Saturday, October 22, 2011

W42, Day 5: Exercising to eat?

I did make it into the gym this week.  We only went three times, but that's better than nothing and I made sure to avoid things that strain my knee or back.  Last night I also bought a knee brace so I'll try that out on Monday and see if it helps.  I have been pondering things this week as I'm chugging along on the elliptical (it's  dull and my mind wanders) about how I work out.  

Generally we work out for 55 minutes and I do 25 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of weight training.  In all honesty, I do the cardio because I want to burn calories and the weight training because I want to be stronger and build muscle.  Is that wrong?  I mean, obviously, it can't be wrong to exercise, but I've been perusing articles online about how you shouldn't focus on cardio because you're not really doing anything towards building muscle (and you need to build muscle to boost metabolism and get your body to burn more calories).  

Maybe I would get more bang for my time if I focused primarily on weight training.  My gym time is limited by time more than any other factor and I know I should be making the most of it.  But I rely on the cardio to burn calories so that I have a little more leeway during the day.  Do other people do that too?  Exercise to eat?  Is that okay?  I know that I use food as a tool to help me deal with the stresses of the day and I'm trying to be more aware of that, but I'm not going to deny that I've been a lot more stressed at work than usual and I come home craving sweets to make me feel better.  Lately I've been buying those Skinny Cow Dreamy Clusters with are chocolately goodness (the only downside of the treat is that it's a small portion, but I guess that's how it should be, eh?) and having one after dinner every night.  If I cut out the small treats like that, I could do less cardio and stay in my daily calories.  I just don't know if I'm ready to do that.

*These are pretty good.  You get about five little chocolately, chewy clusters.  I don't know about "dreamy," and they are a little pricey for what you get, but tasty none-the-less.

1 comment:

  1. I think having a snack at the end of the day to reward yourself is awesome to give you a little happy for all your hard work. Nothing wrong with that. :) I like pudding cups, myself. Mmmm, pudding goodness!

    The combination of cardio and weight training you're doing sounds like it's doing pretty well. And you have to give your muscles time to recover anyway, so I wouldn't focus solely on weight training. Like, if you go two days in a row, make sure to work on muscles you hadn't worked the other day or just do cardio. Muscles need time to recover or else you don't see any progress. There's even a study somewhere that doing weights twice a week as opposed to three times a week almost gained the same amount of increased strength over time as the other group who did more days of weight training. Because blah blah resting something something muscles blah blah.

    Hope your back and knees are doing okay! Make your hubby give you lots of massages! XD

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