Due to interest from some visitors to the site for the Rock Bodies program shown on VH1, I went back to that site and grabbed their exercise list in an effort to provide more info so here goes:
Rockstar Workout*:
Start with a 500 Calorie Burn (on cardio equipment such as elliptical, treadmill, or stationary bike until 500 calories are burned)
Push Ups - 4 sets of 15
Roundhouse Kicks - 40 each leg
Punches - 4 sets of 100
Sweep Kicks - 4 sets of 40
Snap Lunges - 5 laps
Squats - 5 one minute sets
Triceps - 4 sets of 40
Leg Throws (avi file) - 4 sets of 30
Crunches (avi file) - 4 sets of 30
Sun Salutes - 5 perfect form
Follow with another 500 Calorie Burn
*I am not advocating this workout plan simply providing a recap of the workout that was shown on VH1's rock bodies as the fitness test the participants had to finish for their makeover. This should definitely not be attempted by someone just starting out with exercise!
If you are looking for information to get you started, the Changing Shape site has lots of information on different programs with animations of the different exercises.
Of course, the South Beach Diet is the newest craze in diet-world. If you haven't heard of it you probably avoid watching the news or reading anything even remotely related to health or fitness.
I had never really considered myself a fad dieter. I pretty much stick to a calories in, calories out approach. If I eat too many calories, I will not loose weight. However, I don't always put enough emphasis on what I'm actually eating-or how those foods make me feel.
What I do know is that I am addicted to carbohydrates. I'm talking about bread, pasta, candy. I pretty much center my eating around those types of goodies. Breakfast this morning? An English Muffin with lean deli ham and a slice of fat free cheese. I followed that up with a banana. Then an orange. Then lunch of couscous and a small pork chop.
Not terrible choices but not the best either. I do suffer some of the symptoms of over-carbing like getting a little sleepy after my meals. Watching my calories does work (I have lost the healthy 1-2 lbs the past two weeks in a row) but maybe I should think more about what those calories are.
Enter the South Beach Diet. Essentially I did this for the month before my wedding without even knowing it. I needed to drop some weight fast to fit into my wedding dress so I cut out simple carbs and alcohol and focused on lean meats, veggies, and nuts. Sure enough I dropped 7 lbs in two weeks and my dress fit like a glove. Thinking back on that time I didn't feel hungry and I didn't feel sleepy. A coincidence, I think not.
A good friend of mine is a medical writer and it is interesting to get her going on pretty much any subject. She has a caveman diet approach which is simply we should eat whatever we could have when we were living in caves - meat, fruit, veggies, and nuts. Not to say you can't indulge every now and then (which she does) but if you watch what you are eating the majority of the time-you'll feel better.
My co-worker just started South Beach and I have to say it doesn't sound nearly as crazy as Atkins used to sound (I say used to because recently the Atkins camp sent out a press release stating that it too recommends making good choices and therefore not eating a pound of bacon for lunch). Being more aware of how the foods I eat affect my blood sugar, and choosing foods that will have less of an impact seems like a healthy thing to do. So maybe, just maybe, this will be a good long-term plan for me.
However, in true dieter's fashion, I will be waiting until mid-February before I make any major changes to my eating patterns. I'll be visiting Inn at Little Washington for dinner this Saturday (no dieting there) and in three weeks I'll be heading to Mobile AL for a weekend of Mardi Gras celebrations (sorry, again no dieting) but usually I feel like I need detox after that anyway so the intro period may be just the thing I need to recover!
Yeah, that's me but it is starting to come back off. I peaked two weeks ago at 190! Yikes. But last week the scale was good to me as I weighed in at 188 lbs. Now today I weighed in again and was down to 186.4 lbs.
So, I'm definitely making progress. At home we have decided not to eat any junk and to limit alcohol until our trip to Alabama for Mardi Gras. This should really improve the look of the ball gown I purchased. I barely made it into the size 14 but three weeks can make a pretty big difference.
Well, I've eaten better... and I've eaten worse. My daily calorie intake each day has been somewhere in the range of 1500-2000. Yes, I know that is a huge range. I'm easing back into the low cal days of my past. Mostly I haven't been grocery shopping so I'm just trying to eat less of the higher calorie foods I still have in my house!
Working out is another story. Every morning I hit snooze and think "I'll go to the gym after work" then after work I think "it is too cold out-I just want to go home". I really wish I had some equipment I could use at home other than my workout videos. Maybe I need a Bicycle Trainer for riding my bike indoors!
While doing some major house keeping this weekend (thanks to my cable/internet being out) I re-discovered a training manual I pieced together in 1995 when I was in college. The binder consists of basic information on starting a running program, and lots of articles about racewalking. In high school I was a competitive race walker but after turning down an athletic scholarship I stopped traveling down that road.
I'm seriously considering it again. Contained in the binder was a body fat analysis I had done in 1991 in the summer before my senior year of high school. The result: 16.25%! Granted I would not expect to get that low ever again (and remember folks thinking I was too thin) but an average between that and where I am now would be lovely!
Funny, at 16 I had no worries at all about my weight. I ran and racewalked year round, and at the standard rural fare. No frozen dinners in our house-just a protein, starch, veggie, and bread at every dinner.
A very useful tool I also found was a suggested year-round training program with minutes in each target heartrate level broken out day by day for the year. With my new heart rate monitor that sure gives me something to strive for! I tried it out today when doing an aerobics DVD and it was pretty cool (even though I wasn't since I'm pretty darn uncoordinated).