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Go girl go! Try adding some stretches for those quads and ham strings and a few chair squats. You are going to make it great!!

Right there with you, Mary.... cheering section! Beginning IS the hardest part & even if I ever thought of quitting, the memory of new beginnings would keep me going just to avoid it :<}

Hello & welcome, Claude. Fine ideas there. I used the book to recover from being a different kind of 'wounded warrior' but, either way, it's sure a great one! Arlene

Congrats on all of that!! Many good years to come with a great program.

I couldn't do that, Wendy... my first reading was a public library book, lol.... good, sensible stuff, ain't it?

my current volume (I keep giving them away) sits well used and oft re-read or scanned for reminders and re-enforcements...

Arlene, I like your practice better than Dr Sear's theory. I am so fed-up with writers telling us what our bodies were designed or conditioned for. If we are to copy our ancestors we will have to give up wearing clothes, eating cooked food, limiting our families - and be dead in our 30s. My ancestors can't tell me how to live to be a happy hundred-year old - they never had the chance to find out.

I'm all for varied exercise at varied levels of intensity. I agree, pounding out the endless repetitive miles of marathon training is probably not the healthiest form of exercise, but if that is what lights someone's fire, so much better to do that than no exercise at all. Don't be fooled by the "people die running marathons" argument. Thousands of runners compete in big city marathons - in the nature of things, out of such a crowd, every so often someone is going to keel over. It would not be surprising if there were the odd death at every big marathon, but no such thing. If statistics were kept of deaths among those sitting at home watching, I bet there would be many more fatalities.

It just makes sense to me, Jim.... and your runner friend's input... it adds to my feeling that Dr Al Sears is definitely onto something. Thank you.

Interesting Arlene: My trainer believes in conventional cardiac work with alternate days of highly anaerobic body weight training. Heart monitor very important in these workouts. A good indication of fitness is to see how fast your heart rate comes down.
I have a serious runner friend (tried out for the 10K in '74 Olympics). who says that running marathons at true race levels absolutely destroy your body. He ran NYC in 2:39, took weeks to recover and vowed never to do it again.

I suggest you talk to your doctor BEFORE self-medicating. You really do need to know WHY your BP is up, not just try and force it down. And I agree with Arlene. Normal life in the West is almost designed to raise the BP. Buck the trend! Lots of exercise, gentle for now - walking would be ideal. Cut out as much salt as possible, which means reading the labels and avoiding fast food, restaurant food, bread, cooked meats etc etc. If that leaves a hole in your diet, good! fill it with high fibre foods - fruit and vegetables. If you are carrying any extra pounds - lose them. The dietary measures already mentioned may suffice to make that happen naturally. If you can do all this, your BP WILL come down. If it remains higher than it should be, you may need medication, but there is so much you can do for yourself first.

As we age more and more of us become salt sensitive, so that food that previously did not affect our BP now pushes it up. Maybe that has happened to you. Normal diet in the UK and US contains way too much salt. Avoiding it is hard, but the stakes are so high, I think it's very wortthwhile. Good luck!

I'm sorry for the fright, Scott... and the threat to be dealt with. Before looking at / taking herbs & drugs, I'd opt for the exercise and diet approach... and as Jim said, if you smoke... get away from it! Then, if I hadn't effected any changes on my own after a time, I'd be checked for underlying cause(s) and grudgingly do what my Dr instructed... that would likely be RX meds.

Smoking sure doesn't help your blood pressure problems Scott.

Congrats!!! A great decision. It's NEVER too late to re-start exercise and taking the reins on a quality life.
I'd like to know how you're doing, keep in contact.

Welcome Charles,

Always good to have a new member join the site. Keep building the exercise habit and before you know, you won't believe the transformation.

Best,
Chuck

Bully for you, Charles!! Great mindset... I'm with you. As far as blogging, only about a year ago I was the new kid on the blogging block, lol... it gets to be fun!

Thank you!

Hi Christine: I use a PolarF4. It is very reliable. I am not familiar with strapless HRMs. Mine provides the HR throughout the workout as well as the max and average HR over the period of the workout which I find is the most useful info. The cost is about $100, but if you are serious about fitness a HRM is a must.

I think HRMs are a brilliant idea. I have one strapless and many with strap, both simple and complicated - can't remember offhand how many! They are all useful in different situations, but if you, like most sane people, want just one HRM then it has to be with strap. The strapless gives a snapshot of your heart rate at one moment, and you must be stationary for it to work. Its value is similar to that of taking your own pulse with your own finger. The snag is, if you are taking your HR during or just after effort, by the time you have stopped and the HRM has come up with a figure your HR will probably have slowed considerably.

The HRM with strap gives a moving film of your HR while you are actually exercising as well as before and after. I agree with your preference for a simple one - I hate the idea of a machine beeping at me every time I slow down and the calorie counters are unlikely to be accurate. I started with a very simple one that showed nothing but my HR. However, later I graduated to one with a memory that could be made to record laps as well as the whole session. Getting used to working it was painful, but now I would hardly go out of the door without it.

The memory is great for a number of reasons. One, one can't be looking at one's HRM for every moment of the session, and if it has no memory it is easy for peaks of high HR to go unnoticed. Two, it is very motivating I find to be able to compare one session with another. My HRM tells me my maximum and average HR for each lap as well as for the whole session. It also tells me my HR at the end of the session, making recovery calculations very easy.

Should you want a HRM just for taking your HR on waking, or if you want to spot check your HR inconspicuously during the day, the strapless HRM is ideal, as struggling to apply the strap while horizontal in bed may well make your HR rise, especially before you get used to it.

My HRMs with straps are all from Polar, and my strapless model from Oregon Scientific. All are ECG accurate. I think the Polar straps may be sturdier and more comfortable than some other makes.

Good luck!

Are you referring to telomeres? I believe that these are little bits of DNA that get clipped off as we age - they get too short and then they won't function. I'll be interested to read what you find out.

Am glad you're pretty satisfied with the summer's gains as they stand :<} It's very interesting following you around... in print. Too tough for me in real life.

NOT CHICKEN POX! Dunno where that came from unless recent talk about Shingles, maybe. I nearly died of MUMPS.

lol, I"M impressed with MYSELF, lol .... and thanks for you saying so, too....

Each case is SO UNIQUE... there simply cannot be a common fibre, I don't think. I was incredibly poorly nourished in the first 3 decades of life... this, while even bearing 3 children... as a teen, I was SEVERELY MALnourished, due to economic circumstances... plus I nearly died without benefit of any medical intervention when I had Chicken Pox @ age 13 or 14... was comatose a couple days while fever raged... such a serious virus can attack the pancreas.. so, how to identify my particular trigger?

I havn't shed any more weight... chances are, if I do... I'll undertake this another time down the road. In the meantime. I'm all happy, strong, well, hale and hearty... bottom line!

Still, impressive. I've never heard of a type one diabetic accomplishing that before. It raises the question about the initial causation for type one: diet? Perhaps a greater sensitivity to the detrimental effects of the wrong food intake? Could a "good" diet prevent even type 1?

Interesting...

A true "family affair"... soooo wonderful. Soak it up happily, Ed, and continued successes are wished.... for ALL !! I love posts like yours!

I concur! But I do take cues from some studies... trying on a suggested thing if it makes sense to me... some fit, some do not. I swear I have the metabolic make-up of an Eskimo!! lol Blubbery fats agree with me.

I think it is best remembered that each of us is different, and even different day to day, depending on our activity and level of health. Most studies are worthless in that they fail to differentiate between metabolic types, this diffusing the results. If they would first isolate their test subjects based on type... then study cause and effect, studies might have some benefit, and some researchers are beginning to use that protocol... but it is few and far between. Till we have that standard there will simply be conflicting results, study to study based on the luck of the draw of who they included in their group. This effect is offset a bit if the study is large enough (50,000+?) but still...

It's hard to offend me, Alex, because I make it a point to not embrace it (offense) :<} Only those who mean me harm offend me.

What you describe sounds to me more of a hypoglycemic situation, whereas all I read into the trainer's article was that for the two hour window following training, to eat sugar / white carbs can inhibit the muscle building one does the exercise for.

Hi Arlene, glad I haven't offended you - it's a subject dear to my heart so I got a bit carried away. I was also remembering an incident in my youth, walking in the mountains in winter. I was into slimming and healthy food so had taken along salad and cottage cheese sandwiches - normally a great choice, but not when doing vigorous hill walking in sub-zero temperatures. A companion had to feed me some kind of sickly confectionery bar, and it was absolutely what I needed. I never forgot the lesson.

Hi Alex! Good to see you again! I think... all that you said, translates roughly to... not believing everything I read? lol

In recent times there has been lots and lots of research into just what and when to eat post workout for the best results. Umpteen research studies completely contradict Dr Mercola's views. They repeatedly show that athletes recover and then subsequently train better if they ingest a mixture of (less) protein and (more) carbs in the post exercise window, firstly some in the half hour after, and then more in the 2 hours after. (Consuming much fat at this time greatly delays digestion, so that the window of opportunity is missed.)

Of course, if people do a little moderate exercise and then eat lots and lots they will not lose weight. Conversely, if a person exercises vigorously and fails to consume adequate carbs, there is a danger that the body will actually "eat" its own muscles for fuel, and certainly will not be able to replenish the muscles' depleted glycogen stores, so that instead of getting stronger they will get weaker.

There are so many self appointed weight loss gurus out there, and they each have to say something attention-catchingly different. I notice that further down the page Dr M is perpetrating the familiar stunt of promising more fitness for less effort - all the benefits of weight training on just 1 hour a week. Maybe if I had looked further on I would have found an advertisement for snake oil too.

Arlene, I am full of admiration for what you are achieving and you clearly need and thrive on a low carb diet. What you are doing should be an inspiration to anyone suffering from diabetes, showing that they can turn their lives and health around, but I really don't think that is the way for all of us to go, particularly those of us who aspire to an athletic lifestyle.