I have been a masters level swimmer for years.



On 1:



- The cap should fit snugly. It will not be waterproof, but your head should not get soaked.



- Shower afterwards with Ultraswim shampoo. According to the label, it breaks the chemical bonds that chlorine forms with hair. I cannot confirm that claim, of course, but if you shower with it after swimming you will feel the hair losing its stiffness and dryness. Makes a noticeable difference.



On 2:



- Vaseline was a good suggestion, but it contains petroleum byproducts which might not be good for your pool. As an alternative, start with a good waterproof sunblock. The chlorine may be irritating your skin, and if the chlorine cannot reach your skin ...



On 3:



- Amazon.com is rife with good swimming books! But if you arent trying to win the Olympics next year and want a more practical alternative, the Red Cross offers low cost swimming instruction and booklets that have helped millions of people learn to swim or learn to swim better. Just contact your local chapter.



Ron

You may not be battling past baggage, but you are surely carrying past baggage!

The frustrating thing is not the plateau itself, but the loss of control--the sense that MATHEMATICALLY your body SHOULD be dropping pounds and there's no logical reason why it isn't.



I think that eventually we will find--as several posters have suggested here--that this isn't a matter of visible mathematics alone. The body on a diet reacts as if it is facing starvation and eventually adjusts calorie burning in an effort to maintain a set point. You are taking in less, but the body is doing everything it can to burn less than normal in response to that.



The trick seems to be to either wait this out (which can be a long wait) or to eat a bit more than you have been doing for a few days ("Hey, we're not starving!") and then return to the diet once the body loosens up on the calorie burner's brake.



Works for me, anyway!



Ron

Okay, I am going to show my wife your posts and plead for a wii. I may or may not lose weight, but hey: I'll own a wii!



Ron

Terrific job! An inspiration.

Suzanne,



Good for you!



For what it's worth, speaking from my own experience, I wouldn't get too hung up over the time frame for your weight loss. You took 10 years to gain it so the weight won't be gone tomorrow. Slow and steady wins the race--and you will win the race.



Ron

Tania,



Great recipe!



Have you had your blood tested recently? Slow healing, tiredness, extreme thirst, excessive sweating, and cravings for sugar can be symptomatic of many things. Some of those things--like thryoid disorders and diabetes--are well worth a doctor's visit.



Ron

Jeremiah,



Stress is inevitable; bad eating habits are not. I'm with Warren--stick with it and kick some butt, amigo!



Ron

That is an amazing success story. More than losing the weight, you may have gained a few years of life and surely an improved quality of life. Way to go!!

Great link, thanks!

Kat,



I totally identify with the need to "feel full". I've found that asking whether I am really hungry or just looking to have that feeling of "fullness" is helpful to me. And I drink a lot of water and eat snacks high in fiber and low in calories, such as carrots. Good for you for mentally changing that habit!



Ron

I tried the workouts in this book a few years ago and can personally attest, from painful first-hand experience in doing the workout, that the Navy Seals are in seriously good shape. It is hard to maintain that level of intensity unless you have a lot of time, a lot of dedication, and are already in very good shape. Good luck!



Ron

To add to this, not only are you likely to be building muscle, but you are also likely drinking and retaining more water. Your routine sounds impressive, but a week is too little time in which to evaluate it; keep at this for at least a month.



By the way, how much are you sleeping? I've found that the more I get a good night's sleep, the more that I seem to lose from the same amount of activity.



Ron

Hi Stephen,



Sadly, with the exception of Gustavo's proposal, there's no way to spot reduce. If losing even more weight isn't appropriate, what you can do is firm up your abdominals and obliques through targeted core stability training.



Building up a stable core through exercise and weight training can tighten up those muscles, help burn calories, improve your posture, aid you in carrying your weight more easily, and provide a strong foundation for additional exercise training.



Ron

Now that is truly incredible. What an achievement! Congratulations!

Couple of thoughts here:



- Is that 1 lb of meat before cooking or after cooking?

- Does the 1 lb include all the fixin's -- buns, pickles, lettuce, etc.?



I think your girlfriend is confusing calories with pounds.



If I hold a 1lb barbell in my hand while standing on the scale, I gain 1lb. If I eat the same barbell, I may or may not gain a pound over the long term, because most of that barbell is undigestible and will be excreted (one hopes!)



The basal metabolic rate--the breathing, pumping blood, digesting, process that your girlfriend references--go on all of the time. This means that when you burn 230 calories on a treadmill, that's inclusive of whatever calories were necessary to sustain the basal metabolic rate. And it's only calories burned above and beyond the basal metabolic rate that --> weight loss. So you burn fewer calories than you think at the time of pure exercise.



Thus, your girlfriend is correct that eating a pound will not necessarily cause you to gain a pound of fat, and you are correct that immediately after eating, you will be heavier in proportion to the weight of what you have consumed.



Ron

Heather,



Don't worry; you can do it!



Exercise isn't essential to weight loss; it just speeds your metabolism and burns calories faster. Consuming fewer calories than you burn will also work--it just takes longer. You will succeed.



Ron

Steve,



Have you sworn off of meats? Is there dressing on that salad? Do you eat nuts (good source of protein and easy source of calories)?



Ron



P.S. Presume you are alternating leg and arm days on the weight training? You'll actually get better results if you allow the body some time to recover between training sessions.

Dave,



Chances are that as you gained your weight, you didn't ask yourself, "I wonder what the heck I have to do so I can hit 300 on the scale faster!" Your weight crept on little by little through the practice of unhealthy habits and you didn't think much about that at all, except on that day of reckoning when you looked in the mirror and said, "Enough."



Same rules apply on the way down. Forget about how quickly you will see expected results, that will only trip you up. You have minimal control over how quickly you'll see results. What you can control is how much and how often you eat and how much and how often you exercise. If you make healthy changes in your lifestyle, the rest will inexorably fall into place.



Weight loss isn't a matter of being strong or being weak, about being good or being bad, about being happy with results or unhappy with results. It's a matter of intake v. energy output. So damn the torpedos and definitely damn the scale. Keep cranking that weight loss widget, and sooner than you think, a new you will emerge! The human mind can indeed sustain a lifestyle change, as many of the postings on Traineo attest.



Ron



P.S. You may also have some anxiety about losing the weight itself and what it will mean or not mean for you. Big life changes are often stressful, even if they are healthy changes. I've been there. We all have. But my advice is not to confuse that natural anxiety with frustration. Good luck!

Dave,



This process is about learning to make better judgments and not about finding ways to be judgmental.



Thinner people aren't better than you or stronger than you are mentally or physically; they have simply had better long-term eating habits. You ate when they didn't eat. Or you ate larger portions or more fattening things than they did. Or your metabolism slowed and you didn't compensate with exercise.



You and you alone can decide whether or not you will make choices in any given instant that satisfy you over the long term. And you and you alone can determine how you will then react to having made decisions that you later regret. But if you want a friendly suggestion, you'll be happier over the long run if you decide that your mistakes aren't failures in mental toughness or weaknesses that demand punishment.



Making mistakes is inevitable. Acting outside your best interests from time to time is probable. The before and after photos posted on Traineo testify that even people who sometimes believed that they "made mistakes" and "let themselves down" could learn how to change their eating and exercise habits and thereby transform themselves (and their self-esteem) over the long term. That's what this process is all about.



By the way, contrary to what you wrote, weight loss is a journey that has to end or you'll end up anorexic at the opposite end of the spectrum! What does not end is the process of learning how to make healthy choices more frequently. And that process isn't just for weight loss, you know. It extends to everything else in life.



Which brings me to your question ...



When I decided to lose weight, I didn't go on a diet. I figured that if I took that approach I would gain the weight right back as soon as the regimen ended. Instead, I decided to eat/exercise as if I were trying to maintain my ideal weight.



The pounds have been dropping off of me more slowly than if I had truly deprived myself. But I am pleased that the needle on my scale is headed slowly, inexorably, in the right direction.



Good luck, Dave!



P.S. to Paul. I agree with K M--great post, and welcome to Traineo!

Might be nice if the group could provide statistics: # of pounds lost per member or collectively, progress toward a group weight loss goal. Progress v. another group, etc.

I agree with John in principle--never go too fast too soon, but if you are truly in "pain" after jogging just one minute, maybe you should try an elliptical alternative with less impact to avoid reinjuring yourself? What about rowing? Bicycling? Stair climbing?

Way to go, Amy!

As King of Plateauville, I support your view: Plateaus suck, no doubt about it. But the only real thing you can do is wait them out. If you are exercising, eating appropriate things in appropriate amounts, and getting enough rest, eventually, the plateau will end and you will experience rapid weight loss for a while thereafter.



The one thing you should not do is eat more. Because as discouraging as a plateau is--and that's awfully discouraging--eating in response to stress is not healthy self-medication. Go out and buy yourself something nice, treat yourself to an evening out with friends, redecorate your home or do anything else to get through the doldrums, but don't eat your way through them. That will break the plateau all right, but in the wrong direction.



Keep the thin clothes. In fact, take some of them out and put them where you can see them as motivation. And burn the bigger clothes that no longer fit you. The road behind you is filled with potholes, and you aren't going back.

Richard,



You are probably retaining a bit more water now from all the cardio and the circuit training. My guess is that the moobies reduce in size as the diet progresses and as your body adjust to the exercise.



Ron

I agree with K M, Ray, and Jennie. There will certainly be days in life when you have birthday cake or pizza or chicken tenders. The idea is to keep those days the exceptions, rather than the rules.



Saddle up and hop back on that horse, bro, and try not to notice, as you meander over the prairie, that those grazing buffalo would be mighty tasty with barbecue sauce.

We did a competition like this at my company between the legal department and the business development department. We called it Lard of the Rings.



Legal won.



But then again, everyone who participated was a loser and a winner at the same time.

Nice work, Nikki. My thanksgiving resolutions are to:



* Stuff the turkey, not the chef.



* Remember that the turkey is to be shared, not consumed in one sitting.



* Bear in mind that portions always look smaller in relation to the size of the bird.



* Reflect on the fact that pumpkin pie is not low calorie simply because it includes a vegetable.

Well, at the very least, there's a drop in water weight!



I wonder if regenerating lost blood is really such a calorie intensive process.

You can log most anything else alphanumeric with the feature at:



http://www.traineo.com/customlogs