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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?
So TIL... you actually can mess yourself up by not eating enough salt. It's not a problem with the typical American diet, but I've been drinking more water and eating nothing but mostly unseasoned fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and protein lately to try and shed weight.
I normally do superheavy/superslow weightlifting once a week, 4 - 5 reps over the course of two minutes. This morning, I couldn't do 2 reps at usual weights without fierce muscle cramps and dizziness.
I supplement magnesium and calcium, and had a banana protein shake earlier... so what could it be? One serving of Gatorade and it fixed me immediately - the missing ingredient was sodium. I've been sweating over heavy gardening through the week, and apparently threw off my electrolyte balance badly. Not everyone's cause for a bad exercise day, and a serious surprise.
Slat is very important, I start the morning with a glass of water with lemon juice and a sprinkle of salt to help with hydration.
I could not find it, but there was some study of Korean diets, and they associate many befits to healthy gut bacteria to eating salt which is very present in their diet because of kimchi.
One time I had a flu that involved a lot of sweating and vomiting. After a couple days of sipping water to stay hydrated, my other symptoms had cleared but an insane headache lingered.
My wife brought me a piece of fresh baked focaccia with coarse salt sprinkled on top. That was the saltiest and most delicious piece of bread I’d ever eaten. Within an hour my headache was gone and I felt right as rain.
Lesson learned: don’t neglect salt and other electrolytes!
I started my fitness journey back up about a year ago starting with daily cardio. Since November I've added in weight training again doing 5/3/1 and I'm loving it after not lifting for years. I'm down from 215 to 165 and hope to keep it off this time with lifestyle changes.
Recently I've found two podcasts that I've really been enjoying called Iron Culture presented by MASS, and Data Driven Strength. Both are science focused podcasts discussing various topics of exercise and nutrition. If that's anyone's vibe I suggest checking them out!
Been feeling really good about what I've been up to! Doing off skates workouts for speed skaters from a couple different places. My friend and I got a slide board that I've used a couple times and need to get on it more. Overall I feel like the workouts I've been doing have done more for my muscles than just plain lifting, especially my legs. I'm looking forward to keeping at it!
I had my first hockey 101 class. Everyone in the class is way ahead of me and I'm just here doing my best lol. It was fun and everyone was nice and I know I have a lot to work on and want to work on it. It was also a lot of work and I was so fucking sweaty.
And then I start my roller derby flight school tomorrow! I'm all geared up and ready. I actually went roller skating downtown last Saturday with a friend and his friend and it was terrifying and fun lol. They helped me a lot and I was an absolute sweaty mess after.
I've been really enjoying trying new things and not just exercising to exercise but having specific goals in mind has really made things easier in a way.
The rather severe muscle pain I had after my first week starting on strength training had me doing a lot of research on ways to avoid it. Part of it was supplementation, particularly with caffeine. So I decided to go off the deep end and buy a commercial preworkout powder since I also wanted to add at least some creatine.
I ordered the Mr. Hyde Blue Razz flavored stuff they have on Costco's website because it was relatively inexpensive per serving. My god, it's sweet! It's painfully sweet, almost! When this stuff is done I'm just going to order the components I want from Bulk Supplements and make my own mix.
I did notice a big difference though. I know that when you start you can get some pretty big gains in how much you can lift pretty quickly, but this time I had more dramatic improvements than my last week and I had more energy at the end. It hasn't been a full 24 hours yet, but I'm not feeling any soreness at all!
My husband is also going crazy over protein supplements right now; he's constantly eating protein bars and drinking protein shakes because he's overly worried about muscle loss. I don't think he's wrong to worry but I worry he's going about it the wrong way about it because he's consuming a huge amount of whey instead of just eating it as part of his regular diet. I also have read that excessive protein intake can accelerate aging so it might be hurting him in the long run.