Was watching a lifting vid yesterday from some body builder about mistakes he made when starting. Main one was that he worked out too often. Said do 3 (or 2) days a week until advanced. Others were not enough protein and get 8 hrs of sleep. If you have a squat rack and bar look into the starting strength book.
Bought a pair of 60 lb dumbells today ($240). Home gem is up to about $1000. Still at 310, eating 2500 cal/day, but have continued to get stronger. Started taking creatine about 9 days ago, so probably some of that is water weight. Belt and pants getting looser. The lifters say it’s easier to lose weight than gain muscle, so I’m not too worried about gaining muscle while staying the same weight.
Starting to feel actually strong and need to stretch/flex on occasion. Can throw my 310 around fairly athletically now. A1c (blood sugar) was pretty high when I went to Dr last Jan. She put me on 3 meds to control it (was taking one before then). I got another test in May and it was normal with the meds and she took me off one. I stopped taking another one about a month ago and blood sugar has stayed normal, likely due to an increase in glucose uptake/receptors due to exercise and additional muscle.
Put on 20lbs since last October, didn’t quite hit 300 but close enough. Wasn’t paying too much attention to it since I wasn’t leaving the house. 40ish days ago I got an Ergatta add-on for my WaterRower and have been using it every day since. Been doing 45ish minutes in the morning and am getting close to 10k in that time. Not really interested in lifting, focusing more on not eating so much shit. Starting to see some changes but it’s nice to find something I’m interested in doing again. Walking around the Muck sucks and driving to good hikes takes too much time.
I’ve been working out for about 9 mos now, not including 2 months off for covid (started Nov. 1, 2019). I’ve lost a total of like 10 lbs (gained 15 in the 1st 2 months of Covid, when i ate like crap and didn’t work out at all). I have a lot more muscle, but I do want to get down to 260. I think the key is close monitoring of diet at 2500 cals, which I’ve only been doing for 3 weeks. (I was losing pre-covid because, even though I wasn’t logging, 5 days of fitness classes a week and daily weighing inspired some food discipline). I think diet was definitely the leak post-covid and I’m now logging cals. A recurring idea I’ve seen is that exercise is not really the way to lose weight, as you don’t really burn enough cals unless you’re going quite hard, and that weight is lost in the kitchen. Of course, adding muscle and overall fitness does help, but the kitchen (or restaurant) is the main thing.
You’ve probably heard of many different diets out there, and when they work, they all achieve weight loss in the same way – manipulating calorie balance. While you can reach a deficit by increasing your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) through exercise, it is significantly easier to eat less than to do enough exercise to make a difference. This also means that you can lose weight through diet alone and exercise is not required to lose weight.
This creates two points of failure to be aware of:
Overestimating your TDEE.
This is very easy to do. Just remember, always, that no TDEE calculation is 100% accurate. Treat them as estimates only and don’t get fixated on what a calculator told you if it conflicts with what you’re seeing on the scale. Calculations of calorie burn during exercise, in particular, tends to be wildly inaccurate and inflated. Underestimating your calorie consumption.
Most commonly this happens when people pay inadequate attention to what they’re eating. This ranges from unconscious snacking to ignoring calorie content in drinks or food additives (dressings are a big culprit) to simply not tracking calorie consumption at all.
Yeah this is true, I’m afraid. The way I look at exercise is that it allows me to eat enough that I don’t feel deprived by the measly portions while still losing weight.
Every reputable person I’ve come across says that weight loss is 80% kitchen, 20% exercise. There’s a very good bariatric medicine doc here in town whose favourite saying is, “You can’t outrun your fork.”
Yeah, I think the “eat less” part has always been more important than the “do more” part of the basic weight loss equation. That got reinforced a lot by the weight-loss thread on the exile board and hearing from the calorie in/calorie out guys. Knowing how I feel when I haven’t raised a sweat for 6 months vs how I feel when I’m active though gives me more appreciation for exercising. When I was at my worst, shopping for clothes would get me out of breath. I should think about that more and less about what the best flavor of Lays potato chip is (New York Pizza, natch).
I’m pretty happy with my bowflex dumbells I got off craigslist. Although there are times I wish they went over 52.5 lbs. But for $440 I have dumbells from 7.5 lb up to 52.5, which is pretty good.
I’ve been lifting 4 days/week - but not super hardcore. Right now my routine is something like:
Sun: curls, triceps, wrist-strengthening (important for my elbow), core, cardio (cardio = 40 min to 1 hr. on exercise bike).
Mon: military dumbell press, bent single row, lateral raise, delts, core, cardio
Tue: rest/stretching/walking
Wed: squats, deads, barbell shrugs, core
Thu: cardio
Fri: bench, incline dumbell press, core, cardio
Sat: hiking - 4-12 hours (be nice if the fires ever stop and the mountains open back up, there are some places by me but it’s not the same)
Or something. I think in reality I’m on more of an 8-day cycle - which is fine because lol quarantine.
All this stuff about diet being 80% is probably true. But for me if I don’t get exercise my body goes into super-slowdown mode or something where it seems impossible to run a calorie deficit. Consistent exercise seems to keep my metabolism from slipping into hibernation mode. Also it keeps my mood from descending into shit. But it also makes me more hungry, which is tough.
The only way I’ve ever lost weight w/o getting a lot of exercise is to get almost anorexic - like one small meal a day - maybe 500 cal. But I think that’s what fucked up my metabolism in the first place.
I think my idea of diet exercise balance was in part informed, somewhat mistakenly, by wrestling in high school. The coach was pretty intense and I would sweat out 5-7 lbs during a standard 2.5 hr practice. With those workouts it was difficult not to lose weight regardless of diet.
That was the go to film for the wrestling peeps. It sucks that wrestling has been cut from many colleges due to a stupid interpretation of title IX. Then again, it doesn’t make one a better person (see Jim Jordan). But I don’t think most people realize how intense a legit high school wrestling program is. It’s like 100-200% harder than any other sport. I would finish football season and start wrestling practice and could barely walk from the soreness. We would run like 3 miles to warm up for saturday practice. I played center in football and the coach would complain when he would see me during wrestling season because I had lost so much weight (without any dieting).
In Feb/March I had started going to the once per week 85 min HIIT classes (most days were 55 min). 85 mins felt normal to me once I was in ok shape, probably because of prior wrestling experience.
Remember that guy who didn’t flinch when hit with baton by cops in Oregon? He was a wrestler at the Naval Academy. They broke his hand and he shrugged it off, saying he was “just an out of shape dad.”
One time, he wasn’t really talking to anyone in particular, just talking before a wrestling match, dropping homophobic slurs and such and the wrestlers were getting restless and circling and Jaron’s handlers realized it even if he didn’t and very quickly directed him out of the locker room before anything came of it.
There has been a diet development. Mrs S watched some program about losing a stone in 21 days and immediately bought a months supply of meal replacement shakes
Day 1 she took one sip and branded them completely undrinkable. However they are 200 calories a pop and for a lazy man a bit of a boon so I decided to give them a go instead of lunch, and I’ve been finding them surprisingly palatable.
So this past week Ive been having my traditional omelette for breakfast, shake for lunch and 6oz protein 14ox veg for dinner.
Booked a 3lb loss on the week so progressing nicely
Only downside is cutting back on my sardine intake
Disappointing plateau but with Summer officially over, I won’t be updating except maybe monthly for a while. I think portion sizes probably crept up bc I haven’t been paying as close attention due to diet fatigue or whatever. Hoping to make it through the stress of the election and holidays without regaining this hard-lost weight.
