At times I allude to the fact that I can (physically) be all over the place in a week but not really give any idea of what that looks like. It is not unusual for me to go from a meeting in the morning with someone at Panera, to lunch at a great salad place with another person to an afternoon meeting at Starbucks with someone else just to round off the day. My entire week does not look like that as I spend a significant amount of time on the phone, but I can have a day or two to be like that once or twice a month for sure. As crazy as that sounds, it makes for great people watching and a few great stories peppered in between.

There is a really cozy café type store that I tend to frequent a lot because it has some really good soup. The only drawback of this place is that it is a little too cozy: the seating is very close. When I meet with someone, I have zero idea of what we’re going to talk about or how it’s going to go down and it does not matter if it is the first time I’m ever going to meet with them or the thirtieth. I do not dictate the conversation, whoever I am with does. Trust me when I say there are never any awkward moments and we never run out of things to talk about but I have learned in my old age that your everyday conversation reveals more about you than any “philosophy” that I may come with trying to sound educated. If I shut up, you reveal. It works well.

However, there are times when I may ask a question or poke a stick in something that it is a loaded bee hive and you burst forth like the Hoover Dam. It is never my intention but I don’t apologize for it happening either. Clearly we needed to go there and it always ends up being worth the tissues. With that being said, I never think about the people sitting around us and I never wonder if they are paying attention to us because normally, they are not. But on this particular day, there was a woman, we’ll call her Rosy, who was very much interested in the conversation I was having with a client.

“Excuse me.”
“Yes?” I said in a very warm and inviting manner (big mistake because she took me up on it).
“What do you do for a living?”

I sat there for a solid two minutes thinking…what *do* I do for a living? What in Heaven’s name would you call this? At this time I am sitting across from someone who is looking for an entire box of Kleenex, never mind just one, and I have a woman who looks like Blanche from the Golden Girls shaking me down for info. So I kind of did a soft shoe because I have no idea where she is going with this.

“I’m… an athletic coach and nutritionist… I guess. Although… I am not actively coaching right now and I do not do nutrition…in the traditional sense.” I need you to know that that sentence came out of my mouth like I just got caught nude in a car parked on Lover’s Hill or something. What was my gig? You would have thought that I had 2 kilos in my bag with me and she was the Feds. Ridiculous.

“Oh. Good to know. I knew it was something like that. I am a counselor myself and I could just tell that you were in that line of work.” She sat there smiling at me…awkwardly…for a while…anybody?

She was sitting across from an older gentleman who I think was her husband. She was decked out in the latest Lulu outfit and looked quite fit for an older woman. She was definitely in her mid sixties, I would say, and either just came from the gym or was about to head there. She went on to explain that she counseled women with eating disorders and thought what I did (I said more after I stopped feeling like I was Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct) was really interesting. Our conversation, which by the way was intermittent because in between all of this I was still sitting across from someone (!!), started out light but then it took a crazy turn and I sat there thinking to myself, “Should I ask my client to move over?”

She launched into how she loved the place but the soup had way too much sodium in it (it does not, it is all made that day on location so it is not laden with MSG or other preservatives) and how she needed to avoid sodium because it was so bad for but it was okay because she had already worked out for the day so she had sweat and a little bit of sodium would be okay but that she didn’t want to put on any weight and you know how bad sodium is and…DEEP BREATH…

Who has ever seen my blank stare? Yeah…in full effect at this point. This begs the question now, ‘Who is the client? Her? Or the people she counsels? And what does that session look like?’

Did I say anything? What?? Are you smokin’ crack?

No one is harder to counsel than other health and fitness professionals. We are on the front lines doing personal work in spite of our own personal failures. We have to look like we have it all together even though we do not…not even a little bit. The thought of opening up to someone who is your peer and saying that you need help—or better yet, even admitting you need help is pure heresy. Do not even think about it in this industry. If you want a good idea of what I am talking about, go to a personal trainer’s conference and watch everyone jockeying for position that they know more than the guy next to him. It is like crabs in a bucket each pulling the other one down to get on top (I am only referring to the participants). The saddest thing about that, though, is that every trainer needs a trainer. You cannot be good at giving advice if you suck at taking it. I have two very strong women who speak into my life weekly and I will never give them up. One of them gives me the hairy eyeball while the other gives me the silent treatment. I love it and I love them. If you help people in any capacity, make sure you are being helped yourself because you need a place to dump all of that angst. It is hard to work through everyone else’s stuff all week long and not unload some of that somewhere. Ask me, no really, pleeeaaase ask me how I know? OY!!

Tomorrow, via email, I will wrap this up so be sure to check for it. Not sure what’s coming next but I have two cooking in my brain now. Just need some titles…haha!! Woop woop!!

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Yesterday we tackled what you needed to do physically to get through the STA. Today, we are going to talk about it emotionally. I am not going to go into too much detail because I would rather cover this more comprehensively at another time but you will get the gist of where I am going and it will give you a few things to think about in the mean time.

Scenario #1 Having to lose weight again within one year of a 10 to 15 pound weight loss.
Pro: This should not be earth shattering in terms of losing the weight again. It is very doable.
Con: You will have to work harder than you did the first time and that is always a bummer.

Things to consider:

1. The weight comes off easier the further you are from the date when you stopped dieting. If you entered into maintenance in April and gained the weight back over the summer, you should not have a hard time come December or January if you follow the guidelines I outlined.
2. The older you are, the harder it is and the longer it takes. Each time may look different so be ready to “re-learn” your body all over again.
3. The way you gained it makes a difference as well. A slow creep is easier to take off than a 2 week bender that happened a month after you entered maintenance.

I find that this is the least debilitating situations out of the four groups. Typically, this did not come about as a “grand revealing” so you don’t have to do the “grand veiling” 6 months later. Most of us who take off ten pounds, just take off ten pounds and there isn’t much fanfare about it. Maybe someone notices and compliments us here and there, but if it took a while, it most likely didn’t cause a commotion. Where the problem comes with this group is that they keep losing the same 10 pounds over and over and over again. This brings on a sense of failure, futility, frustration and guilt that can start to take on a life of its own and also become habitual. I can honestly say that some of us would not know what to do with ourselves if we didn’t have “10 pounds to lose” but if that is the case then I would seriously beseech you to look at the underlying feelings that are causing that craziness.

Scenario #2 Having to lose weight again within two years of a 20 plus pound weight loss.
Pro: If you are closer to the two year mark there is hope.
Con: You will most likely be forced to go extreme to take off the weight if you are impatient–which pretty much describes most of us women.
Things to consider:

1. You lost a good amount of weight and you will not get it off the second time without a fight.
2. Before trying to lose the weight, get all of your ducks in a row in terms of eating and having a rhythm. This means trying to regulate your eating right where you are. Don’t restrict calories, just clean up the diet. Give your body some time to get into a healthy rhythm before putting it through the rigors of dieting again. Usually, when we get off track our normalcy goes with it. Restore that for at least a month before starting on yesterday’s guidelines.
3. If you gained back 20 some odd pounds in less than a year, then it will take an act of nature to get it off again in a year without some sort of extreme measure. Can you do it in 2 years? Yes, you can. But less than one year is going to cost you.

This is a hard one to get through emotionally. Twenty pounds is noticeable and you feel naked before friends and family. What is the hardest, though, are the declarations you most likely made to yourself and others that now you have to live down. Things like “I will never go back to my size { } ever again” or “You just have to make healthy choices” and so on. Insert whatever glib statement you want but many who lose that amount tend to become overnight nutrition counselors to everyone else so when they fall…they fall hard. My weight in last 2.5 years has fluctuated more than the Dow Jones off a bad Tweet. I went for 5.5 years without being able to lose a pound to fixing some major hormonal issues that caused me to drop weight in five seconds flat. So yes, I could now lose weight but I, also, could gain it back faster than I have ever seen before and the roller coaster ride that I went on trying to find a balance was not fun. I have a very different body post apocalypse and I have learned much in terms of the emotions that go with not being able to control your body’s response to things. It will be really tough to go through this if you had much to say about your weight loss to others. To the degree that you were vocal will be the amount that you will struggle on the rebound. If you were quiet, though, your second journey will only be physically hard and only slightly emotionally laborious. Sounds exciting.

Scenario #3 Having to lose weight again after a 12 week hardcore diet countdown of any kind losing ANY amount of weight.
Pros: You haven’t had the new weight long enough to become too emotionally attached.
Cons: If you lost it that fast, EVERYONE knows and is now focusing their attention on you and you feel as naked as a baby’s bum on a changing table.
Things to consider:

1. You have to give yourself at least a 4 week break before you can try to lose weight again. If you dropped into a 15-20 pound weight loss over a 12 week hardcore restrictive diet, you most likely rebounded HARD—meaning almost overnight–when you gained the weight back. This is THE hardest weight to ever take off. Your body is tired from dieting and you are SO over it by this time. Hormonally you need to stabilize before expecting your body to respond.
2. You must drop your cardio immediately and stop dieting. The guidelines are essential—follow them.
3. This was to be expected and I am not sure there was much you could have done to prevent it. It is…the nature of the beast. Knowing that, do not beat yourself up over it because it only wastes time and you don’t have any to waste.
4. You will not rebound this hard the next time you diet. Your body will get used to the dieting and you will be that much wiser the next time around. Trust me on this one.

See my series called Failing Forward to see how this goes down emotionally.

Scenario #4 Having to continue to lose weight when you have a sizable weight loss goal of 30 pounds or more.
Pros: If you have been doing this incrementally and nothing extreme, you just need a refeed here and there and you’re good to go.
Cons: It is a long haul and you need a good team behind you and that’s not always available.
Things to consider:

1. You have to be the master of change: diet, workout, perspective, etc.
2. Cut your cals last. Since you have a long way to go, a cut too deep too soon = plateau.
3. You will lose on the scale, in the mirror and in bodyfat. Do not declare a plateau until all 3 of those have stopped moving.

You need a professional team of rah rah shish coom bah’ers on your staff. They need to stoke you like a coal fire in a steam engine train. There is nothing more to this. If you have to lose more than 30 pounds, you know what I am talking about. Put your nose to the grind, ignore all the people who feel like they are your “Jillian Michaels” for the moment and just keep it moving. Make sure you have a sanity check in your life from someone who knows what they’re talking about and just ride out the storm. Cool? Because the only thing that is going to take you down is taking your eyes off of the road. Looking out the window will cause a crash. Keep your eyes focused on the road.

Oh my, ladies.  Well I’ve lost about five pounds just getting worked up this week over this.  Whew!  Thank you for the workout! Haha!  Next series is a short one…Look for it on Tuesday…Cool?  Woop woop!!

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Today can best be described as ‘rolling commentary’. For those of you who have ever had a conversation like this with me all I can say is, “Thank you for still staying in touch with me.”

Shell Shock
I remember the first time I realized I couldn’t lose weight right away and that where I was, was where I was going to stay. I am not sure that there are words to describe that feeling. Shell shocked was about the only words I can find for you. But you will run the gamut in terms of feelings when you realize that the golden scepter of weight loss has been removed from your life.

Your first reaction will be to put everything back into action again. In other words, go back to the diet you were doing, the same amount of cardio, the same supplements and so on. My reaction?

It’s not going to work. In fact, you will feel like a hamster on a wheel because you are going to be working really hard but getting nowhere. You will go weeks without any weight loss and you will end up exhausted before anything else. If you don’t get really desperate and think about a fat burner, liposuction or gastric bypass,then you will most likely cut your cals down to just sniffing your food and boost your cardio up to endurance training levels.  That’s a surefire way to enter in no-man’s land–fast.

Flim Flammed
Once that doesn’t work, you’ll turn the internet. You will read somewhere that you are not eating enough or that you dieted so long that you are now in “starvation mode” and what your body really needs is calories. But you’re too scared to just increase your cals so you find one of those really “book smart” gurus out there to help you. He tells you that yes, you need to eat more and puts you on a high calorie diet and says, “Don’t worry. This will get your metabolism going so you can take off the weight again.” My thoughts on this?

DON’T DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is he reputable? I’m sure he is.
Is he brilliant and beyond reproach? I don’t doubt it.
Is he right? Technically.
So what’s the problem? HE’S A MALE!!!!! And he is leaving out the most important thing you need to know: YOU ARE GOING TO GET FATTER BEFORE YOU GET THINNER!!!!! That may not seem like a big deal to a random passerby but I have not met ONE of you who are willing to take one for the team like that! Guys don’t care about the things that we care about. I would rather have someone do a cavity search on me with studded gloves before I’d EVER willingly gain a pound! Am I driven by my body? NO! You all know that—especially so if you’ve met me in person—but I’ll be darned if you send me ten steps back to go twelve steps forward! It takes a LOT to lose weight. Heck, I was gonna say it takes a village for a minute there because it almost seems like that but do not ever, I mean ever assume that that weight is going to come off just because some really knowledgeable guy says so!!!!! Let’s look at why:

1. You know you didn’t tell him all the reasons why you are where you are. To be thoroughly truthful, you probably haven’t told yourself either!
2. You know you are not stable minded when you weigh more than you want to weigh. You will only half follow what he says so you’ll only get half of what he promised.
3. You know he can’t really *make* it come off and since he is giving you that assessment off the bogus information you gave him in the first place, you are playing Russian roulette. Get out now.

So let’s say for afro’s sake that you didn’t go up anymore weight because that just didn’t sit right with you. What do you do? And when you *do* do it, what does it really look like while going through it?
1. Open up your diet but do NOT increase your cals, yet. Whatever you took out to get there, put back in immediately. This includes but is not limited to dairy, wheat, eggs, starch, fat, taste, enjoyment, fun, crunch, salt and anything else that makes you smile when you think about it. Stop eating Styrofoam lying to yourself saying that this is ok. Girl, please! It’s most likely why you fell off the wagon so fast in the first place.
2. Make sure you have a way of tracking your intake that is reliable. I get it…tracking is not fun. It is time consuming and laborious but so is dragging around an extra 15 pounds in your back pocket. Suck it up and get over it (the harshest thing you will ever see come off my keyboard. Sorry, but please do it.) You did not have to do it to get here, but you will have to do it to get out of here. You must know what you are taking in every day. Eyeballing is not going to work the second time around.
3. Start first with a refeed. Do not ever increase your cals for a sustained amount of time but definitely eat a ginormous amount of food for 3 days or so to at least signal your body that you are about to do something. Just coasting into a diet is not going to work and I cannot tell you how many times we try to get away with this. Crazy. What constitutes a lot of food? Around 2300 to 2500 CLEAN cals for 3 days. Doesn’t sound like a lot? Try it. You’ll hate food by day 3 because that’s a lot of food.
4. Whatever way you dieted before, do something completely different this time around. If you were lots of protein and greens before with no starch, you’ll be moderate protein, some green veggies and some colorful ones, too, with a bit of starch here and there. It cannot look the exact same as before. YOU MUST CHANGE IT to get the scale to move.
5. Start with the cals you started with the first time you dieted assuming you were dropping them as you were dieting. This puts you in a caloric surplus but not so much that you balloon up like a tic on a dog.  Do not…I repeat…do NOT gain a ton of weight back thinking it will just “come off”.  You better make friends with that weight at that point.  Start talking to it.  Cuz it’ll be with you for a while! Just sayin’.
6. Leave cardio where it is. Don’t touch it. Whatever you’re doing now is fine. This is a diet issue.
7. Make lifting more like cardio. Stop the splits because you are wasting your time. Get to moving the big muscle movers and for Pete’s sake, increase the amount that you lift.  Or…hire a trainer who will work you hard during this time.  The point here is you must sweat, work hard and lift heavy and most of us are not motivated enough to thoroughly change our workouts like that.
8. Wrap your mind around the fact that this isn’t Kansas anymore, Toto. Gone are the days of 1 to 2 pounds per week. What you will most likely see is:

• Non linear weight loss. You’ll go 3 weeks without losing one pound and then suddenly drop 2 out of nowhere.
• You will get smaller before you get lighter. Don’t ask me why I have no idea but this is fact.
• You will feel like everyone in the world is talking about you. This is not true. Only a few are talking about you and you most likely talked about them so all is balanced in the world again.
• You will not be as hungry. This is a tough one because there is a fine line between stuffing yourself and shorting yourself.  My first instinct is to tell you to eat but if you have to unbutton your pants like it was Thanksgiving everyday, something’s up and I’d pull back.

9. BE PATIENT! If it took you 8 weeks to lose it the first time, it will take you 12 weeks the second time. You will have to put in about 1.5 times the effort to get what you got before.

Wow. I actually tore up some of the fabric on the chair in my office and it is now securely tucked away in my butt thanks to my anal sphincter. I think I’m gonna go for a walk now and let off some steam. Scare the neighbors a little. Hahaha!!

Wrapping it up tomorrow! Woop woop!

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I’m not sayin’ I’m upset or anything but I’m definitely spitting while talking today!

(On side note, I used to wear my hair like this but what a beast of a hairstyle to keep up! UGH!)

You are not general public. Period. Do not forget that as I go through this series because I have to constantly remind women of this who venture into the land of clean eating. Once you get to a certain body fat (I will qualify this in a later post), none of the diet rules pertain to you anymore; you have now entered into the clean zone. Why do I bother to say this? Because much of what I am going to say is going to seem counterintuitive to what you know is out there or it is going to seem like I am making it up because I have nothing better to do with my laptop keyboard. Another reason is that there is very little research on this—if any at all—because no one studies the lean community. (When’s the last time you saw a study that said, “Lean Girl Struggles to Lose 10 Pounds to Get Back to Pubescent Weight”? Don’t wait around for it.) Studies are done on the obese (and by companies who want to push a product or an agenda) and you cannot extrapolate their results to you because they live in *excess* and you live in a constant famine. Hormonally, you are a very different woman and depending on how much you lost, your body may not be happy about it.

The number one question rolling through our minds is always ‘how did this happen?’ Although the answer is quite obvious, as you lift your face out of a bag of Lindt chocolate truffles, it really isn’t that clear cut. First, you never ate Lindt truffles before you lost the weight so now why the obsession? Second, it’s more than the fact that you like them—you’d sell your first child on the black market for them–and if you don’t have kids, you’ll sell a niece or a nephew because it is all about the [insert food here] right now! Where did that intensity come from? Third, you are not pounding them down in outrageous amounts. Yes, it is more than you should be having but it’s only once a week or even less so why the extreme weight gain? And lastly, why aren’t you doing anything about it? Why is it that the more you try to stop, the more you eat?

Before I can get into the details of what it looks like the STA (second time around), it is imperative that we define just who we are talking about for this series. Yesterday I gave you 4 possible scenarios as to what constitutes the STA, today we are going to tackle scenario #3. Let’s assume that you have just done a 12 to 16 week diet. You lost anywhere between 12 to 15 pounds. You lost it either easily or quickly—or both. Let’s also assume that you ended at a weight that you have not been at for a long, long time. And that you threw out all your clothes at the larger size because you swear you “will never be there again”. OY! Now that we have all that established I ask again…what happened?

1. You lost too much too soon. Honestly, saying it that way is sort of inaccurate because what really matters is not how fast you lost it but how extreme you had to go to lose it but for this blog post, it’ll do. Losing that much weight that fast causes your body to go into “oh heck no” mode and it begins to fight you but not like it does if this was for an event, this is a different fight. It is more akin to a scale creep than a scale leap. Because you are not losing this for a show or an event, your cortisol levels will not be sky high since you are not anticipating anything. Therefore, you notice that although you crave sweets, it is not an all consuming vacuum like it once had been but the fight to stay at that weight is there and you feel it. Your body wants to go back to where it was and that desire of your body depends on how long you were there.
2. You didn’t own the weight. This picks up where I just left off: you have to be at that weight for at least 3 months before you can truly say that that is now your new weight. And let me be even more real here: you really have to be at that weight for at least 6 to 9 months before you can breathe a sigh of relief. This does not, by any means, mean that you have to keep up with the level of dieting that you were doing to get there but it does mean that you need to be extra vigilant for a while.
3. You bounced out of diet mode instead of easing out. I see this a lot. It was an inconvenience in the first place to diet, it is an even bigger inconvenience to keep it going. Making the time for the gym, keeping up with the dieting, being a nuisance at events that you had to go to. When it was all said and done, you couldn’t wait to be “normal”! Not to mention, life got hectic so you had to cut a few days here and there off of your normal gym time as well as a few weddings happened and so on. You woke up one day and just said fahghettaboudit. And you did.
4. You didn’t deal with the issue that made you gain in the first place. I’ll admit…this is a tough one without first adding a qualifier. Let’s assume that you have dieted before and this “new you” has happened in your lifetime already. In fact, over the course of 5 years, it has happened a few times but this time is the best you have ever looked. In light of this, we can honestly say that you haven’t dealt with the issue that keeps causing you to self sabotage and gain the weight back. Dieting is exhausting and every time you gain the weight back, you care less and less about doing it again. Not only that, but you begin to “live” in diet mode and that is debilitating.
5. You live in diet mode. You should have seen this one coming just from the way I ended that last sentence. At some point this gets old. We never know when it is going to hit but when it does, watch out! This is sheer rebellion, ladies. “I am tired of being on a diet”. However, you are not on a diet any more but your mind is! You perpetually live in restriction. Even if all you are doing is eating clean, in your mind you’re on a diet. So many of us have ritualistically embraced the concept of eating clean: Tupperware, cooking ahead, no processed food and so on because we joined the clean community in hopes of changing our physiques. But over time, we need to shift from this being a means to an end to this being a way of living in our minds, hearts and actions. I guarantee you that most of you believe that you have because you have lived this life for so long but I am telling you just from talking to you that you have not. You have “accepted” the ritual as your reality but deep down, you long for the old way of living of eating [name your food of choice here] and make do with the new way of living. This is why when you are left on your own in front of a buffet for five minutes, you cut up like a clown at a Big Apple Circus premier. We will talk more about this.
6. You really don’t care. What?! Did I just say that you really don’t care after you paraded yourself around the gym like a float from the Macy’s Day Parade? Yup. I did. And look me in the eyes and tell me differently…I dare you. Hairy eyeball ‘n’ all. Talk about a real let down dropping 12 pounds, looking awesome, loving the way you feel and realizing that your significant other is still a pain in the butt, your siblings are all still dysfunctional, your job is still demanding and you still don’t have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of. Why flippin’ bother? You thought it would solve all your problems. Now you’re the star of Facebook but you still have to collate all the pages of the 2013 Budget Review at your firm. Fun.

Those are 3 technical mistakes and 3 emotional mistakes that we make that cause us to go from glory to gory in all of a few months. Next up is what it looks like when you are actually dieting because it is very different from what you expect and it can drive you bananas (although I hope not on a no starch day because that wouldn’t be cool.

See you tomorrow! Woop woop!

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Who wishes they were in my basement with me when this guy showed up?  He was HUGE. And he made loud clicking noises.  Ewww. Now this is a beast.  YUCK!  Thank goodness for hubby and the 6 pound med ball he dropped on it!  But then it stunk up the house for at least a day. Blech!

Clean living sounds like the most simplest of things to do; that all you have to do is stop eating processed food and voila—you are all set. Your body comes in line, your happiness is all set, your bills are paid…I mean seriously, look at the ads for living the clean lifestyle. You would think this is America’s best kept secret. On the one hand, it is. I would not go back to the way I used to eat before 2002 if you paid me. But on the other hand, I wish people told me back in the day about food cravings, mood swings, texture issues, loathing protein, loving protein, loathing green veggies, craving green veggies, metabolic chaos, hormonal troubles and the topic I’m covering this series: losing weight “the second time around”. There is so much more to eating clean than is ever talked about and I pray to cover every little dirty secret of the industry if I possibly can because most of you think you are nuts, when really, you are experiencing clean eating.

I am sure that I speak for many of us when I say nothing is more upsetting than the big diet countdown that leads to a fabulous loss of weight—at least 10 pounds or more—only to be dampened by a not-so-fabulous gain of weight less than a year later. So please allow me to set up the scene:

• You are not out of shape by any means, but you feel as if you could lose at least 10 pounds without looking like a crack fiend.
• You go to your gym at least 5 days a week and missing a workout is rarer than a Sasquatch sighting.
• Not only are you the mayor of your gym, but the front desk staff checks in with you if they do anything like change the TV settings or enact a new gym policy.
• You show up to family functions and everyone knows that you’re the “healthy one”. They ask you things like, “Does this meet your approval? I got it just for you.”
• It is not like you truly know that your girlfriends are jealous, per se, but you definitely can tell that they are secretly rooting for you to gain a pound or two and certainly don’t want you to lose more.

This is your life before you even lose any weight so what do you do? You get your act together and lose 15 pounds off of an already good looking body. It wasn’t easy. You fought for it tooth and nail but you did it. This may have been your introduction to true clean eating or maybe you have been eating clean for a while and simply got your head out of your butt and made it happen. Regardless of which one that it was, you got it together in such a way that now you look amazing and just about everyone on the planet (or so it feels) notices. This, ladies, is the beauty.

Everyone had something to say about it:

• Gym goers named a piece of cardio after you because you look so good.
• Your mother “just knows” you’re doing drugs. How could you be so skinny?
• Your girlfriends now give you attitude over anything that you say. Somehow it’s all about you. (Although…they may be right!)
• Your partner may or may not be onboard depending on whether he’s all about “skinny” or “meat on the bones”.
• The mailman asked if you if you lost weight! I mean seriously!

For a few months you are walking on air. As far as you’re concerned, life has never been so good and you can’t remember a time when you didn’t feel insecure about your weight. This is great…kind of… While you were busy losing weight, life was unhappily going on around you and somewhere in your euphoria you woke up and noticed. Your boss was laid off and now you and your co-workers are picking up the slack; your mother got ill—nothing life threatening, but now you are taking care of her and her affairs; you and yours truly are suddenly fighting and you have no desire to hang out with your girlfriends right now. It has only been 5 months since you lost 13 pounds but somewhere in all of this hoopla, you have gained back 10 of it. You’re actually not sure if it is a full ten or not because you are afraid to step on the scale. And you can’t really tell in your clothes because you immediately went back to the baggy pants just in case someone notices. Your gym buddies can’t really help you because now you don’t want to go back to the gym. Now what? Do you crawl under a rug and disappear? Do you change gyms? Of course not! You simply lose that weight again. If you just get right back on to cardio and fire that ole’ menu up again, you’ll be back down to your diet weight right away. Right? Wrong!! This, ladies, is the beast!

The most hardcore eye opener you will ever have is that you cannot lose weight the ‘second time around’ without either taking an organ out to make the scale drop or selling your soul to the cardio demon just to take off an ounce. It is the most helpless you will ever feel when you have to diet the second time around. So what defines “second time around”?

Having to lose weight again within one year of a 10 to 15 pound weight loss.
Having to lose weight again within two years of a 20 plus pound weight loss.
Having to lose weight again after a 12 week hardcore diet countdown of any kind losing ANY amount of weight.
Having to continue to lose weight when you have a sizable weight loss goal of 30 pounds or more.

If you have any of those scenarios in place right now, this is the series for you. We need to talk about 4 things:

• What got you here in the first place.
• What it looks like losing again because it is very different than the first time.
• How to get past the emotions you go through looking “fabulous” one day to looking…well…like what you used to the next.
• The rules and guidelines of dieting the second time around.

I am not sure I am going to go in that order, but I do know I will cover all four of those topics. This is a big deal because how you handle this determines whether you keep your metabolism healthy or not. Most girls get themselves in trouble here and almost all girls think that they have “metabolic damage” when they are stuck here which is pure nonsense. Trust me when I say, when you have true metabolic damage, you have far more indicators than gaining back a few pounds. You typically have an apocalyptic event on your hands.

Hang tight for more. See you here tomorrow! Woop woop!

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Prideful

– satisfaction or pleasure taken in one’s own success or achievements.  Not a bad thing for sure until it drives us to hurt ourselves, destroy our true sense of worth or worst of them all:  hurt others.

The “I Know This Works” Diet

What is a good example of this diet? Whatever diet you did when you think you looked the best.

Why do we think we do this? “Oh, this is the only thing that ‘works’ for me.”

Why do we really do it? Because we think, “Oh, this is the only thing that ‘works’ for me.”

If you are two months into a weight loss plateau and you will not change what you are doing simply because ‘this is what got me to where I wanted to be in the first place’, then I am talking to you.  Taking starches out of your diet does not give you instant weight loss, ceasing all cheating does not make your body shape up overnight and splitting your meals into 5 meals from 4 meals does not put you on the fast track to the cover of a magazine.  There is so much more to physique trans4mation than ‘the last thing you did that worked’ and you are cheating yourself out of a new experience simply because ‘you know this works’.   There are three things going on here:

1)      Arrogance: No one knows your body better than you do, as far as you are concerned, and you know what you are doing because you do it for other people. Maybe so but every coach should have a coach, just like every doctor has a doctor.  Get over yourself and learn something new (this said by the former ‘most arrogant nutritionist in the field’) so that you can at least get off that weight loss plateau and before you do something harmful in desperation later.

2)      Fear: The last time I tried something new I gained 10 pounds and fought like a dog to get it off again.  No thank you.   I know this works and I’m sticking to it. I hear you loud and clear here and NO ONE knows this fear quite like me…BUT…it is still a cop out.  Your body does not change because of what you are doing; it changes because of the *change* in what you are doing.  If you do not change, it does not either.

3)      Pride: I actually do not want to change because then I would have to tell someone what is really going on with me and I’ll open up my closet full of Jurassic Park bones. Listen, after reading this site, you have to realize that we all have closets full of pterodactyl bones and it is A-Ok over here.  Feel free to mingle with us loonies.

The Celebrity Diet

What is the origin of this diet? Facebook:  Following the diet of the latest and greatest fitness model.

Why do we think we do this? Typically we start this because we are new to the industry, in love with {insert name here}, naïve enough to believe that they do what they print in the magazines and it is going to work for us.

Why do we really do it? We want to prove to ourselves that we can hang with the best of them even though up until then the only thing we’ve ever “denied” ourselves was humility.

Almost all of us have the same story in terms of our paltry beginnings:  we were always the best at {insert here}/very athletic/very smart/the obedient one/the dare devil who got good grades/worked 2 jobs/started a social campaign to save the whales/discovered America so when we graduated college we were looking for a way to stay athletic/top of the heap/challenged beyond belief because we over achieve at breathing and denying ourselves food and lifting until we pop a hemorrhoid seemed like the best way to do it.  I know, I was like that, too, so this is a common one for all of us in the way beginning:  we find the best looking fitness model/competitor with the most stringent diet and we just follow it.  We may follow their whole diet, the fact that they will not eat {insert here}, how many days out of the week they lift or what have you.  But what is the most notable thing about us doing this diet is that *we* think it is hard and that somehow there is something glorious about us because we can hang with such and such and do what such and such is doing.  Eventually we grow out of this but some of us are still doing it, not by following a person, but by following the *culture on a whole*.

Following the things your favorite fitness model puts on her Facebook is like eating the display dish at your favorite deli counter: both scary and dangerous all at the same time.  Not only is she not telling you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but she is most likely sponsored by someone to tell you all that she did and she is not disclosing that to you.  I am saying this unequivocally right now that this is not about anyone in particular nor am I pointing a finger at fitness models or competitors.  This is about you—and just you.   The internet is a scary place to be when you feel “less than”, when you are vulnerable or when you just gained 3 pounds for no particular reason so you are reaching for straws.   Seeing her Facebook page is like an ex-alcoholic walking into a 24 hour lounge with open bar.  Even if you don’t want to participate, the draw is too much for you to resist when you are down and out.  Think about who you are allowing your mind to be filled with everyday and ask yourself, “Are they helping me or hindering me?  Do I feel good about myself when I am done looking or do I start a barrage of negative self talk right after seeing her bum hoisted up on the bathroom sink with her thong in full view?”

When we stalked them as a particular person, it was easy to spot later on that we had an issue and had to stop.  But when we stalk them all as a culture, it is less obvious and we may not see the things that we are doing that are hurting us.  She diets for a season and a reason, you diet so that your physique is pleasin’—it is not the same.  To hold yourself to that standard of discipline week in and week out is unrealistic and to compare yourself to her is mind numbing.  I totally get it, though, she *looks* like where you want to be but trust me, even if you hardened up your butt cheeks to the point of cement like status, you are still married to the same man, living in the same house, going to the same job and eating the same food.  This is a dangerous diet to be doing.  Knock it off.

The “I Am Superior” Diet

What is a good example of this diet? Dr. Mercola, PhD based diet programs, The Program

Why do we think we do this? We are being mindful of our metabolism; we are nurturing our thyroid; we are on top of our hormones, all cancer and food intolerances.

Why do we really do it? We are showing off.  Plain and simple.  Look at me, I am doing this elite diet by this PhD guy and his intelligence has now wafted on to me somehow.  I am leaner and smarter all at the same time.

We have to be really careful, ladies, we are different.  We diet harder, we workout harder and we achieve more in the day than the average doobie.  Some of us get up at the crack of dawn and do in one hour what many may not do in a month.  Those around us get “it”: we’re driven.  But let me let you in on a secret:  you will not always be.  And when your drive fades or the reason behind your drive shifts, you will be left with a shell of who you used to be and a whole lotta people celebrating your crash because you spent a good amount of your time letting them know how superior you were when you were fit and in shape.

We do not mean to do it, but we do.  We make our families feel bad, our co-workers insecure and our significant others feel like schleps and in all honesty, that is their problem to deal with for sure.  However, we do not help by the way we do things:  making our Facebook pages a place to lecture people on their bad habits, spouting off information that sounds super intelligent but does not help a soul, showing up to the gym in our latest LuLu outfit complete with our program from our ‘top coach’ or being the one at the party who has to set everyone straight on the latest food findings.  There are other little things that we do that may seem more innocuous like never letting anyone ever see you eat something bad, never allowing people to see you “up a few pounds” because you will not go to the gym until you are “back to normal”, never admitting to a friend that you cheat even though your fingers are orange from the bag of Cheetos in the car or basically not ever being “real” with anyone.   All of these things scream, “Look at me.  I look good, I diet harder, I am more disciplined and I am smarter than you.”

What makes this diet so hideous is we did not choose the diet or the online coach because we needed them, we chose them because there was someone we knew who we “didn’t think was up to par” doing the same diet/using the same coach as us and we immediately thought, “I need to up the ante.”  Our fuel for changing and seeking this person out was simply that he/she is at the elite level and we wanted to be associated with them lest the nubie dieters get the idea that they are on the same level of us as dieting and working out.  At this point, we are probably just graduating from the The Celebrity Diet and we need to distance ourselves from the crowd of those “who do” from those “who think they do” so we hire the intelligent guy, keep it hush hush, stop talking about our workouts and food because now it is proprietary (because he’s the only one who knows about oatmeal) and we begin to insulate ourselves from everyone else because…well…we think we are more special.  Wow…did I just say that?  I did.  And it hurts my heart to know it is true.  We can insert whatever we want in there, too, because it is not just dieting.  It can be gyms, trainers, exercises, food brands and so on.  There is an undercurrent of snobbery with us and like I said above, people are waiting in the rafters for us to fail and we eventually do.

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Reactive

– pertaining to or characterized by reaction.  Whether you are reacting to what you have seen or heard, trying to avoid an adverse reaction to what you are not admitting to or trying to snuff out continuous damage done to your physique by your bad habits, it is all in some way reactive.

Oh no!  I think Jodi just threw out her back while actin’ a fool listenin’ to your new diet request.  WOW.

The “I Watched Too Many Documentaries” Diet

What is the origin of this diet? Skinny Bitch, Omnivores Dilemma, Food Inc., Forks Over Knives

Why do we think we do this? Because we are on the cutting edge of health information and we need to set an example for our families and clients.  We need to be aware of what is in our foods.

Why do we really do it? We’re scared crapless!  Oh no!  We’re gonna die!  Aaaahhhhhhh!

I do not know why y’alls do it to yourselves.  And then I don’t know why you then turn around and do it to me!  Stop watching these films and reading these books!  It makes you psycho.

We all have things we do not like about ourselves and we make it a point to work on trying to change them.  One of the things that drive me crazy about myself is that I am physically dramatic whether I want to be or not.  Yes, I am dramatic when I tell you a story or I want to explain something to you and that’s a good thing, but it becomes a bad thing when you come to me with your new food kick you are on because you watched one of these documentaries:

“Jodi.”  The minute you say my name like that I tense up like my 7 year old does when he hears me coming up the basement stairs while he is illegally fishing for snacks in the cabinet.

“I was watching {insert scary movie name here} (instantaneously I just convulsed in your presence) and I had no idea that {insert some God awful thing here like cows were fed pig eyeballs for 4 weeks to fatten them up so they could be slaughtered with acid, fed to llama, regurgitated, breaded and shipped to school kids in Idaho}.  I will never eat {meat, starch, sugar, veggies, worms, etc} again.  Can you help me put a diet together of wheat grass, tempeh and locusts?”

At this point, I have rolled my eyes so hard that I have most likely sprained my Levator Palpebrae Superioris behind my eyeball, sighed in such a manner that I have expelled every inch of air from my lungs and my afro has grown at least 3 inches off of my head into a full blown peacock plumage.  I am visibly not on board with anything that you are saying and I am about as professional as a chimpanzee running around in IKEA.  I admit this fully and I apologize if I have ever done this to you.  But, please, stop watching these things.  If you are not set on changing the world through an aggressive social campaign, spare yourself the drama and just eat whatever food you are now afraid of while praying that it won’t kill you.  I say this because very few of you are truly prepared to become responsible vegetarians. What you actually become is an “I-refuse-to-eat-meat-a-tarian”, which is just a physique nightmare waiting to happen.  Suddenly your meals become cheese, lots of starch and the two vegetables you still eat (because you know you hate asparagus, green beans and broccoli now). Holy hodge podge of food, Batman!  Stop making me show my behind in public by acting out this way.  Just say no to these films!

I do realize that none of you would try to eat brickle every day and pass it off as okay.  But you see, I love brickle…and I do have a picture of chocolate and wine but…I love bricke…and I wanted to see it again…so…I added it.  Sorry.  It’s all about me right now.

The Hypnosis Diet

What is the origin of this diet? Wine is good for you.  Chocolate has antioxidants. It’s just a little milk in my coffee.

Why do we think we do this? We want to prove we can keep these things in our diet because we have restraint, unlike general public dieters, we are different.

Why do we really do it? Life is hard right now and we want what we want when we want it so we convince ourselves that the thing that makes us feel best is actually good for us. And it stokes our sense of adventure by making us feel like we can get away with something.

What I love about this diet is that this is the hidden diet.  This is the thing that you are doing that you think that I don’t know that you are doing that you are secretly hoping you do not have to confess to doing while we are still friends.  Whatever this thing is, it is so good and so important to your well being that you would risk a few pounds on the scale for it and you do not care.  It would take a force of nature to get you to give this thing up.  You would have had to have watched one of those scary food documentaries and find out that your beloved thing was made with squid guts from the sewers of a third world country and even then you would try to find an organic version of it.  You love it and you have convinced yourself it doesn’t have calories or any kind of impact on your goal whatsoever.  When I finally approach you about the thing that you think that I don’t know that you are doing or you finally have to confess it because the pressure is too much to take anymore, you present it to me in 1 of 3 ways:

1)      The scientific approach: “Jodi, studies show that having molten lava chocolate cake once a day enhances your love life and you know my husband and I are struggling.”

2)      The humanistic approach: “Honestly, Jo, this was the only thing keeping me sane during company layoffs.  I just figured that if it kept my cortisol levels down, it was helping. It was just a jar of nutella.”

3)      The defensive approach: “I figured you knew.  How was I supposed to know I shouldn’t be having a quart of cream and a ½ pound of sugar in my 7 coffees a day?  Jeesh!”

Face it, ladies, you don’t stand a chance against this foe.  Look at it.  It’s creamy and yummy and…and…

The Paying Penance Diet

What is a good example of this diet? Juicing, cleanses, any kind of “jump start” plan, shakes and also really hard, psycho workouts that defy human nature fall into this category, too.

Why do we think we do this? We’re cleaning out the toxins, we need to get our heads focused, we need structure, we love to sweat.

Why do we really do it? We put ourselves on punishment for some kind of out of control behavior that we feel we should not get away with so “pat me on the head for disciplining myself”, please.   In fact, you will try to talk about this diet like you deserve it for the awful behavior you have been engaging in.

If you have ever had the luxury of having this conversation with me regarding one of these diets, you now know you will never ask again because I will give you the hairy eyeball times two and force you to fess up.  It starts out this way:

“Jodi.  What do you think of {insert latest hot product name} cleanse/shake system/cat-o-nine tails? “

Sudden silence–enough for me to make you uncomfortable.  Steely stare.  No facial expression.  You start squirming.

“No, I know what you’re thinking.  I just want to try it out.”

I break the silence:  no inflection in voice, quiet, resolute.

“Why?”

You’re nervous. “Well, because I heard it really helps with cleaning out the body.”

“Oh?  Why do you need help with that?”

After what seems like hours but really was no more than a 2 min exchange you begin to babble…

“Honestly, Jo, I am just a mess right now and I need something to get me back on track because I can’t stop eating {insert whatever here but usually full of sugar and involves some form of peanut butter—I know of very few women who can stand against peanut butter} and I just want to feel clean again.  I feel gross.  Work is a mess and I am tired and I am not working out the way I want to and I am up 3 pounds and I eat it every flipping day and…and…and..”

…so you somehow think I am going to say it is ok for you to enter into an incredibly negative cycle of out of control eating and then “cleansing” it away.  Umm…yeah…no.  But what *is* good is that I just stared at you in such a way that you are now thinking about what you just asked me and realizing the root of your folly.  Bullseye.  I joke about this one today, but I bring it up again in a different way a little later on and all humor is gone.  Knock it off. {hairy eyeball}

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I’ve changed.  Yet again, I have changed.  I know, I know…I disappeared last summer and I am resurfacing today because this current series was nagging my fingers to type (and because about 20 of you called/texted/emailed/sent smoke signals saying ‘write or else you die’ but that’s neither here nor there) so here I am typing away but I have to tell you…I’m different.  At first I didn’t think that it made a difference that I’m not the same person anymore but how many of you already know how silly that statement is?  Then I thought that I would just throw out a few series here and there and I would figure it out as I went along.  Well, that didn’t happen either since I have now had the longest writing gap to date in the life of Jodiojo.  Now I am at the point of simply fessin’ up to the fact that I am not the same person but I have no idea how to package all that rattles around in my brain and get it to you in a way that makes sense so that I don’t come off like some kind of internet troll with an ax to grind.  Please bear with me over the next five days as I tell you how my metamorphosis affects the information that comes out of this blog.

There I am.  Eighty five and still talking someone off a Dr. Mercola ledge.

First, let’s talk about the fact that I’m older—and I don’t mean my age–I mean in my worldview, the way I think and process information–I’m like an old lady.  I am much older in the way that I view things but in my everyday life I feel like a kid again.  I describe it in that manner because I feel like I’m getting younger everyday (I’m so much happier, life really is awesome and if I could, I’d skip around my house a few times) but my professional disposition is that of an 85 year old woman.  I have no interest in the ‘latest happening’.  If it’s on TV, it’s not on my radar.  Period.  If you saw it in a magazine and want to know what I think, you’ll have a better chance of getting me to tell you that you can drink alcohol for the next 3 weekends in a row—and good luck with that.  So I’ve become this sort of…curmudgeon.  It’s terrible.  Yes, I know…you already thought I was one.  But if you can believe it, I’m worse!  No kidding.

What is worse is that I no longer have a passion for the nutrition and training industry.  It’s gone.  Dead as a doornail.  Sigh.  ALRIGHT!  That’s a little dramatic and far be it from me to be dramatic but the passion has severely waned.  The thing is, losing any part of my heart for the industry on a whole is monumental because I have lived nutrition and training for the past 16 years (and seeing that I just turned 21…haha!) and I cannot even imagine doing anything else since I “get” it and I can do it in my sleep.  It’s almost frightening.  Most of you know that I started out as both an engineer and group fitness instructor, dropped the engineering to stay home with my kids and voila! my career began.   It was fun, new to me and a perfect fit seeing as I had a biology concentration alongside my engineering degree from college.  However, the industry of old is not the industry of new and I can no longer stomach where it is going.  It’s a shame.  At one point there seemed to be dignity to the craft and people honestly gave a crap but now, not so much.  There’s a trainer on every corner but they are less and less interested in being educated, never mind certified; there’s a new diet on the market every month; and there’s a ‘new reason’ every ten minutes as to why the country is obese/dying of cancer/leprous/you-name-it and typically it’s wheat/gluten/dairy/meat/starch/sugar…whatever—gimme a break!  So much of it is fear mongering and whatever is truth is so massaged in favor of whoever is presenting it that it is hard to believe it for face value.

But it is more than just the charlatans that have moved in and set up camp on the internet or the latest fads on the market, it is the overall mindset of the consumer, too, because we are the ones giving these folks a voice.    If you do not have a gimmick, if you are not pushing the latest craze or if you refuse to put a gratuitous butt shot on your site, you might as well give it up in terms of being heard.  Please let me say, I do not mean being “heard” is about being “liked” by everyone on FB or having a super popular website because that’s not even in my vocabulary.  If I cared about that, I would be on Twitter, FB, Pinterest, Instagram and so on vying for attention like everyone else.  I am nowhere near that stuff; I am too busy sitting in my basement office loving life.  No, what I mean is you are not heard by the people you are working with simply because they themselves are drowning in life. The enemies are typical:  the news, the internet, the hot chic on FB, the latest myth in Oxygen, Oprah, Dr. Oz and so on.  The more I think about it, they are actually not enemies but more distractions.  The real enemy is what’s going on in our minds, and getting someone to see that takes time and patience that I no longer have in that capacity.  If you want me to sit with you one on one and walk you through a nutrition concept, I have endless patience.  If you want me to argue with you about why someone else can do something that you can’t (like lose 5 pounds while eating junk), I’m going to have to bow out on that one—I am fresh out of patience.  In terms of other trainers, you have to be willing to argue with whatever camp that may be out there pushing whatever the latest and greatest discovery is and if you notice one thing about Jodiojo—I am not into that at all.  I refuse to argue.  I’d rather pluck the tiny hairs on my toes with an old pair of pliers before I’d ever waste my time arguing over the metabolic impact of eating a sleeve of Oreos versus the slow response of serotonin when doing a squat. (I so just pulled all that out of my butt–with those pliers.  Thank you for humoring me.)  You get my point, though.

You know those aren’t my toes right? The question is: did I pluck my toe hairs first or pull that out of my butt? Hmmm….

When did the industry change like this?  I feel like I was on a deserted island for 10 years and this is what I have come back to.  ACK!!  However, the real question is:  How does this affect Jodiojo?  I’m getting there…  There’s more…lots more…hang tight.  So glad to be back.  Woop woop!

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Today we’re at a “park”.  Nowadays, parks come in all forms.  I miss the back-in-day parks with the dangerous 20 foot slides that were metal and the speed limitless merry go rounds that could shoot a kid 40 feet if spun the right way.  Ahhh…the good ole days of broken bones and knocked out teeth.  Today, however, is much different so you have to work really hard to find a park with these 3 things:

• Monkey bars
• 100 feet of open space
• A taller than normal slide

GROUND RULES

• Don’t go to the park and workout during mommy hours.  Do I even need to say that?
• Do not do this in minimalist sneakers if you are new to them.  Try crosstrainers instead.
• Use creativity to add to this workout.  You may not have my park at your disposal.
• Avoid running in the park mulch if at all possible.  All kinds of hidden horrors are lurking in that stuff.  You’ll sprain an ankle in a minute messing around with that maniacal mixture.
• Get used to people staring at you.  They’ll most likely be sitting on a bench with a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee wondering what in Heaven’s Name you are doing.  Just keep moving.
• You can find any of these exercises by googling them.  I have used all standard names.

DYNAMIC WARM UP

1. 30 sec pogos
2. 5 push ups (Alternate #1 and 2– 5 times.)
3. 10 Flings
4. 4 Groiners for stretch (hold them 3 sec each)  (NOTE:  I do the version that is one leg at a time—not 2.  It looks like a runners lunge but harder.)  Alternate #3 and 4– 3 times.

Do the following in place one right after the other, ten sec each:

1. High knees
2. Butt kickers
3. Squats
4. Alt side lunges
5. Mtn Climbers
6. Gate swings (do these half time for warm ups)

Repeat 3 times

Here is your dynamic “stretch”:

• Leg swings in all 3 directions
• Hip hip in place
• Round house kicks in place

THE WORKOUT

• Starting with the monkey bars:  jump up and do 1 pull up, drop to the ground and do 1 push up.   Do this twice.
• Stand up and perform:  4 jump squats, 8 squats rapid fire, 4 split jumps (T)otal, 4 alt fwd lunges
• Repeat this sequence for a total of 4 times through.

If you have an open and free parking lot or field space:

• Sprint for 15 sec.   (STOP AND NOTICE HOW FAR YOU HAVE GONE) Back pedal back.
• Now sprint half that distance, touch ground, sprint back to start and touch ground again.
• Do that 3 more times for a total of 8 half sprints.  (Remember that with me, 1 direction = 1 time.  Therefore, there and back = 2.)  Perform 20 russian twists, 10 plank jumps and 3 inch worms.  Repeat this sequence 2 more times.

Go back to the monkey bars:

• jump up and do 1 pull up, drop down and do 4 prone jacks.  Do this twice.
• Stand up and perform:   4 (T) alt side lunges with a plyo hop in the center, 4 lateral bounds, 4 rotational lunges
• Repeat this sequence for a total of 4 times through.

Go back to where you were doing the half sprints.

• Shuffle the half distance.  5 burpees
• Shuffle back.  1 rocket jump/8 mtn climbers (5 X’s)
• Repeat this entire sequence 5 times.

Head to the slide…

• Run up an extra long slide.  10 squats at the top (there should be a platform); be bold here:  no hands if you can do it or super long strides.
• Walk down the same slide, or another slide that is close, slowly.
• Turn around (or run in a loop if there are 2 slides) and repeat this for 10 reps.

Go back to the monkey bars:

• Jump up and hang there.  Perform 5 leg raises.  Drop down and sprint 5 sec away.  Touch the ground and sprint back.  Repeat this until you can’t do any more leg raises, you puke or you cramp up in the leg raise and become stuck in that position til a 5 year old helps you.  Ok, I was kidding about the last one but do let us know if you puke. J

COOL DOWN

Walk around slowly for 3 min.

Perform the cool down from the track workout in the place where you did the half sprints.

Tomorrow we conquer the beach.  WOOP WOOP!!

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Yesterday was about the basics.  Today is about faking like you know what you’re doing on the track.  Ready?

BREAKING IT DOWN

We are currently on a state of the art track.  Well not physically, but I want you to envision it because it’s important for today’s post.  The track is made of that red, foamy rubber stuff that feels great on the feet; the middle of the track is covered in turf instead of grass and has the little black rubber beads in it, too; there are bleachers that are in good shape and are made specifically for running them because they are high, with evenly spaced stairs; and there is a bathroom within 5 min of walking to it (ESSENTIAL for a woman).

I am going to take yesterday’s basic workout and add a ton of fillers to it.  Depending on what I add, it will lean either more to the conditioning side (lots of plyos and rest) or more to the cardio side (not much rest but much less intensity).  I will color code this because the anal engineer in me says that that makes the most sense.  You don’t want to know what the lazy woman in me said.  I told her to shut up for your benefit.

Red = added to yesterday’s workout

DYNAMIC WARM UP

1. Performed in a straight line, over 15 feet or so.  Backslash BP means to return to start with a back pedal.
2. 8 “runs”—each way is 1 run—get faster with each run so that the last one is just short of a sprint
3. High knees/BP
4. Every 3^rd high knee/BP
5. Butt kickers/BP
6. Every 3^rd butt kicker/BP
7. Skip/BP/10 mtn climbers (from the down position, pop up into skip for height)
8. Skip for height/BP/10 mtn climbers (from the down position, pop up into skip for distance)
9. Skip for distance/BP/10 mtn climbers (from the down position, pop up into skips with a twist)
10. Skips with a twist
11. 5 push ups/Shuffle/5 push ups/shuffle (“pop up” from the push up like a burpee; do not get up slowly and shuffle)
12. 3 groiners for stretch/Carioka/3 groiners for stretch/Carioka
13. 5 gateswings/side run/5 gateswings/side run
14. 180’s
15. 360’s
16. Fast walking lunge
17. Lunge and rotate
18. Frankensteins
19. Prisoner walks
20. Round house shuffle
21. Monster walks

The purpose of this warm up is two-fold:  warm you up dynamically in a way that mimics the movements you are about to do and get you used to flowing from one move to the next.  For example, when you back pedal back it is very natural to go right down to the ground at the end of it.  This puts you in the position to do a mountain climber.  From the down position of a mtn climber, you are almost in the “start block position” and you go right into a skip.  This forces you to learn how to go from floor to fast, but we’re not doing in it into a run because we’re not Flo Jo so back it down.

WARM UP SPRINT—this doesn’t change

1. Start at the beginning of the straight away
2. Run at a fast, but easy, pace half of the distance of the straight away.
3. Walk back to start.
4. Do this 3 to 5 times depending on how long it takes you to loosen up and feel comfortable.

SPRINTS AND SUCH

Start in start block position, run faster speed than the first set of sprints for the entire length of the 100m strip.  Walk back.  Repeat 2 more times.

HERE ARE THE FILLERS

Conditioning:

Rest a full 3 min. from the sprints.  Really do this or you’ll be junk by the end of the second set of sprints.  Respect rest periods.

Head to the bleachers.  Run up/down the bleachers 2 times.  At the bottom do 10 squat jumps, 10 squat thrusts and 10 prone jacks.  Repeat 1 time.  Rest 3 full min.

Begin another set of sprints again only this time, empty everything you have into the pavement.  You will only feel fast for the first one.  You will get progressively slower after that.  Rest fully now.  However long it takes to come down to normal breathing, take it.   You’ll notice this will get better every week.  Head to the turf.  This should be a football field marked off in 5 yards.  Find a vacant “10 yard space” for you to perform a 5/5/10/10.  You are going to perform an exercise for 5 yards Right, 5 yards L, 10 yards R, 10 yards left.

• Sprint/sprint/sprint/sprint
• Shuffle/shuffle/skip for height/skip for distance
• Bear crawl/bear crawl/carioca/carioca
• Sprint/BP/Sprint/BP

Rest 1 min.  Do this in sets of 4, do no more than 3 sets as a filler and use anything you want such as leap frogs, side runs and so on.  Get creative.  Rest fully again.  However long it takes.

Last set of 3.  Feel this one out.  If you feel good, do them full speed.  If you’re new to this, just “run fast” but don’t empty your tank into the track or you could get hurt.  Rest fully.  Head to bleachers.  This is a combo filler.  Run up the bleachers 1 time.  Come down, run to the turf.  Peform the following crank 1 time:

• 20 rapid fire squats
• 10 jump squats
• 10 squat thrusts
• 10 burpees

No rest AT ALL b/w exercises.

And then run 4—5/5/10/10’s.  Rest 2 min and repeat the entire sequence again.  If your bleachers are short, double the amount.  Time for cool down.

Cardio:

Rest a full 3 min. from the sprints.  Really do this or you’ll be junk by the end of the warm up.  Respect rest periods.

Run a 400.  Not all out as a sprint, but at a good pace.  Rest 3 full min and repeat one more time.  Rest 3 min.

Begin another set of sprints again only this time, empty everything you have into the pavement.  You will only feel fast for the first one.  You will get progressively slower after that.  Rest fully now.  However long it takes to come down to normal breathing, take it.   You’ll notice this will get better every week.  Run the bleachers 2 times, come down and run across the track (meaning across the turf) to the other side and back at 70% of max.  Repeat this for time (5 min), not reps.  Rest 3 min.

Last set of 3.  Feel this one out.  If you feel good, do them full speed.  If you’re new to this, just “run fast” but don’t empty your tank into the track or you could get hurt.  Rest 3 min.  Run the curve of the track, if they have bleachers on each side you’re going to loop the track by doing the bleachers on the straightaway, a good run on the curves.  Do this for 10 min. People will think you’re nuts—tell them you lost your wallet while running.

Same cool down as yesterday for both conditioning and cardio sections.  We’ll change that next time.

Do you have all that?   I know it’s a lot.  I’ll elaborate more when we head to the park tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

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