Exercise and Fitness: bro science debunked

[Theda Baratheon]

3 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Its a wonderful feeling to be tired from exercise rather than the lethargy induced by depression and other mental illness. I’m very happy for you, and congrats on the progress!

Oh yes totally and you know I know the latter kind of tiredness WELL. Where you don’t really feel like a human being, just a useless lump. But this kind of tiredness is actually really nice because you DO feel like a person haha and you feel useful and strong and good. Anyway that’s just my personal experience also I’ve lost a stone  and my legs are starting to really tone up compared to what they were so I’m BEAMING 

[Iskaral Pust]

Workouts are going well for me this past couple of weeks.  I got back to a more diligent routine after several weeks of busy travel.  Next week will have a lot of travel for me, with no chance of a mid-week exercise.  But otherwise I should be able to stick to this pattern.

Congratulations to everyone seeing positive progress.  It's great to build some positive momentum as the improving weather gives more opportunity for exercise, and even just better energy levels from more sunlight.  Keep building on it.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I put a two and half hour session in yesterday. Progress for the wedding is going swimmingly. I've still got four months to work on some better ab definition. Sadly that means I have to put myself on a two beer a day pitch count, despite my previous advise that one can never drink too much beer (assuming it's quality beer). 

[aceluby]

17 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I put a two and half hour session in yesterday. Progress for the wedding is going swimmingly. I've still got four months to work on some better ab definition. Sadly that means I have to put myself on a two beer a day pitch count, despite my previous advise that one can never drink too much beer (assuming it's quality beer). 

2 quality beers can be 500-1,000 kcals.  I have to drop beer completely and stick to whiskey when I want to lose weight.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, aceluby said:

2 quality beers can be 500-1,000 kcals.  I have to drop beer completely and stick to whiskey when I want to lose weight.

Two Stellas is 300 calories, give or take. The sours that I like are around 400-450 cals for two beers. I can live with that plus a night cap of quality scotch.

[BigFatCoward]

31 minutes ago, aceluby said:

2 quality beers can be 500-1,000 kcals.  I have to drop beer completely and stick to whiskey when I want to lose weight.

How fucking big are your beers? 500 calories each? 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

How fucking big are your beers? 500 calories each? 

Perhaps Ace drinks like an Argentine?

[aceluby]

10 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

How fucking big are your beers? 500 calories each? 

I typically drink high ABV beers.  A 12oz pour of a triple IPA can get that high, also a tall beer at 8-9% can start to get in the 4-500 kcal range.  

If I drank 3 of my favorite beer I'd hit 900 kcals.  It all depends on the beer.

[Impmk2]

Ran a half marathon for a first test of the legs this year on the weekend. Bastard of a course, first 10.5km was mostly uphill, then a return back down along the same trail.

Was aiming for sub-1:35 (approx 4:30/km). Was about 30sec off schedule at the turn around and thought I'd blown way too much energy on the uphill to get back on time. Managed to drop the heart rate and recover over the first few kms back down, then hit the last 5km hard and ran a few ks in the low 4:20s.

Came in at 1:34:24 which I'm pretty happy with, and wow are my legs sore today. Still nothing like as fit as I was in August / September last year, but am on track to getting my mojo back for my target Marathon in August.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 hours ago, Triskele said:

As your physician I highly recommend ditching the nightcap.  Sedation =/= sleep.  

Ain’t no sleep without the sedation. I have a really hard time shutting down at night.

[Martell Spy]

Ran into a bit of trouble. I made some tweaks though and it seems mostly fine. I lost only one pound over 15 days, a much lower rate than in the past. I cut some stuff out. And I removed a cheese slice from lunch, so I'm down to 1050 food calories then. And I turned my third beer a day into a 100 calorie light beer. Kind of a hassle, as I don't usually drink light beer and thus have to buy some. I'm sick of this though. I have only 9 pounds to go to get done with this phase of the diet. If this isn't working I will go down to to 2 beers a day. And if that doesn't work, I will take the drastic action of going sober. I kind of want to sprint to the finish.

It does look like 2 beers or drinks a day is about the limit to maintain a diet. I'd likely already be done with this part if I had been sober during this, but I did not want to quit at this time.

Have not seen any increase in hunger after cutting that cheese slice. I often don't have problems with the post-lunch period. No morning hunger issues ever since I added a slice to breakfast.

[BigFatCoward]

That sounds a really unhealthy amount of calories. 

My weight loss is going ok. No food sacrifices, minor booze sacrifices (light beer during the week, or occasional alcohol free if I was only going to have 1 to wind down anyway).  And I do all my training in work time (shoulder injury means it's all cardio, an hour a day of cycling, running, rowing and cross trainer).  About 10lb over last 2 month.

I always find getting down to 14 stone easy, the next half stone is a ball ache. 

[Heartofice]

I hate to say it but if anyone is genuinely serious about losing weight then Beer would not be in their diet at all. If it really had to be then maybe a once a week couple of drinks would be it. 

Cutting out food just so you can hit your macros with beer is crazy if thats what you are doing. It will not go well for you. 

Daily drinking and weight loss just don't mix I'm afraid. 

[BigFatCoward]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I hate to say it but if anyone is genuinely serious about losing weight then Beer would not be in their diet at all. If it really had to be then maybe a once a week couple of drinks would be it. 

Cutting out food just so you can hit your macros with beer is crazy if thats what you are doing. It will not go well for you. 

Daily drinking and weight loss just don't mix I'm afraid. 

It is disgraceful how hard you have to train for a couple of beers worth of calories.  I remember when I was cycling for 2 hour a day, I was devastated when I realised how few beers that equated to.  I should be allowed 20 beers if I cycle for 2 hours. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

It is disgraceful how hard you have to train for a couple of beers worth of calories.  I remember when I was cycling for 2 hour a day, I was devastated when I realised how few beers that equated to.  I should be allowed 20 beers if I cycle for 2 hours. 

You're always allowed to pretend that beer calories don't count. 

Now, off to clanging and banging!!! 

[Martell Spy]

20 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You're always allowed to pretend that beer calories don't count. 

Now, off to clanging and banging!!! 

Stay thirsty my friends.

[Starkess]

Ugh, been struggling lately. I hurt my back a bit at the gym last week--nothing super bad, just went a little heavier than I should have followed by cleaning my apartment the next day (involving lots of bending over) led to a lot of soreness in my lower back. Several days of icy hot patches, ibuprofen, and my heating pad and I'm feeling mostly alright again. Haven't been lifting but did do some yoga and cardio over that time. I'm going to start a training plan next week for a 10k race in June. Haven't been running a ton lately, so I'm using a beginner plan and not aiming for anything with the 10k except having fun.

The struggle side is with my diet. I was having trouble sticking with my diet and decided that I was being too aggressive (aiming for 1500 calories a day) and that it was causing problems with yo-yoing and feeling tired/cold all the time. So I decided to be patient, go for a small deficit (aiming for 1800 calories a day), and take it slowly but surely. Well I've been doing that for a month and not really losing much weight, which isn't surprising since that's about 250 calorie deficit. But I'm still struggling with feeling deprived and had a few episodes of borderline-binging. And then I feel terrible and feel like I should give up and wonder why I'm putting in all this effort for no results. It's just SO frustrating. I've gained 14 pounds since last year and I don't get it. I'm not eating that differently, I'm working out, I walk a lot...I dunno. I guess it's just getting old. And I'm not like overweight or anything. But I'm definitely packing on some unflattering inches around my waist, getting bigger fat deposits on my love handles and back, and just not feeling as fit and attractive as I'd like. I don't want to give up, but maybe I should. Maybe I'd be happier just accepting that for whatever reason I'm never going to look like I did last year again.

[Martell Spy]

31 minutes ago, Starkess said:

Ugh, been struggling lately. I hurt my back a bit at the gym last week--nothing super bad, just went a little heavier than I should have followed by cleaning my apartment the next day (involving lots of bending over) led to a lot of soreness in my lower back. Several days of icy hot patches, ibuprofen, and my heating pad and I'm feeling mostly alright again. Haven't been lifting but did do some yoga and cardio over that time. I'm going to start a training plan next week for a 10k race in June. Haven't been running a ton lately, so I'm using a beginner plan and not aiming for anything with the 10k except having fun.

The struggle side is with my diet. I was having trouble sticking with my diet and decided that I was being too aggressive (aiming for 1500 calories a day) and that it was causing problems with yo-yoing and feeling tired/cold all the time. So I decided to be patient, go for a small deficit (aiming for 1800 calories a day), and take it slowly but surely. Well I've been doing that for a month and not really losing much weight, which isn't surprising since that's about 250 calorie deficit. But I'm still struggling with feeling deprived and had a few episodes of borderline-binging. And then I feel terrible and feel like I should give up and wonder why I'm putting in all this effort for no results. It's just SO frustrating. I've gained 14 pounds since last year and I don't get it. I'm not eating that differently, I'm working out, I walk a lot...I dunno. I guess it's just getting old. And I'm not like overweight or anything. But I'm definitely packing on some unflattering inches around my waist, getting bigger fat deposits on my love handles and back, and just not feeling as fit and attractive as I'd like. I don't want to give up, but maybe I should. Maybe I'd be happier just accepting that for whatever reason I'm never going to look like I did last year again.

I'm not sure I have a solution for you, but I would advise not taking too much importance on age and how it effects weight. I'm 42 and I went from 140 pounds to 220 from 2012 to near the present. Now, I realized that beer, and some other mistakes, were a good part of the cause, but I also blamed my age, since I'm on the cusp of middle-age. I started to fear I was trapped at this weight forever, and doomed to get only larger. I was eating 600 calories worth of croissants for breakfast for a year and a half or so, but did not realize it was this much calories, so that was another thing that contributed.

Age is definitely a component, but I think I definitely placed too much importance on it. I guess I'm semi-young though. I am kind of shocked/chagrined to be 42 years old.

It's good if you can exercise, but as was discussed earlier, it takes an enormous amount of exercise to get anywhere. I would guess it also makes it more likely you get hungry due to energy expended. I had zero luck losing weight with exercise. I also tried a 1600 calorie diet and this failed. I'd guess because I wasn't actually sticking exactly to 1600. I think there are often little increases in calories. For example, even now I tend to chew on saltine crackers in the evenings sometimes. I don't really count this in my calorie count. It's just kind of necessary to not make larger mistakes. 

Something I read when I was researching near the time I started to try to diet that seemed important. The point of exercise is not to lose a certain amount of calories per day. It's to gain muscle, which in the future will let you do more. Now, this sounded exhausting to me, as I have never been much of an athlete. What I took from that is I do not have the fortitude to put up with that shit and I took the dieting route. I'm going to do some light cardio and light weights later though, just not for weight loss reasons.

 

 

[Heartofice]

5 hours ago, Starkess said:

The struggle side is with my diet. I was having trouble sticking with my diet and decided that I was being too aggressive (aiming for 1500 calories a day) and that it was causing problems with yo-yoing and feeling tired/cold all the time. So I decided to be patient, go for a small deficit (aiming for 1800 calories a day), and take it slowly but surely. Well I've been doing that for a month and not really losing much weight, which isn't surprising since that's about 250 calorie deficit. But I'm still struggling with feeling deprived and had a few episodes of borderline-binging. 

I'd say you just need to find a strategy that works for you. Reducing your calories is really hard and gets quite boring so you have to find ways to adjust your eating patterns to make them more interesting or less painful.

I'd suggest fasting for a start. Not eating till midday and then having 2 meals during the day, then fasting again till the next day is a really great way to mentally prepare yourself for not eating. When you have 4-5 meals throughout the day its easier to get calories wrong or over eat. Other fasting methods work too.

I'd also consider food choices, eating large protein rich meals with vegetables should be the basis for most of your meals, and only adding in carbs like rice or potatoes to things once in a while. Stick to that, with fruit for snacks and your hunger goes away a bit too.

5 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

I'm not sure I have a solution for you, but I would advise not taking too much importance on age and how it effects weight. I'm 42 and I went from 140 pounds to 220 from 2012 to near the present

I'm basically the same age as you. The only major difference I've noticed over the years is that my stamina is not so great and my muscles tend to ache a lot more than they did after exercice. Other than that being 42 should not influence your weight loss

[Derfel Cadarn]

17 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

It is disgraceful how hard you have to train for a couple of beers worth of calories.  I remember when I was cycling for 2 hour a day, I was devastated when I realised how few beers that equated to.  I should be allowed 20 beers if I cycle for 2 hours. 

Get one of those massive German-style beer glasses that holds a few pints. Fill it. Not ony are you drinking your beer, but you're lifting weights too!