Welcome to the Jungle

My whole life I have been an athlete. As a kid, I played softball, basketball, soccer, track...not to mention endless games of touch and tackle football with my friends. While my activity level was quite high (especially when compared to today's video-game generation), my diet was woefully poor. Processed foods, chips, soda and whole milk *gasp* made up a high percentage of my daily intake. If I hadn't been as active there is little doubt that I would have been an obese child.

Despite my four-season sports schedule, like most teens, my weight caught up with me in early high school. By the end of my freshman year I had reached 136 lbs. Luckily I slimmed down naturally after my pubescent hormonal fluctuations regulated. By senior year I found myself at 5'2" and 105 lbs. without any real change in diet or activity level.

That was 17 years ago. Today I am a somewhat active mother of one daughter, one stepson and two grown stepdaughters. I'm still only 5'2" (some things can't be helped), but I'm topping out around 125 lbs. Now that's not a bad weight for my height and build, but I have found that as I near my 36th birthday that my bodyfat is overtaking my lean muscle mass and something must be done.

This blog will chronicle my journey over the physical-fitness savannah in search of my abs on an expedition I call the Fitness Safari.

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Lift Like a Girl - You just might like it

After I sent Martin ( Leangains.com ) my chinup vids so he can post them, he asked me about my routine so he could offer some background to the videos. He felt it may help give some direction to other IFing women out there; and I hope it does. I think he's going to post this sometime soon as well, but I wanted to archive it on my own blog. I created this routine from bits and pieces found scattered like confetti across his blog. I know everyone is slightly different and has different goals, so this routine may not be for you. I also know that, after two months of this, I'm stronger than ever before, but will likely have to find a way to shake things up a bit to keep things moving...but I'm not sure how to proceed. In case you rush through the routine without reading the fine print, I generally rest from 3 to 5 minutes between every set. Since I'm only doing 2-3 types of exercises at 3-4 sets each, I'm in and out of the gym in under an hour. Oh, and I only workout 3 ...

Finally - Progress Pics

Recently I've been struggling with my motivation. I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. My workouts stalled (poor diet, lack of discipline and no sleep). Then, today, I hopped on the scale to a solid 116.0 lbs (was literally 117.8 yesterday at the same time). I think the two pints of Guinness I had to celebrate St. Patty's with my girlfriend and the bar appetizers I shouldn't have eaten may have given me the "Whoosh" that Martin Berkhan speaks of. "By the way, a nice bonus after a night of drinking is that it effectively rids you of water retention. You may experience the "whoosh" effect, which I've talked about in my two-part series about water retention. That in itself can be motivating for folks who've been experiencing a plateau in their weight loss." In any event, I'm pleased at my results so far and look forward to seeing how I will look in another two months - just in time for Memorial Day at the Jersey Shore. Here the...

The F-Word

Fresh fruit will not make you fat. I don't know about you, but my favorite part of any food store is the produce department. I love the rainbow of colors, shapes and sizes on display. The playful misting of the lettuces, the exotic vegetables I've never heard of from parts of the world I've only read about. I can't imagine anyone getting fat by eating a variety of any combination of the foods you find here. So why do people think fruit will make them fat? It's the F-Word - Fructose Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a simple monosaccharide and one of three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and galactose, that are absorbed directly into the bloodstream during digestion. Unlike glucose which can be immediately available to the muscles, however, fructose must first be processed in the liver, giving it the lowest glycemic index of all sugars. Naturally, fructose is fou nd in fruit, many plants and some vegetables, but not in very high concentrations....

Fitness Safari

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