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[nenjin]

I should add, in defense of Europe, that a reason sparkling water is so popular is the quality of the tap water can be questionable sometimes.

[Caz]

I should add, in defense of Europe, that a reason sparkling water is so popular is the quality of the tap water can be questionable sometimes.

Yes, that all-known trick of making it sparkly so that it's not worrisome anymore.

[JimboM12]

funnily enough i've been thinking of getting back in shape now that i've started my new job and get my old military body back, lo and behold, we have a thread for it.

wow this is gonna be a son-of-a-bitch. i've been working office jobs for the past 5 years and have gotten loose. but i know. i know underneath this flab is the old lean and mean jimbo.

at least i've cut junk food (the easy part for me, i like me my salads with vinaigrette) but cutting soda? a goddamn struggle. i've weened myself down to 2 cans a day, but i'm probably going to go down to one at dinner cuz i can't drop the real sugar dr.pepper. you'll have to pry the stuff from my cold dead hands.

wish me luck. if i get to my fitness goals in 2 months (likely now that i'm getting back into dating as my motivation) i might even post..... a photo! dun dun dun

[nenjin]

I should add, in defense of Europe, that a reason sparkling water is so popular is the quality of the tap water can be questionable sometimes.

Yes, that all-known trick of making it sparkly so that it's not worrisome anymore. Kind of matters when your water infrastructure may date back to the middle ages.

It stands a better chance of being processed and filtered to some degree than not.

i've weened myself down to 2 cans a day, but i'm probably going to go down to one at dinner cuz i can't drop the real sugar dr.pepper. you'll have to pry the stuff from my cold dead hands.

wish me luck. if i get to my fitness goals in 2 months (likely now that i'm getting back into dating as my motivation) i might even post..... a photo! dun dun dun

I too struggled with the "dinner soda" at first. I like the contrast of savory, salty food with a sweet drink. (Yet dislike sweet dinner food like sweet sauces or glazes and such.) For years I'd been weaning myself off of soda, to the point that I often wouldn't finish one if it wasn't with a meal.

But since I started eating healthier, I dunno. I just don't crave it as much. I stick to my slightly sweet coffee most of the day, have water with my meals and haven't gone crazy with boredom or cravings. I had a soda with dinner tonight but it's my first in a over a day. A 6 pack of coke is lasting me a couple weeks now. Turns out it wasn't as hard as I thought to give up the dinner soda. If you really need a better alternative to soda that isn't water, try hot tea in the winter and iced tea in the summer. Just bear in mind, if you're putting more than 6 teaspoons of sugar in over the course of everything, you've effectively drank one average soda.

And I think the whole "cut out EVERYTHING bad for you" often isn't realistic. There's a reason we have a term for "Cheat meals." The trick is moderation, and allowing these things to be infrequent treats. Infrequent. They shouldn't become goals. "Oh if I just go 12 more hours without a soda I can have a soda." Because you're still essentially craving. I treat it as a "oh, you know I haven't had a soda in a couple days, I guess one with dinner is ok." If you're keeping up a good regime that 24g of sugar isn't going to destroy your belly. Now if you start cheating AND get inconsistent with your workouts...that's when it starts to add up.

Anyways good luck on the fitness. I've debated posting photos but I'm not quite that self-absorbed yet. If I can make myself a real specimen...we'll see. I do wish I had taken some "before" photos when I started though. It is inspirational to see the difference.

[JimboM12]

Good luck on the fitness. I've debated posting photos but I'm not quite that self-absorbed yet. If I can make myself a real specimen...we'll see. I do wish I had taken some "before" photos when I started though. It is inspirational to see the difference.

thanks. the photo is purely an after: it's gonna be a dumb little meme. i'll be back in shape and i'll get someone to photo me at my sexiest and then superimpose the words "body goals" over it.

or i'll photoshop me riding a dinosaur. we'll see.

[Reelya]

One thing I was doing for a while (when it was hot) was buying the cheap soda-water and mixing it with this ginger cordial that's made with the real stuff (you can tell because it has sediments). Home-made ginger beer, less sugar, more fizz. Basically makes even the good brand of ginger beer taste like sugary shit with no balls, it's also costing me around 50 cents a liter to make it, and I can try different flavors out. But if you're doing that, fill a pint glass with ice and pour everything over that, it's just better.

So that's a good thing about plain soda water, you can get creative with that and make your own mixes with just enough sugar, that are as cheap as the cheapest no-name soda, but taste better than the good commercial brands. I've noticed recently that the supermarket near where I live has a huge section of just bottles of their cheap plain soda water, bigger even than the amount of coke they sell. You can also do stuff like e.g. a dash of lemon juice into soda water, for a pretty low-cal lemonade without getting all the chemical shit that's in diet drinks. Personally, I really like that level of control where I know what I'm putting in stuff.

[nenjin]

I tried using the rationale that koolaid was an ok replacement for soda because you could control the amount of sugar you put in it. It's what I bought my green pitcher for in the first place. (Which I have instead used for cold water for the last 4 years or so.) Even after reducing the sugar the package recommends, it came out to like 1 cup for 4 quarts, and that's still wwwaaaayyyyy too much. But the thing with koolaid is, there's critical level of sugar that if you fall below it tastes like shit. Which is probably still way more sugar than I'd want to drink now.

Might try the soda water thing. Work went on a soda stream craze for a while before everyone kind of concluded it tasted like ass and went back to regular soda. Might still be some of that stuff left I could swipe.

Also now that I think about it, I have a minifridge in my office full of soda I'm probably never going to drink (haven't been drinking it for the last couple years anyways.) I could probably start bringing my yogurt and other stuff to work. Pass on going out to lunch since I just made damn near 3 pounds of pasta salad I'm going to be struggling to finish before it goes bad. Normally I'd eat 2 or so giant bowls of it a day when I make it and polish off in a week. But I'm really trying to come in under 2k calories a day to see how far I can get my body fat down, so there's no way I'll finish it before it starts going south.

Christ the amount of money I'd save and calories I wouldn't be eating on fast and restaurant food for lunch.....but it means I'd have to get a little more serious about "prepared meals." It's one of the least appealing things about being healthy to me, is the work cooking on a regular basis. I *like* cooking, done it professionally, my whole family is passionate about it. But it's not something I've been in the habit of doing for years. When I cook, it usually takes several hours to make a lot of something I'll enjoy for a while. And it's something I've only done for pleasure, not erm..."sustainability?" So my repertoire of things isn't that large. (And tends to be pasta-based >.>.) I get why people in to fitness end up just grilling up some meat for the week and putting it in tupperware. It sounds so damn boring, but appealing at the same time, because one of the hardest things for me is nightly cooking. Which is why I'm not a great grocery shopper, because every time I try to get regular with cooking I get one or two meals in, break the cycle and stop eating what I bought and half of it rots and I wasted a bunch of money.

I sort of doubt I'm going to become a "making tonight's dinner" kind of guy unless there's a woman in my life. So I'm open to some good "will keep for a week" bulk recipes people like.

[Reelya]

I know what you mean by weak cordial aka koolaid. I find the fizziness does actually offset that a bit, for sure.

What I mostly live on for dinner is curry: chickpeas, coconut cream, veggies, curry powder and other spices. It's very easy to make and cheap. For carb reduction I like chinese cabbage aka Wombok or something. You can shred cabbage and use it as a substitute for rice or pasta base for meals. Cabbage is pretty awesome, has way more nutrients and stays fresh longer. Fuck lettuce.

[Xantalos]

Like you yourself said, it's mainly pasta dishes and various other starch-based things that keep for a week. Soups and stuff too, chilies, stews, etc. Or at least that's the kind of stuff I tend to eat, I try to cook only every 3 days minimum if I can help it. Doesn't always work that way, but pasta of some description, ground meat of some sort, tomato sauce and/or canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, maybe a bell pepper or two, a big batch of something like that tends to keep me for like 3-4 days or so, and can be lifted up pretty easily by adding herbs and such after re-heating.

Of course I have no idea what the nutritive figures on that sort of thing look like, and I figure having vegetables with a serving of the stuff is a sensible thing, s'what I do. But that's what works in my case.

Given my relatively young age I'm not sure if it would be as advisable for someone more likely to retain calories as fat, whether due to age/genetic predisposition/whatever else. I'm still in that lucky bracket where so long as I eat reasonably well I'm not gonna screw myself over.

Ramble complete for now, I think.

[Reelya]

When I was cooking less often, I'd make the sauce then do the carbs as needed, e.g. with the cabbage thing you just cut it up as needed. Gluggy pasta sounds horrible. Rice keeps ok however, but if you're having week-old pasta that would be pretty yuck.

[Xantalos]

It does get rather chewy after day 3 or so, but I've never been particularly scrupulous about the food I eat so long as it isn't bad for me.

[JoshuaFH]

But since I started eating healthier, I dunno. I just don't crave it as much.

This comment piqued my interest again in something I was studying a couple months ago: gut microbiology. As I'm sure you know there's a rich microbiome existing your intestines that acts as a secondary organ, both auxiliary to the digestive system and independent with it's own various, much still unknown, functions.

What is very interesting is that the various microbes, being their own living things that have a vested interested in their own survival, will interact with their host (you) to try to better their own chances. This can be as subtle as discretely giving hormonal signals to store away more fat, or even more arguably insidious behaviors like sending chemical signals to your brain to influence how hungry you are and even specifically what to crave after. Now, what's additionally interesting is that your own body is co-evolved to be wary of this behavior of it's denizens, and your own body depending on the circumstances, such as being excessively stressed, will go out of it's way to curb or support these microbes, reining in some and even go as far as feeding your own body fat to keep others alive, hand-sculpting your microbiome for your own benefit.

Now, what had piqued my interest was whether or not exercise has a strong influence on the contents of your gut microbiome. I just did a google search, but I found this interesting article:

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2017/3831972/

To summarize the article, yes it does! Though like seemingly every ecosystem in nature, it's participants are strongly interdependent on eachother. If one's diet is poor, your gut microbiome cannot change no matter what; and that means that the existing microbes that are adapted to a fat and unhealthy environment are strongly incentivized to keep you fat and unhealthy. If one's diet improves, that can set the stage for a more diverse and healthier microbiome, but it would seem that the body also uses exercise as its own trigger to begin sculpting the microbiome towards a biome that rewards and additionally powers a more fit and active lifestyle. That's what I'm gathering from the article, as it's not totally conclusive and admits that more research is required.

It's just cool as hell, there's not really any action plan you could draw from this info other than "Yep, diet and exercise is good alright" so even with all that said, it's kind of a flaccid contribution to the thread. Though, I do think that the body's various hormonal systems play perhaps the most important role to weight loss and gain, to the point that it needs to be considered in full for any dietary plan to be effective, and that includes the gut microbiome.

[nenjin]

Cabbage is pretty awesome, has way more nutrients and stays fresh longer. Fuck lettuce.

Yeah but it smells like a dying whale's asshole when you cook it

[JimboM12]

ive got my daytime meals set; mornings are light, usually fruit or whole wheat toast with a glass of milk and orange juice, lunches are similarly light with set salads of regular old store bought (i know, i know, i get'em cheap from publix in big bags and it has a good variety of veggies in'em) combined with some chopped kale and vinaigrette and either tea or water. Dinners are where I need to get creative.

so thanks for the tips fellas, i might make various simple pasta dishes or something.

oooh, or simple stir frys could work too. diced white meat chicken with soy sauce in a wok with assorted veggies. simple, healthy and delicious.

[Yoink]

Good grief, hungover workouts aren't much fun.
I just did one, though. Yep. Pushed through it. Some serious iron man shit right there. Phew.