Monday, December 7, 2009

Weekend Demo

During the weekend I went to Melaka to visit my old pal Nani, and also to celebrate a fellow blogger's birthday. While I was there I took the opportunity to ask Nani about her exercise regime. Like many others like her who are trying to lose weight, she is pretty obsessed with the scale.

Wake up: Scale. After breakfast: Scale. After shower: Scale. You get the picture.

Many times I have told her not to take the scale seriously. Admittedly, it is a way to quantify your progress. But scales can be deceiving. You can weigh 60 kilos but have a higher percentage of body fat compared to muscle mass. You can also weigh 60 kilos but have a higher percentage of muscle mass compared to body fat.

So screw the scale. Weigh yourself but couple it with a body composition test. But then you'll have to buy that body composition tool thingy that looks like a clothes peg on steroids. The next best thing is to notice whether your clothes feel lose. Do you need to wear a belt with your jeans now? That's a better indicator if you ask me.

Anyway, Nani also told me about her exercise regime. She mentioned that she's been doing interval training (she didn't say interval training, but that's actually what she was doing). She says she's doing jumping jacks for 30 seconds, rest a bit then followed by static jogging (err...lari setempat) for 30 seconds. Repeat. I've no complaints. That's the best way to go, in my opinion.

She also mentioned she's been doing crunches and situps. Obviously, she doesn't read this blog because I've mentioned that crunches and situps are a big no no in my books. So I recommended she do stability ball rollouts and cross mountain climbers instead. I hope she adapts those moves in her workout sessions after this.



And oh... this pic is of me demonstrating a pullup to Nani. Unfortunately I couldn't do as many pullups as I could at home. Doing pullups on a monkey bar at a playground without gloves on and doing pullups at home on a padded pullup bar is definitely different. Plus it was 3.30pm. It was hot. I couldn't concentrate. Yeah, yeah....excuses.

1 comment:

Rajan said...

Aizan: I totally agree with you on the scale, but for some reason, many women (no offence) are obesessed with what the scale says. How your clothes fit is an excellent way to measure, but the drawback is, clothes can stretch and shrink after washing, hence may not be the most accurate.
If you want to be precise and scientific, use a measuring tape. Can't go wrong there.

Oh and finally, the best of course is if people tell you lost weight or "wow, you look good"... who cares what the scale tells you... its the compliments that matter the most. :-)