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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 picked up Ring Fit Adventure on a friend's recommendation, and it's the most inspiring thing I've ever tried to regularly excercise. It's fun, even as I'm pushing the upper bounds of what I can do, and it's far more convenient than going to the gym.
Concurrently, I'm trying to change my eating habits to involve fewer crackers and cheese and more veggies and hummus. It's going ok.
I'm about 25 pounds overweight so I decided to make a priority to lose the weight asap this year. Been doing keto for almost 1.5 months and going to the gym daily. Tracking my routine and weight with a google doc. Every morning I have just 2 hard boiled eggs for breakfast. No alcohol or any drinks with carbs. I have lost about 8 pounds now, so it looks like it's going to take about 3 more months. Feels good to see progress though!
I mentioned in some other weekly threads I've started to go ice skating, around 1 month ago.
Here's my weight trend of the past five months: https://i.imgur.com/chvrz1o.png -- I'm finally and solidly out of a year-long stall (which was preceded by me putting on 7kg). I'm now at my lowest weight in 13 months, with the previous record low being right after some surgery complications (= unhealthy). My current goal is 75kg, and hopefully I'll be able to reach some weight near it before the rink closes.
For context, this is a time sink. I'm going on average every 2.5 days, and staying there between 4-6 hours when I do go. The sessions themselves aren't that intense, but I think the main point is that I found something that I can a) regularly go to, b) actually enjoy and be motivated to do / look forward to the next session, c) stay there for long periods if I want to. And my food intake has diminished as well, primarily and counter-intuitively because doing so much exercise makes me feel less hungry.
The only other sport I felt similarly strongly about is fencing, and that was not as frequent / lengthy (once a week for 2-3 hours), not as easily accessible (45-75 mins to go to the club depending on where I've lived, versus 30 mins for the rink), not always as friendly (the ice rink's staff is fantastic, includes a cheap and comfy restaurant, etc) and certainly a hell of a lot more expensive (full fencing kit is at least 600-700 EUR, twice that if good quality, and club membership ranges around 200-450 EUR / yr; good skates are ~100 EUR and club membership is 150 EUR / yr).
With that said, my body is suffering a lot. Early on I needed stitches on my eyebrow after falling; I've also hit my knee pretty bad, and got a contusion on my left hand that has yet to fully heal after 2 weeks. My feet are in seriously rough shape when I'm finished with the day's session, too (but recover in <10 mins). Unlike gym, I don't feel sore the day after, as long as I don't go two days in a row.
Anyway, I've discovered my love for ice skating, and I've been rejecting extra work to spend more time at the rink before it closes end-of-april. Next year I really want to go to Gorky Park's beautiful rink (video).
I absolutely hate the gym. Gym has only ever worked for me when I had a personal trainer I liked enough to actually look forward to the social aspect of it. This year, I've tagged the "Year of the Body", under CGPGrey's fantastic alternative new year resolution system; I'm promising to take more care of myself, get back to a healthy weight, and "learning to ice skate" has fallen perfectly into that.
Abandoning the gym has been such a fantastic decision to my mental and physical well-being, but only because I could find something to replace it tenfold. For some people it's going to be some other sport, or Ring Fit Adventure, or home gym, or whatever else works but I've realized how insanely unworkable it was for me to follow a fitness regimen that involves "you have to do this thing you don't like doing", versus "you have to find a thing you like doing that happens to include physical exertion".
I'm nowhere near where I want to be, but this morning, I've hit three milestones: Lowest weight since moving in to the new country; New notch on the belt to tighten my pants; Progress pic #2.
It's also great to feel like if my weight stops dropping, I can just spend more time at the rink, because fuck yeah why wouldn't I?
Can't agree with this enough - if you can find a physical activity that you enjoy it's really easy to devote more time to it and use it as a means to get more fit. That being said, it is good to schedule things to ensure that you don't push it off in order to do something else. You should have some dedicated time to work on yourself, your hobbies, and your fitness that is time you always take.
Kind of dreading the start of spring break. I started lifting jn January and made ok progress, but i've seen a lot faster progress now that i've stopped babying my weight progression and started going 3x instead of 2x a week these past few weeks. The weightroom has been refreshingly empty now that pre-season conditioning is done haha.
Unfortunately, the weightroom is closed during break (or at least i'm pretty sure) and there are few good gyms in my area. They're either planet fitness-type "fitness centers" or exorbitantly expensive. Oh well. I'm hoping I see a good rack pop up on craigslist for a reasonable price but i'm afraid the new-years quitselling boat has sailed. Tennis is also starting soon and it coincides exactly with the hours the weightroom is open :/.
Question: I can't seem to improve the number of pull-ups I can do. It seems like I can do fewer each time haha. Is there anything I can do besides rows to do better on them?
Can you currently do any pull-ups or are you trying to work up from 0?
Doing negatives (jump up to the bar and let yourself down as slowly as possible) are a good way to add in extra volume once you've started stalling. If you can stay at the top position, static holds at the top, halfway down, and bottom are also good ways to train different muscles used in the exercise.
I can do them but 4 has been my max for a couple weeks. I'll try the negatives though, thanks!
I started going to the gym every morning with my friend, it's amazing how much better I feel after waking up and doing some exercise for an hour or so. I paid for a program from a personal trainer, which has taken a bit of the stress out of starting up, because everything is clearly laid out and I don't have to really think about what to do when I get to the gym.
Next step in the progression is to start counting calories and to think more about what, and how much I'm eating. Has anyone here done this before, and do you have any tips on keeping it manageable?
Meal prepping is a common strategy to help make calorie-counting easier. It's also a solid cost-savings strategy, so not a bad idea to do it either way.
But I've never managed to calorie-count. I'm too lazy to meal-prep and too easily tempted not to log the one-off snacks and what not. I think the main aspect of calorie counting that helps people is actually how it makes you aware of bad habits, and puts you in a position of asking yourself "do you really need that midnight snack?" and "is that dessert really worth the 480 extra calories?"
Pony up for a kitchen scale and use it with MyFitnessPal, the app. After you use it religiously for several months, you can start figuring out what's good and not pretty easily without it
Get a kitchen scale, and an app that allows you to track your intake easily. Dependong on where you life and your OS, I've found Lifesum, FatSecret, Calory, or Carrot Hunger to be decent. (I stopped using the latter two pretty soon though, because their catalogue is super US centric, and I don't live there). Some people swear on MFP, but I personally don't like it, and have found many of the entries to be quite different from the label on the products.
I personally do IF (Intermediate Fasting), but mainly because that's what works best for me. I enjoy a big meal (and snacking on some fruit or veggies shortly before that) to multiple smaller ones.
My suggestion is finding a system that works for you (several small meals vs. fewer larger ones; restricting food types vs. restricting amounts; planning and prepping vs. eating what you feel up to right now) and stick to it.
Ddoing your own cooking helps immensly. Both by increasing the accuracy of cour counting (weigh ingredients, see exactly what's in it) and by adjusting your food towards your goals