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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?
After a long hiatus I've gotten back into the swing of things. Cleaned up my home gym setup into a usable state. I have a barbell, adjustable kettlebell, and a rowing machine at my disposal but have been mostly focusing on weights.
Couple years back I primarily used an app called Progression to track exercises but it lost my data somewhere along the way so I started fresh. The current workout is just 15 minutes a day on weekdays only. I can do significantly more but I want to pace myself so I don't regress again. Honestly have not worked out consistently since pre-covid.
I'm optimistic so far at three weeks in. Doesn't sound like much but I am enjoying it and working more positive eating decisions into the mix. In the past I was super strict on my food and workouts but after a year or two I was tired and hungry and fell off. Compromises were made and I'm dealing with the consequences.
So I'm doing okay.
I've got a really newbie question.
When people say "I've lost X pounds/kg!", how are they measuring this, because there's a few pounds fluctuations during the day? Same time of day same outfit only? Can one really claim loss of X units of mass when later in the day they're weighting more or less, or is that just the way body chemistry works and we pretend same time same day is good enough?
Do folks input data and bin them for daily avg or is that crazy? Is it less crazy making to measure only once a day and be done with it.
Similar to @trim, I also track my caloric intake, but using cronometer instead of macrofactor. Shoutout to fellow Canadian Jeff Nippard though (macrofactor's creator), whose YouTube channel I love (and encourage you to check out if you're at all interested in nutrition/exercise science, or science-based lifting), and whose fitness book I own and body recomposition guide I've lost 40lbs over the last 6mo by following! I would use macrofactor to support him further too, but sadly it doesn't have a web portal yet, which is a deal-breaker for me.
As for weight tracking, I also weigh myself every day too, although I additionally make sure to weigh myself at roughly the same time every day (before breaking my intermittent fast, after my morning workout and poop ;) while just wearing my underwear. And then my RENPHO "smart" scale calculates my weekly/monthly averages to minimize the statistical noise that the normal daily weight fluctuations create so I can see my overall trends more clearly. So you're not crazy for thinking of doing that yourself, since that's actually the recommended way to more accurately track your weight. :P
I track everything in macrofactor (app) and weigh daily, but I really track my weight progress weekly to avoid the daily fluctuations that you mention. That's what works for me.
Sounds like @trim and @cfabbro are measuring carefully, but I'd wager most folks report the lowest number they see on the scale. It's what my partner does, some friends do, parents, etc... I think it can be a motivating thing and often people like to claim those wins. I think it all depends on what you're looking for!
I’ve been stepping it up lately at the gym. It’s been about 9 months now of me going 2-3 times a week for at least 70 minutes or so (and on the weeks I go twice, I do outdoor exercise like disc golf for additional exercise). For the longest time, I haven’t been losing much on the scale, but I’ve clearly been replacing fat with muscle (I’m mostly doing weight training) and my body shape has been changing for the better. Well, the weight also started dropping off lately and I’ve also been less hungry and eating better. I’d still like to explore medication options with my Dr. to help with diet, but I’m honestly feeling pretty good right now. I have a lot of fat to lose yet, but I’m getting there and ultimately I’m feeling healthy right now too.
For reference, I’m a 6 foot woman, currently at about 310lbs with my highest being 360 and my lowest of my adult life being 230 in 2018. I have a similar frame and the same height as another woman I know, who looked pretty fit when she was at 200lbs, so I think getting down to 200 would be nice, but I’m honestly taking it day to day right now instead of setting a daunting goal. Weight is coming off, muscle is building, I’m feeling healthier, I check out fine at the doctor, I’m less injury prone, and I’m eating better. So I’ll get there when I get there. I’m not really bothered by the number anyways, I just know I have 80ish lbs of fat to lose or more.
As for progress at the gym, I’ve stepped up my weights on a few exercises. For deadlifts, doing 5x5 at 225lbs has been getting easier and easier. I’ve also been using hand strength trainers as fidget toys while in meetings and it’s been helping with my grip on the bar. I did go for a max weight day last week and hit 300lbs!!! My bench press is still weaker than I want, but when I started, I was only the bar and now I’m up to 5x5 at 115lbs. I also started working in clean and jerk as well as squats. Not much to write home on PBs there yet, I’m keeping weights lower while I practice my form. I already hurt myself once this year, so I learned my lesson.
I’ve also been pushing with cardio more, lately. I used to only do about 10 minutes of seated cardio to cap off weight training days and I’d do an hour or so of basketball on fridays for my cardio. The courts have been too busy with school being out right now, so I’ve been capping my workouts with 20 minutes on the elliptical, instead, with decently high resistance and incline. It’s been helping a lot as well.
That was sort of rambly, tldr I’m feeling great even if I do have more fat to lose and I’m still fucking pumped from that 300 lb deadlift! I might look into if there a proper weightlifting gym around if I want to focus more on Olympic lifts, which have been the most fun and rewarding for me so far.
I don't have a whole lot meaningful to add, but Jesus, you're strong!!! That's about twice what I can deadlift. :P
Well, with deadlift, it helps that I've been fat my whole life, I got a head start on both that and leg press considering I already carry a lot of weight with me every day. I've also usually been relatively athletic, despite my size, so now that fat is coming off, I'm having an easier time with things. Even though I hadn't been regularly going to the gym before last year, I did used to train in historical european martial arts and also performed some feats of strength as part of a viking reenactment group, so I already did have some of those muscle groups built up from practical applications. That said, I've still worked hard at it, so thank you! I started by "only" being able to do 3x3 at 160lbs or so, I've worked my butt off to build up in the last year and it feels great to now have a hobby where I can see hard work directly translate into measurable progress.
I was also pretty fat for most of my life too. I'm only 5'11" but was ~300lbs through most of my 20s-30s. It's only in the last 5 years (I'm in my 40s now) that I got down to below 200lbs, and the last 6mo I've gone from there to 160lbs where I am now. As a result of that, playing Catcher, and doing commercial landscaping I have some decently developed legs and back muscles too, but I can still only deadlift 3x8 at 115lbs. So don't short change yourself! Your numbers are still goddamn impressive!
p.s. I love military history, and watch a fair amount of medieval history and HEMA-adjacent content (Schola Gladiatoria, Tod's workshop, Skallagrim, etc) and HEMA has always intrigued me... but apparently the closest club to where I live now is about a 50min drive away though. So I'm super jealous of you for that too. :P
Thanks for mentioning your age, because at 33 I’ve been pretty nervous about my weight and while my health is good now, it certainly doesn’t help in the long term. I’ve been trying to lose more long term now with good lifestyle changes over short term losses (which I always gain back) so it’s honestly comforting to know you even did it in your 40’s and going from 300 to 160 is massive, congrats! I’m trying to get myself to make healthy permanent changes over trying to target a number with a time scale of months.
YVW, and thanks for the compliment! :) And yeah, I definitely wouldn't recommend waiting until your 40s to take your health more seriously. It's never too late to start (until it is), but starting earlier undeniably would have made it a hell of a lot easier on me. :P
Trying to make sustainable choices is absolutely a good idea too. I feel like my current exercise routine (strength training 3x week, yoga+HIIT cardio 2-3x week) is totally sustainable for me in the long term. I'm still making noticeable gains, and it's not too much volume that I can't recover from it by the start of the next week. But my diet over the last 6 months was definitely not sustainable (1200kcal/day + whatever I burned while working out). However, I do also feel like I needed that so I could see fast enough results to keep myself motivated. TBH, I think I probably would have given up, to a certain degree (not back to 300lbs but probably back to 190-200ish), had I not managed to see such drastically positive results in this final stretch of the journey.
Despite that, I suspect now comes the truly hard part though, which is trying to figure out how to gradually get back to a "normal" caloric intake (~2500kcal/day) while still continuing to make healthy food choices, and maintaining roughly around this same body size/composition (while slowly adding more muscle, ofc ;).
Yeah I also did 1200 calories a day in 2017 when I was desperate to lose for the first time and while it did work (lost 90 pounds in 6 months), it was unhealthy, I was miserable, and I rebounded hard once Covid started and my habits changed. So I’m doing it more smartly this time :)
Thanks for the chat, I appreciate it and it’s always good to know others have been in my shoes and made it, I can do it too.
I actually don't think my 1200cal diet was that unhealthy, believe it or not. I meticulously tracked my caloric and macro/micro nutrient intake the entire time. So I made sure to hit at least 100g of protein per day, stay under 40g of fat, and also hit the vast majority of my RDAs every day too thanks to a good multivitamin, magnesium and fiber supplements, and eating skim milk+0% yogurt based overnight oats with chia seeds (for that sweet omega 3) every morning.
And I honestly haven't ever felt miserable, or like I was starving myself during this diet either, especially since I have also been volume eating foods that are low cal, high fiber, and/or high protein, like bowls of 0% greek yogurt with tons of fresh fruit, and loads of fresh raw veg (e.g. I still enjoy demolishing entire bags of sugar snap and snow peas, which are <55cal for 125g). Even so, your way of taking it less drastically than I have is undoubtedly still for the best though. :P
And trust me, if I can lose this much weight you definitely can too. I'm an over-the-hill, lazy SOB, computer nerd and still managed to do it. ;)
Likewise thanks for the chat too, BTW. It always nice to connect with someone working towards the same goals. :)
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply it was a bad choice, it was just bad for my own body, but I know a lot of people can make 1200 work!
No worries and no need to apologize. I didn't take it as an insult or anything. I just suddenly felt the urge to ramble on about my diet a bit. LOL
Getting close to a 160 kg (~352 lbs) deadlift now that I'm in a caloric surplus again. Next goal: 4 plates.
I got super fit when I passed 40. Dropped from 147Kg to 69Kg over about a year. Became a decent runner (sub 1.30 halfs, marathons at 3h15 etc.)
Anyway, covid came and went and the weight started to go up and the fitness declined when i started working from home and didn't need an excuse to get out of the office and train. Much of that is excuse and cope of course, and I know this.
Anyway, I've had enough so for the last 2 weeks I've been folliowing the NHS Couch to 5k programme.
It's pretty challenging, though I've done enough running and coaching (I got my L1 coaching back when I was fit) so I know how to pace my effort segments during these interval runs (which is what this particular couch to 5k app is giving me, it's just interval training).
Hopefully I can get back to where I can do a 5K in under 30 minutes (waaaay off the 18 I was running before but hay, I'm also 15 years older now).
Weight's starting to come down -- I got kinda shocked when I was back at 105Kg. Still under 147 of course, but the writing was on the wall if I didn't do something. I really want to be like ~80Kg or something. That's still on the upper end of the green BMI but it'll be fine.
Just come off week 2, which was 6x 90s effort, 120s brisk walk.
Week up coming is 3m efforts. That's going to be significantly harder, I can tell!
So far I'm remaining injury free and I'm loving it.
Holy shit, that is insanely insanely impressive!!! It took me over a decade to go from me being at my heaviest ~300lbs (136Kg) down to ~200lbs (91kg). And it was only in the last 6 months that I've finally managed to get from there to my goal weight of 160lbs (72.5kg). So I can't even imagine losing all that weight in a year! Major major kudos to you!
If you don't mind my asking, did you require surgery to deal with excessively loose skin from losing the weight that quickly? That's one thing I'm actually kinda struggling with myself now, and that's after only losing another 20kg over the last 6 months. But I'm hoping it will tighten up naturally given enough time holding myself at this weight like it eventually has previously after I lost significant chunks of weight over a short span of time.
p.s. Speaking of Couch to 5k, I recently watched a great video of someone else making that journey too:
Sierra Schultzzie - I Tried the Couch to 5K Running Program (full experience)
No one was more surprised than me that I was still tight after that! I lost so much that even without strength training I had visible abs. Crazy. I’m kinda wondering if I’ll get away with this again after dropping this 20Kg. I hope so.
The thing that turned out to be very hard, was maintaining. When I was losing, I was hyper focused on it and super motivated. I wanted to play with my kid, then 3 years old but heavy me couldn’t do it.
Then I was running 70-80Km a week, and I didn’t really have to watch my food that much. It was really the drop off in activity levels post Covid that was my downfall weight wise.
I’m looking forward to goal weight this time again, we’ll see how it goes.
Good job with yours too, that’s a great drop. Man I felt so much better then, and I’m really quite disgusted with myself that I let it slide.
Mind you, it’s a lot bloody harder in my mid 50s than it was at 40!
Damn, you must have some seriously good skin elasticity genetics! I'm jealous! :P
Yeah, I feel ya. Despite the overall downward trend over the last decade+, my weight has gone up and down a fair amount over the years too. Now that I've finally reached my goal weight, I'm really hoping I can remain disciplined enough to maintain it and stay here indefinitely... But I'm also not gonna beat myself up too much if I backslide a few times again before finally reaching equilibrium at this weight, and you shouldn't either! It's not about how many times you fall, it's about how many times you get back up again afterwards... and all those other cliche motivational saying... which despite being cliche are still generally true and worth keeping in mind. ;)
In any case, I wish you much luck and success on your return journey back to your own goal weight! :)
Cheers, that means a lot. All the best for your own goals :)
It's been a funny few months for fitness for me. May and June were pretty much write offs as I had covid, my partner and I travelled, and then got married! But it pretty much meant any consistency for my exercise routine evaporated. I went from swimming about a mile every day, biking every day, and lifting 3 times a week to sporadic at best. On top of that, when I wasn't sick and just laying in bed for 2 weeks I was eating and drinking a lot. Friends were in town, we were celebrating, consumption went through the roof.
It took some time in July to get back on the routine, and I'm maybe 2 weeks into returning to normal and I've had this weird spurt of improvements in all my endeavors. I'm swimming more, like 2 miles a day, and swimming faster than before. Something I couldn't do before. My lifts all maintained through the break period - something that has never happened to me during an extended break - and I'm starting to move towards breaking a plateau I've had since March for 2 of my main lifts. And I'm also able to bike longer than I was before when mountain biking - 25 miles and 4-5k elevation vs like 16 miles and 3k elevation. It's nice but also frustrating, as there is no reason for all of these gains. My body seems to be changing as well, like I have well defined abs for the first time ever, all while I haven't changed my diet at all.
I realize this will likely be an annoying post because I'm getting all of these great things seemingly without trying for them. But I'm just baffled. There have been periods of my life where I've tracked all my food, exercised to an insane degree (running, lifting, climbing, biking for hours like almost every day) and yet I'm looking better and feeling fitter now. I'm also like 10 years older than that period which feels counter to everything you hear about aging. I just don't get it. I spent the summer feeling guilty about how little I was doing and how much I was drinking/eating/celebrating and yet here we are. Has this happened to anyone else? I'm so confused.
Maybe your body needed a break? Even elite athletes have an off season, usually a month or two where they cut back on the exercise and don't go crazy watching what they eat. When they get back into the routine, they may have lost a little ground, but then can quickly make big gains. Sounds like you did exactly that.
That would be hilarious. Usually when I take months off I come back feeling out of shape and sluggish, and the ramp back up to normal period is a few months itself. This has been a wild one!
Are you sure you were giving your body the right rest periods, nutrition, and the right macros post workout before? It sounds like your body recovered from a deficit of some kind. Are you less stressed than before, since stress can also impact you.
I've definitely had major improvement after seemingly small changes in my diet and recovery routine. Like the difference between hitting the wall at 10 miles of running versus 20 being the exact right recovery steps from the prior run.
So yes, I've had similar experiences, but was able to isolate them to things I could replicate in my recovery routine.
Honestly, I'm not sure about rest periods, but I don't usually exercise until failure - I'm much more lazze faire/listen to my body when it comes to exercise. I wasn't tracking macros before or now, I just usually increase calorie and protein consumption on lifting days. And stress has actually ramped up in the last few months due to issues our company is running into with Trump stuff, so not sure there either. I did sleep in a lot during the time off, so maybe that was the missing factor?
Glad to hear you've had a similar experience, now I just need to figure out what the impacting factor was to try and replicate it!
Edit: I'm not telling folks in real life but as I don't really know anyone here... my wife got pregnant in June and I've heard the partners body/brain goes through changes too - i.e. sympathy weight - and I'm wondering if maybe some of this is associated with that? We are eating more aligned with my wife's cravings so maybe baby is the best nutritionist I can get?
Hey, congrats on the baby! That's the start of a whole adventure. May you learn patience quickly, lol.
What your describing is sort of like how I was before I made changes and boosted performance. If you aren't pushing hard to lift more, gain mass, run harder or farther, etc, then yeah, you don't really need to worry about the details as long as you eat healthy overall.
But it sounds like you are pushing for better performance, so those little things really make a difference in that regard. Getting the right nutrients in the half hour after a session was particularly important to me. I didn't used to worry about eating right after a 5 mile maintenance run, because for me that barely breaks a sweat. But after I started focusing on recovery after everything, my performance went up, especially on long or high intensity runs.
Same for swimming and biking in my experience. I also want getting enough protein for a while, and as someone doing athlete intensity workouts and a vegetarian, nearly vegan, that took some work to fix.
Anyway, of you are happy with where you are at don't sweat it. But if you plateau, give the extra recovery focus a shot.
Cheers!
Thanks, it feels like supporting pregnancy nausea is just the beginning ;)
Thanks for all the advice! I think my "pushing it" days are behind me, but if I ever feel the bug again I'll definitely reconsider my consumption habits. Funny enough, the friend I bike and swim with is an absolutely nazi about his diet - to the point where we won't eat a cookie (too much sugar and butter) unless he has adequately "earned" it. And to earn it we're talking about running more than 30 miles, biking more than 50, or swimming more than 4. I'm ok with a little extra flesh if it means I get to indulge in the ways I like.
Thanks again!
Oh man, I'm the opposite with the treats. Love, laugh, run, eat pastries. While I want to balance fitness and nutrition, I just budget the calories in my normal days budget, and only restrict things like protein or other recovery items based on my level of exertion.
Cheers, and good luck with the kid that's exciting stuff!
Dunno how I missed your comments in this topic originally, but thanks to the ping above I finally saw them. Holy crap, congrats on both the marriage and the baby, @rosco!!! That's awesome news. :)
Thanks a lot!!! It's been a bit of a flurry the last couple of months with lots of changes but it's been exciting! We're still not really talking about it outside of immediate family and close, close friends as we're still in the high risk for miscarriage window but it's nice to get to chat about it here a bit. I was really on the fence about sharing, but honestly it's the only thing that's different that could have been why workouts were having different outcomes.
Thanks again for the support and I'll be posting more about it once we're past the 14 week hump. I have so many questions and I'm excited to use the community as a resource!
LOL, yeah, that's definitely a lot of significant life changes occurring over a rather short span. A flurry, indeed! The fact that you're seeing improvements in your fitness and breaking through previous plateau's at the same time, despite the added stress from work and everything else, is actually not all that surprising to me though. Love can move mountains, after all. ;)
My sister has endometriosis, and has unfortunately suffered quite a few miscarriages over the years so I totally understand the hesitance to share that news too broadly just yet. I feel privileged being amongst the few who know though, so I could congratulate you, and wish you and your partner well! And if all our pleasant interactions on Tildes over the years are anything to go by, I think you'll make a damn fine parent. :)
Aw, thanks cfabbro, that means a lot. Glad to be able to share it with you guys!
❤️ :)
I've been overworking and hurt my knees lol. Went to my PCP and she recommended stretches for jumpers knee, so I'll be doing that everyday and doing my off skates workouts once a week and doing much lighter on the legs workouts for all my other stuff. Great time to get back into swimming for me lol.