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Exercise and Fitness: sticking to resolutions


Iskaral Pust

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On 19/07/2017 at 3:10 AM, KingintheNorth4 said:

I've changed my eating pattern by doing Intermittent Fasting (16/8 method to be exact). I started last Wednesday. My eating cycle begins around 9 am and ends around 6 pm. I'm hoping to finally lose the weight I've gained since I started taking SSRIs to treat my Social Anxiety.

IF is a really great method to control your calorie intake. I highly recommend it. The old idea of lots of little meals sounds good in practice but in reality you end up simply over eating many times a day. At least with IF you can contain your hunger into a certain portion of the day which is helpful mentally. 

There is some evidence that IF is good metabolically and for nutrient partitioning but I'd say it was debatable and the real benefit to IF is being able to control your calories. Weight loss is almost entirely about controlling your calories, and the easiest way is via your calorie intake. 

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My lifting is really struggling because logistically it makes more sense for me to do my cycling (road, not gym) first, but after cycling for 75-90 mins i tend to dial it in in the gym.  the thing is i actively enjoy cycling, and hate lifting so i can't see any way this is going to change. 

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2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

My lifting is really struggling because logistically it makes more sense for me to do my cycling (road, not gym) first, but after cycling for 75-90 mins i tend to dial it in in the gym.  the thing is i actively enjoy cycling, and hate lifting so i can't see any way this is going to change. 

I don't see any reason to change, unless you have some specific goals you're not reaching.  Do the exercise you enjoy and round it out with something else for variety and challenge.  I played football as my primary and often exclusive exercise for most of my life.

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1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

I don't see any reason to change, unless you have some specific goals you're not reaching.  Do the exercise you enjoy and round it out with something else for variety and challenge.  I played football as my primary and often exclusive exercise for most of my life.

I agree, i'm far more likely to put the effort in to the thing i'm enjoying more.  The reason i wanted to up my gym sessions is because the first time in my life i'm paying for membership, so i want to get my moneys worth, basically i'm tight rather than committed to keeping fit. 

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I'm struggling to get in enough (or, rather, as much) exercise now school is out and I'm not on campus at least a few times a week (plus started another new job which is on yet a third side of town) but my student gym and pool membership is still in place at the university until November. I need to figure out some way to work that more strongly into a routine.

The answer is probably, inevitably, to go early in the morning first thing, when traffic is light so its not such a pain to get there, but I never seem to be able to keep that up. I'm just not much of a morning person, and when I am, that's some of my best academic writing stuff time. I may have to just accept dialing it back for a bit, but still - I'd always sort of assumed health and weighloss had more to do with food and exercise was more of a perk, but I've been sticking to same eating routines the past weeks and really noticed a stall in losing weight and, you know, that bubbly healthy feeling of increasing fitness. :huh: 

Anyway, about 5kg down this month, complete stall in lifting progress (due to only lifting maybe 2 times a week at best, but also possibly not eating enough to really make progress there...I pulled it off a few years back, but it was a quiet period and I could be very careful about getting lots of protein and sticking to a lifting schedule while eating at a defecit...there's too much else going on at the moment for me to manage it) but maybe slightly better running times.

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Saturday was bench press, cable rows, etc.  After a week of terrible sleep I noticed my nervous system was failing before my muscle strength but I still had a good workout.  

Sunday, still no squats or deadlifts so I just rowed again: 4x1km, all sub 4:00.  It's definitely in my head now that I need some sort of perfect feeling to return to squats.  I need to get over that.

My wife and son return tomorrow from their visit to her parents.  That will do wonders for me going to bed at a reasonable hour and not eating so much junk late at night. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

No exercise last week, none this week either probably until the weekend.  Work is crushingly busy and we spent last weekend visiting friends.

Thankfully the exhaustion and stress he not left me guzzling junk food, apart from one very regrettable binge last Thursday.  

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I've run a bad 10k race on Sunday. I mean the race itself was great, the atmosphere of 11 thousand runners celebrating the anniversary of Warsaw Uprising 1944 and all that was spectacular. Just my run was bad. I started too strong, even though I knew it could happen. Plan was to start with the pace 4:45 and after 4 or 5 km ease to 4:50-4:55. It was a plan for a personal best. But something told me to try to attack 48 minutes, so I started with 4:35 pace instead and it was clearly a mistake. Too fast, too soon. After 3 km my pace slowed to 5:00, and then even to 5:20. All in all I didn't manage to break my PB, and I finished with the time 2.5 minutes worse than my PB (51:18). I treat it as a lesson.

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I've been off the working out train since my wedding and have gained ~15lbs because of it.  I've also been making some pretty bad decisions regarding my overall health and eating habits.  So this weekend is my last softball tournament, this week was the last week for one of my leagues, and next week marks the last week of my other two.  So next week I'm going to ease into working out again, going Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, & Sunday; then the following week kick it up to where I was last year.  Just need to get back into a regimen.

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1 hour ago, aceluby said:

I've been off the working out train since my wedding and have gained ~15lbs because of it.  I've also been making some pretty bad decisions regarding my overall health and eating habits.  So this weekend is my last softball tournament, this week was the last week for one of my leagues, and next week marks the last week of my other two.  So next week I'm going to ease into working out again, going Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, & Sunday; then the following week kick it up to where I was last year.  Just need to get back into a regimen.

Congrats on getting married ace.  We all get those life disruptions to exercise regimes, and they generally ruin your healthy eating too.  Just pick it back up again.  You may need to keep something more intense alongside softball during the summer.

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6 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Congrats on getting married ace.  We all get those life disruptions to exercise regimes, and they generally ruin your healthy eating too.  Just pick it back up again.  You may need to keep something more intense alongside softball during the summer.

Thanks!  Yeah, next year should be easier.  Planning on only playing twice a week next year, which should give me two afternoons free.  That and not having a full month dedicated to a wedding should make it doable.

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2 hours ago, norwaywolf123 said:

What is barre?

It's a workout derived from a mix of ballet and yoga. I enjoyed it a lot, but unfortunately it hurt my feet because it is usually done barefoot.

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I got into taekwondo when I was a kid and have been doing it on and off. Sometimes I just don't really want to get into it for the day so I just don't it. Other days I'm fully committed. I want to get into more martial arts though or maybe kickboxing.

I have a friend who got me into cross country in middle school. I was on the cross country team in high school even though I wanted to quit because I just hated high school. (I went to a Catholic high school, and, even though I got voted as the most crushed on during senior year, it was the worst. The girls there were snobs. Never send your kids to a Catholic high school unless you have the money to do so).

I've been lacking in fulfilling commitments to myself in this area though. I've gained weight - not that much -, but, since I'm a smoker, I've found on numerous occasions that I cannot breath if I go past a certain point.

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I'm back from my two week vacation. The trip took us through four cities - Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki and St. Petersburg. As you can imagine, such a schedule left no time for exercise, though we did manage to include a kayaking tour and a bike ride tour in Helsinki. Plus side is that we walked a lot (averaged some 20,000 steps per day) and spent a lot of time in general on our feet (museums of St. Petersburg are heavenly, though some are not that well suited for non-Russian speakers). The end result is that I'm at the same weight now as I was before the trip, which is quite a success given we've tried out a few restaurants and, I must admit, a fair bit of junk food.

One more thing, in Helsinki we went to a sauna on the seaside and did the whole "sweat a lot then jump in the sea" thing which was quite fun. I'm thinking of making a sauna a regular thing - like once a week or once a fortnight.

Either way, back to training starting tomorrow. I would've done it today but with our plane landing after midnight, me having to get some bank stuff done before work and the heatwave that's currently ongoing in Belgrade, I decided to skip today and go for tomorrow morning session before work and the 35-40ºC heat.

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Sounds like a good vacation.  I need to visit the Baltic at some point. 

On Saturday, after two weeks of no exercise, little sleep and losing 5lb (without trying to, other than cutting back the recent junk binge) I get back to the gym for benchpress, cable rows, etc.  It went pretty well but the heaviest bench press felt a bit shaky so I dropped a rep on the two heaviest sets rather than get fatally trapped under the bar and added some heavy sets of seated chess press machine instead. 

On Sunday, work spoiled my window for exercise so on Monday evening I did squats, deadlifts, etc.  That was my first time in 2-3 months but it went pretty well. 

Tuesday night, before two days of work travel, I went back for shoulder press, wide pull downs (pull-ups unavailable), etc.  I was sluggish and low tempo but so lifted well.

Lots of muscle soreness in my pecs and quads this week, and I'm exhausted after sleeping badly after a late night workout and early rise for a flight.  But glad I got back to the gym. 

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On 8/4/2017 at 1:38 PM, Starkess said:

It's a workout derived from a mix of ballet and yoga. I enjoyed it a lot, but unfortunately it hurt my feet because it is usually done barefoot.

I LOVE barre.  It's weird that it hurt your feet though, it's supposed to be low impact.

Today starts my first day back in the gym in weeks, and a start to going regularly again until next summer.  I want to lose 10 lbs before Sept 28th, when we have a funeral followed by a wedding, then lose a much tougher 10 lbs by the end of the year.  This week will be 3-4 yoga classes, with next week mixing in 2 barre classes and at least one YOD class.

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