Better Body Goals-Accountability Thread

[Mermaid Jaffa]

We both might have to start wearing corsets.

Do they make them in super tuna size?

[Miyu]

Sadly, I also have problems with breathing in the pool air, because of the chlorine content! -_-; It triggers my asthma and it takes so long to calm down long enough to dive beneath the surface much... Working on that issue, because I'm not going to let that stop me - indoor pools are the only swimming available around here a good portion of the year, so I'll take it where I can get it!

I'm hoping the underwater MP3 player will help calm me mentally, since I know a lot of my asthma+swimming problems is related to mental issues - anxiety or something. I'm also working on acquiring nicotine-free vape "juice" - I found a few places that use mostly soothing botanicals, certified organic, because I have this theory that I could help treat my asthma with some nice herbal vapor, which is mostly going to be moist air with whatever "flavour" I choose... Some of these also contain propylene glycol, which is an ingredient in inhalers, which I suspect will also aid in the opening of my airways.

When I schedule my doctor's appointment, I'll have to see if they can do these tests on me - nothing's been done about my asthma/heart condition since I was 17, when they found out about it, and they weren't very helpful at all. I don't like feeling held back physically when everyone around me thinks I'm in good shape!

[Mermaid Harmony]

I know this is off topic, but I love corsets, I love looking at them, wearing them, etc. I just bought this cool steampunk red one and I"m in love with it.

[Vrindavana Starfish]

Okay, so I have a question: What cardio exercises are good for someone who has asthma? You say it needs to be well over an hour of cardio workout, but what cardio should I do if I have both asthma and a heart condition, along with bad knees (thanks to genetics)? Not trying to make excuses, but instead trying to find actual things I can actually do without sending me to the hospital. I really do want to work out but don't fancy passing out after 20 min of cardio.

I have no equipment, absolutely no access to gym, and it's dangerous to run on my road because there are logging rucks barrelling around corners at all hours of the day/night. I'm looking for things I can do at home with zero money spent. If I can find some decent exercises I can handle I'll do them all the time.

Does hardcore hooping for long periods of time work if it's getting your heart rate up? I have a polypro hoop, so it's much lighter and it gets my heart rate up faster than a "regular" adult hoop.


Arion, you are my complete inspiration for the squats challenge. May I ask which program in particular you use? How long do you hold your squats? Right now I've been just doing squat-till-i-drop, then doing other exercises, and coming back several times throughout the day to do more squats. A lot of the squat challenges start off with too few squats for me, but then I squat on a regular basis doing everyday things anyways.

I've gotten much better about turning down food. I've started to get out of the mentality that I should eat everything in front of me because I could starve - I spent too long wondering where my next meal was coming from; now I thankfully have food stamps so I always have quality food around. As for desserts... Yeah I love candy and cake, but I buy it a lot less now and have turned to making my own frozen pumpkin/peanut butter greek yogurt and soy-nog chia pudding; I use healthy sweeteners such as natural maple syrup and local honey; I buy things organically whenever I can. I probably should Really watching my diet has helped immensely. Maybe I'll dig out my old photos for comparison. In the meantime, however, I'm still on the hunt for a decent workout that won't literally kill me.

Yes, hooping counts. If your heart rate is up, it counts. Anyone who says hooping isn't real exercise hasn't been doing it right. For asthma, and for gaining endurance for long cardio workouts, I found that HIIT (high intensity interval training) has been the best discovery for me. If you're not familiar, you go as hard as you can for a short, regular burst, like 30 seconds or one minute, then you recover—go at a moderate pace to catch your breath and lower your heart rate a bit— for 1-2 minutes. Repeat that up to 20 minutes, sometimes 30. It is intense.

Benefits:
1) Your body is confused about whether to be efficient in burning calories, or to go ahead and burn them. It decides to go ahead and keep burning them, and over a very long period of time, hours after your workout.
2) This will boost your metabolism overall, since you'll be burning more calories longer.
3) It will build strength and endurance. You wouldn't think so, but it does.
4) You can pretty much make any activity from weight-lifting, to yoga, swimming, running, and hooping a HIIT activity.

You don't want to do only HIIT. You want either a rest day after or you want to alternate with longer periods of moderate cardio where you just keep your heart rate up for 30+ minutes. It isn't necessary for most people to do cardio for an hour and a half. If you add some HIIT, you're working smarter and not having to go to cardio extremes for the same results. Every body is different, so exact times will vary per body.

When I started losing weight, I was running (with asthma) and the most amount came off when I was inadvertently doing HIIT. I could only run so far before I had to walk, then push it again and repeat.

When I got comfortable and was only running for distance and time, my weight loss stopped. The only difference was the activity I was doing. Upping my speed or distance did nothing to change it. Alternating between hard and moderate made the difference.

If you go on youtube and search for HIIT workouts, you'll find LOTS. I'm sure there's some hooping stuff too.

[AniaR]

Great tips!!!

[Mermaid Harmony]

Hooping seriously...kills me. I can't do it (i'm not very good (yet)) but when I do I feel it. Also, poi spinning is a good workout for your arms, body without getting your breath going hard, but helps hand eye cordination, and your arms will look awesome, I started doing it and I love it, and now I do fire staff spinning and soon fire poi!

[Vrindavana Starfish]

Great tips!!!

Thanks! I hope what helped me will help someone else.

Hooping seriously...kills me. I can't do it (i'm not very good (yet)) but when I do I feel it. Also, poi spinning is a good workout for your arms, body without getting your breath going hard, but helps hand eye cordination, and your arms will look awesome, I started doing it and I love it, and now I do fire staff spinning and soon fire poi!

Fire spinning is amazing. I would totally set myself on fire though. But I want an LED hoop! Or one that looks like it shoots electricity, like a tesla coil. Hmmm. That would be epic.

[Rivertee]

Archery is all about core body strength. Working with recurve bows helps a lot with resistance training, is a sort of weight lifting in itself, and really works your core because you have to stand still while pulling and holding pounds and pounds of weight before loosing the arrow. As opposed to compound bows where you pull it a certain distance and then the bow itself holds the string for you, sort of. Though that can be good too, so if you need to work up your strength you can rest for a little.

Plus throughout the whole thing you have to be calm and centred. It's like meditation crossed with weight lifting, haha.

Oh cool, I just started archery in my Dagorhir group so this.is exciting news thank you

[Merley]

Hooping seriously...kills me. I can't do it (i'm not very good (yet)) but when I do I feel it. Also, poi spinning is a good workout for your arms, body without getting your breath going hard, but helps hand eye cordination, and your arms will look awesome, I started doing it and I love it, and now I do fire staff spinning and soon fire poi!

I can teach you how to hoop That's what I do at work. But I do a weird kind of dance hooping though where most hoopers specialize in tricks. I can move around with it and keep it up forever. Spin it down past my knees and back up to my waist. Let me tell you if you do that for an hour or so straight you get pretty tired even if you don't have a weighted hoop.

[Mermaid Harmony]

Merely, I would love that.

[Vrindavana Starfish]

Speaking of hooping, I JUST FIGURED OUT HOW TO CHEST HOOP! It's taken me months, and I'm bad at it, but at least I can do it now!

I'm stupid happy about this. Way more happy than with elevators or any other trick I've learned.

[SeaGlass Siren]

@jaffa, yes actually you can get one custom made to your size!
@harmony, did you see the mermaid corset organic armor did for me?? I think you'll love it

[malinghi]

In response to some recent posts that became a bit heated, I just want to remind everyone that if you disagree with someone, be sure to do it respectively.

Remember that harassment is extremely subjective, so if you think something you're going to post could possibly be interpreted as harassment, please play it safe so that we don't need to intervene.

[Miyu]

Thanks for all the info! I think I'll look into some suitable HIIT workouts and add in some other exercises on the "off days" - probably from the hooping.org bikini-body hooping challenge a few years back. Hooping seems to be decent cardio, especially as I get all crazy and "interpretive dance"-y when I'm hooping (I get really into music, okay? I'm the person dancing and singing through the aisles of stores).

I love making hoops I've been hooping for years and am not so good with the "tricks" aspect of hoopdance, I kind of... dance with my hoop as a partner? I don't know how to explain it, but it's not "normal" hoopdance, so not likely I'd ever get hired for a show. As for LED hoops, have you guys seen the FutureHoop at moodhoops.com? That is pretty much my dream hoop right now I also make/spin poi when I can, I usually end up selling whatever poi I make so I don't have a pair right now (I need to remedy that, because it is amazing for my arms).

[-Annwyn-]

Thanks guys. I am proud of you harmony you look great!

I am missing a key component. Its not an excuse it is reality. If I was missing a leg but wanting to run and asking for help getting around it you wouldn't say try harder. If cardio gave me asthma attacks and I was asking for alternatives you wouldn't say try harder.

I can't really try harder. All I can do is try different, and try more efficiently. I will always be sick there are no cures for my illnesses. But that doesn't mean I can't try the best I can anyway right?

I think for me what is frustrating is that what always worked is suddenly not and I'm not sure why. And like I said doctors are more concerned about the bigger picture and could care less if my abs go mushy lol

Thanks for the support and advice. Annwyn I contacted that archery group and they were super nice!!! Sounds like something right up my ally. I'm going to check them out in the new year. Thanks for that. Pearlie I found an aqua zumba class I'm just trying to find a way to budget for the cost. Thanks for that idea too.

Ill keep you posted on my progress in my prof mer thread from now on I think I may not be trying to lose weight but my body and fitness has been a long struggle with many ups and downs. It wasn't that long ago I had to relearn how to walk. I used to tell myself if I could live through that I could live through anything.

My pleasure It looks like a really nice dojo, too.

As for me, I'm getting back into fencing after a 5 year break, and it's hurtin'.

[Sammyantha171]

Yes, hooping counts. If your heart rate is up, it counts. Anyone who says hooping isn't real exercise hasn't been doing it right. For asthma, and for gaining endurance for long cardio workouts, I found that HIIT (high intensity interval training) has been the best discovery for me. If you're not familiar, you go as hard as you can for a short, regular burst, like 30 seconds or one minute, then you recover—go at a moderate pace to catch your breath and lower your heart rate a bit— for 1-2 minutes. Repeat that up to 20 minutes, sometimes 30. It is intense.

I never even considered doing HIIT with my hoops before. I'm going to have to try this out for my next workout, this should make everything so much more fun!
Thanks for the idea.

[SeaGlass Siren]

Started my second pack of birth controls. Now I reaaaallly feel like shit. I'm gonna ask the doc if I can go back to not taking anything.

[Coradion]

Started my second pack of birth controls. Now I reaaaallly feel like shit. I'm gonna ask the doc if I can go back to not taking anything.

Have you tried papaya or papaya milk? If you just want something that helps with cramping and pain it's supposed to reduce pain a lot.

[SeaGlass Siren]

I haven't, but I'll try it out

[AniaR]

Started my second pack of birth controls. Now I reaaaallly feel like shit. I'm gonna ask the doc if I can go back to not taking anything.

If your main reason for taking birth control is terrible cramps you may have early stage endometriosis. Mine started out like that and gradually over the years got worse and worse. I bounced around from birth control to birth control in the past 10 years and suffered through horrendous side effects. I truley believe most men and many women have no clue how hard birth control can be on your body! doctors do not cover all the side effects when you talk to them and different BC pills can have debilitating affects on different people.

I always felt when I was on BC my weight wouldn't budge and there's a lot of science that backs that up. It can also mess up your digestion, give you cravings, and you can be on the same BC for years and have no problems and then suddenly have problems.

If cramps are the main issue and are horrible without BC, no homeopathic remedy will help if you're at the point that BC is the only reliable means you have of controlling it. It;s hard to get assessed for endo here in Canada but it's so incredibly common that they think 80% of women who have bad cramps actually have some form of endo- even if it's only low grade! More and more studies are suggesting it's running rampant. And a huge amount of women who have fertility issues (the majority) have endo and most dont even know it.

I would suggest asking your doc about "visanne". After 10 years of trying to find something with low side effects, that stopped pain, and didn't make me gain a shit load of weight and ruin my body... this has been my miracle drug. It's an endo drug. it's NOT BC it's specifically intended to stop pain in that area. However, it does work similar to BC in that you can't get pregnant while on it. You take it everyday, so you dont get periods while you take it. If you have a good doctor they make let you try it for 3 months. If you feel healthier than ever before, and have no pain at all- chances are you've been battling endo and not knowing it. It honestly changed my life. The only downside is that it's expensive. I don't have insurance so 3 months is over 200$ but if you have insurance you can get it for a fraction of that or maybe your doc will let you have samples. It's easier to go that route than to have a doc check you for actual endo. On average it takes women 8-10 years to figure out if they have or not because the testing measures are either all or nothing. Meaning, do nothing, or let's open you up in surgery and see! It doesnt show up on scans, but you can physically see it in a person's body.

I feel like women don't talk openly enough about how this stuff affects our fitness and our life in general. So we all think everyone else is just magically coping and doing fine. lol when studies show the majority of us aren't. You know in some parts of the world women with bad cramps get 1-2 days a month of menstrual leave from work? like sick leave?

If you wanna talk more about the possibility of endo send me a PM. Mermaid Bonnie has it too and look at the great shape she was able to get into once she figured it out and got the right meds for her! We can talk about your symptoms and see. There are also some really reliable books for that type of pain in general with reliable information that's FDA approved. I know it can be tempting to reach for homeopathic remedies but when you're at the point you're in that much pain, it's not going to do anything for you. They work for people who have the odd bad period maybe once or 2 times a year. Not people who dread every month because of the pain they know they will be experiencing!