On 2005-01-10, thinnmann penned:
Monique,
This is a moderated group and I am really not trying to sound rude, but
if you really live that high and you really ski that much and you
really mountain bike off season and play ice hockey, the quad suffering
really isn't adding up, except for the 5'5" 170 lb part. If you do a
BMI on that it is pretty poor.

Ironic name you have there =P

Believe me, the weight issue isn't a surprise to me, and all of your
links and advice are old hat. I lost a lot of fat before the wedding
last March; then the wedding dinners and honeymoon brought it right
back. I was in awesome shape through most of the summer, but multiple
illnesses, a wrist injury, and a trip to visit family out of the country
all conspired to undo my hard work. I'm also on medication that
probably adds 5-10 pounds of combined water and fat, but I'm switching
to another variant that will hopefully eliminate that. I also have old
knee injuries and arthritis that imo completely eliminate running from
the "smart moves" category, aside from the fact that I absolutely hate
that form of exercise unless I'm chasing after a ball or perhaps running
for my life. The Covert Bailey philosophy (lots of exercise and reduced
fat consumption) has been a great help to me, when I've been able to
follow it. As long as I'm listing my excuses, I also have a tendency to go
witless and grumpy when I haven't eaten recently, resulting in me blindly
grabbing the fattiest, most sugar-laden meal I can find and wolfing it down
before sanity returns. It's no good. I've just purchased glucose tablets so
that I'll hopefully reach for those instead of chocolate chip cookies when I
feel taht way.

I was down to around 150 this summer, and I believe a good weight for me would
be 140. Of course I know that weight is irrelevant, and BMI is misleading;
it's actual body fat percentage that matters.

[snip]

Unfortunately, you should have been doing this, minimally, June -
September... You will be playing catch-up now that the season is in
full swing.

Preaching to the choir. As I said, I worked my butt off this summer,
partially in the hopes of getting the "jump" (ha, ha) on the ski season, but
last year just wasn't my year in a number of ways.

I have seen lots of athletes blame their equipment and spend lots of
money on new stuff when they would get better results through simply
improving their conditioning and losing some pounds. Fortunately,
these things usually go hand-in-hand.

Certainly, continue to demo stuff and make sure you are committing to
proper pressuring a pair of nicely shaped edges so that they do most of
the work for you. The fitness component will make you even more of a
star.

I don't think that new skis will solve my problems. I do suspect that a
different pair of skis would be more compatible with my current skiing habits.
I just brought my skis in for a massive retune/sharpening/etc, desperately
needed, so it will be interesting to see if I still think that way after all
the work.

--
monique
Longmont, CO