All-Purpose Health and Fitness Thread

[Ramsey]

As of today I've lost 30 pounds in roughly 4 months. Counting calories and moderate exercise. The "My Fitness Pal" app on my phone has helped tremendously.

[Craig H]

For those of you who have been doing DDP Yoga - here is my question

How "noisy" of a workout is it?

I ask because my problem is I live in a 3rd Floor Apartment so what I can actually do in my place is limited (since I really don't want the neighbors to complain of the elephant living above them)

I have seriously considered getting it but I dont want to waste my money if I can't use it for like another 6 months (when we possibly move)

I'll second it by saying it isn't noisy. A lot of it is VERY controlled movements, so not a lot of stomping, even on lunges, and most of the time your feet are planted firm because you're keeping every muscle in your legs as tight as possible.

[Buy Me a Burrito]

I started doing CrossFit last month. 

 

First it was the introductory classes, the "OnRamp" they call it. Hard work, but I walked out of there feeling okay. This month is the real classes. 

 

Holy fuck I might die. Tonight was the hardest workout I've ever done in my life, but I finished it. 

[BrianS81177]

I just ordered DDP Yoga. Not so much for getting "in shape" (family genetics tell me I'll always be on the heavy side no matter what I do or how I live) but mainly just to increase flexibility, muscle strength, etc. Looking forward to trying it. Anyone have any advice for someone just starting out on it?

[Cliff Hanger]

Took me a year and three days, but I have cut from 262 to 199.4 and got my body fat down from over 28% to under 20.  Now it's time to go sign up for Gold's, get my gym rat friends to help me devise a solid 4-day-a-week workout and concentrate on building muscle.

[Super Ape]

So I think I'll finally get myself DDPYOGA as a birthday present since there's a deal for the Max pack from the Steve Austin podcast and I got the rare three-paycheck month in May.

[Cliff Hanger]

Finally had my first "proper" workout under the tutelage of my serious-lifter friend on Saturday. 30 squats (10 each at bar, then 50, then 55), 30 deadlifts (all at 55 because after the squats, I couldn't seem to get the bar off the ground without some weight to prop it up), and 3x20 on the leg press at 25lb (which felt ridiculous, since I'd been maxing out at 100 when I was only doing simple machine stuff at my complex weight room). It felt like the self-directed, beginner machine workout I found on bodybuilding.com was utterly invalidated in an hour, but not in an entirely bad way.  Got the Gold's membership, and this weekend I've got lessons in chest, shoulders and arms for Saturday and Sunday. I'm theoretically repeating the leg day on Thursday, but since my quads STILL hurt when I get out of a chair over 72 hours later I may save that for Monday or Tuesday. Goal is that by the end of July I'll be able to do enough different things safely that I can take a four-day workout schedule whether anyone is able to go with me or not.

 

Jesus, I'm going to have to buy actual protein stuff instead of just eating a plain Greek yogurt before gym time, aren't I?

[Antacular]

If you're gonna do a 4-day a week routine, I'd recommend Chest/Back/Shoulders/CardioOrLegs. If you plan on doing cardio before/after every workout (and you should do after since that's what REALLY gets your results), there's little reason to do your legs at all. In which case the 4-day routine I'd use would be Chest/Back/Shoulders/Back, with chest day at high intensity, back days at medium, and shoulders at low being that chest will hit your front shoulders and back will hit your rear shoulder parts.

[Cliff Hanger]

Ah, sorry. Cardio isn't going away, it'll be a fifth day. I didn't include it because it isn't something I need help with (I've been doing it over a year now) and because it's going to keep happening at my complex and not the Gold's. I had been doing lower body Machine weights with 20m of cardio/upper body with 20m/just cardio, 40m or more twice a week, taking Friday and occasionally one other day off but the 15 min hike to the gym limits my actual workout time a little more strictly. So cardio will probably only be dedicated one day a week for the time being.

[Antacular]

In that case I'd schedule it as Chest/Back/Shoulders/Back/LegsAndCardio. Do legs and cardio at the end since that'll take longer to recover than anything else.

At the risk of being accused of mistaking this for an "advanced weightlifting forum," here are some tips that I wish I had known when I first started:

- No arm day. First 3 or so years I lifted I included an arm day in there, like a majority of people. Biggest fucking waste of time. You should be doing enough compound exercises on other days (at least 3 - 4 "push" exercises for chest/shoulders day and 4 "pulls" on back days) that your arms will increase in proportion with the rest of your body.

- ALWAYS do medium-to-wide grip exercises (bench, rows, pull downs, etc) as these primarily work your chest/shoulders/back, and your arms as secondary. Given the size of those muscles compared to your arms, your arms are smaller and thus are the ones to fatigue first anyway.

- Building on that, always do isolation exercises (various flys, pullovers, etc. Basically any exercise that doesn't require you to push/pull with your arms) at the end, after compounds. When you start to wanna get crazy, should do wide-grip compounds, isolations, narrow-grip compounds (I.E. Chest day would go something like medium grip bench, medium grip incline, push ups, flys, narrow grip bench).

[Petey]

Just don't be this guy:

 

[Super Ape]

Not his fault PF decided offering free pizza was a good idea.

[Control]

Study: Losing Weight Basically Impossible

[Cliff Hanger]

That's really depressing. I'm fairly confident I'll be one of the 5%, but that's less because I'm "special" or "dedicated" than because so much of my initial weight gain in my 20s was the result of being on SSRIs. But for friends who are working just as hard as I and don't have the unfair advantage of "my metabolism was shot to shit for fifteen years and without that disruptive factor my equilibrium weight is lower" I worry. I know at least three people who have been working WAY harder than me and eating better than I do, who have gained strength at roughly the same rate as I have (which I am assuming is average for a clueless idiot looking at beginner workouts in a vacuum), without the attendant weight loss. It's a lottery and it sucks.

[Petey]

Not his fault PF decided offering free pizza was a good idea.

Yeah! It's Planet's fault!

 

Study: Losing Weight Basically Impossible

I can speak from personal experience about this. I had always been overweight my whole life, gaining weight every year. I remember each year when I would go clothes shopping for school, I would go up a pant size. I never thought anything of it. By the time I was 20 , I was quite obese and already started having high blood pressure (not ridiculously/dangerously high, but high enough that my doctor was concerned. Especially since I was only 20). The reasons why I was obese were easy to identify: I ate a tremendous amount of food (I would say that a lot of days I'd consume well over 4,000 calories and when you're only 5'6... that's a lot) and didn't exercise at all. I also didn't have a physically demanding job, so there was really no fitness going on in my life. Then in the beginning of 2008, I decided to change my eating habits and start working out. I lost 115 lbs and looked great. I had gained back about 25 or so over the course of a couple of years but I'm almost back down to where I was in the beginning of 2010 and even with the 25 I had added, my blood pressure was fine and I was still working out and physically fine, I just had a little bit of a belly again.

 

I like to believe that losing weight permanently isn't impossible. I do think that for people who are really obese like I had gotten, there's a lot of psychological factors at play that lead to one being so overweight and those are always difficult to battle. I'm gonna generalize here, but I think some of the problems are that some people lose a lot of weight fast, often due to a long term unsustainable very low calorie diet and once people achieve their desired goal, they start eating more again, even though it might be a healthy amount of calories, but because it's more than they were consuming previously, they surprisingly add the weight back. I know the main reason I added back my 25-30 was because after I lost all the weight and everyone kept complimenting me on how much better I looked, I lost my edge to keep eating healthy and started to revert back to my eating habits pre-2008. It wasn't as bad or as frequent as when I was 20 years old, but it was enough that I started to gain weight. Of course, all people are different and like I said, I'm generalizing. But I do think psychological factors play a huge part.

[Antacular]

If you go from an idle, obese lifestyle to one of slender and active, you're bound to put weight on as it's most likely muscle. I.E. I went from 42 inch waist at 270lbs to 34in at 180, to currently 220 at 36. Which one is the healthiest/best looking? It's pretty obvious, despite the 40lb gain.

[Kevin Wilson]

Study: Losing Weight Basically Impossible

I think it depends also on what they consider failing.  I mean I reached my peak weight back in 2009 and even though I have yo-yoed a bit since then I've never come even within 20 pounds of that peak weight.  Currently I am 70 pounds under it, but if I gain say 10 pounds back does that count as a failure?  I think that more than the percentage they mention lose weight overall, even if they don't maintain their lowest weight.

[Beech27]

 

Study: Losing Weight Basically Impossible

I think it depends also on what they consider failing.  I mean I reached my peak weight back in 2009 and even though I have yo-yoed a bit since then I've never come even within 20 pounds of that peak weight.  Currently I am 70 pounds under it, but if I gain say 10 pounds back does that count as a failure?  I think that more than the percentage they mention lose weight overall, even if they don't maintain their lowest weight.

 

I think it's also worth noting that basically all relevant health markers improve when the usual diet/exercise tandem is usefully deployed. There are benefits beyond the aesthetic. 

[piranesi]

Man I don't know about all that, but I've spent the last week trying to cut 70-75 Grams of sugar a day out of my diet.  Looking back at my life, I'd be amazed if I haven't already killed myself with cereal and shit.

 

I'm down to nothing but apples/carrots and breads as my main sources of sugar (and whatever is hidden places I'm not seeing).  Hopefully down to around 25-30 grams a day.  I'm hoping that even though it's not a total "no sugar" thing, that it will have an impact.

 

The first few days I had serious withdrawals, crashes, and cravings and I think I've been posting some really weird shit about Dave Batista.

[Ramsey]

Just before the holidays last year I was sitting at about 260 and just shy of 6'1" (about has heavy and icky as I've ever been) so I decided to start doing something about it.

 

I started with diet. I just started counting calories. I got an app for my phone called "My Fitness Pal." Dumb name, great app. I told it my weight, my age (41 in a couple weeks) and my activity level (radio dj and musician, so slug-like really) and it told me how many calories I was allowed a day. I keep track of everything I eat on this thing. I started dropping pounds but after a while I knew it was time to start working out as well.

 

My routine started light so I wouldn't jump out and hurt myself. My morning routine now consists of 80 hindu squats, 320 punches (shadow boxing) 40 knee lifts (20 each side) 50 pushups and 100 low weight, high speed bicep curls. I do the entire circuit as quickly as possible turning it into a 10 minute cardio/fat burning/metabolism jacking thing. I do this workout seven days a week. I've missed it twice in the span of months. Plus, I try and walk two miles at least 4 nights a week. I went for cardio and metabolism because I knew low impact was going to have to happen. I have a bad knee and neck from wrestling and football as a kid and bad shoulder because, fuck, I'm getting old. All of this combined has put me at roughly 223 pounds. My weight has leveled out as now I'm doing the "swap fat for muscle" thing which is fine with me. Between this and quitting smoking almost a year ago, I feel better than I have in years.

 

If I can do it, ANYONE can do it.

[Ramsey]

 

The first few days I had serious withdrawals, crashes, and cravings and I think I've been posting some really weird shit about Dave Batista.

Correction: You've been posting LIFE CHANGING shit about Dave Batista.

[driver]

I started doing DDP Yoga last week. I do it when I can. I did it this afternoon, after mowing the yard, and was completely soaked with sweat by the end. I love it.

[Cliff Hanger]

Had my first workout-related ouchie on Sunday. My left arm is, predictably, much weaker than my right; the first day working on improving my arm strength resulted in a biceps that felt like someone had punched me right on a bruise and minor inner-elbow tendinitis that's only really going away today. The perils of having a long-time, hardcore lifter giving me my newbie lessons, I guess. I'll need to ask him to slow me down and ease me into things. (Chest-and-shoulders day was much more successful, though my shoulders kind of suck). I'm finally realizing how unbalanced and chest/legs heavy the nautilus machine in my complex was; realistically I should've done that for maybe eight to twelve weeks to get over the initial fear of strength training and then gone to the gym right away instead of doing nine months.

 

Currently 198.6 at an even 20 percent body fat; I'd definitely like to bring the latter down to around 15% whatever weight I end up at. I'm no longer really worried about my weight, since at 6'2 floating around 200 is perfectly fine as long as I get rid of some more of the visceral fat. I never really did the math until today and figured out just how much lean mass I lost in the 60 pounds I've dropped since last year; about 20 pounds worth, which is way too much. Too much cardio, not enough protein.

[Petey]

You know, the Ultimate Warrior would just say "SCREW BICEP PAIN" and keep doing them bicep curls and contracting at the peak point.

 

I'm actually not kidding. Apparently not long after he had bicep surgery, he went back to bicep curls even though the doctor told him he really couldn't lift anything for X amount of months.

 

Actually, maybe you should let your muscles recover first.

[Control]

Had my first workout-related ouchie on Sunday. My left arm is, predictably, much weaker than my right; the first day working on improving my arm strength resulted in a biceps that felt like someone had punched me right on a bruise and minor inner-elbow tendinitis that's only really going away today. The perils of having a long-time, hardcore lifter giving me my newbie lessons, I guess. I'll need to ask him to slow me down and ease me into things. (Chest-and-shoulders day was much more successful, though my shoulders kind of suck). I'm finally realizing how unbalanced and chest/legs heavy the nautilus machine in my complex was; realistically I should've done that for maybe eight to twelve weeks to get over the initial fear of strength training and then gone to the gym right away instead of doing nine months.

 

Currently 198.6 at an even 20 percent body fat; I'd definitely like to bring the latter down to around 15% whatever weight I end up at. I'm no longer really worried about my weight, since at 6'2 floating around 200 is perfectly fine as long as I get rid of some more of the visceral fat. I never really did the math until today and figured out just how much lean mass I lost in the 60 pounds I've dropped since last year; about 20 pounds worth, which is way too much. Too much cardio, not enough protein.

What's the difference between body fat percentage and BMI? 

 

I'm the same height and weight as you (6'2, 195-200 lbs) and have a 33 inch waist, and when I last saw a physician that added up to me having to lose a few pounds, since my BMI is over 25%.

 

So I'm still a little doughy-looking in the midsection, but it's hard to get too fired up about it.