Fitness Thread

I wasn't sure if there was one of these going or not, so I figured I'd start one. I have lost (currently) 32 pounds in the last year, and have finally made that lifestyle change that was needed. I can't imagine going back. I'm not to my goal weight yet, but I know I will get there.

Currently I work out 5 days a week, sometimes 6 if I'm feeling frisky. 2 of those days per week are spent at Camp Gladiator, and I'm hoping to up that to 4 days a week once school is out. The other times I go to the gym and do a mix of strength training and cardio. I thoroughly enjoy weight training, it makes me feel strong and powerful.

As far as my eating, I use the My Fitness Pal app to help me stay in balance. I try to eat clean, but don't limit myself really. I'm trying this paleo-esque sort of thing. I haven't completely cut out breads and dairy, but they are limited.

Anyway, I thought maybe this thread could be filled with healthy recipes, links to workout tips, or just a place to vent or celebrate your journey. Happy Healthy y'all!

 

That is amazing. Was this mostly from diet? I suspect it was because it’s tough to lose a lot of weight with just exercise. You can do it, but dropping the carbs/sugar is a quick route to weight loss.

My wife and I went low carb / high fat (paleo-like) two years ago and we have never felt better. Excess body fat just dropped off really quickly and my energy levels have been consistently high. I wish I had known about this years ago. We quit bread, pasta, cereal, most all starchy foods and sugars, although we still have a little rice or potatoes once in a while but not much. I’ve been running for 20+ years and it just makes me feel great.

Bunless bacon cheeseburgers, heavy on the mayo. Ribeye. Cheesy omelets. Oh yes.

 

I started doing P90X in September 2014. With the exception of a week or two break here and there to give the body a rest, when I finish a round, I begin a new round.

40 inch waist when I began. Probably around 240-250 pounds. Have gotten down to a 33-34 waist and around 205 and kept it there. Diet is 80% of it. Recently, I felt I was actually gaining back some fat! I took a hard look at my caloric intake (I am not a calorie counter, however). I figured I was taking in an extra 1200-1500 calories daily! I was eating 95% healthy foods, but my portions were over the top. Now, I'm not a scale person either, but in 3 weeks since drastically reducing my caloric intake, I am down probably another inch in my waist, back to a 33, and down 5-6 pounds.

The key is diet, and, I feel, resistance training. The research is there. Lean muscle and the body having to rebuild lean muscle from resistance training, provides a much longer calorie burn over the 24 period following a workout then cardio alone.

Good job, Walking Horn!

 

It was a mix of diet and exercise. My body type requires both. I'm Hispanic and tend to carry some junk in the trunk. So yeah, I need both. I started off eating around 1,500 calories per day but just recently adjusted and so now I'm down to 1,200 calories per day.

 

I have lost 35 pounds since November. It's mostly been diet with cardio and strength training mixed in, about to increase. I was at 40 but picked up 5. I was at a 42 inch waist and now at 36 which is getting lose. I have bought a new belt and am at the second to last hole. The big diet change for me was meat. I don't eat red meat any more. I will eat fish here and there but mostly eat a whole foods clean diet. I am lucky because I love fruits and veggies so that part is easy. I have a good friend who is a long time and very educated vegan. He has helped me tremendously with food options, recipes and prep to take food with me on the go.

I make my own Seitan at home, cook large quantities once a week and it takes care of 80% of my meal. I eat lots of beans (variety), lentils and Quinoa, three things I love. I spice them up with anything from Wasabi to Sriracha. I make my own corn tortillas in the oven. I have greatly reduced Dairy and have not had one little drink of milk since November. I will sometimes use Greek NonFat Yogurt in protein shakes.

Sweets? No real craving like before since food tastes so much better. Veggies are sweeter and fruits, off the chart. I snack on things like Apple slices with peanut butter (usually Natural). I also take nuts with me for in between meals. I like them raw or roasted with no salt.

I drink lots of water. Alcohol is not something I partook in much before so I don't hardly ever have any now. I don't smoke.

It can be done and without suffering or torture. I didn't have the self control to limit a diet with red meat in it. So I just cut it out and took advantage of an already open mind and mouth to many various foods.

Oh, Nutritional Yeast is a wonderful thing!!! I am saving tons of money cooking at home too. I eat in a month, cost wise, what I used to in a week or less.

Good luck.

 

I smell a HF meetup/pot luck opportunity. Snek you bring the tortillas, I’ll bring butter. Done.

 

That's amazing! Makes me feel like my year to lose 32 pounds is just silly. I'm not on as strict of a diet as you. I still eat some dairy, and minimal flours. I've never been a big drinker either, so that hasn't really been hard for me. I'm finding it really hard to drop weight now, and I'm working harder than ever on both diet and exercise. It's a little discouraging, but I'm just going to keep on keepin' on. :/

 

Rock on, hippie. Your loss is awesome and it's all individual depending on metabolism. You are right, it gets easier as it goes by. Gotta get that ball rolling first. I feel so good. Never even realized I was not as energetic as I once was or could be. And to think I have more progress to go even though I could stop now and be way better off than before. I won't say I am not going to eat meat again because I may but if I do it will be in moderation and not often. I just don't miss it the way I thought I would. I don't crave it now. I sit with people devouring it and I don't even bat an eye out of desire for it. I don't lecture anybody either, it's their life, their body. I just know what I have done and how I did it. I have my doctor's full support after filling him in on the details. I am off any medications I was previously on.

Fact, pharmaceutical companies and many doctors DO NOT want you cured or healed of your sicknesses. They want you in a stasis so that you can keep buying their products and services without dying. They don't want that either. They lose a customer. Diet alone won't cure all disease but it sure is a damned good starting point. Blood pressure med's, Type II meds, cholesterol meds...kiss them goodbye in time. Or, be dependent and not get better. It's a choice each individual has to make. I chose to not have to take those in the future which is where many of us are headed if not there already.

 

Yeah, I do a lot of strength training and weight lifting, so I'm going to start relying more on my body fat % and lean muscle mass measurements to tell me my progress. I know I'm just the kind of person who gets really down on myself though, so it's hard not to pay attention to the scale. I'm trying to improve that as well.

 

You are not a boxer or in a job where weight is an issue. Scales are evil and generally a piss poor indicator of fitness. There, how is that to help get rid of it?

 

Right. We don’t have a health care system, we have a disease maintenance system. Healthy people and dead people are not profitable, so chronic illness is where the money’s at.

I’m convinced that the food and insurance industries are in it with Big Pharma — the food companies create these products that pass as “food” only because they sometimes taste good and don’t kill you immediately. Consumers buy this **** and slowly get fat and sick, but not too sick to keep working and paying those insurance premiums. So you go to the doctor where you get maybe five minutes, which is only long enough to document the symptoms and prescribe something to temporarily suppress them. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Eating well, exercising, minimizing stress and getting plenty of sleep = subversive lifestyle.

 

Never thought of it quite like that, Mudhorn. Subversive is right! I was a punker in H.S. so hell, stay true it, fight the system and not only live but be healthy in the process. F the man!

 

I stick to a 1,200 calorie/day diet all week and the minute I go over that I feel like a piece of ****. This is pretty much every Friday for me. It's the one day I don't work out and let myself have a nice dinner.

 

A dinner which you've more than earned.

 

I had some birthday cake yesterday, and it was wonderful.

 

kek?

 

So far since January I've dropped 55 lbs all on calorie control and walking. I bought a fitbit HR and I now average about 20,000 steps a day. I use the free app my fitness pal to track caloric intake, but sometimes it's hard to figure out which to pick when counting because there are so many similar choices.

 

Meals are sort of all over the place when trying to lose weight...I've known some that try to swear by different things no matter whether it was calorie counting (despite placing no emphasis on WHERE those calories came from) to doing the various fads that come and go.

I made a decision to lose some unwanted pounds a few years ago and am far more convinced that it was the cardio regimen multiple times per week combined with cutting out most breads and going cold turkey on my DrPepper habit that led to me dropping close to 30 pounds across three months. Even after stopping the diligent gym activities, I still dropped another twelve pounds or so over the next several months, still having sworn off the breads and most soda.

During that time, I was primarily eating just one real meal a day but it was far from what most would have considered 'healthy' or part of any diet...my regular dinner was a petit filet (medium rare if anyone cared) and a few glasses of good red wine (usually a cab or petit syrah). I never was someone who consistently ate three meals a day...when I was hungry, I would eat at a usual meal time, and if not, well...why bother.

Being active certainly helps...most of what I put on came when I moved up the executive-level food chain and was sitting behind a desk too much of the day. Getting older certainly did not help matters either...but it is not the sole reason for blimping up across a span of a few years (it was a gradual creeping) as the activity levels slowed down.

 

Yes!

 

What am I doing wrong? I record everything I put into my body, stay under or at my calorie goals, work out 6 days a week, and I haven't lost nearly the amount of weight some of you are talking about.

I pay attention to every aspect of my food as well: macros, amount of sugar, amount of fat, amount of sodium.

I strength train and do cardio 4 days per week. I'm part of a boot camp style workout two other days during the week. I'm completely at a loss. WTF am I not doing?

 

Have you looked carefully at the labels on EVERYTHING you eat? The vast majority of items in a typical grocery store have some form of added sugar — and they use a variety of names to obscure it: corn sweetener, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose, malt sugar, etc.

That **** is everywhere and those carbs (and also starchy foods like potatoes, corn, bread, pasta, cereal) increase glucose, which drive up insulin levels. Insulin is the fat storage hormone. When glucose levels come down so does the production of insulin, and the body will start to burn fat instead of store it. Insulin stimulates lipogenesis (fat storage) and inhibits lipolysis (fat breakdown), so lowering insulin levels promotes the burning of stored body fat.

It’s been said over and over that “a calorie is a calorie” no matter what the source, but this is false. It’s how our bodies metabolize different kinds of calories that matters. And the “healthy whole grains” are not necessarily healthy, especially the crap “enriched flour” in many wheat-based products. It’s also been preached that some amount of carbs is necessary for glucose production. This is false. There is no essential carbohydrate, not one. If and when your body requires some glucose, gluconeogenesis is the means by which it will produce it.

Don’t fear dietary fat at all — it has been demonized as a problem but it never was the problem. In the last 30 years or so since the USDA began promoting a low-fat diet our society has gotten heavier and sicker. Why? A high carbohydrate diet is why, including tons of added sugar in processed food. A low-fat diet is by default a high-carb diet because there are only three macro-nutrients: carbs, protein, and fat. If you avoid fat you will offset that by increasing carbs.

I can’t say for sure if this will work for you but there are a lot of folks (including me, my wife and our son) who went on a very low carb / high fat plan and the body fat just dropped off. We also have way more energy and feel great. Blood work is fine too. I could not believe how great I felt when I started eating this way. It pissed me off too that this is not common knowledge and not being promoted, but politics and money trump the well-being of our citizens. Sweden is maybe the first country to really get it. They have begun promoting LCHF (low carb high fat) as the nation’s official dietary recommendations.

I’ve said it before but humans are a fat-adapted species. We have been eating lots of protein and fat for hundreds of thousands of years and we never had these chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease until very recently. Food is the problem and it is the solution too. I think most doctors will not tell their patients this because (1) they don't know the current nutritional and metabolic science, or (2) they know that doctors don’t get sued for pushing the old dietary guidelines — even though those guidelines are making people sick.

Pardon the lengthy response but this subject is of special interest to me since I found out two years ago that the U.S. dietary guidelines are based on bad science and politics, and are directly responsible for untold sickness and premature death. We have been LCHF for those two years now and have never felt better.

Look into the “ketogenic” diet. This is what we have been doing. It is amazing.

Bacon, eggs, chicken, fish, butter, steak, more eggs, veggies, a little fruit, cheese, more butter, nuts, coconut oil. Cut out bread, pasta, grains of any kind, all sugar. Try this for a month and see what happens.

/rant

 

I stick to my macros to control my carbs. I'm not completely paleo, but I don't eat a ton of carbs. I usually have a sandwich on a whole grain round for lunch, and then of course my veggies at dinner.

I also eat mostly whole foods, so I'm not getting those artificial sweeteners all that much either. As far as the fat though, I'm usually under my daily goal (in terms of my macros), and have had a hard time trying to add more fat to my diet. I used to be big on having raw almonds, but even just a handful of those is sooooo many calories. Since my limit is 1,200 it just kind of eats into my daily menu.

Don't get me wrong, I AM losing weight. It's just that for as much as I pay attention to what I'm putting in my body, and as hard as I work out, it's been such an extremely slow process. As of this morning I'm at 39 lbs lost, but that's taken me a full year and half to do.

 

Do Calories Matter? by Peter Attia might be helpful. Dr Attia is one of the leading researchers and voices promoting LCHF. One thing he says, and I have seen from many others working in this area, is that calorie intake matters but not in the way we typically think it does. It is not a simple calories-in-vs-calories-out equation — what matters is the kind of calories and how the body metabolizes them.

A key quote from the article:

“Fat accumulation is determined not by the balance of calories consumed and expended but by the effect of specific nutrients on the hormonal regulation of fat metabolism.”

 

This is helpful. I feel like I've invested so much time and energy into this, and I still don't even know what's best for my body. I'm also scared of how my body might react to having a bit more calories in exchange for some good fats. If I start losing weight, great. But if I start putting on weight I know that will be very discouraging to me. Only one wait to find out I suppose.

 

One thing you may find is that the higher fat content in your diet increases satiety, so you will be full quicker and hungry less often, and end up consuming fewer calories overall. When I was tracking calories for a while I averaged about 1200-1500 daily and I ate whenever I was hungry. I just wasn’t hungry very much. Even now I only eat once or twice a day because that's all I want.

It’s hard to accept some of this because our whole lives we have been told a story about calories and fat, and how we need to minimize them. But look around. It has not worked.

 

So very true! I've been really pushing myself with the strength training, and my appetite is just through the roof! I don't know if my metabolism is just in overdrive or what. But here's what I can't figure out. I've been getting headaches (even though I drink at least 64oz of water per day), and I'm constantly hungry. To be honest, after I eat, I feel satisfied for maybe 30 minutes to an hour, and then I'm hungry again. It's super annoying. I don't know if my body is trying to tell me that I need more food or what.

I went through my macros back to a couple of weeks ago and every single day I was under on fat. I usually meet protein and carbs right where I should. I think I'll stop at the store in the morning and get some almonds and maybe an avocado to put on my sandwich at lunch.

 

How many carbs are you eating? To get into ketosis (fat-burning mode) target no more than 50-80g total carbs.

 

more like 100-120. Wow... I guess I'm going way over. * This is me throwing everything in the air and saying "f**k it".*

 

Damn...20k steps? I have a fitbit too and I struggle to achieve 10k on average. I'm impressed. You must be walking 10 miles a day!

 

Here's my workout playlist. I listen to this when I'm doing cardio, and then I'll just listen to spotify radio when I'm doing strength training.