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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?
My SO and I have started going back to the gym. We're both vaccinated and the gym says masks are highly encouraged, so we've been wearing them more for courtesy.
We have a day for cardio, arms, and legs and accompanying cardio for the weight lifting days. I genuinely enjoy cardio now. I like feeling my heart work and know every time I push myself a little more, I'm building up my threshold.
Im still doing my yoga, it can be really intense! My SO tried to be like "yoga doesn't count" once and I about blew a gasket. For me it does! It's 50 minutes of body weight exercises and stretches. I get sweaty and I work hard! I engage my muscles and now I can do a plank for more than ten seconds without feeling like I'm going to die. And I don't half ass my flows neither. I'm sure if you're just looking in at someone doing yoga and you see them in down dog, you might think what's the big deal, but it isn't easy. It kicked my butt when I first started!
More than anything, I'm very happy to be back at a gym. It's nice to use their machines and free weights (when they're open, that's genuinely the most popular part of the gym it's bananas). It makes me feel better and honestly, this is the best I've felt mentally, going to the gym. It used to feel like a total slog and a chore but now I'm enjoying it and am happy to make my noodle arms less noodly.
Hey, fellow cardio lover! I started doing cardio around a year and a half ago. Prior to that I'd pretty much never exercised unless I was tricked into it. Do you have a fitness tracker? They don't really do much for you outside of cardio so as a cardio-only guy it's a fun way to quantify my capabilities and progress.
It's interesting to see the effect on my resting heart rate after a good night's sleep, meditation, caffeine or alcohol.
I don't have a fitness tracker yet! I'm saving up a a smidge to get a Polar heart rate monitor. My SO has one and it works pretty good. I'll use it for my yoga too, and just randomly! It'll be nice to see that kind of stuff and to adjust my workout accordingly.
Fitness has been a top priority for the past 2-3 months for me and I'm finally starting to see the fruits of my labor.
To start, I will talk about some changes to my nutrition that I have been working on. I have never eaten the right stuff and I suspect that for a good majority of my life, I have not gotten nearly enough protein to make working out work well for me. So protein has been the biggest priority. I'm starting out each day with 2 scoops of chocolate protein powder added to cold brew coffee and almond milk to get 50 grams of protein at 305 calories. I call this "GO-JUICE" because it keeps me feeling satiated 5-6 hours after waking up and the caffeine gets me ready to work. It is also very delicious. I have to be mindful of the diuretic effects of caffeine so my water intake is also increased in the morning. My 32-ounce water bottle is a great help with tracking my water intake.
For lunch and dinner, I have been making it a priority to not just eat a carb or fatty meal, it has to have some sort of protein. I've been doing well cooking chicken, steak, and turkey meals to the point where I have actually managed to average ~160 grams of protein a day for the past month. The next step is to take a look at the types of proteins I am eating to ensure that I am doing well enough to maintain anabolism as I am still running a daily calorie deficit of 600-800. I think I am going to try eating a greek yogurt protein snack every night before dinner so that I get the casein I need while sleep to promote anabolism. I know there are ideal times™ to eat protein and different types of protein, but I need baby steps as I work through nutritional bad habits. I need to avoid letting perfection getting in the way of progress. I have been experimenting with various protein bars and my conclusion thus far has been that anyone who thinks they actually taste like "birthday cake" or "fruity pebbles" has clearly not eaten either in 10+ years. Yuck!
Outside of protein, I have incorporated drinking a small glass of tart cherry juice every night to take advantage of its various health effects. This is due in part to me learning about free radicals (which I could swear sounds like a totally made-up thing) that can occur due to stress from working out. Apparently, that is why antioxidants are so critical and tart cherry juice seems to be one of the best sources of them you can buy. Not only am I getting the antioxidants out of it, apparently tart cherry juice increases the body's natural melatonin development and release so you sleep better. I haven't noticed too much there, but I will take it.
The march continues on in the nutrition field. I have been using this Great Courses lecture series called Changing Body Composition through Diet and Exercise to learn more about what I can do to use my diet to meet my goals.
On the fitness side, I have been doing well enough to keep up my routine of two days cardio, two days yoga, and two days of resistance training. On top of that, I have reached my step goal for a personal record 43 days in a row (damn my first COVID shot or I would be at 60 days!). In one of my last updates for these threads, I believe I mentioned that I had injured my ankle from excessive running earlier in the month. I substituted a few bike rides and the stair climber at the gym to let my ankles heal from my running routine but I did go out for my first run late last week. It feels like the rest was needed because my 5k mile average was around 9 minutes and my heart rate didn't creep up to 160-170 until my final mile. I'm going to take it easy on running until June to give my ankles some additional time to heal. Before I jump back in, I really need to work on a pre- and post-running routine that works my range of motion and stretches out my muscles or this is going to happen again. My target mile time is 6-7 minutes a mile.
I'm pretty pleased overall with my progress so far. The goal is to maintain a fitness routine for 6 months more than anything. I need to prove to myself that I can make fitness and good nutrition a way of life for me instead of falling off the wagon and eating pizza two times a week. God, I miss pizza. I should plan to do an intense cardio session this weekend and have pizza afterward. Apparently, the best time to eat a carb-heavy meal without gaining fat is directly after a good cardio session so I should give it a whirl.
I don't know if it's a good idea for me to push you toward pizza, but I've worked pizza into my life by baking whole wheat pizza from scratch myself. That way I can control exactly how much wheat I'm eating (and make sure there's no sugar in the sauce - which is gross and some places totally do it). Whole wheat absolutely makes a huge difference in how it sits in my stomach. Supposedly the significantly higher fiber content (and slightly better macro breakdown) helps to keep it from going straight to your gut. You can also choose to go with part-slim mozzarella instead of whole milk if you want a higher % of calories from protein.
We're still talking 150g of carbs in a thin crust 14" pizza - 110g in a 12". Bread is bread.
That's a great idea, thank you for sharing the idea! I will have to give it a try, I'm definitely looking to substitute whatever ingredients I can into healthier options. I made a spaghetti sauce over the weekend with chicken sausage and lean ground turkey that turned out awesome so I should definitely give the same treatment for pizza.
I have never worked with whole wheat dough, any special considerations?
No. It seems to be more absorbent than white flour so you'll quickly realize you need a bit more water. It's also not as stretchy. But in general it's the same.
Thanks! I will let you know how my effort turns out when I give it a whirl :)
I think I've hit a point where progress is really going to have to slow down on how much weight I can lift, and it's because my joints just need a little time to catch up. Mostly it's my wrists - namely I'm struggling with increasing weight on kettlebell deadlifts and the sled push because my wrists get sore.
My knee which I complained about before on the other hand is almost completely better - I think that just increasing the strength of the muscles in the area has helped a lot.
Overall since starting regular strength workouts in mid-January I feel like I don't really look any different - though my mother / aunt / grandmother all made comments. But I certainly feel like I have harder muscles under all the pandemic doughiness.
So starting today I'm going to start journaling food again, although to be honest it kind of makes me miserable to calorie-count.
I was about to achieve 1,610 km or 1,000 miles cycled in the month of May until two days ago I hit an unmarked, unpainted speed bump on a marked bike path that blended into the surface perfectly while cycling fast.
I was launched into the air and landed 25+ ft away. I have a badly dislocated and fractured left wrist and am covered in stinging road rash. I was admitted to the ER. I have orthopedic surgery in a few days.
:(
I'm very sad. I had been training to the point where I could do 100km efforts back to back and theoretically could easily do 200km+ steady touring days. I had plans for sports and outdoor adventures and bikepacking for this glorious vaccinated summer. Now I can barely use a computer keyboard because of a terribly ill-conceived bike path.
That's crazy!
Have you been given an idea of what your recovery timeline looks like?
Anywhere between 4 to 8 weeks of active recovery, followed by a few months of physical therapy. It’s shorter than I expected. But I still will miss out on many wonders of summer.
Eight months ago, the rinks were still open. I had just reached 80kg. I was on my way to 75kg. I hadn't been in the 70s since … I can't remember, at least 10 years maybe 15. I swore to never go above it again.
Well, the rinks closed two months later when I was averaging 77.5kg. But I was trying my best to keep my weight. It slowly went up. Three weeks ago I reached 80kg, and two weeks ago I reached 81, which is when the alarms rang and I pulled all the stops to fall back below an average of 80.
I'm now back at 78.5kg! And pretty motivated to keep losing just on diet, if I can. I'd love to be lighter when the rinks reopen on the 9th of June, than when they closed. Maybe I can do it.
However I'm in a bit of a lull in terms of Beat Saber. I haven't played it much since I started dieting hard. I tried to play it earlier today but my accuracy was super low. Maybe next week I'll set up addons and find some motivation to play again.
Edit: NEVERMIND THERE'S A NEW ALBUM OUT. https://twitter.com/BeatSaber/status/1397930610866331654
Edit 2: I'm super rusty unfortunately, but the fun thing about playing a DLC so early is getting top 10-20 worldwide so easily on songs haha. Here's today's training: https://youtu.be/2YMd20Z0fhE
For the first time in a while I pulled out my pirated copy of Insanity and did a routine. I've been doing cycling a few times a week so I wasn't a total disaster. But it's clear that the whole-body aspect is something that is going to kick my ass until I get used to it again. Since I'm doing this indoors I now need to mop up after I finish the video. On the bright side my floor will be a lot cleaner.