A winner is me

[batskeets]

The demo last night was as trying as I imagined it would be. I barely got there on time because I was told the wrong location at first, the beginning was disorganized, and the stage was even smaller than I expected, barely enough room for 5 stretch kicks. No way was spear going to happen, unless I wanted to spear an audience member through the head.

BUT! During my nanquan form, I attempted and successfully landed a kickup, which is basically one of these. If you hadn't figured it out by now, I'd NEVER done one before without putting my hands down, and I couldn't do it AT ALL until a few weeks ago.

I think that's the first sign I've had in a while that my extra efforts in training might actually be paying off. I'm definitely not losing weight (boo), but getting stronger and more generally awesome is a perfectly good substitute. Woohoo!

So, yeah, $20 richer and full of wushu awesome. And my ankle is actually starting to feel better today, too. Almost makes up for the fact that I seem to be really design-blocked this week. Oh well, I'll muddle through. :)

Comments

[lillilah]

I am losing weight while doing a fair amount of exercise, but as many of my friends have said in relationship to exercise and weight loss, you basically get to do one or the other as your primary focus. If you eat enough calories to have enough energy to really do the exercise, then you probably won't lose weight (although clearly you will build muscle). If you eat few enough that you lose weight, then you probably won't have enough energy to really do the exercise. This has certainly been the case with me. I'm still managing to do non-strenuous stuff, but jogging is way more lame than it used to be. I've had to cut my calories down ridiculously low to actually lose any weight (probably less than 1400 a day). HTH

[skeets.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm hoping that the nutritional consultant I'm meeting with this week can help with that very issue, because she's worked with athletes and body builders, i.e. people who need to keep up with training at the same time that they lose weight.

It *is* decidedly un-fun to work out when you're on a really restricted calorie intake. And wow, 1400 calories/day? I'm not sure I could get by on that even if I *wasn't* exercising. ;)

[adventure-girl.livejournal.com]

So, yeah... backtracking through blogs, but...

It helped me a lot when I had weight to lose to track my BMI rather than my weight. Keeping in mind the density of muscle and fat, I may have given up when my weight hadn't "gone down", but didn't because my BMI was plummeting -- that felt REALLY good.

Food for thought. Also, um... don't overtrain, m'kay?

[skeets.livejournal.com]

Isn't BMI the catch-all chart that's based on your height and your weight? Because I have a serious bone to pick with that thing!

If you're meaning body fat percentage, I am interested in tracking that! I've had a dickens of a time finding skinfold calipers in town, though, and the accuracy of my scale's bodyfat measurement seems dubious, at best. (there is no freakin' way that I have 35% body fat. Srsly.)

If you know of a good way to keep track of that, I'd be interested to hear it!

[adventure-girl.livejournal.com]

I use US Navy measurement for BMI (which measures bodyfat without calipers).

http://www.wikihow.com/Measure-Body-Fat-Using-the-US-Navy-Method

[skeets.livejournal.com]

Oh, awesome! I'll have to try that when I get home! :)

[adventure-girl.livejournal.com]

There are online calculators, too, if you don't want to do the math... You can just put in your measurements and it does it for you. I've used them once or twice, but I don't have a good link.

Ideally, you should be between about 17%-23% "for an athlete" and about 25%-28% "for an average female".

I was SO stoked when I got down to 23%! I'm sure I'm not at that now, of course, but should be able to get back to it pretty easily. :)

Have fun!