Weight Loss Challenge

Hey, I’m Shawna K, but you may know me as the ‘pull up queen’ here on big Mike’s blog. We have fun challenging each other and sharing fitness ideas. You can see one of our challenges here.

Now if you know Mikey, you know that he’s the dad of an adorable one year old. We have parenting in common, except my kids are teenagers. They’re maybe past the ‘adorable’ stage…not really, aliens are adorable in their own way aren’t they?

All kidding aside, I know that several of you are likely parents and I wanted to share two things: a weight loss strategy that relates to dealing with teenagers and a cool bodyweight challenge for you.

Understand that I’m a ‘Mom’ first and foremost. Those of you that are parents of teens out there will get this concept. I say this weight loss strategy was learned in ‘Mom school’. If your children are still at a tender age, no offense is intended. You’ll understand me better when they grow up a little and you learn first hand what I’m talking about. Now all my experience with teenagers isn’t just from my own two wonderful specimens. I also taught school for 20 years, so I’m well versed in ‘teenager’.

It’s awesome how teenagers know so much, in fact, pretty much everything. If ever I have a question, I can be sure to get a (smart ass) answer from a teenager. Why go to Google or research when you have the answer to everything right in front of you? (insert tongue in cheek here)

However, when speaking to a teenager they’re extremely busy with their own high level stuff. It’s either that my language is totally foreign to them, or the ‘is your homework done?’ ‘please clean your room’ ‘go the principal’s office’ type comments aren’t deemed important enough to illicit a response.

I share this as a comparison as to what’s going on between your head and your belly where eating is concerned. There’s actually a weight loss strategy around this concept that’s so simple you may be reluctant to try it.

Imagine that you’re sitting down to eat. In this case, your brain is the teenager. About 15 minutes into your meal, your stomach knows that it should tell your brain something, but often times it knows that your brain is too busy doing something else to listen. Just like teenagers are distracted with so many other pressing things they don’t listen when their mom tells them to ‘bring a jacket’ or ‘remember your key’.

So, although the stomach will send an important message to the brain, like ‘slow down, I’m full!’, the brain ignores it. Or, the teenager gets rained on and is locked out of the house.

First, how many of you eat with the TV on

Eat while reading a magazine?

Eat in front of your computer?

This is the same as you talking to your teenager whilst they listen to their Ipod with their noise canceling headphones on.

Your stomach is trying to talk to your brain saying, ‘I’m FULL!’, but your brain is too busy doing better things to listen. And so you overeat.

The stomach and the brain are connected, but there’s a bit of a time lapse. It takes about 15 minutes for the brain to recognize and say ‘OMGosh, I’m stuffed, I need to go lay down and undo my pants’ because since you weren’t listening, you’ve had an extra 15 minutes to stuff food down your throat.

There’s an obvious solution to this.

STOP watching TV,

STOP reading

STOP working on your computer or doing any number of other distracting things while eating.

When you’re eating, just EAT.

Pay attention.

Chew your food. (OMGosh, now I sound like your mother!).

Put your fork down between bites.

Give some time for your stomach to tell your brain, ‘I’m full’ and when the brain is paying attention, you’ll feel full and actually stop eating. You’ll save yourself loads of calories.

I know it sounds too simple to work, but it really does work. It’s a matter of enjoying your food, being in tune with your body, listening to its cues.

It’s amazingly simple.

Unlike teenagers, who aren’t as simple to deal with at times (but totally loveable).

I have to say that my kids aren’t your typical teenagers. They’re pretty good at listening, but they do know a lot so I have a great ‘go to’ resource 😉

They’re turning out to be great people. In fact they’re both honor roll students and do volunteer work to help make the world a better place. (Even if their room isn’t one of those places 😉

My daughter and her beau…(Nothing weird going on here is there? Why wouldn’t a brother be included in the pic?)

Now, onto a cool workout for you as promised…

I sort of morphed a pull up challenge with a finisher challenge. As you know, I love pull ups and I love burpees too.

Watch the video and you’ll see the challenge and then look below for a few tips and ways to modify:

Burpees aren’t for everyone and neither are pull ups. So, I wanted to make this challenge one that everyone can do so here are a few ways to modify the workout….

Instead of doing burpees, you can do a 10 full body extensions and follow that with 10 DB bent over rows instead of pull ups. Repeat this set 5 times for time.

If you can handle the burpee, but not the pull up, do the burpee and follow with the rows.

Or, if you can do the pull ups but not the burpees…can you see where I’m going with this? Make a switch, even if it’s half way through the work out so that in the end you’ve done 50 burpees (or full body extensions) and 50 pull ups (or bent over DB rows).

As I mentioned in the video, I like to record each set. I break the total number of reps I’m going to do (50) into manageable mini-sets (10) and time them. Then in the future, when I repeat the challenge, I’ll know at what point in the workout I started to fade and I’ll know if I’m going to improve my time, I need to push through. It also gives me a bit of a rest which, when you’re doing this sort of challenge is nice to have.

Give this one a try and tell me you can’t feel the fat melt off your bones…

If you need to work on the pull up portion of the set, I can help you learn or improve your pull ups. I even have a bonus burpee challenge workout for you. You can check it out here.

Don’t forget to post your times on the blog. Let’s encourage each other along, there’s nothing like a little competition to light a fire under your bum!

Thanks for letting me share big Mike!

Over and out.

Shawna

www.Challengeworkouts.com <==== Awesome Program