, one ankle) by early summer of 2012. When I started in October of 2011, I was at nearly 26% body fat, which was way further into that red zone than I had ever strayed before. The interim goal was to be below 23% by year's end…

+1. My mantra at the moment is this: "I don't need to be lighter; I need to be stronger."

Unprocessed Quinoa tends to be coated with a substance called saponin, which tastes bitter and protects it from birds and insects. Fortunately its consistency is more or less that of soap, so rinsing in cool water and rubbing the grain between your hands is enough to remove it. Just be sure to drain the rinse water! Other…