Jillian Michaels Can Kick My Butt

The Food
I have weird taste. I admit that. But tastes issues aside, her food plan sucked. Problemo numero uno: the insanely low daily calorie allotment. She expected me to not only wake up every morning and take care of my house and kids but to work out on my BMR: a measly 1300 calories a day. Even refugee camps provide 1800.

Secondly, I don't know if I buy her whole "oxidation type" theory. I (kinda) get the science behind it but just because something sounds scientifically correct doesn't make it so. There are a lot of variables in metabolism and upping my carb intake by a lot didn't help my weight or my muscle at all.

Third, the food tasted terrible. Not to mention the overabundance of mercury-contaminated large fish (one day in my menu plan called for 6 oz. of swordfish followed up the next day with the same - the FDA recommends avoiding swordfish altogether as it is one of the most heavily contaminated fish in the ocean.)

Fourth, she came from a totally California rich girl mentality where organic produce grows on trees (hee!) and tempeh is at the corner gas station.

The Exercise
This part was obviously Jillian's field of expertise. She provided two new workouts per week, each repeated twice. The exercises were varied and worked out the entire body. She relied mostly on tried-and-true body builder standards like the squat and the bench press but added in some novelties I'd never tried before.

At first I thought her workouts were too easy until you guys pointed out to me that I could do them twice in a row. Once the Gym Buddies and I did that, we consistently got our butts kicked. Although I had to up all her recommended weights, speeds and inclines.

The one thing I didn't like, and I know I'm being nit picky here, was that her exercise program felt a little bit "old school" and not in a good way. Her reliance on the Swiss ball and push-pull technique were all very hot a few years ago but have since been relegated to the what-were-we-thinking bin. It was only after I looked back at the copyright date that I realized the book actually is several years old. So it was probably cutting edge... when it came out. (So don't ask me why they are marketing it like it's new now.)

My Results
Weight: +9 FREAKING pounds (but we've already discussed that that was probably due to the over training and not to Ms. Michaels)
Body fat: +2% (sigh)
Measurements (ready for some weirdness?)
Waist: -1/2 inch (after gaining 9 lbs???)
Arm: +3/4 inch - goooooo biceps!
Hips: +1.5 inches
Butt: +1 inch (which I admit that I kind of like. I don't have much of a butt usually)
Thigh: +1.25 inches

Gym Buddy Allison's weight and measurements stayed constant.

My Conclusions
There was nothing really exciting or earth shattering in here. The strength of the book lies in Ms. Michaels' considerable charisma. I loved her honesty about how hard she and other H'wood types work for their physiques. I loved her no-nonsense no-coddling here tone. And, since I now own the book, I will probably continue to use some of her workouts (slightly adapted, natch) to break up my routine. But the food plan - blech. And I have to say that I will NOT miss her smirk on her cover photo. Seriously, after a few days I started turning it over just so she'd stop looking at me like that.

I know a bunch of you tried this one with me - what were your thoughts? Results? Anyone end up with Jillian's abs??

Fiber: Can You Have Too Much of a Good Thing?

When it comes to eating disorders I often have a been-there-done-that-bought-the-t-shirt attitude. What I forget is that despite being around since at least the Greeks, these pernicious disorders are constantly evolving to take advantage of current trends and products. So it was with some surprise I read an e-mail from a brave and beautiful reader. She writes:

The past few days I've been extremely bloated with water weight, edema I suppose. It's everywhere, but most noticeable in my legs, fingers and belly, but definitely water weight. I know you've done a lot of reading on eating healthy and on different diets and such, so if it's okay and not too triggering for you, I was curious about your opinion about what might be causing this. I don't eat a lot of salt - I don't like salty-tasting things and try to eat as little preservatives as possible, so I'm definitely not consuming excess sodium, and I drink several liters of water a day (usually 6 or so), so I'm not dehydrated. I do binge and purge; I had it under control for a bit but the fast few days have been doing it again, but it has NEVER in all my years of ED behavior made me this bloated with water weight. I've recently been taking fiber powder as a laxative, and I suppose taking an excess amount (a cup and a half some days, and a serving is two spoonfulls). It's weird - I always said I would never take laxatives because it's not "real" weight loss, yet I'm taking insane amounts of fiber (though in my head that's not a laxative, just has a laxative effect). Part of me just wants to make the bloat from the b/p go away (and somehow thinks fiber will make that better instead of worse). A friend mentioned that excess fiber can actually cause bloating, and too much can have the reverse effect if you don't drink enough water... but I do, and this is more water weight bloating than food weight. Is it possibly related to the fiber still, and do you have any ideas of what it could be or how to make it better? It's been messing with my head since all my clothes are tight and it affects the number on the scale and is just plain uncomfortable. I don't know if you have any experience with this or have read anything about this in all your research, but if you have any thoughts about it or ways to make it go away.

Can You Have Too Much Fiber?
The Harvard School of Public Health recommends 20-25 grams of fiber a day for women and 30-35 grams for men. However, they don't really set an upper limit. For most of history getting too much roughage in one's diet was not really a problem. In fact, most Americans get far less than the recommended daily amount. People eating real food find that fiber ends up being self-limiting. Sure lentils pack a whopping 16 grams of fiber per cup but anyone who has eaten an entire cup of lentils can tell you how that feels - after they return from multiple trips to the bathroom, that is. But in this day of Metamucil, Benefiber, and fiber-fortified cereals, granola bars, pop tarts, waters and even soups, people who trend towards the more-is-always-better school of thought can easily overdose on the stuff.

Fiber is a tricky thing. Too little and you end up being constipated - as all those strangely invasive commercials will tell you - not to mention that fiber helps with heart health, reduces diabetes and helps with irritable bowel symptoms among other things. But can you have too much fiber?

Excess fiber, generally defined as greater than 50 grams per day, has several well-documented effects. Besides the gastronomical effects (everything from explosive diarrhea, gas, and cramping), it can lead to vitamin deficiencies as it interferes with their absorption. Not to mention the excess bloating mentioned by the writer of the e-mail.

Using Fiber To Purge
The part of the e-mail that really caught my eye though was using fiber as a purging technique. Bulimics have long used emetics, laxatives, diuretics, exercise and even feeding tubes as ways of purging food from their systems. But taking a cup and a half of fiber powder (the equivalent of 90 grams of fiber) to achieve the laxative effect is one I'd never heard of before.

After thinking about it though, I can certainly see where the temptation lies. Both Gym Buddy Allison and I have O.D.'ed on fiber powder - weirdly on the exact same day, you should have heard that conversation at the gym! - and both of us did it out of a desire to use fiber to control our weight. The problem is that everywhere you look, fiber is the new "it" word for weight loss. Fiber "fills you up" and "triggers satiety" and even, as evidenced by Fiber Choice's Weight Management tablets, help you "control your weight."

I've bought into that marketing mania. If I have a choice between buying a regular granola bar or a "fiber bar", I pick the fiber bar every time. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Except that all the extra fiber adds up and now my body is used to a lot of fiber and needs it to, you know, keep things moving. It's funny how these things sneak up on you. Everything I've read says that if you eat a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and whole grains you'll get all the fiber you need from your diet. So why the huge boom in fiber-enhanced products? I'm guessing it's for the money. Either that or some ConAgra CEO finds "sharts" funny.

If you've never seen this Sarah Haskins video before, it's a must-watch! Warning: use the potty first if you have a weak bladder.

January Great Fitness Experiment: The Lose 10 Pounds Diet

Reader Maggie made an astute observation in her comment on my post "Can You Be Too Old To Exercise?" Smart girl, she writes:

[...] it really bothers me when a fitness magazine has an article about loving yourself and your body the way you are... and on the next page there's an article telling you how to lose 10 pounds fast (!).

Shape Magazine heard Maggie and decided to give her a late holiday gift (just like when your aunt "forgets" you are allergic to peanuts and gives you a gigantic tin of her famous peanut brittle): On page 150 they have a delightful little article called "Banish Those Body Issues" illustrated with a photo of 6 naked women. (Why is it that for a woman to show she is body confident, she must be naked? Is confident and clothed some kind of oxymoron?) On the very next page is the article with largest font from the cover: "Drop 10 lbs This Month." Not only that but it was subtitled: "Our best plan ever!"

To paraphrase my favorite karaoke song ever "Why do you build me up (build me up!), buttercup baby, just to let me down (let me down!)?" (If you are currently singing "And worst of all (worst of all!), you never call darlin' when you say you will (say you will!)" then you will love this.) Shape gave me a challenge I could not refuse. I am going to do their "Drop 10 lbs this month" plan and see what happens. Will I learn to "banish those body issues?" or will I banish that pesky poundage?

I've always wanted to take a magazine at their word and then write about the results. It's like those commercials that say you can burn (tiny type) up to (huge type) 1,000 calories an hour doing Zumba! Now I love Zumba but I've done that class with a heart-rate monitor on and I'll be darned if I ever broke 400. This workout not only says it will "burn more than 400 calories in just 30 minutes!" they also promise "you'll have firmer muscles, your clothes will be noticeably looser, and the number on the scale will plummet. Plus you'll feel like you can take on antyhing the world throws at you." I don't know about you but interplanetary objects chuck stuff at me like all the time. Who can resist that?

It's the smart aleck in me. I can't help it.

All snarking aside, a lot of people look to magazine workouts for ideas and while occasionally they come up with some flat-out craziness, often they have some good plans for spicing things up. In addition to novelty, you can't beat them for cost effectiveness. In this time of financial hardship, shelling out a few bucks for a magazine certainly beats an hour with a pricey trainer. Also, they are widely available, come with pictures and are a good place to start. And what is January if not a good place to start?

My sister, who knows me better than I know me, pointed out that a lot of people find my Experiments intimidating because I'm such a die-hard exerciser (post about compulsive exercise coming at you soon!) "Why don't you do something that everyone can try?" she asked me the other day. "Oh but everyone can try the stuff I do," I began to enthuse. She cut me off, "What I should have said was, 'Why don't you do something that everyone will want to try?'" Ah. And while I do realize that some of you read this just for the freak-show appeal of watching me do hilarious and sometimes idiotic things - and that's not going away, don't worry - I do worry about alienating people who are just getting into fitness. Exercise is for everyone! No matter how young or old, how weak or strong, how thin or thick, how introverted or extroverted; there is something for everyone. So this month there are no excuses. This is a real workout - your quads will burn - but it is customizable to every level, requires little to no equipment and has a good healthy balance of strength training and cardio.

The Workout
You've got two days of the strength circuit in the magazine, two days of high intensity interval work and one day of something low-n-slow like yoga or walking. Every 4th day is a rest day.

The workout the Gym Buddies and I will be following is:
Monday - Shape Magazine strength circuit (see pictures below)
Tuesday - Boot Camp interval workout (you can sub biking, running, swimming or any other activity that gets heart rate upupup and then takes it down for a rest and then back up again. The key is the intensity - you want something short and hard. Don't go over 45 minutes. You want a suggestion? Do the 8/12 bicycle sprints!)
Wednesday - Shape Magazine strength circuit
Thursday - Yoga/walking
Friday - Turbokick interval workout (again, sub in what you like)

We will also be doing a Hip-Hop cardio class Monday nights that falls into the steady state cardio category and a TurboKick class on Saturday but that's just because we love those classes so much and can't bear to give them up. You don't have to add anything else in.

While I would be highly surprised if I lost 10 lbs this month, this workout has some new moves and takes anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes depending on how much time you have to give to it. If you can get past the editorial hyperbole, I think you might like it. We did it at the gym today and it kicked our butts! So throw those resolutions in high gear and join the Gym Buddies and I this month. This is your month, people and I want to hear all about it! Who's in with me?

Shape Magazine Workout Scans
*note: This workout uses a weighted ball but there is nothing special about the ball. If you don't have a ball, use a dumbbell or a milk jug or two soup cans. You can even do the moves without any weights at all! (Click the images to enlarge)

Changing a Negative Self Image [Aplogies All Around]

It is not often I feel genuinely sorry for celebrities and yet - have you seen the video of Giuliana Rancic pestering women on the red carpet at the Golden Globes about their diet secrets?! Jezebel provides a helpful mash-up:

Click thru to see the vid - it doesn't allow for embedding. Sorry!

It's a veritable body-image gauntlet. How is it that the most important question a reporter can think of to ask an actress is what her diet and exercise routine really REALLY is? Especially when said reporter is so waifish herself. Just watching it was like being sandblasted with body snark, jealousy, insecurity and shallowness. I can't imagine what it must have felt like in person. Made me love Christina Hendricks though with her, "Maybe you should eat more food and lay off the booze" admonition!

Actually, watching this vid made me think of how things have been around here at GFE lately: a hail storm of body image woes. A sweet reader recently e-mailed me saying, "I wish you wouldn't be so hard on yourself. Because when you're hard on yourself, it makes me hard on myself." Unless it's from joy, I don't often cry reading your e-mails (usually I snort liquids and make embarrassing noises trying to stifle my laughter) but this time I did.

I forget sometimes that I walk a fine line here by sharing all my deep-seated crazy - and there's been a serious uptick in insanity since the Jelly Bean has been born, I'm not going to lie to you - and holding all of you hostage on the crazy train with me. You should know that for every weight-loss thought that I write, I think 100 (1,000?) in my head. It's an illness, this self hatred.

The scale, the calories, the inches, the percentages: for years these numbers ruled my life and I don't want to go back there. Truly, I don't. But you should also know that every recent resurgence of my disordered eating has been after the birth of one of my children. Hormones, sleep deprivation and baby weight combine into this trifecta of evil that makes me so very hard on myself. Plus this time around my therapist, whom I loved dearly, is now working for the prison system and alas I am not a criminal.

And so I blog about all this trying to keep it transparent, thinking that if I'm accountable to all of you then perhaps I can avoid repeating past mistakes. But I forget that some of you are fragile too. And some of you are just sick of hearing about this. In retrospect, I don't know that it is helping me much to indulge in the negative self talk. Making excuses for my bad behavior just allows me to wallow in it instead of making the necessary changes.

I asked my sister today if it is possible to change one's entire personality. To let go of my Type A insanity and embrace a more mellow me. She said she believed I could with a lot of work. I hope so. I'm going to try. I'm not exactly sure how to go about it yet but I hope to be gentle in the process.

My sincerest apologies to those of you I have made sad, mad, crazy or just otherwise irritated. I'm going to cut the negative self talk in the future. I won't be perfect but I'm going to try. I love you guys too much not to. Hopefully I'll learn to love myself that much as well.

Thanks for your patience with me. We're all in this together, right? Where do you draw the line between a healthy dialogue and pointless obsessing? Anyone else want to smack Guiliana??

How Audrey Hepburn Ruined My Day

Note: This is hands-down the most enigmatic post I've ever written, not because of what it says but because of the effect it continues to have on other people. I wrote this in February of 2009, when I was not in a very good place mentally and I thought it would be a nice little chunk of mental vomit that a few women would relate to and we'd all move on. This post remains to this day the number one post that brings people to my site from search engines. It is the most active post comment-wise in my archives.

Almost weekly I get people sympathizing with, chastising, hating and lecturing two-years-ago me. Some people say Audrey absolutely did have an eating disorder. Others comment that there's no way she was 103 pounds. Still others chalk it up to the deprivation she experienced during World War II. And there's even one commenter who claims to be related to her. It's bizarre. So I thought I'd share this post with you again on the off chance one of you can tell me what is still so compelling about a woman with a teeny tiny waist.

And just so we're clear: I would not write this post today. I still adore Audrey but I no longer covet her unattainable figure. In fact I'm a little embarrassed I wrote this but that's where I was at the time.

103. 20. Those two numbers have haunted my every waking moment for the past three days. Even though I have a known weakness for numbers - body fat percentage! max reps! weight! calories! IP addresses! (xkcd, I love you!) - the tenacity of these two little numbers in my mind has surprised even me. Every spare moment this weekend when my brain has not been occupied, all I can think is 103. 20. 103. 20. Their power over me is tied to a third number: 5' 6.75"

That's right. My height. I'm nearly 5' 7" which may possibly be the one number I have always been quite happy with. I have never wished to be shorter and thanks to a weird complex I have where I always think I'm taller than everyone, 6 1/2 foot-tall men included, my height has always been a happy number for me. Good thing too since it's not like it's something one can really do much about.

My height also puts me in good company. Kate Moss is 5' 6.5". Angelina Jolie is 5' 7". Jackie Kennedy was 5'7". And Audrey Hepburn, one of my favorite actresses and style icons, is my height exactly. (Well, she was anyhow. For those of you who missed the memo, she's dead now. She died a few months before her 65th birthday of cancer.) Why do I care about other women's heights? Because it gives me the information I need to compare myself. Sigh.

103 was Audrey Hepburn's weight. 20 inches was the size of her waist. I found this out courtesy of one of the magazines I read that is supposed to promote health (in fact it even has the word "health" in its title so it must be true!). This same article also called Princess Di "normal" with a waist of "26" at her largest" and Kate Winslet "large" with a 28" waist. But seeing as I do not share the coloring nor stylistic predilections of the tragic Di or the beleagured Kate, back to Audrey. It is said that all throughout her life and illustrious career, she made it a point to never exceed 103 pounds. And according to all sources, aside from her two pregnancies, she never did.

Let's get real. 103 pounds (a BMI of 16.2) is a positively ridiculous number for someone of our height. Kate Moss, the Waif of all Waifs, is reported to weigh 114 pounds (BMI 17.9). Angelina Jolie, if you believe the tabloids, is near 110 (BMI 17.2). All are considered underweight to the point of it being a health risk. At my very sickest with my eating disorder, I never got as low as Audrey Hepburn maintained for her entire adult life. For me to get to 103 would require calorie restriction and exercise the like of which I dare not even imagine.

A 20-inch waist is also similarly extraordinary. One of my thighs is bigger than her waist. The only women that I know of that can even approximate that number are Vivien Leigh (Scarlett O'Hara) and Dita Von Teese, both of whom use highly restrictive corsets to achieve 18" for the former and 16" for the latter. Audrey's waist was 20 inches even in a bikini. (For the record, it is reported that Dita's uncorseted waist is a mere 21".)

I know all this and yet I still pine for a 20 inch waist. Why would I do this? I am healthy - exceedingly healthy if you want to talk those kinds of numbers (you should see the blood pressure reading on this baby!) - so why aren't I happy with that? It's because deep down I yearn, like most women I think, to not just be functional but also to be beautiful. And I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but for this beholder, Audrey Hepburn has always reigned supreme.

Part of my problem with this is that for everything that Audrey was known for in her life, being eating disordered was never one of them. She maintained an impossibly tiny figure without making herself ill. Good genetics, I suppose. And I imagine she was very careful with how she ate - there are certainly no records of her being a glutton. But here's where the crazy voices kick in: Why does she get to be so thin and beautiful when for me that weight would earn me a one-way ticket to the mental health ward? Why doesn't she look sunken-eyed and gaunt in any of her pictures? I lose 10 pounds and I have bones sticking out in all sorts of wrong places. And where did she put all of her internal organs? In her pocketbook?

I am embarrassed to say how much these numbers bother me. I have spent the last two days looking up corsets online and wondering if I could wear one under my gym tank tops without the Gym Buddies noticing (not likely) and still be able to breathe enough to do my cardio (extremely unlikely). I have been wondering if I ought to take out all oblique exercises just in case my crazy strong ab muscles are actually making my waist bigger - an assertion that Jillian Michaels uses in her book Making the Cut as her reason why she never does them - despite the fact that it would give me an unstable and unbalanced core.



There is a reason that comparisons are odious. Certainly I am stronger than Audrey, she being no fan of sport or exercise aside from dancing in her youth. And other than coloring (and height!), we share precious little with which to draw a comparison. So you would think that I could stop obsessing. But I can't. I have admired her for so long that to learn that the reality of looking like her is so far out of my reach as to be a logistical impossibility feels terribly sad to me. A loss, even.

Rachel Cosgrove Female Body Breakthrough Results UPDATE

Having just finished Day 1 of our Fitness Challenge Experiment with Lindsey, the Gym Buddies and I all got our body fat percentage tested so we'd have our official results from November and December's Rachel Cosgrove Experiment. I posted last night about my results from it but these new numbers were so stunning I had to add an update. Seriously, any of you who are still undecided about heavy lifting and minimal endurance cardio, this will be the push you need! Just try it!

Me: Today I got the same trainer to take my body fat as I did a month ago and I'm down 7% according to her measurements. (The other trainer gave me a drop of 5% on Saturday. Yes, I had my body fat tested twice in three days and yes I know that's nuts.) So I lost 5-7% body fat, either of which is a massive success.

Allison: Down between 5% and 8%, which is impressive alone but considering she started at the very low end of the body fat scale makes it even more remarkable. (But don't lose any more girl - you need some fat to live!)

Creatine Supplementing for Women: The Good, The Bad and The Bloated

Proof that even the skinniest girl will look bloated if she stands wrong. And this is how 80% of Star magazine's headlines are born...

Increased muscle growth, faster recovery, increased endurance, less body fat, reversal of the beginning stages of heart failure and greater mental acuity (about a 10 point increase in IQ!) are just a few of the many benefits of the supplement creatine. Benefits, I might add, that are very well supported by reliable research as creatine is possibly the most researched athletic supplement out there. So why isn't everyone running to take this miracle in a powder? Indeed, it's estimated that upwards of 75% of professional athletes and Olympians take it so why aren't more of us average Janes taking it?

That's the question I found myself asking as I read about it in several fitness books this past week. It isn't that I've never heard of it before - you can't spend more than 10 minutes on a weight floor without somebody sprinkling white powder into their drink (note: if they're sprinkling white powder into your drink you are in one of the few situations in which it is totally appropriate to drop a weight on someone's foot) - I just figured it was one of those kooky things that bodybuilders did, you know like wrapping chains around their bench press bar and making sex noises during every rep. But after reading breathless reports of its amazing powers and virtual lack of side effects, I took it as a sign when I found a small canister on clearance at Target. I bought it.

Perhaps I should not buy supplements on clearance at a mega-grocery store but that's a discussion for another day. At any rate, I took my first dose yesterday. The white sparkly powder (seriously, Edward Cullen is jealous) didn't dissolve well in the recommended 8 oz of water but it also didn't taste like anything so I chugged it down and went about my business. An hour later this was me:

Okay so this isn't ME me but my belly was so swollen I pretty much looked 4-months pregnant like J.Lo. here (p.s. Elvis only wishes he could design a maternity line this awesome). While creatine doesn't have any serious side effects - anecdotal reports of severe cramping and dehydration have been disproven in studies - it does have one very uncomfortable side effect: Bloating. And not just "my period is imminent, hide the cookies" bloating but "holy crap, if you poke me with a pin I'll turn into an elephant sprinkler" bloating. While I peed like a racehorse for the rest of the day and the bloating was gone within a few hours, still, I was not happy. Before I tell you more about my little experiment, here are some FAQs about the supplement. (Read here for more info and hilarious answers.)

What is Creatine?

Creatine, an organic compound produced naturally from amino acids in our kidneys and liver and stored in our muscles, was first discovered in the 1800's. By the early 1900's it was already in use as a performance aid (and I mean that in the non-Levitra sense, egads marketing has warped me!). This extensive history has made it one of the most studied supplements on the planet.

There are several different types of creatine and prices range from pennies a serving to $120 for a small canister. Creatine monohydrate, the kind I took that made me inflate like a Macy's Parade float, is the cheapest and most common. Other types of creatine like creatine ethyl ester are supposed to not have the bloating/gas side effect but of course they cost more. And you don't find them on clearance at Target, precluding any "the universe made me buy it" arguments.

How do you use Creatine?

Most sources recommend "loading" for the first 4-5 days by taking 20-30 grams a day with afterwards taking 5-10 grams a day for maintenance. You maintain this load for about 6 weeks and then you stop the creatine for 2-6 weeks before starting a new cycle. Although I did read several recommendations that said to never stop taking it, just to repeat the loading every couple of months.

Most sites I read recommend taking one dose within a half hour of finishing your weight workout and a second right before bed (presumably so you go through the distended-whale stage in your sleep). Make sure that no matter when you take it, you are drinking a ton of water.

What are the effects of Creatine?

It works by drawing water into your muscles and because of this it has the dual effect of 1) making your "pump" or the visible size of your muscles look larger and 2) making you gain weight about 1.5-6 pounds during the first week as your body retains this extra water. The water weight is lost after stopping the creatine but you retain the extra muscle you built - in studies athletes on creatine gained about 5 pounds more of muscle than athletes not on creatine doing the same training program.

Should I be capitalizing Creatine?

I have no idea.

After doing all this research on it, I am super intrigued by the benefits but I have one main concern. It's the weight gain. Don't even pretend you are surprised. While I'm still not weighing myself (two months now scale free, yay me!!) the thought of doing something that could make me gain 5 pounds in one week makes me want to run and cry in my closet just for old time's sake. I don't care if it is water weight. When your pants don't fit, your pants don't fit. I also am not thrilled about my muscles getting "bigger." Yes, I love my new Rachel Cosgrove muscles and I love being strong but I don't necessarily want them any bigger. Less body fat? Higher metabolism? More energy? Yes, please! But I'd like those without the hypertrophy.

Unsurprisingly, when I threw this question out on Twitter, the only people who responded that they had taken it were men. I think a lot of women are scared away from creatine for the same reasons that I am: we don't want to gain weight and we don't want bigger muscles. But what about our lack of testosterone - wouldn't that inherently limit our muscle growth? (And since creatine is not a hormone it would not impact our testosterone or estrogen levels.) And if we're gaining weight but it's all muscle, isn't that a good thing? Plus: TEN IQ POINTS. Who doesn't want to be smarter? (Notice how the reversal of heart disease doesn't even make my top 3? Hahaha...)