Spinning out of Control!

“We’re coming up on a team from UPENN, check out their matching uniforms. Get ready Team Animal, we’re going to blow past them on the left, in 3-2-1 Go –Go! PUSH, PUSH, PUSH! Faster than that! Faster than that! Yes you can! You can do it! AND… Recover. Bye-bye UPENN”

Nope I’m not on a cycling team. In fact, I’m not actually on the road at all, although I AM going about 100 MPH. This is my Tuesday afternoon Spinning Class at the Drexel University Recreation Center, led by Deb. Deb is a little powerhouse who likes to play 80’s hair metal and tries to make us throw up before the end of class, and I keep going back!

I never took a Spin class before this term, and here is my list of excuses why:

1. “I would feel like I was exerting all of this energy and not getting anywhere.”
2. “I prefer to do my work outs standing up.”
3. “I don’t want to buy special shoes”
4. “My legs would get huge.”
5. “Sitting for an hour, I think my butt would hurt too much.”
6. “It’s not a good time.”

Bullshit, all of it. The truth is I was a little scared. Spin class was an unfamiliar situation, I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t know how to set up my bike, I was afraid my butt was going to look ridiculous on that little seat, all of these things prevented me from stepping into that room of bikes.

What I learned during my fitness assessment is that I needed to add more cardiovascular activity into my workout schedule, so I took the leap. I went and talked to the instructor and she helped me set up my bike and I went at my own pace. At the end of the class, I had fun, I was covered in sweat, my legs were like Jello, and I’m totally hooked.

Moral of the story, be honest with yourself and don’t be afraid to try new things.

Next post: “What’s a motto? Nothing, what’s the motto with you?!”

Portion control: Seriously, that’s the entire meal?!

Did you know that the size of the average American plate has increased 36 % since the 1960s, which means you don’t have to back for 2nds anymore, you can just pile more on in one sitting!  If I went back in time and gave my great grandmother one of the plates I use for dinner, she might think it was a serving platter!

Gauging meal sizes can be tricky, and who looks at a piece of chicken and knows how many ounces it is, AND who want to think about that kind of stuff when you’re eating anyway!  Counting calories and measuring out portions is math, and math makes my head hurt, and I don’t enjoy eating with a headache!

You don’t have to eat off of a salad plate or dirty every measuring cup in your house to make dinner in order to make sure you’re not eating too much food.

Here are a few potion control methods that keep it simple:

1. The Divided Plate
1. Divide your plate in ½ and fill it with your veggies (salad, spinach, broccoli, escarole, etc.)
2. The other have of your plate gets divided in ½ again
3. Fill one ½ with your protein (chicken, fish, lean beef or pork)
4. And what’s left is for your grain (roll, rice, pasta, quinoa, etc.)
2. Hand - Palm - Fist
1. Spread your hand out, that your veggies portion
2. Turn your palm over, not including fingers- that’s your protein portion
3. Make a fist and that’s your grain.
3. Object related sizing
1.  Your protein should be about the size of your iPhone or a deck of cards
2. Grains should be about the size of a tennis ball.

Everything is good in moderation and if you (and me) can stick to balancing meals and snacks like this, it makes dieting easier. It also keeps us from trying to justify ketchup and pickles as vegetables! You know you’ve done it!

Eating “good for you” foods in the right proportions gives you more energy, wards off illness and disease, speeds up your metabolism, and will eventually melt off the pounds.  It’s pretty easy to know the kinds of foods that are good for us (refer to the new food pyramid from a previous post.)  We all learned the food groups in grade school, and I don’t remember there being a “cake” group, I WISH, but alas, nope, no “cake group.

Next Post: “Spinning” out of control!

Squats…why do you have to hurt so much?

I’m not, how would you say, the most graceful of ladies. In fact, I once acquired the nickname “Accident prone Andi.” Currently I am nursing a broken left middle phalanx, otherwise known as my left index finger. If there is a slick sidewalk, I WILL fall! If there is a low ceiling, I WILL hit my head! I’m more of a danger to myself than Bella Swann in the Twilight saga! I’ve been known to walk through screen doors, It looks a lot like this:

One time on my way to work at Taco Bell in Willow Grove, I was running to catch a bus that I thought was getting ready to leave, so I attempted to jump a small rail. I hyper extended my knee, and then proceeded to land on the same knee. It caused me so much pain that after I got to work, I blacked out and was rushed to the ER. Insurance you say? Not so much, I was 18 years old. This has become an injury that haunts me to this day.

After my last child was born, I developed crippling sciatica; back pain to the point where I was stuck on the floor, in the prone position for 2 days. When I was finally able to go see a doctor, she prescribed physical therapy. I’ve never been to physical therapy before, and I soon found out that it’s a sneaky term for exercise. 2 hours a day, 3 days a week for 3 months and I was feeling like a new person, I was hooked. Not only did this routine make my back feel better, it took away my winter blues, and I didn’t catch that cold I usually got around Christmas time. After graduating to a home program, I began to get bored exercising by myself, and that is when I discovered group exercise.

I picked a class that I noticed was doing exercises similar to my physical therapy, made a few friends and learned now to do squats. The woman next to me was easily 70 years old and made me look bad. Did I mention how uncoordinated I was? After the warm up, we did squats; everyone in the class was holding 2 8-10lb weights! 8-10lbs?! That is a pair of large newborn twins! I went with a pair of 5lbs and then placed them down on the floor 3 squats in.

Important things to know about squats:
1. While your butt goes out, your chest stays up.
2. Weight goes in your heels, so you are able to lift your toes off the ground.
3. Knees stay over your toes.
4. Squeeze your glutes to push back up.
5. You WILL be sore the next day, like “No, no son, you can’t sit on Mommy’s lap today, or the rest of the week” sore, so don’t try to keep up with the 70 year old lady holding 10 lbs weights because she’s been doing this a lot longer than you!

Group exercise is a part of my routine now. I’ve done most of them: Step aerobics, Yoga, Les Mils Body Pump, Spinning, Abs, Boot Camp, Circuit challenge, etc. People who attend group exercise classes are supportive and encouraging.

This is Lauren Dalton from the Drexel Recreation Center on group fitness.

If you have the opportunity to try one jump on it, and be sure to tell the instructor that’s it’s your first class and address any concerns that you might have. If you bad knees, wrists, back, they will be able to give you a modification to an exercise so that you can still challenge yourself without it feeling like it’s impossible. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll eventually learn to be more graceful.

Next post: “Portion control: Seriously, that’s the entire meal?!”

Setting Goals: I can beat that

So losing weight is hard, right?! Why is it that you never see a program geared toward gaining weight?  Gaining weight is easy, thanks to evolution, our bodies like to store extra fat in case we run into some kind of famine, and it’s really hard to get rid of that extra weight with Darwin’s apes on our back!

I decided that 2012 is going to my year to finally lose that baby/winter weight that I’ve been meaning to get rid of for the last 7 years, so I’ve enlisted the help of the Drexel University Center for Integrated Nutrition & Performance (CINP) as well as the Drexel Recreation Center to help me achieve my goals.

Just before the holiday break, CINP announced that they were going to be holding an 8 week weight management program starting January 2012.  Taking that as a sign that I found my new year’s resolution, I registered immediately.  Prior to starting we needed to have a fitness assessment, if you’ve never had one of these, please know that they are almost as a personal as giving blood, there are no secrets left, and what happens during the assessment stays locked up unless you choose otherwise.  Definitely get one though, it’s a great starting point, and it will put you on the right track to fitness, but we’ll get more into that in a later post.

Week one of the program we talked about setting goals, diet goals in particular.  We were told that our goals need to be more than just a number on the scale.  They outlined for us S.M.A.R.T. goals: Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.  Now I’m thinking, I want to lose 30 pounds, but that goal is not smart enough for this program and I’ve got homework to do.

The next part of the class talked about Choose My Plate. A while back the government changed the food pyramid, you remember that from grade school right? No? Maybe this will help to jog your memory “You are what you eat”   They didn’t really change anything but make it vertical instead of horizontal, but the Choose My Plate initiative is designed around this update to the food pyramid, and it preaches portion control within a well rounded diet.

They take us to the ChooseMyPlate.gov website, and the first image I see is Michelle Obama. Michelle is the spokesperson for the program, and she’s always on the Disney channel, or making the talk show rounds promoting a healthier lifestyle. This woman is in ridiculous shape, her arms are so ripped, I bet she could break walnuts with her biceps! And she has to be, right?! She IS the first lady of the U.S.A., she has to be tough, and that got me thinking about my goals.  I’m a Philly girl, born and raised. Now, I don’t know where you’re from but around here we like to size each other up.  We eyeball each other’s physical traits and secretly wonder who would win in a fight. Hey it passes the time, don’t judge.  Now I realize that a part of my goal is that I’d like to know that if I met Mrs. Obama in person that I could look at her and think, “Yeah…I can beat that.”

Here is my smart goal for the next 8 weeks: To lose weight and gain fitness endurance through a well rounded diet and regular exercise.

Next post: “Squats…why do you have to hurt so much?”