Cheers Adam. It’s good to be back to my workouts, but crappy to be home 🙁

Good to have you back, Ace

Hi Feng, Glad to hear you and your wife want to start using Kettlebells. I’m not a fan of the cardio bells, especially if they have a short handle. Honestly, I would encourage your wife to start with 8kg, she will be able to do everything except maybe the military presses and windmills. For presses, I would substitute push presses and upright row until her upper body is strong enough. She will surprise herself Feng. Anything lighter, probably won’t challenge her enough, she wouldn’t need the light ones for long anyway so it would be a waste of money. We have very unfit ladies try our classes for the first time using 6kg and 8kg for presses, they try their best and eventually they build strength.

Another point is, it might be better for your wife’s technique to learn from the start with the pro grade size, mainly so she will be more likely to move to the heavier KBs and not be intimidated by their size in the future – especially when the KB is in the rack position 🙂

Good luck and happy shopping 😀
Marianne

Any special consideration when it comes to buying a kettlebell? I’m assuming I can’t go wrong with a pro-grade type. (same dimension regardless of size etc) Having said that, the pro-grade minimum 8-kg weight might be a little too much for my missus. Any idea if those lighter cardio-bells by Reebok are any good?

Very interest, Thanks a lot Gillian;)

Thanks Gillian, this is very helpful advice for people.

Marianne

I was reading some material from Scott Sonnon of Tacfit/RMax that I had overlooked, but I was stunned by its simplicity and obviousness: he says we don’t eat for today, we eat for tomorrow. What we eat right now will be put to use tomorrow. Based on what you intend to do tomorrow, you may want to adjust today’s eating habits accordingly.

That is one reason why workouts drag when you are on a low calorie diet. I was surprised that I did not have to pay dearly for the two brownies I ate yesterday… but yesterday was a hard workout day and so was today. Tomorrow is a light day, so no brownies allowed today!

I really really like Marianne’s limited fasting approach to eating, where you can only eat during an 8 hour window. I have finally settled in to working out first thing in the morning, and then having a good breakfast and smoothie right after my shower. I have read that we have a higher metabolic rate for about an hour after strenuous exercise, so I try to eat within that hour window. I eat minor snacks like fruit or a handful of nuts during the day and then we try to have dinner between 6 and 7 PM.

Using that routine, I have stayed within about 3 lbs for months now without really being too concerned about what I eat, though I try to eat clean, unprocessed foods. I went up a little bit over Thanksgiving, but now I am back to normal.

So between the varied workouts and the limited fasting,it seems pretty easy to keep my current shape. Not backsliding is my big concern. Now that I can think of what I eat as a tactical decision, my choices suddenly become easier to make.

I hope this helps someone!

~ Gillian