Lifestyle physical health/fitness thread

[Krockodile]

Is there any recommended plan or steps I should take to resolve my weight loss issues?

If it helps, I usually eat a poached egg from the microwave or eat a scrambled egg for breakfast.
When I'm at home for lunch, I usually have a wrap (hopefully protein wrap) with meat, butter, maybe cheese. If I'm at the office, I usually either have a burrito or a pizza (not proud, but it's cheapest food near me). I used to get 1-2 sushi rolls, but each cost $5 aud. A subway six-inch would cost $8 at least.
As for dinner, I try to have meat and every second day I have a chocolate paddlepop for dessert.
Sometimes I walk about 5000 steps on average when I work from home, but it's not guaranteed since I sometimes finish work late.

Are there any exercises that I can do at home that will ensure I can lose body fat and weight?

Edit: I usually have museli bars for snacks

 

[bello figo]

Hello!

I finally discovered this thread, after they took down my beloved Health&Fitness room on PS! I’ve been devasted. I loved sharing our fitness journeys and helping one another

If it helps, I usually eat a poached egg from the microwave or eat a scrambled egg for breakfast.
When I'm at home for lunch, I usually have a wrap (hopefully protein wrap) with meat, butter, maybe cheese. If I'm at the office, I usually either have a burrito or a pizza (not proud, but it's cheapest food near me). I used to get 1-2 sushi rolls, but each cost $5 aud. A subway six-inch would cost $8 at least.
As for dinner, I try to have meat and every second day I have a chocolate paddlepop for dessert.
Sometimes I walk about 5000 steps on average when I work from home, but it's not guaranteed since I sometimes finish work late.

Are there any exercises that I can do at home that will ensure I can lose body fat and weight?

Edit: I usually have museli bars for snacks

Ok, it sounds like you are very busy and already doing good, but with just a few tweaks you’ll be thriving.
You could try reducing hyper-processed foods and eating them more rarely, you could try to substitute them with some fruits or yogurts as snacks/desserts. It’s fine eating pizza and burrito at the office, as it’s the cheapest as you said and always delicious.
Try to get your daily protein intake and be hydrated, being consistent will bring results.

As you know, you don’t wanna lose weight, but mainly fat. Losing just weight is pretty easy, but that means losing mostly water weight + muscles + some fats, cutting the carbs and upping our calories deficit. You could try tracking your calories with an app, it could help you to be consistent and be in a deficit. Doing intense exercise (like lifting weights) is even better, cause it doesn’t slow your metabolism like just losing weight (mostly muscles and water). Basically to lose weight, mainly fat, a calorie deficit is what you need, but that doesn’t mean to exercise more than you eat, but that means our entire life does need to burn more calories, still exercise is a crucial part to get a better body composition + better metabolism + burning calories (studies:
NEAT burning up to +2,000 calories per day :
PMID: 25905303
PMID: 9880251)
For the exercises, it depends on how much time and energies you got after a long day of work and how used you are to training.
I would recommend doing high effort workouts, with a focus on building muscle and bettering our metabolism and of course burning calories!
I would divide it in two days that you could alternate between, and train even 4/5 times a week.
Day 1: 3x8 pushups, 3 times 12 incline pushups (more easy) + 8 inverted row (using even something like water bottles), 2 or 3 times wall push-up hold (holding for 20/30 secs), plank
Day 2: jumping jacks warmup, bulgarian split squats [very difficult](4 sets-5 reps), jump squats (3 sets-8/10 reps), single leg calf raises (3 sets-15 reps per leg), crunches and leg raises
This is a simpler variation of an home workout I used to do in 2022 and it helped me get a lot stronger to reach my goals in swimming and surflifesaving competitions.

I hope at least some of this can help you lose body fat and reach your fitness goals!

 

[des121]

hello i love working out so much. i started working out since like about 14 with a pt and now i do leg press like with 2 plates etc

 

[Krockodile]

You know how packaged foods usually have the nutrition information which usually has stuff like energy, protein, fat and carbohydrates.

Question is how do I know on what would. Like for example what is a maximum limit on how fat I should intake from a serving or from these packaged products, or what would be a good quantity per serving for protein?

 

[bello figo]

You know how packaged foods usually have the nutrition information which usually has stuff like energy, protein, fat and carbohydrates.

Question is how do I know on what would. Like for example what is a maximum limit on how fat I should intake from a serving or from these packaged products, or what would be a good quantity per serving for protein?

You should get 1.5-2 grams of protein per kg you weigh. A good 10/20 grams of protein per serving should be good most times. Carbs usually compone half of our caloric intake, try to keep fats maybe at 20% + eat enough fibers from vegetables and fruits.
You can think of it like if you’ve already eaten enough processed food at lunch, you will try to eat more proteins and some fibers at dinner

 

[Krockodile]

Carbs usually compone half of our caloric intake, try to keep fats maybe at 20% + eat enough fibers from vegetables and fruits.
You can think of it like if you’ve already eaten enough processed food at lunch, you will try to eat more proteins and some fibers at dinner

Just to clarify about the 20% fats, did you mean that my daily fats intake should be 20% of my daily calories intake?

 

[bello figo]

Just to clarify about the 20% fats, did you mean that my daily fats intake should be 20% of my daily calories intake?

Yep more or less, you still need some fats in your diet to keep it balanced, but around that percentage should be good. If you exercise and are in a small caloric deficit you won’t store fat but you will lose it while gaining gradually lean mass

 

[Pak]

Okay decent shot this post comes out to be a fucking novel but I've had a lot of thoughts about things recently and wanted to word vomit somewhere:

current fitness, fitness industry, future goals(?) rambling

In my last post in January, I talked a lot about how I didn't like my relationship with the gym. I've lifted 5-6 times a week for about 8 years now, but over the last few I've been a like 10-15% worse off than I was when I was at my peak at age 22 or so. There are a bunch of reasons for this that I've talked about at some point - getting a desk job, having newer and more important things to worry about, drinking much more than I used to, etc. I've known all this has contributed to my slight drop off, but knowing that didn't necessarily mean I did anything to counteract it up till January. More than anything, I wanted to reach a new peak. However, my actions still didn't fully align with what I wanted.

I started my cut down from 241 lbs in early February and for the most part, it has gone very well. I am now down to about 218 lbs 3 months later, and I'm hoping to get down closer to 200 lbs before bulking back up. I am really tall at 6'4", so that isn't as dramatic a change as it may seem, but that is still a fuckin ton of weight to drop. Strength has maintained better than I expected and I've been doing way more cardio, so everything has seemed pretty good on paper. With all this said, there's been more to it recently. My brother actually bought me this floopin 800 pg book on bodybuilding by Arnold Scharzenegger for Christmas. I've been super busy between work and school since August pretty much, but I started reading it last week with my semester starting to wrap up. Somehow someway it made a lot of dumb things I've thought about click into place.

The first thing that stuck out to me was just how positive Arnold's tone has been throughout the book so far. He is so complimentary of any of the other big bodybuilders through history, even though they were obviously his primary opponents through all his bodybuilding competitions. It didn't seem like there was any animosity, which in a way reminds me of those memes how the biggest guy in the gym is always the friendliest. But in all seriousness, it felt like such a crazy contrast between this book and all the fitness content I'm constantly exposed to on social media. People are constantly tearing down others, expectations are completely inflated/skewed, and it's all around a pretty awful space. So much of the fitness industry has always been predicated on influencers taking PEDs and using that to their advantage. To be clear, I don't have any problem with people taking PEDs. It is their body and they can do what they want. My main problem is them often lying about their usage to take advantage of newer lifters that simply do not know any better, whether that is offering them diet plans, coaching, etc. in hopes of them one day looking like the influencer. I ran into the same problems when I was like 15 and stepped into the gym for the first time. I had no way of deciphering what was real and what wasn't online, and by all means it is not the fault of the new lifter if they fall for one of these scams.

Okay long tangent there but I swear I'm going somewhere with all this. Something Arnold talked about was once someone pursues bodybuilding, there is obviously a large degree of sacrifice. It is not a lifestyle conducive to a lot of regular activities that people wouldn't think twice about. There are a million aspects that all require some degree of attention, whether it is training itself, cardio, macros, nutrition in general, sleep, etc. To make the most of their potential, bodybuilders have to maximize each of these aspects. This is all mostly common sense, but it gave an extra reminder about all the dumb shit I've been doing on the side. It was actually right after I started reading this book that I saw one of my favorite fitness youtubers, Will Tennyson, was prepping for his first bodybuilding show.

I have always had a ton of respect for Will. For one, he is incredibly entertaining in his own authentic way and very clearly a good person. Second of all, he is clearly a natural lifter but is also in absolutely crazy shape. When I saw him super lean getting ready for this show, it just had me thinking along the same lines as all these Arnold sentiments about what could be possible if I really went all in on this. In these last couple weeks, I have been genuinely excited to get to the gym and make the most of my time there. I have also been making a point to focus more on mind-muscle-connection, extend cardio times, and in general work harder than I ever have. Eating has been cleaner than ever, etc. Lifting used to be such a huge outlet for me, but not always for the better. A big point of my last post was wanting to get back to where I was but also doing so with a POSITIVE relationship with the gym. I don't want to take a ton of pre workout and have that ruin the rest of my day so hopefully I can hit a new max or whatever else along those lines. I can honestly say that right now I feel like I am on the right track, wherever it takes me. I want to see where this cut takes me and whether I could actually pursue natural bodybuilding in the future as well. If so, then maybe lifting all these years could give me just another thing to keep working towards. In any aspect of life, I am always looking for things to push myself in. This could be work, grad school, even fookin pokemon. I would push myself for bench PRs or whatever, but lifting was always more of an escape for me. IDK my point in saying all this is the possibility just excites me and I think I've fallen in love with the gym again!!!

a much more serious aside on drinking

In a way, this is what I wanted to talk about more, but these thoughts all kinda came up at once, so this seemed like the right place to talk about all of it. Like I said, the last four months or so have been relatively good for me fitness wise, but I still have felt like I'm leaving progress on the table. The biggest elephant in the room the last few years has been my drinking habits. While I have always told myself and still believe I was never a stereotypical alcoholic or anything at any point. I just happened to drink a lot once or twice a week. In my mind, there was nothing wrong with that as long as I was staying up on school and work. I was doing very well in both of those, and I was more socially active than ever, so what was the problem?

That's basically what I'd tell myself any time I'd think even remotely deep about my drinking habits. To be clear, I've never been putting myself in danger or doing anything truly stupid, illegal, damaging, or whatever. I would just go out once or twice on the weekend, get absolutely hammered with some friends or eventually random people I'd meet at a bar that night, then go home. For better or worse, I've been drinking consistently enough since I turned 21 that I do have a good sense of my limits and where to stop before blacking out, puking, etc. What always made drinking so appealing to me is how it felt like it'd alleviate all my problems when I was sober. I talked about this in my old depression posts on this very website from 2021ish, but basically I never had much confidence in myself, and that would bleed over into all aspects of my life. I've improved on this front a lot the last 3-4 years, but still. Naturally, this would bleed over into my social life too. Getting a few drinks in me would rid me of all these feelings, and it felt fucking incredible. Most of these nights, I'd go to a bar with friends, meet a million random people, talk to them for hours, then leave feeling like the fucking man. Naturally, I'd have a ton of stupid stories from going to these insane bars till 3 am all the time and so on.

I say all this like it's in the distant past, but the most recent occurrence was 2 weekends ago. I did this every single weekend for I genuinely don't know how many months, and it's been especially prevalent recently. I don't have work tomorrow? Oh bet, time to get wasted somewhere with someone. It took a lot of Saturday or Sundays feeling like absolute dog shit for me to finally do some self-evaluating. It was just hard because it felt like I was finally making new friends all the time after spending so much time hating who I was. If it wasn't actually hurting anyone, then what was the problem? There was a lot of push and pull both ways and I still just kept drinking because it let me feel like I could be myself. I'd wake up to see "oh I guess I bought 12 shots for me and whoever last night" on my credit card bills, or pictures with me and random people whose names I probably don't remember, and so on. It took a lot of these consistent experiences for me to take a step back and ask what the point was. Was I doing this so often because it felt like people liked me? With 2 seconds of critical thinking, yes, that is true. However, some of these people actually did become very good friends, even if it started at the bar. My point is, they like me for me, not because of drunk me. Mentally, I still grapple with that and probably always will to some extent, but I want to get the positive outlook of that more and more into my head.

The last couple weeks I haven't even really changed my social habits. At the end of the day, a lot of these friends like going to bars and I almost always have fun in some capacity when I go out. With that said, I have limited myself to 1-2 drinks max. Turns out, you save a lot of money and remember a lot more of the fun you had when you keep it reasonable. I know that sounds like common sense and it really should be. It was just that my default for so long was to get firmly drunk and go from there. These past weekends have been genuinely great. It's been so refreshing not having to clear out 1000 calories throughout my day for the 5 drinks or whatever I'm going to have later. It's been so nice having real conversations with my friends again without being absolutely sloshed beforehand. It has been fucking phenomenal waking up on Saturday and Sunday feeling refreshed and ready to have a great workout. The last two days I have felt fantastic and had 2 great lifts followed up by an hour-ish of cardio each. Turns out it's much easier when you aren't hungover in any capacity. Also, if I have a great 2 hr workout on Saturday, why would I ruin that later in the day by having 5-6 drinks and eating Taco Bell or whatever at 2 AM? Arnold talked about this in the book, but if you have clear goals, everything kinda clicks into place around it in that way.

Very long-winded and kinda personal but it felt very important for me to write all these thoughts down somewhere. I've had all these loose thoughts for a long time and may have been in denial to some extent of where I stood with drinking. It's just funny how two truly positive influences in the fitness community, Arnold and Will, put two pieces of content into the world and it made me put all this into a different perspective. Fitness is the most perfect excuse to get my drinking and sleep back in line, especially with this summer coming up where I'll have way more time with school being out. I am extremely excited to see what the future holds, and hopefully it involves a lot less heavy drinking.

Very quick update. Cut continued until this week - I was 241 lbs at the start of February and weighed 199 lbs a few days. Had some rough patches with consistency here and there but thats life. The most weight I'd ever lost at once was 30 lbs before this, so this was obv a massive jump. My strength maintained way better than I would've expected until the last few weeks or so, so I'm thinking this is about an ideal starting position to try to get strong again. Afterall, the bulk that I finally benched 315 was coming off when I cut down to around 200ish lbs the first time. That in itself makes me really excited to see what's possible. This was also the most cardio I've done intentionally in my life and it's not close. It was a lot easier when I had jobs that would give me a free 10k steps, but its a bit tougher working from home. Shockingly, cardio got much easier as both my cardio itself and my weight on the scale began to improve. I started watching a bunch of anime like Hajime No Ippo (perfect lifting motivation show) and others while doing some fast incline walking for 30 min to an hour. It was small, but watching a couple episodes of whatever always kinda made me look forward to getting my steps in. In general doing all the cardio has let me eat a bit more and feel better overall thru this process. Hoping for a great bulk, for sure will not get that heavy again.