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[Hanslanda]

I'm not exactly overweight. I enjoy running and I'm really exercising to build endurance overall. I do eat very healthy as an aside. Probably not how you might eat to build muscle or anything, but a well balanced diet nonetheless.

[Loud Whispers]

Couldn't use the frying pan since it was being used by someone else, didn't have much time to oven before work-out, so ate three raw onion-garlic-cheddar sandwiches. Raw garlic in such small quantities is no issue, but by god the onion burns. IT BURNS
At least I can say I've eaten a whole raw onion before. I used to know a guy whose father ate raw onions as if they were apples. I don't know how they managed that.

[nenjin]

I tried the raw onion challenge once, based on some movie where a character ate them like an apple.

Apples, they ain't. Onions are one of those vegetables I know are essential for flavor but I absolutely cannot stand the taste of raw. If it's not minced fine and cooked until almost invisible, I pick them out or skip them entirely.

[nenjin]

So here's an update.

I've been going through some family shit since the start of October. May be the most difficult thing I've had to go through in life up to this point, at least in terms of emotional investment and how long it's gone on.

And that's had a real impact on my fitness goals. Where I started all this I was full of fire, then sort of matured into a more realistic take (that and I was just plain exhausted). Now I've had to learn how to keep fitness important despite having every reason in the world to want to lay around. The abundance of energy and pep I had to pour in to my workouts is now at least half consumed by this other thing.

So I've cut back. Leg day, the hardest day of all, got skipped for a solid month and a half. I've been keeping it to two upper body days simply because it's easier to go hard and suffer less with upper body workouts than lower body ones. There were a few weeks where I didn't work out at all. I've made some small progressions in some exercises, mixed things up like giving my biceps a break after a straight year of training them to focus on triceps, swapped out shoulder training for forearm and grip training, yadda yadda. But in most places I've kinda stalled.

If there has been one silver lining in all this....I've lost body fat faster than ever before, despite the fewer workouts and therefore fewer calories burned. Unfortunately....I haven't gotten there in a good way. I've just been undereating. By a lot. Depression and stress does a real number on your appetite, and I was down to 1 meal a day a couple times a week. (While I was not working out. There's no way I could sustain a real workout on those few of calories.) I haven't been cooking for a couple months, although I still try to keep my easy and convenient food choices smarter. I've more or less kept the same dietary habits rather than caving and eating things to make myself feel better (i.e fast food.)

So I'm the leanest I've ever been since my teens, and getting leaner. I haven't weighed myself in a while, and I think I'll probably wait until things around me have stabilized before I do.

I've come to understand fat loss, what you see and the psychology of it this way: assume you are doing the right things, and you are losing body fat. What you see as you lose body fat is by halves. When you start out and you've got more body fat, you lose it fast. And you look half as fat as you did. As you keep going, you keep losing body fat but the total amount to lose is less and less, so you see changes slower and slower. (Setting aside all the actual metabolic science, this is just what I've observed anecdotally.) You see incremental changes as you get below 15% body fat. It's like peeling an onion. It's layers.

I may have posted this in the thread prior, but one thing that'd been said by someone who trains men for physique competitions is: however much body fat you think you "need to lose", lose it. And then lose some more. And then lose some more. While this was aimed at people wanting to get "stage lean", it applies to anyone wanting to lose body fat. It's one thing to visualize how lean you want to be and make flawed estimates. It's a whole different thing to actually see the results, and makes you realize how far you actually have to go. I guess I posted about this ultimately because I was surprised how much body fat I've lost in the last two months.

If you're still with me at this point, let me just say I'm not starving myself. My appetite is about back where it normally is (although I still don't always eat with the same gusto I was previously) and I'm still not lean by my standards, let alone shredded. But it makes me think that, had my routines not gotten interrupted, I'd be "fatter" now. Cutting calories down to 1000 a day is not recommended at all, especially if you're active. But I won't lie and say it hasn't gotten me closer to my goals. I'm half again as close to the lean I've imagined as I was back in October. That stubborn back fat around the love handles is finally starting to disappear. I've got a little pouch still around the bottom of my abdominals and some pinchable skin and stuff over my obliques, but it's all starting to tighten up. I'm getting close to a truly, and I mean truly, flat stomach.

At some point things are going to normalize around here and I will hopefully get back my real fire for training and working out. Because I feel more capable and tempered now than ever before....I just kind of lack the ability to pour my all in to it like I have been previously. A lot of my gung ho habits have fallen off, like cold showers after workouts. It's winter though and without being overheated from being outside and working out in hot temperatures, and less body fat than before, those cold showers are like fucking daggers again. I know I can get back to it all....but I don't want to pour out the last reserves I have to do it just right now.

Anyways, still chugging along, still learning, still growing, still swoleling.

[pisskop]

Wow a fitness thread I missed.


Unfortunately, the current state of my bod is sad.  I'm 207lbs, ~100kg, and maybe 19 or 20% body fat.  I have been sporadically going to the gym, and running a couple miles a week, instead of the 15 I did in the summer.


Going every day I can muster the strength to, but weekends are full of working and most weekdays are too.  I also have come to realize that other obligations, such as remedial house cleaning, may have to come first.  But I feel like a piece of me is missing without my bod.  A sexy, confident piece that helps me compensate for my social awkwardness.

[Yoink]

Hope things calm down/get back on track for ya soon, Nenjin.
I haven't progressed much in terms of actually starting to work out more, but amazingly I've been more-or-less keeping up with my already established routine, as inadequate as it is. Last time I weighed myself I'd been continuing to gain weight. I think I'd gained about three more kilos since the previous time I checked, actually.   
I really wish I could summon up the time, funds and motivation to start actually hitting a gym of some kind. There are a couple not far from me.

[nenjin]

I dunno, if you don't yet own any dumbbells or a reasonably heavy kettlebell (say 35 pounds), then there is still a lot you could do without getting to a gym. Almost every muscle group has exercises that can be done sans weights (calisthenics), with free weights or with machines. You can't go stupid heavy like you could with a barbell or a machine, and progression is tougher because you don't have an offering of weight ranges like a machine or a gym with a fully stocked rack of dumbbells. But you can still get in a good workout with just free weights. I'd highly recommend investing in a kettlebell. There is almost nothing you can't train using it.

[Gentlefish]

I've got little aerobics dumbells now. Probably going to start doing that reverse dumbell fly for my back muscles (low weight, high rep) since I work a deskjob to help with my hunch and neck posture.

Also going to start crunches/flutter kicks/bicycle kicks and hopefully some pushups soon. I plan on adopting the couch to 5k program in the spring when it starts to get dry again and I'd like to be in some form of shape before then.

[mrkilla22]

Good plan.  Core work is important.

[Yoink]

Oh, I have dumbbells! They're the only exercise gear I have.
I can only do certain exercises with them, though, since I think they're kinda too heavy (8kg, which is apparently 17.637 pounds) to use for others with my current strength levels. I'm still just doing this basic bitch dumbbell routine I cobbled together last year after looking up a couple of single-dumbell workouts. I guess now that I have two I should probably look into incorporating both of them into more than one exercise (wrist curls)...   

[nenjin]

You can always up the intensity of the exercises you're already doing, at the weight you're doing, as a form of progression. If you're doing dumbbell curls, try sitting curls, preferably with your back at a decline. That takes most of the other muscles out of the equation and forces the bicep to work. With pretty much any lift, pausing at the "top" of the muscle contraction, holding it a second and squeezing, before slowly controlling the weight on the way drastically increases intensity.

But you can go the other way too if your current and only weights feel a weebit too heavy. For bicep curls for example, do standing ones versus sitting. That allows more muscles besides the bicep to help. While it may not give your bicep all the work and therefore elicit the most growth, it will still get stronger along with the other supporting muscles.

[Retropunch]

I used to teach physical training a while back and there's lots of good advice in this thread, but the one thing I'd really stress is - there's no need AT ALL to go to the gym until you can reliably do body-weight exercises to a good degree*.  This is really important for a few reasons:
- You're way less likely to hurt yourself with body-weight alone (super important)
- You're not isolating muscles/muscle groups nearly as much (which is great for all round improvement)
- You won't start feeling down about not matching up to others (even subconsciously)
- You're not spending £$$$$££££ each month on something you don't need.

So many people start in fitness by going to the gym, get burnt out/can't make it regularly/get so stressed out that they stop, when it's really, really not necessary. There's been a huge push by media/fitness channels etc. to get people to go (and admittedly, some people feel it helps them 'get in the zone') but unless you have money to burn I'd stay away until you're smashing the body-weight stuff.

*When I say 'good degree' of bodyweight exercise I mean, can reliably do 40 push-ups/body-weight squats in a row. Most country's military have that as their base line standard, and there's a reason for it - it's the level where you can reliably put your body under strain without stuff going wrong.  There are tons of variations if you can't do one push-up/sit-up, so don't worry if you can't make one.  I was taught when I was preparing for my physicals a long time ago that you should 'do as many push-ups (or squats/whatever) as you can each time you go to the bathroom'. It sounds odd, but you'll keep up the momentum, and I guarantee within two weeks you'll be really getting somewhere. I could thrash out a hundred in a row just from doing that for a few months.

Last bit of advice, chest expanders are phenomenal pieces of kit. They're really cheap and you can do a ton of exercises with them at home/on the road.

[nenjin]

I'm going to disagree that the bar for going to the gym is 40 pushups/squats in a row.

MOST people can't get to 30 pushups in a row. Including top tier actors and fitness people. (I seem to recall a Jason Statham push up challenge video where he did about 27 before he was done. And Jason Statham is pretty damn fit.)

After a year and a half my best is about 22 or 23 pushpus (with rest pauses) in a row before I'm completely tapped out. I'll do 30 to 40 pushups for one exercise, but that will be broken up over 3 sets. (I think I could manage 40 air or box squats in a row with no weight pretty easily though.)

That said, I mostly agree: start with body weight exercises. Especially if you've never lifted at all.

WITH the caveat that your body fat is low enough. As I've said elsewhere, if you're struggling to do push ups at 20% body fat, doing them at 30%+ body fat is pretty much out of the question. As are situps, squats and a lot of other body weight exercises. You simply have too much body weight and not enough strength at that point. If you're carrying too much body fat, you pretty much have to start with walking or some light treadmill work, to get your body fat lower, so body weight exercises are easier.

But there's a lot of benefits to body weight exercises; people need to get acclimated to working out, both from a physical perspective and an mental/emotional one and getting started in the privacy of your own home can help with both.

I'm starting to do some very informal coaching with a few people here at work, and the #1 barrier to entry I've seen so far is ego. No one wants to look weak, no one wants to have anyone else see them really struggle. Nobody wants to fart while working out when there's someone else around. Our egos prevent us from really committing, and starting your body weight exercises at home is a great way to start building up that confidence (and more importantly, DRIVE) to be successful with fitness. I worked out for a solid 6 months only at home and at my work gym where I was the only one there. As I lost body fat and started progressing, that gave me the confidence to go to a gym.

Now....I'm getting to the point people are noticing. I'm getting comments. People are starting to come up to me ask questions. I literally had a woman I've been working with stop and look agog (and eventually reach out and touch) my triceps because I've been working them hard the last couple months, and between that and my falling body fat they're really starting to pop. That's like.....huge for your confidence and ego, when you've reached the point where other people are starting to notice and react involuntarily too it. (I'm not humble bragging here but the ladies have started to get kind of handsy with me the last few months, heeheehee.)

So these days.....IDGAF who is watching or what they see. The only time I care is if I'm doing something wrong or using improper form, at which point I welcome someone trying to educate me. Otherwise....I'm the zone and the only real thing I struggle with is uh....keeping my eyes to myself My desire to progress and have access to things that will help me progress outweighs any self-consciousness I might feel about my body or my strength. Now I just go to the gym and work out like a savage, and try to get as close maximum intensity and failure on every set that I do. I get some looks every once in a while, but I'm beyond caring what the reason for those looks are. Maybe they're impressed. Maybe they're intimidated. Maybe they're aghast. Maybe they think I'm just a tryhard. It honestly doesn't matter to me anymore.

Because at the end of the day, this shit ain't about them. It's about you. Everyone in the gym is just as insecure and self-conscious as you are, even if they're ripped or whatever. Everyone struggles with these feelings.

momentum

This is really what it's all about at the end of the day. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. It's like getting a car rolling on a flat surface by pushing it. The hardest part of it is getting it moving and building some momentum. Once it's rolling, it becomes drastically easier to steer it and keep it moving. Fitness is the exact same way, in what I've experienced. It takes less effort to maintain a workout regime than it does to start or restart one. There's also a mental component to momentum. You feel better when you stick to it, it becomes a daily routine like brushing your teeth or taking a shower: you eventually just allot time for it like you would anything else.

Last bit of advice, chest expanders are phenomenal pieces of kit. They're really cheap and you can do a ton of exercises with them at home/on the road.

I'd say resistance bands are a better choice. They may not have grips but they're better designed to accommodate anything, from actual exercises to assisted stretches and all sorts of shit. They're probably a bit cheaper too.

Also I just did a 185pnd deadlift. First time I've deadlifted in 20 years. I'm very pleased. I went in thinking I'd be happy if I could do 135, but the person I was lifting with encouraged me to go harder. Not sure I could much more than that (185 is my body weight) and in the world of deadlifts 185 doesn't even register. But it's a Personal Record for me and I'm quite pleased because now I know where my functional strength stands with dead lifts, and I have a basis to move forward from. And I'm very grateful for the person I was working with, who primarily does squatting and deadlifting. His form tips and techniques very quickly showed me a properly executed deadlift SHOULD feel, versus how much harder and unpleasant an improperly executed one is.

[Retropunch]

I'm going to disagree that the bar for going to the gym is 40 pushups/squats in a row.

MOST people can't get to 30 pushups in a row. Including top tier actors and fitness people. (I seem to recall a Jason Statham push up challenge video where he did about 27 before he was done. And Jason Statham is pretty damn fit.)

Sorry but that's just not true - it really, really isn't.

I don't have any academic sources at the moment (I can find if you really wish), but taking a look at this: https://www.topendsports.com/testing/tests/home-pushup.htm it's about 20-30 for 'average' men and slightly less for women. All other Google sources agree, and I really can't imagine many 'fitness people' that can't manage 40 in a reasonable time. I'm not saying its easy (nothing is with fitness) but If you look at an app/website like hundredpushups.com you can get to a hundred pushups in about 6 weeks (8 for someone really starting off) - it's an incredibly manageable goal to get to 40.

As you say, the issue with pushups is body-weight itself - if you're heavy, it's going to be a hell of a lot harder (and you might want to start with some home dumbbells first). It's also something that works out a lot of your stabilisation muscles which you may struggle with if you've only done weightlifting/isolated exercises.

There may be individual reasons why people may 'need' to go to the gym, but squats and press-ups are good all round indicators of strength and fitness - they work out pretty much all your muscle groups, stress them in a uniform manner and build up the stabilisation muscles allowing you to do other more isolated exercises safely which is again why they're often used for military and policing tests.  This isn't just random fitness stuff I've made up, they're used as indicators for a reason.

As an aside, there's no way on earth that Jason Statham can only do 27 (he's absolutely ripped) - you may be thinking of his challenge video which was about doing 22 pushups for the 22 service men who take their lives every day which was why that was the total number he got to.

[nenjin]

As an aside, there's no way on earth that Jason Statham can only do 27 (he's absolutely ripped) - you may be thinking of his challenge video which was about doing 22 pushups for the 22 service men who take their lives every day which was why that was the total number he got to.

I think this was the video I was referencing, and I remember because he added pushups at the end for a fan who was half-repping theirs. And I remember him hitting about 27 and showing the "I'm about out of gas" indicators. He can likely do more in one sitting but I imagine 30 to 35 is his upper limit. I could also just be completely full of shit.

https://www.topendsports.com/testing/tests/home-pushup.htm

Age    17-19    20-29    30-39    40-49    50-59    60-65
Excellent    > 56    > 47    > 41    > 34    > 31    > 30
Good    47-56    39-47    34-41    28-34    25-31    24-30
Above average    35-46    30-39    25-33    21-28    18-24    17-23
Average    19-34    17-29    13-24    11-20    9-17    6-16
Below average    11-18    10-16    8-12    6-10    5-8    3-5
Poor    4-10    4-9    2-7    1-5    1-4    1-2
Very Poor    < 4    < 4    < 2    0    0    0

30 is the upper end of average for people under 30. Everyone else falls below that. If you're not a young buck, 30 consecutive pushups means you're above average.

and I really can't imagine many 'fitness people' that can't manage 40 in a reasonable time.

Which might be the difference we're talking about here. Can I do 100 pushups in a day? Sure. Just not all at once. Can I do 40 pushups in a day? Sure, just not all at once. I really think 30 consecutive, unbroken pushups done in under 2 minutes indicates a higher than average level of fitness. We can agree to disagree, but the data here would seem to agree with me. And really I just don't want to give anyone the impression that getting less than 30, let alone 40, consecutive pushups means you're weak. That number seems a little excessive to me.

There may be individual reasons why people may 'need' to go to the gym, but squats and press-ups are good all round indicators of strength and fitness - they work out pretty much all your muscle groups, stress them in a uniform manner and build up the stabilisation muscles allowing you to do other more isolated exercises safely which is again why they're often used for military and policing tests.  This isn't just random fitness stuff I've made up, they're used as indicators for a reason.

Not doubting you. Anyone that does fitness knows that compound exercises are far better markers of fitness than isolation exercises. It's just the numbers I disagree with.

But hey, I've probably been setting the bar too low for myself. (I get some shoulder discomfort at the tail end of my pushups. Pushups are one of the more challenging feeling body weight exercises in my book.) Maybe instead of set ranges, I'll just start shooting for a big number in one set.