I'm following my latest goals! To get up 20 minutes early and do 20 minutes of exercise and then eat a filling, healthy breakfast. This was less of a sacrifice than I thought and has done loads to make me feel better all through the day. I think I'm sleeping better too.

I bought Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred, and it really is great. You feel the burn and get cardio all at the same time. Plus it works your abs. It's got everything. Maybe too much of everything, because the one thing I can't figure out is how to incorporate the concept of rest.

There's 3 20-minute workouts on there. She says to do the first one every day until you're ready to move up to the level 2 workout, and I figure for major strength training where you are building muscle, you really need to get rest in there. So I figure in the exercise physiology world I'd have to look at the videos like they are actually pure cardio (circuit training) with some muscle sparing.

Did you guys know that just diet alone can make you lose 30% of your muscle mass, but if you add strength training then you retain that muscle and make it easier to keep the weight off later? This is what I understood, anyway. Although I'm a dietitian, not an exercise physiologist. So I figure Jillian's videos must be cardio that would retain some muscle.

Here's my exercise phylosophy. I've never written this down on sparkpeople before and I hesitate because there are so many floating ideas out there (that may or may not be true...although exercise scientists should know a lot more than most of us), but here's how a exercise science student explained the calorie burn from exercise to me. She said for pure weight loss you want cardio. Lets say you're trying to burn 500 calories per day. You're going to get that with cardio, not with strength training. The increased metabolism that comes from gaining 10 lbs of muscle would burn 50 calories in 24 hours, basically nothing. 50 calories per day is not going to get rid of your stomach (if you have one) 500 calories will. However, you need to do some strength so that you don't LOSE muscle. When you lose muscle it is very difficult to maintain your weight loss.

Which means I still probably want to do some strength training with muscle group rest and then I always think it's important to add some kind of de-stressing exercises like yoga or pilates a couple times a week.

Getting up 20 minutes earlier takes the pressure off of my 1 hour lunch at the gym. I can now use that time with more flexibility because I've got 1/2 of my cardio done. =)

If any of you exercise science people are out there, let me know your thoughts. Plus everyone else, of course. =)