h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was wondering if this thread had fizzled out now Kelli's got married, but I realised that she would not just stop there, having been so successful.

I am still trying to take the first step and remember to drink water. I get about 2 glasses down and suddenly it's bedtime. Until I stop work (in about 15 years' time) I can't see me getting any sort of routine into my eating habits.

Due to acquiring heelspur (does one acquire them?) I've seriously cut down on long, brisk walks. I had no idea that I burnt quite a lot of calories that way until I started putting on weight...

I've also had to give up Flamenco dancing (once a week) for the time being - what I need is some other form of exercise where I don't need to put my foot down. I've been thinking about taking up swimming, but I haven't gotten around to it yet... *sighs*

I did feel inspired to go swimming about a month ago, but of course the place was closed due to refurbishment then - typical, isn' it? And now my SAD is beginning to set in, making me feel very lathergic.

Titania - what is a heelspur? It doesn't sound very nice

I go to the pool twice a week - monday night for swimming lengths and friday night for aquafit. I go with my neighbour who is also trying to shift a bit of weight (and doing very well!). It is perfect to go with somebody else because we drag each other along when one of us doesn't feel like going, we don't want to let the other person down by backing out. We started off doing thirty lengths of the pool - we swim side-by-side so we can chat as we go and at the end we git in the pool jacuzzi for 15 mins as a reward. It has really made a difference to my neighbour's fitness levels and we've now worked our way up to 50 lengths without any stopping, so by now it is actually a good workout for me Aquafit is good fun and it is usually the same crowd there so even if one of us can't make it the other usually goes alone.

Is there anyone you can get to come with you?

TC, the day they release a side-effect-free wonder drug that lets me become slim and yet eat all the curry and rice I want without having to exercise is the day I'll stop coming back to this thread Until then I'll still be slimming and working out

And anyway, it isn't only me that posts here *waves to the other losers*

Heelspur:
http://www.footcaredirect.com/heel.html

I'm currently waiting for an appointment to have my foot x-rayed to see if I've actually grown a spur, or if it's just the ligament tissue that is inflamed.

Company? No one of my friends lives on this side of Stockholm, and I see my neighbours so seldom that I often get the feeling I'm the only person living here (in a house with 11 flats).

*puts on thinking cap*

Is there a pool near work where you could go with a colleague before/after your working day, or even at lunchtime?

Does the pool near your home offer something like my aquafit class? If you started going along maybe you'd meet some people there to encourage you to come along?

I know only too well how hard it is to motivate yourself on your own - would it help to decide on an evening to go swimming and tell us? So we can all ask you how you got on and jolly you along to the pool?

Good suggestions Kelli - thanks! I'll see what I can come up with!

...Which reminds me, it's time I need to be getting to the pool to day, if I'm going to have time to swim.

After a day that involved a snickers bar and some lemonade with dinner, I did 23 minutes on my elliptical trainer thingy, for the first time in a while, something like 7.5km.

Just wanted to tell you guys, also that I'm planning on doing it again tomorrow and may need some prompting after work..

cheers ismarah

I've never figured out how to set the electronics on the eliptical machine in the exercise room at the pool, and yet, I've been doing 20-25 minutes on it every day that I swim. I wonder how "far" I've been going on it?

Are you eliptical-ing fast? Or fairly slowly?

I seem to go a lot faster on it than the retirees I've seen use it, but not *nearly* so fast as a 20-something I saw use it a couple weeks ago. I don't think I can move that fast!

I use the eliptical trainers in the gym, I go reasonably fast (or at lest it seems so compared to those around me!) at between 150 and 180 strides per minute. I do this at a mixture of resistance levels (usually 10 and 8) for 28 minutes and I think this gives me around 5k of distance covered. I then do another ten minutes or so on another cv machine - my target is to burn 500 calories on the machines

Right, so I am a bit bored, at a loose end, and peckish. Help!

Well, lets keep you busy here then.

I'd estimate that I'm probably doing 60 full strides per minute (or do you count each foot indivudually? In that case, it's probably closer to 120/min) on the eliptical machine, but I'm not setting it up for any kind of resistance - the resistance of my own weight seems to be plenty right now! When I get off the machine, my leg/hip/butt muscles are a bit achey.

So then I still head off to the pool and it generally takes almost half an hour of alternating freestyle and breaststroke laps for me to feel fully loosened up and hit my stride. (stroke? whatever.) I swim for about 50 minutes total.

I could swim longer, but I've been going late in the afternoon (around 3), and need to hit the shower before leaving, because the chlorine buildup on my hair and skin is ridiculous as it is. Without a shower, my skin would crawl and my hair would be completely straw like! I need to leave by about 5 in order to get home in time to make dinner. I've been going that late because there's usually significantly fewer people there at that hour, and I can swim without a bunch of little kids jumping on my head, or retirees swimming directly into me, which means I can swim a little harder, rather than spending so much time carefully swimming around people.

I don't know if my legs/knees/ankles have been strengthened enough by all this to make it possible for me to do any significant walking during the day or not. I guess I could try... but I really don't want to, unless it involves walking at the mall or some big store. But then I tend to spend more money, which isn't good.

Our machines count each step (I think!) so you'd be doing a respectable 120/min here Sounds like you are doing quite a lot when you go - how often do you head down there?

I have a special swim shampoo to use that gets rid of the chlorine from the hair properly - I'd be having permanent bad hair days with out that

I succumbed - am eating an apple which I don't feel too bad about

I generally go 5 days a week, although all too often, I end up missing a day or 3 for one reason or another.

For instance, Monday I didn't go because my husband had a colonoscopy done, and I needed to be around to drive him home afterwards, then needed to stick around the rest of the day to make sure he didn't do anything dangerous after having had general anesthesia. Automatically, this week is cut down to 4 days, assuming nothing else happens to prevent me from getting there any more this week.

Next week is Thanksgiving, so I'll be at my Mom's (about 2-1/2 hours away) for at least Thursday, probably getting home too late on Friday to swim (the pool is at a motel, so it will be polluted with tourists, making it impossible to swim anyway), and probably won't have time to go swim before leaving on Wednesday afternoon so that I'm there in time to help her cook Thursday morning, so that'll be only 2, max of 3 days next week.

Then on the Sunday after Thanksgiving Day, I need to take my older daughter back to Uni, which is 7 hours away from here. Depending on how exhausted I am from all that travelling, I may come back home on Monday or just give myself a little breather, and wait until Tuesday to return. So maximum of 4 days swimming/eliptical-ing that week too.

I have chlorine removing shampoos... They don't do much good, primarily because I'm in the water for such a long time, so many days every week, and the chlorine is *extremly* high in their water. I suspect they keep it so high because it's a motel pool - I've noticed that motels keep the chlorine a *lot* higher than even local public pools do, probably because of the tremendous number of people in the water, doing who knows what in there.

I've started trying to scrub the chlorine buildup off with baking soda a couple times a week - Our hairdresser told me they use baking soda to remove the hairspray buildup on customer's hair who have their hair "done" once a week. They put lots of hairspray on it in the shop to hold it in place, then the customer often gives it repeated coats of hairspray during the week too. Anyhow, I figured if they could use it like that, I'd give it a try on the chlorine. Oddly enough, although it seems to help a little, when I rinse it out, there is an extremly acrid odor released. I don't know if this is because of some kind of reaction between the chlorine and the baking soda, or if the baking soda is just reacting with the shampoo.

An apple is good! Shouldn't feel guilty about eating an apple!

Well, it's good as long as your metabolism can hande that much fruit sugar all at once - mine can't, but as someone else pointed out, we're all different.

I've been thinking of setting some new targets for myself to aim at with myweightloss, now I don't have the wedding photos to worry about any more.

Have thought of one short-term one - christmas. I'm going to see a few people then who saw me at the wedding and don't want them thinking that I've been eating all the pies ever since! If I lose two pounds a week between now and then I can get about 12lb off, which would get me much closer to my wedding weight. So that is target number 1.

For target number two - I would have ideally have been just over another stone lighter than I was on the wedding day, so I'd like to get to there. J and I are planning to start a family soonish so ideally I'd like to get this weight off before we start trying to get pregnant. So.... I'd like to get to 10 stone seven by the beginning of May 2006 next year.

This means I have about 24 weeks to lose 32 lb. I feel motivated again now that I have got something to aim at and something to plot my prgess against

Our elliptical trainer(the Reeboky somethingy) has an LCD screen on it and it can scroll through level, time, calories, speed (in km/h?) and distance (I know that is in km) or it can be set to show only one thing.
I have an average speed of about 20-25 and spend about 20-25 mins on the thing. I don't know anything about strides though, never even considered that side of it.

Of course, my own exercise tonight got scuppered. We went to the flicks (orange wednesdays) and then had dinner afterwards. Then the requisite headache I often get from the cinema kicked in and I decided that paracetamol was the better part of valour and tomorrow would be enough. Hey ho.

I have this thing of cancelling something if I haven't done it and I just know I'm not going to and it does mean that I'm not constantly stressed about 'all the things' I haven't done. But it also means that if I write off a days worth of exercise, I don't feel guilty enough. I wonder how to sort that one?

Regarding the whole chlorine thing - my hair started turning a little green, just from the water in the UK (mmm lovely <sick&gt and my hairdresser was right annoyed with me before my wedding. However, my solution to it(other than loads of really good salon shampoo) was to go buy a swim cap. I don't know if people have been trying those already, but I thought I'd mention it. My reasoning was that I tend to be a morning-shower sort of person, but go swimming in the evenings, so I don't want to wash my hair twice in one day...

anyhow, I believe it is bedtime.

cheers ismarah

I actually timed my strides on the eliptical machine today... and it seems I'm actually only doing a maximum of about 84 per minute. That later slowed down to about 60 by the end of my session. Guess I'm just a slowpoke.

There are some women at the pool who wear swim caps all the time... but their hair still gets wet, even with the swim cap on, so I figured it couldn't be doing them much good. I may eventually give in and try one, although I *always* hated struggling with the things, especially when I was little and was forced to wear a swim cap.

I'm a morning shower person too, but there's still so much chlorine on my skin that I can smell it coming off my skin in the shower in the morning, even though I scrub thoroughly during my after-swim shower. Sometimes, I can even smell chlorine coming off my skin when I climb into the shower on Sunday mornings, even though I haven't been to the pool since Friday and not only showered after my Friday swim, but also on Saturday morning. They really have the chlorine in that pool *extremely* strong.

Right, in that case I only have one suggestion. Emigration!
As DT (hubby) can confirm, pools in Iceland are lovely and heated, some outside and none are _that_ chlorinated. I did look for their website to show you, but although they have content in english, they're very limited on the image side of things. Anyway, I doubt you'll be buying your ticket any time soon

cheers ismarah (it really really is beddy byes!)

So did you manage to get back on your eliptical trainer Ismarah? And if not will you be doing so tonight?

I'm in that picky munchy mood again, and this cup of tea isn't doing the trick...

Well, I lost 2 lb this week, was hoping for more as this was a 'first week' and I usually drop loads in the first week, then none at all in the second and third then a load more in the fourth week...

Am slightly scared that this 2 lb is my 'big drop' but fingers crossed for a bit more off by next monday.

I've got a pair of fluourescent, flashing collars for the beasties so I can walk them of an evening after work now, so that will get me more exercise and will stop me picking at stuff in the fridge until dinner time

Am determined to get as much off as I can by christmas!

k

Well, progress is being made, I lost 4 lb this week Was a bit surprised when I got on the scales this morning, wasn't expecting much as I had over the weekend, so am delighted to see such a big change.

Onwards and downwards, hope to see another two pounds gone by next monday

k