Apples vs. Oranges

First, I want to say thank you for all the great feedback. It is very encouraging and motivating to keep challenging myself and hopefully continuing to help motivate you! Tonight I am working on my running schedule which I will post this weekend to prepare me for my upcoming 1/4 marathon race, but since my husband was also involved in the 30 Day Shred Challenge, here is his side of the story! Yes, another guest blog post…he may be come a regular. What do you think?

Apples vs. Oranges – The Husband’s Version!

So inevitably if some of you read Holly’s post regarding our 30 Day Shred Challenge, you saw that we had our “weigh in/measuring” yesterday.  In the spirit of full disclosure I really don’t think my results were anything to cheer about.  Holly was nice enough to give me a pat on the back, but the truth is I did about 1/3 of the workouts that she did and probably about half the total effortJ.  I think it brings up a good point of discussion though.  Some say numbers don’t lie, but they certainly don’t tell the whole story either.

I think it is completely unfair to compare men and women when you look at the speed in which weight is dropped.  The male body is not made to carry babies (thank God!) and our metabolisms just run different.  Here are some things to consider when you compare Holly’s stats to mine.  Some of these have nothing to do with comparing males and females, but how many times do you hear women say, “It isn’t fair, he loses weight so fast!”?

• Starting point – conditioning level, total body fat and muscle mass.  Holly was in considerably better shape than me when we started in early July and had significant muscle tone.
• We are almost 10 years apart in age, but I have her by 7” in height.  My body burns 2100 calories a day just to breath.  It takes much less effort to knock 500+ calories a day when you are my size and need a lot of calories just to survive.
• By cutting 500+ calories a day AND doing some sort of workout that burns 300-500 calories, I am easily able to burn more weight quickly……….again making the numbers comparison misleading.
• Holly is continuing to build muscle as she has far less fat to burn off.  Muscle is more dense than fat and therefore she has to work harder to see the pounds come off the scale.  As she mentioned she was able to put me on her back (225 lbs) and do several squats.
• I only did the Jillian workout for the first 2 weeks.  I’ve had considerable knee problems over the years and even while doing the exercises correctly, the amount of squatting was taking its toll.  So the final 2 weeks was just eating healthy and cutting my calories to around 2000 a day.  That didn’t take that much effort after a few days.

We should all just face it and say that this is yet another area where men have it easier…….. at least initially.  It is not fair to compare genders or numbers when there are so many variables.  I found it helpful to know my BMR (metabolic rate) so that I knew roughly how many calories my body burned just laying around.  I just think we need to be careful comparing our numbers to others…….it is just so individual.  Compete against yourself.  It is great to have someone to workout or help push you, but leave it at that.  No 2 apples are the same, nor are 2 oranges so don’t be so hard on yourself.

What do you do to avoid the comparisons with those you workout with?

Tags: 30 Day Shred, husband, male point of view

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Exercise TV. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.