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Fitness Weekly Discussion
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
I recently (within the past 30 days) started exercising, which I haven't done in years. A little over a year ago I noticed my stomach growing outwards and didn't bother trying to stop it. Now I only have like two shirts I feel comfortable with how I look in them.
I was doing good for the first couple of weeks. But the past few days I've been slacking. As well as eating more. I'm hoping I can get back into it and see some results, but long-term investments are hard, especially when they take time out of your day.
The starting hump is the hardest. It's so much easier to do things you 1. are good at and 2. do consistently. What kind of exercise did you get into and are do you enjoy doing it? I only ask because for me exercise is very positive reward based - like I'm much more primed to take my bike than my car to get around town because I love cycling; whereas going to the gym always feels like a chose so I skip it more often.
I have an indoor bike and treadmill. I am incredibly unlikely to do any outdoor activities with how hot it gets here during the summer.
I don't completely hate it but I don't like it. I read someone say a while ago that exercise just sucks for some people but you have to do it anyway. I feel like that's the boat I'm in.
That's kind of how I feel. Even things that I enjoy doing, like dancing and hiking, get boring if I do them often enough for them to be effective forms of exercise. They also become unpleasant if they're at all challenging - they lead to being sweaty, sore, and tired - which is also necessary for them to be effective, or at least to see any progress. I appreciate the advice to pick activities that I enjoy for exercise, but unfortunately doing something for exercise causes it to cease being something that I enjoy.
What I think I would really like is a group of people who have committed to exercising and accepting that we don't enjoy it. We could swap tips about disassociating during the exercise itself, reducing muscle soreness afterwards, reducing the inconvenience of taking the time out of our days, and just generally bitch and moan and commiserate about this necessary and unpleasant thing that we have to do, while convincing each other to keep doing it. Before reddit went down the drain I tried a few times to set up subreddits with this idea in mind, but it always ended up being taken over by people who don't enjoy the inconvenience but ultimately do enjoy the exercise, and I think that sort of ruins the whole idea.
Let me know if you end up setting up this group, which might work best in a discord server?
I have some suggestions I can list for now at least:
Watch a live stream (on YouTube, twitch, etc.). The content is usually less structured, so you aren't watching/aware of the clock as much.
TV shows - if you do prefer structure (sometimes it can make you look forward to the end being near), something with a very predictable format (Jeopardy, etc) could be a good fit.
I'd imagine podcasts and audiobooks could also be helpful, but I'm personally not a fan of either of those.
My last post here a few months ago was about how I was recovering from a knee injury and finally able to run again. Well I've been slowly increasing back up the weekly kilometre-age (that just doesn't roll off the keyboard, does it?), and it's been going well since then. I've been very careful to increase load slowly and do plenty of strengthening exercises so it doesn't happen agai. I'm not too far from where I was, but still at a reduced level of fitness...
Anyway, last Sunday my partner was away, so I decided to go for a long trail run to do my first half marathon distance run since The Injury. I picked a nice hiking route that goes out of my city across some right-of-way paths and then across a local RSPB reserve (bird sanctuary) - the weather had not been too bad though there had been a little rain in the last few days, so I thought, maybe there will be a little mud in places, but it will be fine. It was not fine. It was unexpectedly raining the entire time, and the whole trail starting from about 4km was basically SWAMP (perfect distance to start after getting my buy-in), and I ended up covered in mud up to my calves. I wasn't even wearing trail-running shoes, just my usual trainers! Some of it was next to unpassable. I'm honestly surprised I finished it. It was simultaneously terrible, comical, and great fun.
Since that day I've seen a lot about how the last 12 months in the UK have been especially rainy, and there are now a lot of problems with the ground being completely waterlogged in various areas.
Recently, I've decided I will not be eating lunch, so my only meal of the day is dinner (was never a big breakfast person before all this anyway). While I didn't realize I was doing it nor was this my initial goal, I am evidently doing intermittent fasting according to some of my friends and family.
Ever since I started skipping lunch, I feel so much lighter in my feet, so much so that when it's time to go to the gym, I find myself working out twice as long. I haven't quite noticed any physical improvements yet, but I can run longer, I can lift heavier, I can do more push ups/pull ups.
Do you track your calories/find yourself eating way more during dinner than before? I was thinking about doing intermittent fasting but ended up being too hangry by the time dinner rolled around, plus it would interfere with my plans during weekends if I wanted to get lunch with friends on weekends or something. Just curious how that experience is for you!
I don't track calories, but now that you've brought that up, I will give it a try. I don't think I eat way more during dinner than I would have if I had two or three meals, but I could be wrong.
I will say that one other positive change that's come out of all this is that I tend to eat more vegetables during dinner. Before all this, I tried eating healthy, but wasn't very strict about it. Now, I tend to have multiple different vegetables every night for dinner (think a mixed green salad, steamed broccoli, and oven roasted peppers in addition to the meat and carbs I eat).
I hope I don't discourage you in any way, if everything is working and you're seeing the progress that you want to be seeing, that's good enough :)
More veggies is something I've been doing a lot more of too actually! I lost 30ish pounds since August of last year, and one thing for me that worked a lot is a lot more veggies for fiber and more protein.
I'm thinking of taking a step back from my years of upper/lower split and changing to three full body days with kettlebell conditioning at the end. I'm a little tired of doing too much exercises and end up missing a lot.
I neglect cardio/conditioning too much. Bought a jump rope for cardio on the non-lifting days too.I
I will keep the weightlifting simple. Main lift, supplemental lift + back exercise superset and biceps triceps abs superset. After that is conditioning.