I think I’ve been off all exercise for 3 years now and my muscles have completely returned to their natural Gumbylike state. Very depressing
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I can’t bear the idea of having to pay for a gym or commute to my exercise just for the privilege of doing it in public, I spend maybe ten minutes every two out of three days alternating between pushups and kettlebell curls and that does the trick for me just fine
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I like the gym because it has all of the stuff. And I can easily be there for a couple of hours. It just takes a little thought about how you order the exercises and you may be surprised about how long you can work out. Then the fun is to sometimes do things out of the nice progressive order, to throw yourself a curveball.
I can do a lot of stuff at home. But having a pull-up bar, all of the leg machines, a pulley setup for seated rows, and a real punching bag; all important to me.
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I’ve bounced back up in weight after weeks of a slow but steady decrease for the past 14 weeks or so, and I have no idea why. I even tried skipping lunch and I immediately got fatter the following days! What gives?
I suspect the culprit may actually be poor sleep. Everything else save for perhaps stress levels seems fine so it has to be that. I looked up the sleep stats on my phone and some days it reports as low as 5h 20m sleep, which can’t be good at all.
So, exercise-wise I started doing the One Punch Man thing, sans running (lol, I know) in addition to my regular lifting. I’m doing 70-80 pushups, crunches, squats per day fairly easily so, I think I might as well bump it to the full 100.
I also tried GVT for a while back in march where you do a lot of volume with lower weight and it kinda illustrated how little I was actually pushing myself before. I read everywhere that it was this grueling workout regimen and yet I felt pretty fine after finishing (except squats. Doing 100 squats at 60% of my 1RM almost made me puke)
So, yeah. After figuring out this sleep thing, I’ll be seriously considering doing some drastic crash instad of the slow-but-steady approach because it was pretty discouraging to jump up in weight suddenly again for seemingly no reason
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Poor sleep is known to make it more difficult to lose weight and it can even make you gain weight. Its been studied.
how much did you lose and how much did you gain back?
Are you sure it isn’t muscle weight which you gained back?
Its normal to fluctuate a couple of pounds, day to day. A few pounds gained in a few days, sounds like a problem. But its difficult to suggest what, without knowing more details.
Also, careful with crash dieting. It is also known that your body will work harder to keep weight on, after you have “starved”. So what I mean is, if your weight loss method is a large calorie cut below reasonable amount of calories, maintained over an extended period, such that your body thinks it is starving: once you gain weight back, it could be more difficult next time you try to do that same crash cut. Its been studied. Everyone is a little different, but I would recommend against crash methods. *do not confuse this with intermittent fasting or even a genuine fast of 2 - 3 days.
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Lost around 2lb in about 5 weeks. Then lost another 2lb in the next 2 weeks. Finally, it took me 4 weeks to lose 1lb more.
Now I have regained that 1lb back and I’ve been at about the same weight for the last ~5 weeks
I have one of those bioelectric impedance scales that measure bf% and been tracking that. I was 17.7% at the highest point and 16.8% at the lowest. I’m currently stuck at 17%
The reported muscle mass also went up and down pretty consistently when body fat went up and down.
So, I’ve considered trying a 3-day fast. Why is it different than simply a severe calorie cut?
With the body fat thing, I suspect you may be micromanaging. I don’t think at home devices are super accurate, such that a 1% spread should be of concern. Also, I wouldn’t worry about testing body fat, until you have lost a much larger amount of weight. I think it can work against your mental state. (I’m assuming that you have some extra weight to shed or may even be overweight).
Losing 5 pounds in 2 1/2 months is pretty slow. Now, I don’t mean to insult your progress. It sounds like you are really trying to do this and that’s awesome! But, you should probably get back to the drawing board on what you are eating. If you are overweight or pretty close to it: you could lose 10 pounds in a month, just from getting your diet right. No exercise. Everyone is different, so it can take some experimenting to find that one diet which will “melt” the weight off. However, most diets do work at least ok. But you gotta give 'em time. If you really stick to a diet, it takes about 6 weeks for your body to fully switch over. But most people don’t even really stick to a diet for a month. And its just past a month, where the results really start to kick in!
Also, you are exercising. That’s going to counterbalance your overall weight loss. You said you lost some pounds, but also gained some back. You could be replacing fat weight and bloating, with muscle weight. This is where it gets kinda tricky for some people. Because some people really like to watch the numbers on the scale. But that doesn’t tell you your fat loss. It only tells you your net weight, after all losses and gains. So I like to tell people to lay off the scale. Do it once or twice per month. Otherwise, go on how you feel and how you look. Does your body feel slimmer? Do your clothes fit different? Do you look different in a mirror? If that’s all “no”, then don’t even worry about the scale. Instead, double down on tuning your diet and keeping a regimen. If its a yes, do the scale. If the scale doesn’t show a significant loss: remember, you just said “yes” to a bunch of benefits. Be happy about that!
And figure out what you need to do, to get about 7 hours of sleep per night. That’s going to make everything you do, that much more effective. And missing sleep can actually cause you to gain weight. Because lack of sleep spikes cortisol, which is associated with plateauing and weight gain. And it crashes other hormones, which play large roles in weight management.
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I got some rings so now I can do like every type of body weight exercise possible even tho the one place in my basement I can (currently) hang my rings on a steel beam is like 2 feet from my furnace so that’s sort of irritating
anyway I am going to get strong… again?
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rings?
Much like how enthusiast frisbee golfers refer to them as “discs”, hardcore hula hoopers forgo the kid-friendly island terminology and know them only as “rings”
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Thanks. I’m not actually overweight. I’m not a big guy. I weigh 75kg currently, which may make it harder to keep calorie margins than if I was bigger or overweight. (I calculated my TDEE at ~1800 kCal. That’s 1300 kCal with a deficit of 500)
I’m guessing these
They seem interesting and I’d like to try rings but I don’t think I’m athletic enough to be able to do much with them
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A while ago I gave away my lounger so we could set my fiance’s Total Gym in the corner. I’ve used it once.
Every Workout Counts
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Yes, these
I cannot do full inversions due to ceiling height but really it’s so I can do pullups and rows by adjusting the height, and dip-type stuff, pikes, even can use them like parallettes for pushups if they are super close to the ground.
I took gymnastics when I was like 6-9 years old so I remember some of that fun stuff, maybe one day if I get in 1000% better shape and find a tall enough spot.
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lol, I think I’m gonna try this as soon as it gets nice out. I won’t be able to do it everyday, and the 10k runs won’t happen for a while, but I’m ramping up my pushup numbers and I think squats will happen soon. I just have a hard time recording numbers for more than one exercise so it’s hard to convince my body to… do them? I’ll focus on squats this month and we’ll see. I have gotten my pushups from 20/day to 70/day since the beginning of this year, so I’m pretty stoked. I think after 4 months I might need to change up my pushup thing, tho.
On that note, what kind of gear do you home folks use? I have a pair of adjustable dumbbells and I don’t know how to do anything w/ them. When I was in shape I was doing the 5x5, but that requires barbells and like a half dozen 45lb plates. I don’t think I need to do that, but I do want to get strong/have endurance.
The Nike app still rules. It’s very minimally branded, so I don’t feel bad repping it. And it syncs w/ Google Fit to autotrack progress, but it doesn’t really record difficulty, so… 5 min walking = 5 min of burpees, and that just ain’t right.
I do them in sets. I do pushups, crunches and squats back to back, in sets of 10x or 20x, so I just count these. 2 sets of 20 and 1 set of 10, boom, that’s halfway there.
I’m not sure if splitting them in sets is the optimal way to do it, but it has to be better than nothing…
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Lately I have become very heavy but also very strong
The next workout is the table push wooooo
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I bought a pull-up bar, which is a new horizon in fitness for me. So far I can do zero pull-ups.
Is it free standing or mounted?
Some tips I have for pullups:
do some light bicep and forearm work before hand, to get some pump going. A few pushups can help, too. Especially if you do inward grip pullups.
Use a stool or something so that you aren’t having to jump to grab the bar. Avoids injury and also easier for beginners to actually setup for the first rep.
Try taking a few deep, but fairly fast breaths, and imagine that you are already pulling. This can help your body get ready.
If you have your palms facing outward, away from your face, try focusing your mind on your elbows and your sides and lift from those mental points.
Also try with your palms inward toward your face, or inward, facing eachother (if you have a bar which accomodates that). These indward positions get your biceps more involved with better leverage and it gets your chest involved. You might be able to do inward grip pullups before you can do conventional, outward grip. Doing the inward grips will help you get strong enough for the outward.
Once you can do 2+, don’t blow out and try to do as many as you can. Do 2 - 4 and then rest for a couple of mins and do more.
Do some static hanging to get your hands and wrists condition for hanging exercises. and to also get our body used to hanging, in general. I find that if I haven’t done pullups for a long time, my hands and wrists blow out before my major muscles do.