Wednesday, 12 Oct 2005
I watched a full episode of The Biggest Loser last night while pedaling on my mini-bike after dinner. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I feel a bit ambivalent about the weight loss numbers the players were posting. It just doesn’t seem right to be sad that you ONLY lost 5 lbs in a week. No wonder there are so many impatient n00bs who get frustrated 2 weeks into any plan.
You know the ones–they tend to post things like “I haven’t lost a single pound or inch and even gained some in my THIIIIIIIGHS! My jeans are even tighter this week! WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
Thank goodness I don’t have to read that stuff anymore. It makes me want to :yuck:
Back to the show…
Okay, did anyone else notice that the men work out a lot harder than the women? Some of those fellows are around 300 lbs, and every last one of them was running or jogging on a treadmill at a decent clip last night. Cut to the women’s workout room, and you see slackers hugging the rails on a stepmill moving so slowly that you could use it as a stadium seat for a Sox game with extra innings, and everyone else on ellipticals that aren’t nearly as efficient at burning calories as a treadmill.
And the women whine to their trainer. WTF?!!! Nothing could induce me to show that kind of weakness to a trainer in front of my peers, male or female. Nothing!
So why the difference in the workouts? I have some theories.
1) Men are afraid of showing weakness in front of other men. Women are taught that being a frail flower is attractive and acceptable. So in the context of the show, each of the guys will keep going with his workouts as long as he sees the others doing the same. The gals fall out whenever they feel like it because they do not tie their egos into their performance the same way that the men do.
2) Men are, by nature, competitive. In this show, they are competing against the women, which makes them work out harder, and against each other, which also makes them work out harder. Women tend to be more cooperative, which is nice, but not very useful when it comes to going faster and longer on a treadmill. The ones on the show aren’t even that cooperative.
3) The men have a female trainer who can clearly outrun and out-exercise them hands down. Failing in front of her would be unthinkable. The women have a male trainer who is too nice and sympathetic, and they revert to their “Poor, weak, girlie me” mode when it comes to exercise.
I think that pairing the male trainer with the women’s team is doing them a disservice. While I have no doubt that the trainer is very good, when it comes to toughening up a bunch of crybaby chicks who need to be whipped into shape, nothing beats a female taskmaster who will not accept the umbrella excuse of “I can’t do it because I’m a girl.” A female trainer in incredible shape proves that it IS possible to do every bit of a workout even if one does carry two X chromosomes.
I whined ONCE during a 5:30 AM run in the first week of basic training. “I can’t do it,” I wheezed after one mile. The one female drill sergeant in the company heard me and said, “If I did it, you can, too.” That shut me up on the subject for good. You can’t argue with that kind of bone-deep truth. I had all kinds of respect for Drill Sergeant Williams. The women in the company could cry all they wanted to about PMS, cramps, not being able to wear make up, and missing their husbands, boyfriends, kids, parents, friends, dogs, cats, or whatever; she just raised an eyebrow and made them feel like the silly little geese they were, and, eventually, every last one of us straightened out, toughened up, got stronger and faster, and graduated from basic more fit, confident, and humble than we had ever been.
What it boils down to, whether you raised your hand and swore that you’d serve your country for four years, or signed a stack of contracts and non-disclosure agreements and agreed to let NBC film your weight loss efforts for a few months, is that you voluntarily agreed to have your ass kicked with exercise. Nobody forced you to do so, therefore the only right thing to do is to suck it up and drive on.
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Nutrition: Training Day Menu
(SGX nutrition details omitted by request of trainer)
1: PWO Dextrose/whey/Creastack shake
2: 3×1 spinach omelette, 1/3 c. (dry) oatmeal, 1 T. raisins, 1 T. wheat bran, 1 t. brown sugar
3: Chinese chicken salad with orange slices and ginger-sesame vinaigrette
4: 2/3 c. LF cottage cheese, 1 T. oatmeal, 1 apple
5: SGX Meal
6: SGX Meal
Daily Supplements: multivitamin with iron, calcium 500 + D, 1 T. flaxseed oil or natural peanut butter
Water: 16 cups minimum
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Workout:
7:00 AM YF Upper Body (30 minutes)
7:30 AM Full Body Blitz no. 11 & Abs (60 minutes)
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The Awful Truth:
1. Didn’t get full points for yesterday since I bailed on running. 
2. Left wrist is starting to feel a bit twingy again.
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Brownie Points:
1. 9/31 Perfect LMH Challenge Days
2. Mixed salad dressing and chopped Romaine for lunch salads.
3. Did the laundry.
4. No cavities at dental exam yesterday.
5. Pedaled on the mini-bike for 45 minutes while watching the Biggest Loser.
6. Made nifty buttons for Pink Dumbbells.
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Short-term Goals:
1. Update HandBase workout module.
2. Organize desk.
3. Read a few chapters from NASM book.
4. Choose pattern and sew Halloween costume.
5. Defrost and grill more chicken breast and legs.
6. Make some TVP burger patties and freeze them.
October 12th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
Speaking of gender differences, I was wondering.. Maggie, do you ever have “bad” days? Most women I know have the “fat” days, the “skinny” days, the “bad hair” days, but you always seem to be about the same. I know you’re not a whiner, which is WHY I PUT YOUR BLOG IN MY FAVORITES (I can’t thank you enough for going against the ‘frail flower’ grain!), but are you like most girls in that sometimes you just look in the mirror and don’t like what you see, vice versa on other days? I was just curious, and if the answer is YES, thank you for not whining about it in your blog.
October 12th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
Sara,
Funny thing…I’ve never even considered posting about something like that except on one occasion when I first started my bulk last winter and definitely had to fight back a bit of panic when I saw the scale creep UP again.
I think every person, male or female, has days when they aren’t thrilled with the image in the mirror, but, despite my weird propensity for taking bikini pics every few weeks, I don’t actually pay that much attention to how I look on a day to day basis. (Harken back to my post about The Inverse Relationship Between Muscle and Make Up.) Maybe because I grew up with the “Independent Brainy Nerd” label firmly affixed to my forehead, my identity just isn’t as firmly rooted in how I look to others. Regardless of how I look on any given day, I can still draw, sing, write, pick up math up through college algebra with just a few minutes of review (alas, the calculus is long gone from lack of use), design sites and costumes, cook a pretty good dinner, and handle any DIY project with a decent degree of competence.
I’d say that 99% of the time, I am content with my reflection these days. The other 1% of the time is when I clearly need a hair cut or when I get the monthly stealth zit near my nose.
A Typical Morning Internal Dialogue in Maggie’s Head Upon Seeing Self in Mirror:
I just don’t think that the above is worth writing about on a daily basis, do you?
Who, besides the person involved, really cares if you feel “fat” or “skinny” that day? I don’t post each time I stumble, bump my shin, earn interest in my savings account, break a drinking glass by accident or snap one of the prongs on my plastic flower hair clips either because these little daily details are just trifling and uninteresting.
I’m an INTJ personality type with a predominantly male mindset. Maybe it’s not very girly, but I just don’t traffic in deep feelings about trivial things.
This blog is out there to help other people succeed in their own BFL or other transformation programs through information and example with a bit of personal humor and commentary, not to be a virtual bucket for the type of neurotic, self-indulgent verbal vomit that usually passes for writing in the blogging community. :barbells:
October 12th, 2005 at 5:36 pm
As to your post, I think men typically have a greater desire for physical actiivty than women. This is not a sexist statement, but one based on our evolutionary heritage. In hunter-gatherer times, men would typically be the ones going on the physically demanding hunts, although women would sometimes come, too. I think this difference still exists today.
Great site, by the way.
October 12th, 2005 at 6:34 pm
Matt–I don’t know that the modern male has any more desire to be active than the typical modern female when left alone to his own devices. You don’t exceed 300 lbs by being a firecracker of athletic prowess and energy. I do think that once they get started, men get more of a positive vibe from being active than women do, perhaps because of that evolutionary heritage you mention.
Maybe there’s more of a sense of “Hey, this active stuff is what I should have been doing all along!” with the guys than there is with the gals, whose own evolutionary heritage is telling them to sit back and incubate some babies.
October 13th, 2005 at 12:01 am
Maggie,
Thank you, for your service to our country.
October 13th, 2005 at 8:48 am
Jilian would have been a better trainer for the women. If you saw the initial episodes, the men harbored a lot of resentment against her. She is tough. A lot of other women would have crumbled. Plus, women need something to compare themselves to. Seeing Jilian’s abs while working out would give me incentive to push it harder.
October 13th, 2005 at 9:52 am
Thanks for that detailed response… I’ve been pointing my female friends in the direction of your blog for quite some time now, because I think it’s good to see another successful female JUST DO IT instead of half-ass DO IT and then whine about it.
October 13th, 2005 at 9:54 am
This is a reality show, which means that the producers edit an enormous amount of footage down to 44 minutes to give us exactly what they want us to see … especially personas and character arcs and the resulting drama (real or otherwise) created from combining them all.
We have absolutely no real idea what Jillian or Bob are like beyond the snapshots we get from the show.
Perhaps the men are losing more because they have more lean tissue and are burning more calories. Or maybe it’s because the women produce 90 percent less testosterone — that vital fat-burning, muscle-building anabolic hormone — than their male counterparts. Who knows? I don’t know if these are the answers, either.
What I do know is that good trainers — and presumably these two are good trainers — are interested in getting their clients results because results mean profit (via client retention and referral business).
October 13th, 2005 at 12:10 pm
I think Bob’s part of the problem. I guess personally, I don’t have a lot patience for this group of women. There’s a whole lot of over-reliance on Bob, a whole lot of woe-is-me, and a whole lot of gossip (as with the men, to be fair). But I keep waiting for Bob to put the smackdown on them, and it just doesn’t happen. I’ll take Jillian over Bob, any day.
October 13th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
Maggie,
Yes, I agree with your comments. “Exercise” in ancient times didn’t exist - people performed activity to gain food, build shelter, etc. If they didn’t have to work, they probably didn’t. Obviously, this works against us in modern times when we need to make ourselves exercise.
Men probably do enjoy exercise more when they get going - maybe that’s the difference.
October 13th, 2005 at 1:40 pm
I love the show, and it inspires me a lot. I have 20lbs to lose, not 100 like some of these folks, and that’s why it inspires me. I watchted it last season as well, and I think Jillian also had better results with her team, which was mixed sex. They are doing it better this year, because they were just counting pounds last year, and the men were at an advantage as they lost the weight a lot quicker.
I think Maggie is right. The men are working harder. They always show them doing cardio, but I’m quite sure they are weight training as well. One thing I’ve noticed is men take the pain a little easier for some reason, and what I mean by this, if I’m in the gym there is often guys who will be doing his last few reps, and make a huge GRUNT noise right before dropping the dumbbells. I haven’t YET heard a woman make this noise. Perhaps women who work out at home make such noises. I bring this up because these people are on tv and being filmed.
I’m looking forward to see their end results. Last years top people did very very well. One of the guys had really bad snoring, sleep apnea (sp), and breathing problems because he was so fat/out of shape, and he lost all of his symptoms in a matter of a few months. His wife was absolutely shocked.