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The 2010 Resolution Thread or D+D Goes to the Gym
Posts
Ladies.
8-)
(my target is to gain enough muscle to stop Tim Burton lamenting his lack of creativity)
Man the internet has a strange way of distorting the truth 8-)
I have a decent photographic timeline of the second half of my weight loss... I'm still not comfortable posting it but even so it's one of the most effective things I did to make myself accountable to, er, myself.
yeah i would never ever want to be hollywood skinny, it's goddamn scary. i know that realistically a size 8 would be as low as i'd ever want to be, that's about 25-30lbs ago. i wear a 12 now. i also have to compensate for such annoying things as hips.
also, what did you mean when you said 'masking fat loss with muscle gain'? i thought having lean muscle mass aided in fat burning. not like OMG JACKED lean muscle mass, but some.
"masking fat loss with muscle gain" in general means that you stay the same weight but are more muscular. It's much more common in men, who can realistically gain a lot of muscle from weight training and exercise, although I've found that in general it's not really something that happens unless you're actually *trying* to do it. Eating a surplus of calories but exercising significantly will usually just give you muscles under your fat, because your body has no reason to burn your fat.
Basically, will my hand be held for a while? Because I think I'd need it.
Depends on the gym really. They may push you to sign up with a personal trainer, which wouldn't be a horrible idea if you think you need one. You could probably push them to give you a free training session or two.
Most likely they'll just show you the gym, where the machines are, where the weights are, and set you loose. I know in my old gym they had staff that you could just go up to and talk to, and they would help you set up a workout plan on the spot. Thought that was really cool.
My ladyfriend went from probably a size 10 to somewhere between a size 0 and 2 over the past year. It was around 40 pounds plus a good amount of muscle development. She looks good at this size, and she didn't really look right carrying around the extra weight - it just looked superfluous and unwieldy on her.
It depends a lot, I guess, on your body time and build.
yeah, it's all about height and build. i'm 5'7" or so and thankfully pretty proportionately shaped.
Yeah, I have a feeling I could use some one-on-one guidance, at least for the first few sessions, or to establish some kind of 'progress' plan. I wouldn't know what the fuck I was doing otherwise.
A personal trainer wouldn't be wasted on you, by the sounds of it. If nothing else, you want to minimize the risk of injuring yourself with the free weights or machines. They should be an excellent font of information in regards to form, proper use of equipment and can include some helpful advice on things like nutrition, depending on their training/expertise.
The last thing you want to do when starting up a new exercise regimen is to pull/strain/damage something, leaving you in a worse condition than when you started.
My sister and I have always struggled a bit with our weights, so when I heard she was starting up at a gym a few years ago, I hooked her up with cash for christmas of that year to get a pesonal trainer for 10 sessions, and she's made excellent progress since.
Personally, I survived 3 days at the gym last week (heavy on the cardio but including more free weights as the days go on) and am tentatively aiming for 4 this week. Going for an hour+ after work is fitting into my schedule quite well, it seems.
In other news... let's see about getting some goddamn progress photos up. Also, lots of people talking about goals without PMing me hard numbers, fix that! I'll add my own later today. If you feel unsure about showing off your body, then take a picture with your shirt on. No wangs plx. Remember to blur out your face, this is the internets.
Also, let's get some progress reports in every 2 weeks. Next data due, say, end of Jan.?
Anyways, an upside to only being able to workout during the weekends now is that I'm hitting the gym with determination to make up for lost time, and really pushing myself.
Downside? I'm fucking sore!
I worked out at home for the past year or so with dumbbells and an adjustable bench. To take my workouts to the next level, though, I realized I was going to have to sink in some serious cash on more equipment; way more than multiple years at the gym around the corner from my house. So I sold my home equipment and got a gym membership.
My workouts are all coming from a book called the New Rules of Lifting, where basically all the exercises mimic real-life motions and the way your body moves, pushes, pulls, and lifts things outside of the gym. There are no bicep curls to be found in any workout in the book, I think... There are 9 workout routines in the book, 3 each for fat loss, hypertrophy (making muscles bigger) and strength (making muscles stronger). I'm just about done with fat loss I, and I'm not sure if I'm gonna do fat loss II or do hypertrophy I next.
One thing I haven't seen anyone mention yet is nutrition... how is everyone changing their eating habits to reach their fitness goals? Exercise is only half of the equation...
For easy diet-improvers... I don't drink anything with calories except for a little half n half in my coffee and adult beverages (which I'm also cutting down on...), and I avoid white carbs (potatoes, regular pasta, bread). I do more than just those two things (high-fiber carbs & veggies, healthy fats, lots of protein), but honestly, those two are the easiest and probably most effective way to cut bad calories.
So what has D+D done on the nutrition side of things so far?
The funny thing is I'm 5'9 have a large frame (broad shoulders) and statistics say I should weigh 150 lbs? That seams like skin and bones to me.
Also while the cross trainer is nice I'd like to know what exercise I should I do to target the gut?
If you're talking about fat loss, there's no spot weight loss. When you burn calories, your body decides where to lose them from. Just burn more calories and eventually you'll lose it.
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Congrats on losing the 10 lbs! That's a great start!
Anyways, if by statistics you mean BMI, ignore it. Brad Pitt has an obese BMI, IIRC.
And to your question... you can't "target the gut." Spot-reducing fat is a myth. You can increase your calorie deficit so you lose weight faster, but the fat will come off wherever it wants to come off, in whatever order it wants to come off.
I would recommend adding weightlifting into your workout routine. If you've been doing basically the same thing for a month now, your body is getting used to the routine; you're going to see the weight loss slow down soon, if you haven't already. Time to change up the routine to shock your body into burning more calories again.
For example, instead of a sandwich and chips and maybe some carrot sticks for lunch, I'd have just the sandwich, but I'd make up for it with a couple handfuls of nuts a few hours after lunch and some triscuits and cottage cheese a few hours before lunch. It trains my body to expect smaller amounts of food, and keeps it working on digestion throughout the day, which I imagine burns more calories.
Liposuction is the only way to "target" fat, and it's horrible for you. And statistics are worthless. You can guesstimate your body fat % using the cartoons in the OP, a healthy male body fat % is sub 15%. A sculpted six-pack is actually really hard to get, you go from lumbly bumps to well defined muscle groups going from 25 to 15%, but cutting your fat content in half from there becomes increasingly difficult. Your body likes having fat. It buffers hormonal levels, provides an excellent energy reserve, and keeps you warm. You can realistically expect to lose 1-3 pounds per week until you hit that 10-15% level, at which point you shouldn't try to cut more then a pound a week of fat, or your body will just give up muscle mass instead.
1)Count calories for at least a week or two. Sites like sparkpeople or dailyplate are awesome for this. When I first started to really try and loose weight I did this, and I was amazed by how many calories some of the stuff I ate all time had. Like one meal at Whataburger being almost 75% of my recommended intake or how many calories sodas and candy bars had.
2)Don't think of it as a diet, but a lifestyle change. Diet to me always sounded bad and worse, temporary. Just think of it as changing your lifestyle. That way when you do eat more than you should (And it'll happen) you don't feel like you failed. That really worked for me.
For example, seafood is all-around better for you than land animals (barring some fatty fish like catfish). Shrimp is a "wonder food" but a lot of people eat shrimp with butter, so you take this wonderfood and dip it in calories, because you might totally overlook that sauces/dips can have a ton of calories in them. It also works the other way -- you find foods that are surprisingly low-calorie for what they are. I often bring up a Whopper Jr. w/ no mayo as an example (290 calories -- the same as most any Lean Cuisine frozen lunch), especially since it costs a dollar.
I lost 20 pounds last year by essentially just eating seafood cooked in healthy ways instead of land animals cooked in healthy ways. Sure, I also reduced the number of carbs I ate, but meats/proteins are the way to stay full through a diet.
In other words, a lot of people are confused as to what "healthy foods" actually are. Knowing your calories helps make it a lifestyle change.
Buy Starting Strength and get in the gym. Do deadlifts, presses and squats. Compound exercises work much better than isolation exercises. Don't be afraid of the gym. Everybody starts somewhere and nobody is paying attention to you unless you are doing douchey things like bicep curls in the squat rack.
My goal for this year: get from 200 lbs to 175 while getting stronger. I lost 30 pounds last year, no telling how much fat because muscle replaced a lot of it.
I'm not going to say it was easy, but it was simple.
My goal is 167lbs by the end of the semester (or by spring break ideally), since that's how much I weighed when I had a six pack.
I'm going to start working out today. I'll probably start on a 6 day work out play with one day for rest. I'm going to switch over to a high protein diet with 6 meals a day. I want to restrict my diet to only ~40% carbs. I'll probably hit up my school's nutritionist for help with this.
Egg whites are a reasonably low calorie source of protein, shakes are a godsend for the veggie types. Lots of whey, blueberries, banana, and milk in in the blender. Gives you the protein, calcium and potassium you need to build muscles.
Aren't soy alternatives to most meats available?
I generally eat food that has mostly protein, a negligible amount of fat, and a minimum amount of carbs. Get in the habit of checking the nutrition facts on everything you buy and eat.
I am not a huge fan of isolation exercises but seriously my triceps need some catch-up.
Gonna hit the gym tomorrow. My goal is to drop 30 pounds by April.
Shakes are seriously great. Yeah, you feel like a raging tool-bag when you buy the protein, but it's tasty and lets you recover faster.
Try close-grip bench press and dips for triceps.
Good call on the dips. I don't have a spot and would be embarrassed to ask any of the juicers at my gym to spot whatever girl weight I could manage on a close-grip bench, so I will try the dumbbell analog.
My favorite workout was waking up, having a light breakfast, then biking to the pool at SJSU (about 6-7 miles away), swimming for 20 minutes, then biking the rest of the way to work (another 4-5 miles). I got to fit in a brick, which made me happy.
My mom is starting her second career as a personal trainer/pilates instructor, holy fuck my abs are sore. I have a new found respect for those toned 40 year olds, I know the pain they endure to get back to the college body.