The fitness check-in thread

Haven't been working out as often as I'd like BUT I've been sporadically using Hydroxicut and not eating TOO terribly. (And working long hours.)

I think I've actually lost some waistline, but I've also lost some definition.

I haven't been hitting the gym enough lately either, but I still gain.

I'm seriously beginning to rethink my workout schedule. Maybe the extra time to recover is more beneficial than the 5 day a week workout.

But then again, maybe pouring concrete for the past 2 months helped build muscle too.

:kill:

So, to bump this thread.

Bench Press: 360#
Squat: - 405#
Deadlift - 320#

I know, I know.....my deadlift is weak, but I've neglected it for 3 months now, so its basically stayed exactly the same.

My goal is 500# for everything.

I was at the gym this morning. I squatted 225. I'm a pussy. In HS I could squat.. I think 460.

Ok so I've finally decided that enough is enough and I'm going to go at it "whole hog," so to speak. I'm tired of being overweight, tired of not having a lot of energy, and tired of paying extra for clothes (Did yall know about that?). And I want smaller boobs for crying out loud!! Yeah I know, men would object but yall don't have to carry them around all day.

So I'm going to cut down, at least, on the sugar and take a page from Tex's book and cut back on carbs. That's my biggest problem because I don't normally eat any more than I need anyway. So 3 reasonable meals, a couple of healthy snacks....does that sound about right?

Now exercise....or rather finding the time, is going to be hard. I'd love some advice on that, please. I have class 4 days a week and work 5 nights a week, but I might could fit some walking in between work and class. How long should I walk per day to even begin to help?

While you begin whatever exercise and diet program you're going to do, you need to give yourself a nutrition and fitness education. I recommend these books to start with:

http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-Eaters-Manifesto/dp/1594201455

http://www.amazon.com/Power-People-...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225549364&sr=1-2

Always keep in mind that at the most basic level, what you're trying to achieve is a calorie deficit. As long as you're expending more calories than you're taking in - no matter what the source - you're losing weight.

As for exercise, you should join a good gym, i.e., one with plenty of freeweights and various types of treadmills, bikes, and elliptical machines. Start out by going to the gym three or four times a week and doing, well, anything. It doesn't matter. Just get in the habit of being in the gym on a regular basis. Once you've done that for a week or two, then make sure you spend at least 15 minutes on a treadmill or an elliptical machine, whichever one you prefer. After you get started on that, begin some basic freeweight exercises with low weight.

If it's not a possibility to join a gym, I suggest you run or jump rope wherever is most convenient.

^^I can't really afford a gym membership right now. I figure I can do some of that stuff at home. I have some weights at home but they're only about 2 or 3 lbs, which I guess if fine? i don't want to bulk up, just tone muscle. For toning, it's amount of reps instead of amount of weight right? Considering I don't exercise at all right now, once I start doing anything, I should see at least a little difference.

My starting weight....and I can't believe I'm saying it in "public" is 275lb. My target weight all together is 150lb but I just want to get down to 200 for now.

Thanks for the advice, Moocey.

Leellana, I have noticed that while I do weight lifting, I don't lose weight unless I get out and walk, ride bike, or run.

So be encouraged - do that. Walk. As long as you can.

Given that you're female, "bulking up" is highly genetically improbable even if you were trying. You'd probably need to take drugs if you wanted to. It's not something that you need to give a second thought.

Happy to help.

Three whole meals plus snacks is a lot, even when you do hard core Atkins (low carb). Here's an example plan for a day:

Artificial sweeteners are OK, as are any spices. Bread is not so no sandwiches! And that 'couple of snacks' makes me a little weary, so keep a strict regimen there - one in the morning, one in the afternoon. But do eat those to prevent any traces of hunger. If you do this, KEEP TO THE PLAN. No chips while watching TV, no quick bite from the birthday cake at work or anything like that! Also, no sauces like ketchup as long as they are not sugar free!

Breakfast
Black coffee or tea, no sugar or cream.
Two eggs (as you like them)
Half a grapefruit

Snack
Can of tuna in olive oil

Lunch
One roasted chicken breast
Cup of green salad, any dressing but Balsamico or anything that contains sugar

Snack
Protein bar

Dinner
One small steak
Cup of mixed salad, dressing see above

You can always interchange fish and meat. You can also take hard boiled eggs to work and snack on them or something. Don't be afraid of fat and/or oil, as long as it's not the processed stuff. Keep the salad in check.

I can recommend such a diet to lose weight fast without hunger. I do recommend you take vitamin pills while you do it, tho.

And get 1/2 gallon to a gallon of water a day. The water is magic. It helps your body operate by lubricating joints, making the blood flow better, removing built up toxin, and improving digestion. It also makes you fuller.

The frequent, smaller meals is also key. Cass' sample menu is pretty fair. If you don't want to dive in with both feet, just get away from American-sized servings--have the 6" sub at Subway--with no chips or soda. It won't take too long before you get used to the smaller meals.

For snacks, while not optimal, there's nothing wrong with peanut M&Ms or licorice from a vending machine in a pinch. I also like fruit-flavored yogurt, trail mix (I mix my own from mixed nuts, raisins, and semi-sweet dark chocolate chips), celery with peanut butter and raisins, and of course fruits--apples, oranges, bananas, whatever.

Beyond that, there's not a lot of advice I can give you. I'm not a woman and I've never been significantly overweight (and don't have that sort of metabolism) so I really can't say much about what you need to do.

I will say I had a friend in 6th grade who'd been a big guy all his life. He was unusually tall, but he was also very fat. Everyone except his youngest sister (2-3 years younger) was fat. He was obese up until around 25-30 years old. 5 years earlier we'd lost touch, because we'd both finished up college and moved to different towns. But one day I ran into him in my brother's bar.

I literally didn't recognize him, because he'd lost probably half his body weight and was in excellent shape. He said he'd just gotten sick of it and decided to change. So he bought books on diet and exercise and just changed his lifestyle. I dunno how long it took him--probably years. But he pulled it off all by himself--no Oprah trainers or anything.

So good luck! Don't quit, and don't get discouraged!

I advise against any diet that attempts to cut out a macronutrient.

I agree with Volpy on the water. Forgot it, sorry. Drink, then drink more. Coffee, diet soda etc. does not count. A good thing are sugar free energy drinks like Red Bull Sugarfree: while they are no substitute for water and contain lots of stuff you shouldn't be taking in, they'll put your metabolism into overdrive and let you burn calories faster.

As for the rest: if you're trying to lose weight instead of holding, I strongly advise against M&Ms or some such. First, you never know what's in it. It's all processed food which is, to put it bluntly, bad for you. Also stay away from low fat foodstuffs - to make that crap tasty, they add unholy amounts of sugar. And sugar doesn't only make you fat, it also drains energy and makes you tired (hormonal thing). Additionally, sugar is highly addictive so cut it completely for a few days and you'll be off it.

As I said - my example is for rapid weight loss combined with long term lifestyle change. You wouldn't believe it how addicted we are to crap food, so the more natural you stay (that's not the same as organic!), the easier keeping the lower weight will be in the long term. It's like with smoking - you can't successfully quit and then start 'a little' with a coffee or something. It will creep back in slowly. But once you're at your ideal weight, you can take some liberties as long as you don't fall back into your old habits. It's not that you can never, ever eat that piece of cake again

I disagre about the red bull. Your body WILL eventually compensate.

I think in the back of my mind I knew this but just wasn't thinking about it...if that makes sense.

As for the food issue itself, I've done well so far with keeping portion sizes to the right ones, except when going out to eat. At that time all bets are off. I know what I need to do there is only eat half of my meal and bring the rest home. Lately it hasn't been so much how much I eat but what I eat. I'm a complete sugarholic so that'll be my main goal food-wise in the next few days, as well as drinking more water. Cass, thanks for the sample menu. I'll be printing that out to help remind myself of it.

As for exercise, I'm planning to do some walking on the mornings that I don't have class, which is only 3 days. The other days I may just have to fit walking around the building at work when I'm not actually doing anything. See at work, I only do about an hour of actually work and have 7 more hours that I can do pretty much what I want to as long as I spend most of that time near the front desk.

Note: I was a chubby...well no fat kid starting around 2nd grade(Age 7). But the summer between 4th and 5th grades, I lost about 50lbs, but it was eating mostly salad and fruit, really not the way to go. So during high school, I slowly crept back up and gained even more weight while I was married. It's kind of funny, inside I "feel" like a skinny person and don't really think about being fat most of the time. It's sometimes a surprise when I look in a full-length mirror and see the truth. Kind of wierd really. LOL

^ You were no fat kid when you could simply lose 50 pounds/23 kilos as a 9 year old?! That's... hard to believe unless you were 2,50 meters tall by then

I don't know, it could've been more than that. I was a short fat kid. LOL

Hey, I wasn't trying to be mean, but that sounds like a lot for such a young child. I mean, the average weight for a ten year old girl is at about 70 pounds or so.

Anyway.

If you have questions about nutrition and/or dieting, feel free to ask here or via PM.

Oh I know you weren't being mean. Honestly I'm not sure how much I lost because I can't remember what the before and after weight was. I do remember that it was a huge amount of difference. I want to say that I probably weighed a little over 100lbs but I'm not really sure.

As for the present try, I had my eggs, but I had yogurt with it. I'm allergic to grapefruit and even if I wasn't the one time I tried it, I couldn't abide the taste of it. Apples usually make me hungrier and bananas do nothing to help my hunger. As for my coffee.....I did add sugar but it was a lot less than normal, with a splash of milk (2%).

Yeah, you have to make a decision: are you going to do this, or not?

I'm no expert on health, but my parents lost a lot of weight (my mom ~40 lbs, my dad ~60) by cooking lots more at home. They learned to love olive oil, all kinds of veggies, and chicken. There's tons of amazing and healthy ways to bake or fry chicken, turkey, and fish.
Learn some quick, healthy recipes and you'll be on the right track.

Also, frozen veggies are great and cheap (about $1 a bag at Wal-Mart). You can get brown rice, frozen veggies, olive oil, some low-sodium soy sauce, and chicken, and you've got yourself a low-fat, really tasty stir fry.

Hm. If you're gonna do this, you need to do it correctly or it's counter productive. I can explain the logic behind such a diet: your body is equipped to burn two kinds of fuel - fats and carbs. Only fats can be stored, unused carbs will leave the body after about 48 hours.

Now, the popular logic since the 60s is: don't give it fat to store. Give it carbs, like athletes do. But, you won't lose any weight because when you do that as there's no need to burn off the stored fat. So... we're trying to get your body to burn it. And that requires a 'switch' to be turned. After about two days with no carbs, the body will start to burn off its fat - a process Atkins calls ketosis. You'll easily be able to notice when this starts to happen. There's a very distinct (but not bad, I'm told) smell to your urine. The other symptom is a greatly increased energy level.

To get this switch cranked, you'll need to deprive the body of any carbs for some time. Atkins recommends two weeks, but I'll say with vitamin supplements you can keep that up as long as you want and basically crash diet. You can go a lot easier once you are at your ideal weight, tho - you can even switch to a normal, mixed fat and carb diet as long as you watch your calorie intake.

The important part to make the diet itself work is to NOT mix fat and carbs, tho - and the higher fat intake is to kickstart the burning process. If you mix in carbs, the fat will be stored instead.

As for the grapefruit - no problem, my recommendation was just a random shot without knowing anything about you. You can of course use any fruit you like (except for bananas as they have unholy amounts of sugar!), but watch the quantity. A few strawberries are highly recommended and extremely tasty IMHO . Or a tomato, which also has lots of anti-carcinogenes.. Maybe you can get some carb-free Mozzarella cheese, put salt and pepper and some good (!) olive oil extra vergine on it and there you go.

Good luck! There's tons of material on this kind of diet on the Internet, and tons of recipes. I'd recommend not doing a pure hard core Atkins as it puts lots of strain on the body. Look into some easier form like the Zone Diet.

When I was 10 years old, I was five feet tall and 63 lbs... I was skinny!
Funny how adolescence changes things...

I think that something like the Atkins diet is alright for a short-term period of focused weight loss, but you should also be thinking about a sustainable long-term diet that doesn't exclude a major nutrient category.

Excess carbs do NOT leave the body after 48 hours. They turn into sugar...and eventually into fat.

So I ran a mile this morning. It's a good time to start as the change in seasonal work coupled with the time change leaves me with more time and getting up early.

I'm not necessarily fat, just unhappy with things, I weighed in at a fat faced 164 this morning. I'd like to get to 150 by new years. It's not undoable, I dropped two inches off of my waist last spring, but slacked off over summer.

I've ran about every other day since then, no weight loss, I admit I'm not even trying, but I definitely feel different.

I'd say lift weights.

But you already HAVE a hot wife.

I conclude every session with pull ups.

Yes, I have a hot wife. But I'm always looking for more.