Yeah, I just don't get that. I feel miserable at the gym, I feel miserable getting back from the gym. It's all I can do to just lump myself in the shower afterwards, doing anything else that day is pretty much out the window. Definitely no ego boost either, since the way my head looks at it; everything's just a compounded reminder of everything I can't do, rather than what I can do or have done. No Ahhnold "Every rep feels like I'm cumming" either.
I used to have discipline, then I was in the army... That knocked a lot of it out of me. Like, I still go work out even though I don't really feel/see results and I find the experience awful, because I've agreed to do it. Now if I don't go, I'm failing that other person instead of just failing myself.
I mean, if you're that wrecked....sounds like you had a good workout! The mind is a powerful thing. It can recontextualize things if you let it, both good and bad. Don't look at feeling "miserable" as a bad thing. It's a good thing! It means you tried, and your body is going "Aaaaahhhhh ghad ok ok I'll change!" That is the essence of working out. I've never busted a nut doing a rep either. And let's remember: Arnold took lots and lots of steroids. When you're on steroids, you recover quicker, you can do more and you don't feel as fucked up, and it's a lot easier to be cavalier about working that hard. Arnold is not the guy to listen to for the overall mindset IMO. He wanted to be a professional body builder and made it his life and did the things necessary to succeed at that sport (working out for hours a day sometimes and taking steroids.) Working out isn't orgasmic to me but it DOES make me feel pretty fuckin manly, and I double down on that by giving it my best actual effort and going to failure as often as I possibly can. That last rep, the one you probably won't complete, is where you really test yourself.
You're probably feeling kind of emasculated based on what you've just been through. I know, my friend went/is going through the same thing. Breakups/divorces are hard and for guys it can totally torpedo your sense of self-worth as a man. That's why the gym helps. It helps raise your testosterone, which makes you feel more like a man again, along with the act of doing difficult shit simply because you can and succeeding.
Stop focusing on what you can't do. That shit will demotivate you right out the gym. You're aware of this, you just need to embrace it. You're only in competition with yourself. You will never look like anyone else, you'll only look like yourself. Focus on becoming the best looking version of yourself, and forget everything and everyone else.
Back in the day, I was about 160-166 lbs at 6'1", and I don't think I've gone much outside of that range... But again, I don't have any real numbers on that (don't even own a scale!). Sure, my belly's not flat, but I can touch my forearms behind my back and grab the inside of my ribs, so I figure I'm alright.
I'm 5'11" and when I started I clocked in at around 203 pounds. And I was looking pretty chunky. Now I'm probably 190 and I'm definitely getting trim. Muscle mass went up, fat went down, and the net change in my weight makes it look minor but the visual read tells a much more interesting story.
Weigh yourself. Face the reality. Get a benchmark. Pleading ignorance doesn't really change reality, it just gives you an excuse to not actually know, and by not knowing, not face facts. If you're not going absolute beast mode in your workouts and in your diet, change is going to be slow. Glacial, even. The scale helps tell the truth, both for muscle gain and fat loss. Once you get some forward momentum, you can rely less on the scale and more on your own eyes for how things are changing. But what makes it easiest to see change....is losing body fat. Building muscle, especially over the age of 30 and/or 40, is a slow process. Fat loss is also slow, but in some ways it's faster and easier than building muscle and you can see more immediate results and start looking better, sooner, depending on what your goals are. And remember, people carry body fat in a lot of different ways and in proportions. If I just went by my arms and legs, I'd have been like "I'm lean!" But the rest of my body tells a different story.
Thing is, my food intake is fucked enough as it is, I just don't want to make things more complicated by stressing about my fat levels. It's already enough of a pain just prepping a minimal dinner every day; let alone getting a varied diet... Trying to stack more restrictions and conditions on top of that is just going to make me lose what little motivation I've got and potentially make the whole house of cards collapse. S'why I'm not even bothering thinking about abs, since I know I'm simply not going to have the dedication to drop myself lean enough for them to show.
I mean...I'm right there with ya. When I started I said "going completely clean is just going to make this already hard thing much harder." So I *didn't* go clean. I just got honest about what *I didn't need to eat.* I didn't need sugar. Cookies. Candies. Ice Cream. Soda. I didn't need to eat shit just because it was there. I added some raw vegetables a couple times a week, drank water if I didn't have milk, and despite eating a large volume of stuff that doesn't meet most people's definition of healthy food, I've continued to lose body fat. You don't need to eat chicken and rice every day like most body builders advise, not unless you want to get lean fast. Start simply, and honestly: cut as much sugar out of your diet as you can live with. Eat more protein, whether that's from meat or other sources. Eat _fewer_ carbs, but don't just quit carbs. You need that shit for working out. Eat fewer _shitty_ carbs like sugar and decadent bread products. Eat more fats. You don't have to upend your diet to lose weight. You just need to start making some tweaks, and if they're working and it's sustainable, you can do a little more experimenting. I still eat fast food, all the time. I just make smarter choices when I do. I view my meals as an assemblage of nutrients rather than as tasty things. Is that hamburger bun the best source of carbs? No. Does it get the job done? Yes. I still eat at restaurants all the time. But I make better choices. I substitute fries for a salad. I avoid fried foods. I don't do desserts anymore. You can try eating cleaner, and give yourself a cheat meal to just do whatever you want so you still feel like you have freedom. Point being is, people overcomplicate the shit out out of nutrition and there's a lot of dogmatic thinking around food. It doesn't need to be that complicated. Although I would advise you to actually spend a week counting calories, because again, it's about being honest with yourself. How can you know where you're at if you never actually do the math on the things you eat all the time? I don't even count calories anymore. I just know roughly what the calories are of the things I regularly eat, and I pay attention to nutrition labels when I have them.
For as often as it's touted as a cure-all, depression/trauma and exercise really don't like playing nice together... Funny, that.
Not sure what trauma refers to, but yes, injury and working out do not place nice together. As for depression....working out is a distraction from your thinking, just like anything else. The difference is it has a positive biological impact where sitting around vegetating on TV or video games has a negative one. Working out has the psychological benefit of feeling like you did something, anything with your time other than sitting there and atrophying. Nothing is ever a cure-all. But depending on where you're at, fitness and working out can help you change trajectory on many things.
Kagus, you're going through some shit. That's pretty clear, and yeah, as if fitness wasn't hard enough already, depression and all those things make it even harder to focus yourself on the task at hand.
It's not the exercise or the act of working out that's really the issue for you I think....it's your mindset. Being down on yourself is spread all throughout the language you use. And that's not unexpected, but it's the thing that will continue to hold you back more than the workouts you do or don't do, the foods you do or don't eat.
You said clean slate. Well, that's more than just your workout plan. It's your attitude. It's your willingness to sacrifice. It's how much time and energy you devote to it. Imagine all the psychic energy you're spending on your breakup, your sense of self worth, your feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Now imagine if you took most of that energy....and put it in to a workout instead. What could you accomplish if you channeled that angst in to something productive?
For me, I was dealing with watching a family member essentially dig their own grave right before my eyes. The psychic pain of watching that happen was almost too much to bear. I was desperate to get away from that situation and the feeling of being responsible for it. The inability to change their situation left me feeling completely trapped because I was obsessed about this thing I had no control over.
*SEE MY SIG*
That was my solution, even though it only crystallized later in to pithy sayings. You think you have it hard? You know who Viktor Frankl is? He's a concentration camp survivor. There is possibly no greater suffering that any human has experienced than that. And even in the depths of that hell, he found a way forward by becoming a master of himself and his own mind. Fitness is just that: mastering yourself. Taking control of how you feel and what you do in response to it.
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Topic: The Fitness Thread - THE RE-SWOLLENING (Read 62943 times)