I fractured my L1 (5mm), L4 and L5 left hand side transverse processes 2 and a half years ago in a snowboarding accident. I am 22 yrs old and moderate fitness level. Now 2 years on I am still in constant pain with my back.I have restless sleeps due to my always needing to change the way I’m sleeping to support my spine and hips. I wake up every morning with a extremely tight muscles on my right side, to which I cant turn until they have relaxed. I cant go for a decent walk along the beach or drive for 1 hour without suffering later on. I had a deep tissue massage the other week, it helped for about 2 days. Does anyone have any ideas for some long term pain relief?

You will need to talk to your GP about your options. The things I would be thinking is: a low dose of diazepam will help to stop the muscles from going into spasm. You don’t say if you are male or female but muscle strength around the injured areas will keep things more stable. You should see a professional to set a weight lifting routine to target the right areas without doing damage. If you saw an orth surgeon for the incident, he will probably have someone to refer to. It *might* even be worthwhile to have a testosterone supplement to aid muscle strength.

Everyone knows that cardio is the best thing for you when looking to burn extra calories. Or is it? What most people don’t know is cardio can be the worst thing for cutting fat when it isn’t paired with weight training. If you ask the girl (or even the guy) on the ab machine what she’s trying to do, nine times out of ten she will reply with “lose my stomach fat.” Ten times out of ten, she won’t loss stomach fat. The number one reason for this is that you can’t spot reduce an area. When you lose body fat, the fat will be reduced throughout the body, not just from the area you’re working. If we could lose weight in just one area, don’t you think we’d look a little funny? People would walk around with rock hard abs, saggy glutes, and flabby arms. All beach guys would have fat legs because they only do chest, arms, and abs.

Stop listening to your uneducated group fitness class groupies.

You’re working too hard and burning too many calories. Your body is eating your muscle, which is slowing your metabolism down, and you aren’t strength training.

I don’t care about my muscle. What does that have to do with me losing weight.

It has everything to do with you losing weight. Your muscle is going to be what regulates your metabolism. Your metabolism is going to be the amount of calories you burn at rest throughout the day. Now this is where muscle comes in. Your muscle determines your metabolism. A pound of muscle can burn anywhere up to 50 calories a day depending on its health. The more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn throughout the day. This is known as your basal metabolic rate, an estimated amount of calories you burn throughout the day. If you don’t take in enough calories throughout the day, your body will have to get the nutrients it needs from somewhere. If you had to choose between eating fat or meat, what would you eat? Meat. Your body would too.

Meal frequency. You eat three meals a day, correct? That is ok if you’re eating the right amount of calories and your metabolism hasn’t been damaged like yours has. The trick to keeping your body burning calories or keeping your metabolism moving is to constantly put food in to be used for fuel for the body. An easy way to understand this is to think of your body as an old furnace that needs wood for fuel. The wood represents the food. To turn on the furnace, you must put wood in it. The wood will burn for a few hours, but in order to keep the furnace on, you must add more wood. The same thing goes for the body. If there isn’t any food to fuel the body, the metabolism slows down. If you are to eat every two and a half to three hours—four being the most—you will keep your metabolism constantly working. Five to six small meals should do the trick.”

Carbs are good for you, especially after a workout. Any exercise over about 45 minutes can be long enough to completely destroy your carb or glycogen storage. Glycogen is what carbs are stored as in the body. It is stored in muscles and organs. After an intense cardio session, Have you ever noticed that your muscle are flat or you feel thinner? That isn’t just from sweating out fluids. It is also from using your energy storage. This is where the whole low carb diet thing came about.

After one day of cutting out carbs, most people will lose one to two pounds, mostly from water. Not only do you lose weight, but you also feel thinner. That’s because you’re depleting your muscles of glycogen. Carbs will keep your muscles hydrated, making you feel like your muscles are bloated, hence the name carbohydrate. About two-thirds of your carb intake is used for the brain. That is why most people get light-headed until of course they get used to operating on less carbs. You will be able to function but not at your max.

If you burn off more calories than you take in, you will lose weight.

Don’t get me wrong—too many carbs are bad, but so is too much of anything. If you were able to have 2000 calories and ate 2500 calories of all protein, you wouldn’t lose weight. The same thing goes if you ate 1800 calories just from cake. You wouldn’t lose weight. Each macronutrient, protein, carb, or fat has its own job. Protein is great because it is the most versatile one.

Adding a carb in at breakfast and lunch and then two small, healthy snacks in between lunch and dinner.

What kind of snacks?A shake, fruit or almonds.

Some fats are good for you. The body needs fat for certain things, and you shouldn’t deprive your body of it. It is the secondary source of energy and also helps with joint health. There are other things your body uses fat for. But no matter how good it is for yo
u. The body needs fat for certain things, and you shouldn’t deprive your body of it. It is the secondary source of energy and also helps with joint health. There are other things your body uses fat for. But no matter how good it is for you, fat is fat in the end. Too much of any one thing isn’t any good, especially fat. It contains nine calories per gram as opposed to protein and carbs, which both have four calories per gram. That’s why fat should be kept to two servings per day in my opinion. So, yes, almonds.

As a general rule of thumb, to help portion meals, I recommend having a small amount of protein with each meal with a serving of carbs or a protein and a serving of fat. It will balance out to about the same amount of calories. If you do a fruit or almonds by itself, that is ok to start. It is a step in the right direction.

You’re Welcome.
gbangURmom
(You can thank me with bee that make milk.)
Helter Skelter you’re so cool. Thanks for enlightening me.

Awesome stuff mate. Keep up the good work. A lot of people tend to stay away from weight training when trying to lose weight but I always balanced between my diet, weight training, and cardio to lose weight. It works wonders because the muscles help me up my metabolic rate!

http://www.tlbc.ca/blog/index.php/bmr-calculator/

Put in the weight you want to be and your heaigh and it will tell you the cals you need to maintain that weight (eat those cals no more no less and you will become that size)

Exersize no more then and hour a day (if you are doing the whole week) and no less then 30 mins 3 times a week. Do Cardio AND weights (CAUTION! weights will make you heavier BUT its not fat its muscle which weighs MORE then fat, and the more muscle you have the better your body is at burning calories while you are doing nothing at all!)

PLEASE dont over do it, maintain a healthy weight (if you are over 4′8" you are already perfect so calm your insecurities down a notch , everyone is to worried about themselves to find anything wrong with you)

Crash diets will make you skinny for like a week and then blow you up like a balloon, making you heavier then you where to begin with =/

I will be going to Sac State for the graphic design program, which is one of the most prestigious in Nor Cal. I turned down UC Davis for this because of the cost, and because they are cutting funds/classes for their design program, and I have heard that some of the design students over there attempt to transfer over to Sac State’s graphic design program. Are there also any other programs that Sac State is well known for?

I’m just wondering exactly WHY Sac State is really underrated and doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. It’s WAY better than other CSUs (I won’t mention which ones though). And with the new fitness center in the Fall (http://www.thewell.csus.edu/), it should be able to attract more prospective students and athletes and promote better school spirit and less apathy.

I wanna know people’s thoughts…if you are rude and have nothing nice or intelligent to say, don’t say it. Thanks.

I guess it is a matter of perspective. How much do you know about CSU LA, Dominguez Hills, Stanislaus, Fullerton, Northridge or Cal Poly Pomona? I don’t think they are high on the glamor scale for Cal state colleges either. Those are mostly commuter schools too. Can you get just as good an education there as you would at SLO or SJSU? You bet. Are there fewer distractions and temptations as there are at places such as Chico State or SDSU? Absolutely.

You get what you can from your particular college experience by making the most of it. Yes, there is more of a "college atmosphere" at places like UC Berkley and UCLA, but how often will you be able to talk to your teacher one on one? A big college professor is often much more interested in doing research, writing the next textbook or getting the next NSF grant than (s)he is in ensuring that you comprehend the course material.

Do your best, get the most out of whatever is offered and remember that your education is top priority.

Good luck

Well this is pretty much all I have right now. I planned it according to what’s in the kitchen:

1. Breakfast: Oatmeal w/ Milk (The powdered kind. It doesn’t contain fat. Don’t worry, it’s WAY better than it sounds ) or Cheerios (1 cup)
2. Morning walk around the block. It usually takes me 20 minutes.
3. School til 2pm
4. Lunch: Not sure about that yet, but I almost always have chicken, beans, & a tortilla, (Lol. Yes, I’m Mexican-American. And I enjoy grains.) and there’s mixed salad in the fridge. We’re out of fruit, but I’ll see if we can go to the store soon. I also take Women’s 1 a Day multivitamin.
5. 15 minute walk/jog at 7:30 when the sun goes down.
6. Dinner: Any suggestions? I’m thinking soup since I eat around 8 or 9.

Other details: I’m definitely going to start aiming for 8 glasses of water a day, and a little more milk. My problem is when I’m snacking on poptarts and chips, but I figure if I don’t take money with me to school, then there’s no way to buy snacks right? I DO need something to tide me over b/w breakfast and lunch though. And again before my walk/jog. Oh, and I checked the fridge, we have eggs (and an endless supply of chicken).

Now a little about me: I’m 18, measure 4′ 10”, weigh 117 lbs, like long walks on the beach… just kidding. But the rest is true. I don’t want to lose weight, just belly fat. Maybe even get a little definition in my waist?

I know it won’t happen overnight. It takes 6-8 weeks for a noticeable change to occur, but can you blame me for wishing?

Now, any thoughts? Things to change? Suggestions please! Thanks ^_^

Sorry for all the info!

make the tortilla at lunch a whole wheat one. stay away from white flour altogether. fruits, vegetables, fish, and grilled chicken should be in your diet. no soup for dinner, it has so much sodium in it. try to get 30 minutes of cardio exercise (running,jogging,swimming,biking) in each day or at least 5x a week.

if you exercise 5x a week and eat 1,200-1,500 calories you will lose 2 pounds per week.

Most of it goes to my thighs/stomach, and I have these weird love handle things that make my hips look messed up.
I also have a very chubby face that I’d like to get rid of.

I wanna lose about 40 lbs, I think that’s a healthy goal.
Btw, this weight IS effecting my health, it’s not muscle at all, none of it is, can’t even do a push up, can’t run very fast or for a very long time..

I want to try to lose the weight by next year
I may be going on a trip to Hawaii, Fiji, Australia and New Zealand
So that’s alot of beaches and hot weather, I wanna look cute in a bikini and shorts and not like a whale LOL

I’m 14 btw, I don’t really wanna go to a gym or anything and be the youngest one there, talk about embarrassing.

ALSOOOO I know this is posted in the wrong section, the diet and fitness section is full of bots and spammers, so I know I wouldn’t get any good answers there

im 14 i go to da gym.
and + ur heaps taller than me.
just diet dnt eat maccas etc.
btw i live in Australia lolz

I used to be addicted to sweets when I was a child, so much that my two front upper milk teeth were rotten form eating too much sugar, a few years later I had a painful abscess in my gum and had to have teeth removed, my parents did stop giving me sweets eventually encouraged me to be healthy by taking me to swimming lessons and dancing lessons and to eat sensible meals like turkey salad (yum!) even though I would have tantrums, scream the house down, hide a box of ready made icing under my pillow and eat it at night.

At 11 I would ride bikes with my friends for miles to get to the nearest beach and go for a swim (and a tan). That is when I became more conscious of my body and I started to take responsibility of my diet when I was 13 years of age and started to despise unhealthy snacks and fizzy drinks (Im lucky i didn’t end up with diabetes and obese).

When I was 14 I moved away and stopped going to dance classes etc ect, all me and my friends would do for exercise was walk around all day, I felt withdrawn from exercising and would ask my friends if they wanted to go for a jog or to a swimming classes, they didn’t want to, but I figured that as long as I got some sort of daily excersise and fresh air even if it was just walking, that would be fine.

Im quite proud that things turned around for me and I managed to be healthy and fit, but now I have gone back to my unhealthy ways by eating junk and not exercising, I also smoke like a chimney.

I would start again but now eating healthy and exercising feels like a chore, I can’t do it without thinking Im doing it for a reason or that there is a goal at the end of it, my friends are still reluctant to go to the gym with me (they talk about going, getting fit and loosing weight but never get round it) I went to the gym once with my friend and loved it but she must have felt jealous and because she makes excuses about going with me now.

I have done some fitness DVD’s but they get boring after a while and after a few minuets I think what is the point? I don’t want to go out jogging or for a walk because I will feel too self conscious, I have thought about going to the gym on my own but I’m scared of feeling self conscious and getting in a nervous clumsiness state where I fall over or just give up after a few minuets because there is nobody there to compete with and encouraged by.

What do you think I should do?

Stop being lazy. Staying fit IS a chore. But if you think that the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, and thus being healthy, outweigh the benefits of potentially having medical problems in the future than you will do it. If you don’t do it, than you really are harming yourself. Stop smoking.