I met the head trainer at the gym (started as a movie question funnily enough), and he did a little bit of intervention.
He said that I had achieved a good base of cardio fitness, but that I had gotten to the point that I was not just losing fat anymore, but atrophying my muscles. He said that women are more likely to make this mistake than men since their goal is mostly to look good, and while they achieve their goals, they atrophy their muscles if they don't target toning. So, he says, start lifting again and don't worry about the scale. We did a machine test for body mass percentage and BMI. He entered height and age into machine, I pressed on two pads, and out came 25 and 28 respectively. We will take the measurements again in one month. He said they were high. So my plan is, cardio five days a week, two of those days are half cardio half lifting, and the other three are pure cardio. As I gain strength, he says I should cut back on the cardio mostly to warm up - run a mile before lifting sort of thing. He said that he sees me in the gym everyday, and that while that is admirable, I must rest two days when I am lifting, preferably the two days after I lift to give my body a chance to repair and build. If I am working out well, those two metrics will come down, the weight scale coming down or not.
We discussed the merits of food before and after workouts. His philosophy is that you should have concentrated protein shakes. He said that the energy bars are fine. His point is that if I start to feel weak during workouts, I am at high risk to stop working out. Better to be nutrition, than to get headaches and feel weak and want to stop working out because working out is not fun anymore.
So I started lifting today again, and sore again. I am at 182 lbs as I write this. I may not get to 175 in the short term as planned because muscle grows on me like weeds on a wild field (particularly around my shoulders and upper back and legs), but maybe I am looking at the wrong metric. This is basically what most of you have said, but I have now taking it to heart.
Let's see what happens over the next month.
He said that I had achieved a good base of cardio fitness, but that I had gotten to the point that I was not just losing fat anymore, but atrophying my muscles. He said that women are more likely to make this mistake than men since their goal is mostly to look good, and while they achieve their goals, they atrophy their muscles if they don't target toning. So, he says, start lifting again and don't worry about the scale. We did a machine test for body mass percentage and BMI. He entered height and age into machine, I pressed on two pads, and out came 25 and 28 respectively. We will take the measurements again in one month. He said they were high. So my plan is, cardio five days a week, two of those days are half cardio half lifting, and the other three are pure cardio. As I gain strength, he says I should cut back on the cardio mostly to warm up - run a mile before lifting sort of thing. He said that he sees me in the gym everyday, and that while that is admirable, I must rest two days when I am lifting, preferably the two days after I lift to give my body a chance to repair and build. If I am working out well, those two metrics will come down, the weight scale coming down or not.
We discussed the merits of food before and after workouts. His philosophy is that you should have concentrated protein shakes. He said that the energy bars are fine. His point is that if I start to feel weak during workouts, I am at high risk to stop working out. Better to be nutrition, than to get headaches and feel weak and want to stop working out because working out is not fun anymore.
So I started lifting today again, and sore again. I am at 182 lbs as I write this. I may not get to 175 in the short term as planned because muscle grows on me like weeds on a wild field (particularly around my shoulders and upper back and legs), but maybe I am looking at the wrong metric. This is basically what most of you have said, but I have now taking it to heart.
Let's see what happens over the next month.
