Aquajock
Cathlete
I'm enjoying reading everyone's success stories; the "distances travelled" are always amazing! Thought I'd share mine a bit:
As a child and teenager I was very unathletic and uncoordinated, and when puberty hit (at the same time my parents' marriage was on its last legs) I really ballooned. Due to my own internal pressure and pressure from my family (as well as ridicule from classmates) I began the yo-yo diet cycle that sadly still affects so many teens today, and I developed a pretty severe bulimic syndrome in my junior/senior high years. Had to stop the laxative purges when I was a senior because I was literally fainting in the halls at school, and thus ballooned up again. Of course, intelligent exercise education was non-existent in the '70's in my neck of the woods, so I never really learned how to move effectively.
In college I began drinking heavily, and my incipient alcoholism kicked in, and roared into life until 4 days before my 26th birthday, when I woke up one morning hung over, broke, at least 40 lbs heavier than I am now, and realized I couldn't go on like that. I quit drinking (miraculously) and lost a lot of weight quickly with no exercise effort. That was wonderful and terrible at the same time, because after a year or so when my body had adjusted to not having gallons of alcohol pumped into it every week, my weight started to creep back up again. My exercise program was, again, very sporadic: join the Y, swim every day for 2 months, skip one day and not go back for 2 years.
In my early '30's, I guess I let go of the constant vigilance on the scale, and thought I'd just accept whatever body I had. I started walking around the lakes; funnily enough, I started to slim down AND eat less high-sugar-high-fat stuff, just because I didn't want them anymore. I continued to walk, and slim down, and then over the past 10 years discovered Nordic Track ski machine, Kathy Smith videos, aqua aerobics (both as participant and instructor), the value of the academic study of exercise physiology beyond the Bodyology-Dot-Com crap, total-body weight lifting, and then . . . Cathe. The first Cathe workout I ever did was "Interval Max", and that remains my favorite, and the standard by which I judge the intensity of any other workout including those which I teach myself.
So now . . . at 41-1/2, I can do multiple sets of 35-40 push-ups in a straight-leg decline position, I can do extended squat and lunge sequences with a combined 70-lb weight load, I can do Interval Max routinely and extend out all the intervals by 8-16 reps, my resting heart rate is 49 beats per minute, my skirt size is zero and holding, I'm still sober as a judge, and there's nowhere to go but up still.
I thoroughly enjoy these forums; fitness is a lonely business, and I love the cameraderie here!
A-jock
As a child and teenager I was very unathletic and uncoordinated, and when puberty hit (at the same time my parents' marriage was on its last legs) I really ballooned. Due to my own internal pressure and pressure from my family (as well as ridicule from classmates) I began the yo-yo diet cycle that sadly still affects so many teens today, and I developed a pretty severe bulimic syndrome in my junior/senior high years. Had to stop the laxative purges when I was a senior because I was literally fainting in the halls at school, and thus ballooned up again. Of course, intelligent exercise education was non-existent in the '70's in my neck of the woods, so I never really learned how to move effectively.
In college I began drinking heavily, and my incipient alcoholism kicked in, and roared into life until 4 days before my 26th birthday, when I woke up one morning hung over, broke, at least 40 lbs heavier than I am now, and realized I couldn't go on like that. I quit drinking (miraculously) and lost a lot of weight quickly with no exercise effort. That was wonderful and terrible at the same time, because after a year or so when my body had adjusted to not having gallons of alcohol pumped into it every week, my weight started to creep back up again. My exercise program was, again, very sporadic: join the Y, swim every day for 2 months, skip one day and not go back for 2 years.
In my early '30's, I guess I let go of the constant vigilance on the scale, and thought I'd just accept whatever body I had. I started walking around the lakes; funnily enough, I started to slim down AND eat less high-sugar-high-fat stuff, just because I didn't want them anymore. I continued to walk, and slim down, and then over the past 10 years discovered Nordic Track ski machine, Kathy Smith videos, aqua aerobics (both as participant and instructor), the value of the academic study of exercise physiology beyond the Bodyology-Dot-Com crap, total-body weight lifting, and then . . . Cathe. The first Cathe workout I ever did was "Interval Max", and that remains my favorite, and the standard by which I judge the intensity of any other workout including those which I teach myself.
So now . . . at 41-1/2, I can do multiple sets of 35-40 push-ups in a straight-leg decline position, I can do extended squat and lunge sequences with a combined 70-lb weight load, I can do Interval Max routinely and extend out all the intervals by 8-16 reps, my resting heart rate is 49 beats per minute, my skirt size is zero and holding, I'm still sober as a judge, and there's nowhere to go but up still.
I thoroughly enjoy these forums; fitness is a lonely business, and I love the cameraderie here!
A-jock
, I'd be a very happy woman!!
