BellaOnline Forums Health and Fitness Exercise Do you Ride an Exercise Bike?

I finally got the clothes pile off the Nautilus bike and rode 20 minutes of intervals at level 7. It was challenging but I did it! Hurrah!

Bob was actually the one who kicked it up to level 7 while I wasn't looking, I think I would have done 6 if I was thinking about it. I got my heart rate up to 165 which is a little high Now that the living room is getting cleaner, hopefully I will keep up the daily exercise!

See, it is like Biggest Loser where you have your own Bob!

If I was there, I could be your Jillian!

LOL you are there in spirit, Jilly! I think of you every time I look at my twisty board!

High five!! The bike was my favorite type of cardio back when I was working the 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. shift at the gym. I stood all day long working with clients so it was nice to be able to sit down on a bike and still get a challenging cardio workout. I used to do about 10-15 mintues of sprints and then just coast for 5 minutes. Every now and then I would take a spinning class too.

That was all I needed back then to stay lean. These days my work has become more sedentary so I find that my body wants cardio that involves fullbody movement or walking/sprinting.

Gotta listen to your body. It always seems to know what's best. I think your body was telling you to get those clothes off that machine : )

Would you mind sharing your maintenance level of carb intake? I'm curious to know what that is for somebody who has kept the weight off as long as you have.

I can go ask in your other forum if you like.

It's fine to ask here, I'm happy to chat in the exercise forum!

That's a hard question to answer because over time I stopped specifically "counting" carbs. As in, I know what foods are lower carb, and I eat them. I know what foods are higher carb, and I don't eat them. So for example I used to eat peas and corn as my only two veggies. We never had any other veggies in the house. Now our freezer has steamer bags of brussels sprouts (which I **adore**!!) and green beans and cauliflower and broccoli. I used to eat a *ton* of pasta, my comfort foods were piles of shell pasta with margarine. And potato pancakes and pirogies. Now those are special occasion foods and a more normal dinner for us is a big salad, which I adore.

So it's not that I'm "sacrificing". My tastes have changed and I am even more pleased with the food I eat now. And I feel much better too. When I have a big bowl of shells as a comfort food, I literally fall asleep right afterwards. I used to be like that all the time. So the difference in my energy levels is very noticeable.

So for example today. I had an EAS shake in the morning, with 3 orange fiber pills (chewable), 1 orange multivitamin (chewable) and 1 orange vitamin C tablet (chewable). I know I'm odd but this is what I really want in the morning. I really don't want food when I wake up. This gets me fiber and lots of vitamins and it makes me happy to hop on the computer. So that has 1g of carbs and 15g of protein. I want to emphasize again that it's not a compromise, it's what I look forward to, and get grumpy if I can't have it

I woke up at 4pm today (I have an odd schedule) so at about 11pm I was ready for "lunch". Bob made me a *delicious* salad (a really big one) with lots of mixed lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, cheese, pine nuts, cucumbers, raisins, cranberries, bacon bits, bean sprouts, and bacon ranch dressing. I couldn't even finish it, and it was fantastic. So I would have to guess on carbs - maybe 4g total? 5g?

I haven't had dinner yet since it's "only" just after midnight So in a few hours Bob will probably make us some steak and brussels sprouts, that's a typical dinner, which is only a few grams.

Still, I'm not "counting" carbs any more. We just stock the house with lots of lower carb veggies, and in general we don't eat bread or pasta. So our meals are veggie-heavy, with steaks or chicken or pork or other meats, and my EAS shake in the morning.

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