Ladies... How do you lose the thighs?!? page 32

[Leida]

I don't think I am mentally ill.

I have never failed to make time for anything I wanted to do or had to do. Neither I am obsessing about my body image. This forum is about fitness and nutrition so I speak to that and to what I do about it and what challenges I have encountered, overcame or failed to overcome. I doubt I will find much audience to my pondering about the upsides of getting another 2 colors of x-mas cactus this year to complete my x-mas cactus collection in a thread dedicated to finding a fitness program that is the most efficient for a woman with larger thighs. (Anyone collects X-mas cactuses and africain violets here? I also branched out into hybicus a few weeks back. It has a bud, so I am all on pins and needles to see what color it is)

The question of how to reduce body fat while not impairing the upper body muscular development is of a great interest to me. And, yes, I experimented with a number of approaches. Don't think it makes me a crazy person, because I have abandoned every approach that caused suffering or interfered with the rest of my life. I feel that a woman at a normal weight should be able to discuss her body fat percentage without being sent for a psychiatric evaluation.

Anyway, did a 40 min kroll yesterday, pretty cool. I can't believe how much improvement I got with the simple tips from the 4 Hour Body. Those tips fixed the way I take the breath (I was trained to race after all), and I think all my lifting contributed to the stroke being really strong. I gotta ask my hubby to video me to see if the stroke is in a good shape (though yeah wrist was not optimal but should be Okay tomorrow). Now it is to starting work on flips & counting laps to judge improvement. I wonder if I can make it to 1.5 K mark in 30 min - that's my first goal. I am trying to figure out how much swimming could make that difference (20% of efforts giving 80% of the results in 4 Hour Body).

[sbhikes]

You need a better therapist. Sorry to be so harsh but the way you fill up the message boards with such achy posts about your horrible slathered-in-fat body and your character flaws causing you to eat fruit (the horrors), well, it makes MDA forums kind of a sucky place to be. I start to feel bad about my own body, worse than I would make myself feel if I kept to myself. You are older than me, you lift way more than me, you're way thinner than me, you have children and a nice husband. I'm younger, I struggle to barely lift anything and I'm left feeling like death warmed over for the effort, I never had children, I've always been fat with no neck and still am, I have a mean boyfriend that I am only a thin shred of something away from hating. That you can be so miserable and I can feel overall pretty darn happy and even excited about my life and success has to say something about your mental health (or maybe mine?)

[Leida]

No, you choose to think that I am miserable and that my posts are filled with ache. You dismiss anything to the contrary and keep hanging on the negative. I think you might want to put me on the ignore list or something, 'cause you are obviously upset and stuff.

[zoebird]

No one asserted that you were mentally ill, either.

When I read your posts, I see a lot of suffering. I don't know if you *agonized* over finding two cactuses for your collection in the same way that you describe suffering in these posts: character flaws, how you are slathered in fat (and various other body-hate/shame phrases), and so on.

I'm apparently not the only one who sees this. So either ALL of us are "reading into" what you write, or you are not communicating clearly, or you are communicating clearly from your experience and this is your actual feelings and we are seeing what you are saying accurately and asserting that it's . . . not normal (which is different than mentally ill).

There is a big difference between "interest in this" and "the *i hate my body* tone of your posts." And then followed with the assertion that these various inabilities are character flaws (or that we think it is, or that I'm somehow saying I'm 'better' than you because of what I'm doing, etc).

I mean, I obviously have an interest in a lot of these various topics -- since I've been around for a while -- and yet I do not communicate any notion that I hate my body, or that I'm suffering such that people would say "wow, zoebird, that's not normal thinking."

You can take or leave this, but it's going to keep coming up until you either A. communicate differently/more clearly (ie, if 'we' are reading into things, then perhaps how you are writing things is not accurate) or B. figure it out for yourself such that you are feeling and thereby communicating differently.

----

When I swim, I prefer to swim in sprints, rather than straight laps in 30 minutes.

[Leida]

I will do swim sprints as well, maybe once a week. I like doing it in fins, that's a logistic problem since I get to lag the fins around, or they freeze in the winter in the track.

What I am interested in with the swim is replicating the thermic impact of swimming coupled with the steady resistance of water. That to me implies a steady state swim for a 30-40 min on average. When I trained as a kid, we swam 60 to 90 min 6 days a week, and I am reading that adult athletes swim 2 hours a day. Now, that's the swim as the main focus. As a support, I am figuring to try 30-40 min, 4-5x a week & see if there is an impact.

[zoebird]

When I was a kid, we did stroke training in sprints for about 45-60 minutes. And, as an adult, I just mirrored that training when I did the triathlon training.

Our common training in high school swim team was:

200 warm up any style slow pace

2 x 100 free
2 x 100 breast
2 x 100 butterfly
2 x 100 back

Then we'd do a series of 100s of just kicks/just arms often with drags (little foam things that you hold between your ankles). So, it would be those 4 strokes, 100 each arm then 100 each legs -- equalling another 200.

Then we would do a 500 as fast as possible in freestyle

then start the cool down which was a slow 200 any style

then we would have a finish of a slow 100 any style.

I did this for several years after -- picking up the speed and slowing down the rest time in between sprints such that the whole workout would be about 40 minutes, and then i started adding more distance. Right now, I don't have pool access, so i don't do the laps, but probably will in years to come.

I never swim with fins. The bother me. But, to increase drag, I would swim in hosiery or a t-shirt (that seriously increases drag).

The other thing to think about, though, is that swimming can prevent the "lean look" in general because the cold temps tend to have the body keep on a little extra fat. It's just one of those things. It sort of works different than thermogenesis as far as I can tell.

[paleo-bunny]

No, you choose to think that I am miserable and that my posts are filled with ache. You dismiss anything to the contrary and keep hanging on the negative. I think you might want to put me on the ignore list or something, 'cause you are obviously upset and stuff.

+1. You have always come across to me as being a very positive person, Leida. I hope you stay that way.

[sakura_girl]

I think you come off both positively and negatively, like any normal person, Leida. I appreciate your openmindedness for trying different things. I just wish you gave chocotaco's suggestion of taking a year off "dieting" in general to heart

[magnolia1973]

I think some of the disconnect is that you use a really "female" way to relate about your diet. I have a very lean male friend who experiments and has talks about diet, but he'd never call it a flaw or envy someone over a food based issue. He is very clinical. He is obssessive and has the body to show for it, but he is never going to express any level of self hate over failure.

I think online, we tend to be either more arrogant or self depracating than in real life. There are days I get annoyed at myself for food decisions and days I'm glad I ate the salted caramel... I hope that in real life, everyone has the capacity to enjoy food and eat in a relaxed manner that enjoys the food and nourishes the body.

[twa2w]

A few points:

-if you weigh more, but have the same BF% as someone who weigh less, you are ahead in the game, because that means you carry less fat. Where looks are concerned it's BF% that counts, not sheer mass.
.

Not sure if this is what you meant to say but it doesn't make sense to me.

if you weigh 100 lbs and have 12% bodyfat you have 12 lbs of fat.
if you weigh 200 lbs and have 12% bodyfat you have 24 lbs of fat

Either of these people may or may not look better than the other person depending on their height, muscle and fat distribution. Even two people with the same % bodyfat can look extremely different. I am tall and slim - I have a friend who is quite short but muscular. We have the same % body fat. Some women carry their bodyfat on their hips, some on their tummy and some all over.

Also your body shape and look can change without your bodyfat % changing much if at all - this often happens as people age and hormone levels change.

You are what you are - do what you can to improve yourself then accept yourself.

Cheers
J