I’ve Been Challenged!

By my awesome friend and workout buddy Allison, who is home today recuperating from strep throat (it’s going around here – you might want to sanitize your hands after reading this) and therefore had to miss our Monday morning workout causing me to experience extreme treadmill boredom and instead spend 30 minutes falling on my face from 10 different angles whilst attempting obscure and painful yoga inversions. That might be the longest sentence I’ve ever written! And I still haven’t told you what the challenge was!

But first, look Ma, no hands!!
I successfully did bound headstand A, bound headstand B, double arm headstand and forearm stand. I did drop down into scorpion but fell unceremoniously on my head. I won’t list all the poses I fell out of but let’s just say that would be a much longer list:)

The Challenge
Allison recently broke a multi-year dependence on energy/weight-loss pills. Ever since her great weaning (yay Allison!!) she has complained that she can’t get her heart rate up where it used to be. So for a Turbokick class last weekend, she popped a pill and – bam! – her highest ever achieved max heart rate of 196! Her point being that if the caffeine pills help her boost her heart rate then subsequently she should burn more calories and thereby lose weight. I agree that the pills will temporarily boost her heart rate and temporarily elevate her calorie burn but I’m not convinced that weight loss will necessarily follow. (I wrote more of my thoughts on these pills in a previous post, if you didn’t catch it.)

So here’s the experiment: she’s bringing me a pill (Stacker, I believe) on Wednesday and I’m going to see if it affects my max heart rate (I think it probably will). I’m not going to look at my weight as a factor in this one-day experiment as caffeine’s a diuretic and I’ll probably shed some water weight. She’s going to continue taking the energy pills twice a week to see if that helps her in her quest to lose a few pounds (which I firmly believe she does NOT need to lose but then that’s another topic). I’m not going to take the pills after that one-time shot. We’ll see what happens and let you know!

Your Experiment?
Any of you tried any of these pills? What was your experience? I’m deeply interested in this so bring on the anecdotal evidence!!

4 Comments

  1. I’ve tried Hydroxycut after they “removed” the dangerous ingredient (starts with an E – I can’t remember). At first it was fine but soon I was shaky and unfocused and all over the place. I finally stopped after 2 weeks and saw a little bit of weight loss but if anything it was just water weight. On the subject of heart rate I doubt I ever reach my maxium as my resting heart rate is around 40 -50 BPM so I’m curious to see if reaching your max makes a difference. Looking forward to reading about it 🙂

  2. Anon – I think you are talking about Ephedra. It was banned a few years back after people started having heart problems and, ahem, dying from it. Like you, my resting HR is around 42 so I’ll be interested to see what happens on Wed. The highest I’ve ever gotten is 189. And I was seeing stars. Normally I max out around 183. But then I’m old – maybe some of you younger chickies can get yours higher…

  3. A couple of years ago I went into the drugstore and picked up a bottle of Trimspa. But then I asked myself if I really wanted to be like Anna Nicole, and put the bottle back. Seeing as how things turned out with her, I’m really glad I did.

  4. This isn’t a pill comment (though I do remember blindly seallowing a GNC herbal supp called garcinia while in college b/c I read it sped up your metabolism. Brilliant.) Rather, I have a question: How the freaking H-E-double hockey sticks do you do a headstand?! No matter how many times I try, I fail, as it hurts my head SO MUCH. Even with a pillow of clouds and marshmallow fluff under my noggin, all there is is blinding pain. Good for you for achieving it!