Iron plates are iron, or iron covered. Bumpers are heavy dense rubber. Bumpers are awesome because you can squat without a spotter if someone teaches you to bail safely. Plus all the plates are uniform sizes.
The ACE cert is one of the biggest jokes out there. I helped my brother take it online. I had to refer to the manual because some of the answers they were looking for were just plain wrong.
A friend of mine is taking the NASM I believe, and studying for it one of the test questions was how far away the racks should be set up from the mirrors. Clearly everything is wrong because there was no infinity answer.
Well first post in this thread. It's officially day one of my second week in the bag. I just ran my first full mile in almost 6 years with out a break. And I'm down to 323.6 lbs. (15 lb drop in the first week because I'm really fat.) I'm not in a gym yet because my school won't let you use the one on campus unless your enrolled in summer classes and I can't afford a membership right now. But I'm doing what I can at home. And I have cut my caloric intake to 2500 calories a day. I'm sore all the time, am constantly fighting off internal excuses to just say fuck it and continue being a fat ass, and wish I would see results faster because I'm an idiot. But I'm feeling better about myself. Maybe one day soon I will have a body that is worth throwing in the TiBer thread.
You are doing great...putting on your shoes and getting out the door is the biggest hurdle. In cutting your caloric intake are you also changing what you eat? Or are you just cutting it down?
Good job dude. Sludge your way through until it becomes a habit. Then it gets awesome, and it becomes something that doesn't feel like work. Don't get me wrong, it'll still be work, but you end up loving it. Also, and this is really important for most people. Don't let one bad day, get you off track. Couldn't stick to your diet yesterday? Today is a new fucking day. Have a short term memory and long term goals.
There has been a rather large shift in what I eat. No pop (soda/coke/whatever) cutting down the amount of meat to more reasonable portions. A lot more fruit and veggies. Whole grain bread instead of white. And drinking water to the point of ridiculousness. Getting the work outs in is completely just what you said. Just fucking do it. The more I make it a part of my routine the more I realize how stupid most of my "reasons" for not working out are.
First, I'm going to throw out a disclaimer and say that I understand that this ends up being a very divisive issue for some people and I also understand that everybody's different, what works for some doesn't work for others, blah, blah, blah. That being said, the changes you've already made are great and are really going to go a long way to getting you where you want to be. My only recommendation would be to tell you to rather than worry about regular vs whole grain breads, pastas, etc. just cut that shit out of your diet entirely. I won't lie to you, it'll be hard. That shit's delicious. It also offers no significant nutritional value over an equal serving of quality meats or some additional veggies. I know a lot of marketing out there tells everybody that whole grains are better because they're less processed, but that's like saying cocaine is perfectly healthy because it hasn't been processed into crack yet. There's a really good book out there called It Starts With Food that really gets into the scienc-y bits about how different foods react in the body and all of the different hormonal responses that occur when we eat. They can sometimes be really strict in their dietary recommendations, but it's still a good place to get a strong knowledge base on just how directly the things we eat can affect us. Just like the others have said, you're going to have a bad day where you don't make it to a workout or break and eat something real shitty, but don't let that derail your entire progress. Just think about how long it took you to get to this point and realize that it's not going to turn around and be perfect quickly and you'll be fine.
Are we still doing the whole "grains are bad" thing? From Mike Israetel, of Renaissance Periodization. By the way, if anyone is looking to get their diet on point, these guys are really good.
I'm not doing the 'grains are bad' thing. I'm doing the 'calorie for calorie - what offers the most nourishment' thing. If you can get more real nourishment from this over that, and all things calorically are equal, why not eat this instead of that?
Not for nothing but "real nourishment" sounds like one of those empty terms people throw around, like "functional fitness". What's real nourishment? Are we talking about health? Performance? Body composition? Vitamin profile? Minerals? Do we only look at food in terms of what's "good for you"? (another pretty empty term). Some foods or eating habits will be better suited for body composition (keto) while if you're looking to improve athletic performance you would intake lots of carbs. I have a problem with any blanket statement that causes one to cut out a pretty significant portion of a person's diet, especially if it's not needed. As long as caloric expenditure and macronutrients are tracked there's no need to cut out all grains.
Not all fitness is functional. Regardless of the CrossFit trademark of that phrase - LSD runners, for example, are working toward 'fitness' but struggle to carry their luggage through the airport. They're 'fit', but are they able to perform basic tasks (functionality)? So I get your beef with 'functional fitness', but at the same time, there's logic there. So is a calorie a calorie whether it's from a twinkie, a piece of chicken, or a bowl of kale? Are breads the only sources of carbs? If someone (as in McSmallstuff) is looking to lose weight - initially - and not so much worried about athletic performance because he's not there yet*, then wouldn't eliminating the bread type carbs and moving over to the sweet potato type carbs be a favorable thing? *I say he's not there yet because right now, given the numbers he posted, the most important thing is getting the weight off while slowly and steadily strengthening the body, as far as my experience has taught me. Once a significant portion of the weight is off, and mobility is such that full range of motion complete movements can be performed, then changing the diet to focus on athletic performance may be a better idea. How are we defining need? Medically necessary? To be sure, many people who avoid gluten are NOT gluten intolerant, but, as long as their goals are being met, I don't begrudge them that (til they get pretentious about it). That said, in this case (sorry for bringing you back into it McSS) I can see the benefit of eating more keto for awhile, and waiting to add starches back in once the initial weight loss goal is met. You disagree with that?
I'm not really going to weigh in on the grain debate, because honestly I'm woefully ignorant on the subject. (For example I have dick all idea what you're talking about when you say keto.) I will say that I feel my new diet reflects healthier choices for me. I'm eating with a lot more moderation in portion size, but with much more frequency. My eating habits for the past few years have been basically a huge dinner, and then snacking until I go to bed. Dinner was usually my first actual meal of the day. I might have had a snack or leftovers from the night before. But in one meal I would probably take in more calories than I'm allowing my self all day now, yet I was still hungry. In the defense of bread, once again this is just for me, but I am part of 3-5 people eating on a rather tight budget and it is a good way to consume some quick calories on the cheap that's not loaded down with fats and doesn't sit heavily in my stomach. Which now that I'm eating 6 times a day, speed in which I can get food prepped, consumed, and on about my life is a big draw. Plus as I said economy in the foods I'm eating can not be over stated.
Absolutely. That's why I don't bedevil them completely. I have moved away from the idea of your gut exploding spontaneously due to bread/grain intake. The It Starts With Food book, btw, despite their dogmatic view on bread, is quite interesting.
I wouldn't worry about that now. If you're coming down from 300+ pounds, just making the smaller steps of eating breakfast, cutting out sugary drinks entirely and somewhat reducing your other sugar intake will be enough to see real progress before too long. Once you've got that out of your system, it becomes easier to start looking at whether adjustments like getting rid of bread or starchy carbs or whatever are right for you. It will make the adjustment to a healthier lifestyle much easier than if you try and do everything at once.
I don't know if it's been mentioned before, but I just took my first run with the nike+ running app. So far I really like it. Obviously the calories burned is just a projection but, I love that it tracks my time and distance. Clearly I'm slow as dog shit in January, but I was very pleased to find I got 1.44 miles in on my run this evening.
Speaking of tech stuff like this,,, What is everyone's favorite shit to use for working out? I've been looking into fitbit, but it doesn't really seem to suit me for lifting weights. I know myfitnesspal is pretty high on a lot of people's list, but for some reason when I looked at it a couple years ago I didn't like it. Currently I just use a couple app's to keep track of my shit. I use Lose It! for counting my calorie intake, and calorie usage, and an app called Redy Gym for tracking my weight lifting. I'd say both are okay, but most of it is sometime just best guess's for calorie intake. The Redy Gym app isn't really special either, as they didn't have about 90% of the lifts I do in the data base, so I had to add each one separately. I really only use it to see what weight I'm at for each lift. Does anyone have any calorie, or workout app's that they can't live without?
I don't do weights or other training, I just run. I've mentioned here before, but I really like RunKeeper. It's free and works well. The app is simple and easy to use and the desktop version at runkeeper.com keeps up with more detail. I don't use the "friends" feature, but you can challenge each other by keeping up with friends. Cool running side note: Meb Keflezighi, US Olympic runner who won the Boston Marathon this year is going to run the Peachtree Road Race next Friday. If you don't know the race, it's the largest (I think) 10K, with 60,000 runners. With that many runners, the start them all in waves at delayed start times. He's going to start 10 minutes after the last starting group, and see how many people he can pass, to raise money for charity. It's pretty cool, because all the elite runners usually start at the front obviously. He'll begin at the back with all the walkers, pub crawlers, and costume crazies and generally add a little life to the back end.