I never wanted to be one of those guys who stood around saying, “Yeah, so how much can you bench? I just ate a crate of that Super Bulk food supplement and I put on 2,400 pounds of pure muscle mass.”
I also never really wanted to be a petulant, underfed Calvin Klein perfume model, loafing around on exotic beaches in designer underwear while oiled and sweaty women draped themselves all my… hang on.
Okay, so maybe being in shape wouldn’t be so bad.
Now, this isn’t any kind of silly New Year’s Resolution. I have a specific goal in mind. I want to audition for the part of Brick in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in the first week of March. This means I have to look more like the part of an ex-football player than I do now, which is to say, I have to look less like an ex-NFL2K3 football player (Xbox version).
Right now I’m at weight X (which is 210 pounds). I want to be at X-20, at least, by March 5. X-30 would be better, but my goal is 20 pounds. (I can lose 10 more by April 20, which is when the show would open, should I get cast.)
I’m no bodybuilder, so I’m going to use really technical terms like “fat” and “arms” and “legs,” none of this glabs, cloits, ceptoids, and stuff. I’m not going to measure my biceps or mention baby oil.
I just wanna work on getting in better shape than I’m in now. That won’t be hard, because I look like a Herman character.
I’m with you and I’ve been working on it. A scant few years ago, I was in amazing shape and looked like one of those malnourished, 1% body fat underwear models. Then I moved back home after running out of money fot college and stopped working out for a year.
I’m getting into it and I’m putting on weight. I assume it’s muscle, but I’m not sure. I’m weighing more than I ever did and I’m far from fat.
My goal (long-term) is to be a shitload closer back to the 130 pounds I weighed in freshman year, while benching 215. My realistic goal is to get back to the old 150 that I hovered at in my post-swimming days.
I’m with you. In a wacky coincidence I just started this morning. I was going to make it a new years resolution, but I was feeling particularly old & fat today. “Self”, thought I, “fuck new years, let’s get to it.”
The black belt test at my karate school includes:
[ul]
[li]Running 1 mile[/li][li]100 Jumping Jacks[/li][li]100 Sit Ups / Crunches[/li][li]100 Push Ups[/li][li]100 Kicks with one leg on a target[/li][/ul]
I’m not going to be testing for a black belt by March, but I’ll have to do it eventually & I ain’t getting any younger.
As of today, in 1 sitting I can manage about 25 push ups & about 30 crunches. I havent run a mile in at least 5 years. Gotta fit that into the schedule somewhere.
As it happens, my grandmother had an exercise bike built about the time of the first Crusade, and as she passed away a few years ago, she hasn’t gotten much use out of it recently. I am missing the toes on my left foot (long story) so running is out, but bike exercise would be just as good — especially in winter in the Pacific Northwest.
Squats… I dunno if I can do those. Balance is difficult when you only have toes on one side. I’m game to try, though.
Push-ups, I can do about 3 reps of 10 pushups. Crunches… I can do about 1 rep of 25. I could do more, I’m sure — the problem isn’t getting on the ground to do them, the problem is getting back up.
And I decided to spend my birthday money on a cheap weight bench at Sears. Just a barbell, quadricep exerciser for legs, and fly arm exercise things, but enough to get on with. Only 80 pounds worth of weights, so with any luck I’ll outgrow it, but I couldn’t see spending any more on a set until I’d actually formed the habit of using one.
With you in spirit since I did pretty much what you’re describing this year.
Started at about 210 pounds, I’m down to about 176 now. Weight loss via “Weight Watchers” (Core program, so no bookkeeping or counting points/calories/etc) coupled with increased exercise. Lots of walking, then throw in running as I felt like it. Typically do about 3.5 miles 3x a week with a longer (8-9 mile) run on the weekend which feels fantastic. Not going to the gym but doing pushups, situps, dips, crunches and whatnot at home…worked my way up to about 400 pushups max (that’s in sets, not all at once), but stay in the 250 range now.
If you have a good plan and stick to it you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is. Happy to cheer you guys on from the sidelines.
20 lbs by March 5th…so about 10 weeks from now, 2lbs per week is doable (1-2lbs per week is the rate I’ve always seen as recommended, don’t want to try and sustain much more than that).
Fish, have you thought about swimming? Low impact but good aerobic exercise and also helps build muscle. I assume that missing toes wouldn’t leave you swimming in circles.
If you want my advice (which is always worth what you pay for it), you won’t likely be able to gain a visually noticeable amount of muscle by March 10th if you’re currently “fat”. However you could well be able to lose a fair amount of fat by March 10th, as losing fat is faster in the early going than later. So I would suggest you lose the fat and “reveal” the muscle you’ve got, rather than try to gain muscle you won’t see under the fat.
You see, you really can’t do both at the same time (lose fat and gain muscle). The one requires you to use more energy than you take in by eating, and the other to eat more energy than you expend (but using weight training to direct your body to use that energy to build muscle rather than storing it as fat). Weight training while losing won’t increase muscle mass by very much while losing weight, but you can make the muscles you already have look bigger (and make sure you only lose fat, not muscle).
Earlier this year I lost 30 lbs. in just 3 months, and went from 240 lbs. down to 210, and have since lost a further 15 lbs. (see what I mean by it’s quickest in the early going?). Little or none of that was in muscle (some water weight). I did this by following these commonly available guidelines:
[ul][li]Watching my calories (look up on the web how to calculate your TDEE, or total Daily Energy Expenditure, and track your calories to be 15-20% less than this)[/li][li]Eating less per meal but more frequently. Eat 4-5 medium to small meals rather than starving and stuffing on 2 big meals, and never skip breakfast. Even if your total calories balance out, the starve-and-stuff eating pattern is programming your body’s metabolism to store fat. (Guess what I used to do all the time?)[/li][li]Doing cardio 5 times a week, and after 5-6 weeks, adding some weight training. I started out just walking for 45 minutes to an hour, then started jogging/running at a slow pace after 2 weeks, then increased the running time to about 60% of my workout (staggering running stretches with walking).[/li][li]Watching what I eat a bit more. I did a breakdown analysis of my diet by carbs/protein/fat, and was surprised to discover I was taking in 42% of my calories in fat. You don’t have to go nuts over this, but just generally avoiding refined carbs (white breads and sugars, especially sugary sodas) in favor of whole grains/wheat, and eating less fat, will help.[/li][li]Keeping hydrated. If you feel thirsty, you’re already dehydrated. Drink enough water to never feel thirsty. At work we have these 0.5L bottles of Poland Spring available for free, I go through 5 or 6 of these a day, plus coffee.[/li][/ul]
So, how do I know that 30 lbs. I lost wasn’t muscle?
Get a body fat scale from Tanita, or an Accu-Measure caliper. Personally I find the scale easiest and simplest to use, just remember these things are sensitive to your hydration level (you might “lose” 2-3% body fat just from checking in the morning, when you’re most dehydrated, to in the evening), so do your periodic comparisons (a daily or weekly weigh-in) at a consistent time. (I do mine in the morning.)
In going from 242 lbs. down to 196, I’ve gone from 31.5% body fat to 18.5% (or so my scale tells me based on morning weigh-ins).
I love to swim, but opportunities to do so aren’t enormous in this area — few pools.
To be honest, my apartment complex has long had a freely available universal weight set, but I’ve never availed myself of it. I’ve come to the conclusion that if the weights and equipment isn’t sitting right there in my house, reminding me to do it, then I won’t — at least, to date, I haven’t.
That said, the equipment at my apartment complex has a pull-down bar for my slats or glabs or wobbles or whatever they’re called.
Well, I’m getting physically bigger, as in mass, but I’m also getting heavier as in weight. Muscle weighs more than fat, and I’m thinking I’m hitting an equilibrium point relatively soon because I notice I lost a couple pounds. The new scale at the gym might have been the culprit, though.
The beginning sucks. You have to sometimes force yourself to do it, especially when you’re sore and don’t feel like it. It’s that sticktuitiveness that makes a chore into a habit.
I wouldn’t say I’m “fat,” robardin. I am a bit thick through the middle: 210 pounds and 5 foot 10.
I’m already watching my total calorie intake and watching the amount of fats I eat. I haven’t had soda in weeks, sugar or otherwise, and have switched from putting cream and sugar in my coffee to putting Splenda in my tea. I’ve also switched to eating a bagel for breakfast, plus a snack at lunch, and a bite at dinner, which I hadn’t done previously.
I know I won’t likely look like a football player in two months. My main goal is to lose the weight, not bulk up — but muscles burn more calories than fat does, and many freely available forms of cardio exercise (like running) are out — I wear a leg brace because, as I said, half of my left foot was chopped off.
Yep, that’s what I’m going for. The script calls for Brick to be an ex-athlete, of whom his wife Maggie says, “Why couldn’t you have got fat and ugly? Then it would be easier to leave you.”
The good news is, muscle burns more calories than fat. There’s a reason your body disassembles unused muscle and stores up fat — fat is cheaper, metabolically speaking, to maintain.
At least that’s what the diet books that I’ve read say. Hence, the stationary bike + weights for me.
Go for complex carbohydrates rather than simple ones. My breakfast is typically shredded wheat or plain oatmeal, with fresh fruit and skim milk (this is all stuff that I liked to begin with). No frosted/flavored cereals. Brown rice, whole wheat couscous and whole wheat pasta instead of white rice or “regular” pasta. Lots more fresh fruits and veggies (salads for lunch, without all the croutons, eggs, cheese, etc. bit of olive oil & vinegar for dressing). I have a real sweet tooth so I keep fresh fruit around for that (and I pretty much avoid fruit juice, have an orange not a glass of OJ). Lean proteins (lean beef, tofu, chicken, fish, veggie proteins like rice & beans) and healthy fats (olive oil and whatnot). I pay close attention to how full I feel (WW does a simple 0-5 scale where 0 is “starving” and 5 is “ohmigod I’m stuffed”, try and stay in the 1-4 range which takes a few weeks to develop a feel for). Drink more water.
I was a fairly healthy eater to begin with so this represented pretty minor adjustments to my diet, biggest changes were paying attention to portion sizes and reducing the white bread/pasta/white rice kinda foods.
Side benefit was my cholesterol level (which has always been high, heriditary) dropped to totally normal.
I’ve run 3-7 miles 3-5 times a week for the past several years. Ran a marathon in Oct 04 - and had my knee scoped one year later. Back running again. Currently weigh 205-ish, was 185 at the time of the marathon. I’m pretty comfortable with my level of fitness for a 46 year old guy. But I haven’t done any upper body work for several years.
So a couple of weeks ago I started doing just a few push-ups and crunches. The immediate impetus was when my wife asked me to haul the Christmas decorations up from the basement, and three trips with large boxes was more of an effort than I wished it to be.
Right now I’m just doing 5 push-ups, a series of maybe 50 crunches, and 5 more push-ups. Takes a grand total of 2 minutes! And my schedule is to not miss more than one day in a row. Only missed one day over the past 2 weeks or so. Every week or so I intend to add another push-up and a few more sit-ups. But I doubt I’ll ever get over more than 2 sets of 10-20 push-ups, or a hundred or so crunches. (Back in my MA days, I used to do hundreds upon hundreds of crunches, and lifted big time.) I figure at my stage in life, its probably better to do fewer of them regularly, than try to ramp it up and quit.
Now that I’ve got my weight down to about where I want it to be, the next step is to start developing my body so I like how it looks better. I’ve been told many times (girlfriends, personal trainer) that I have a good frame and that my body has genuine potential if I just worked out more (the only exercise I’ve been doing recently is training for a Marthon Walk), so now I need to start re-applying myself. We have a swimming pool at work, so I would like to start swimming once it’s open again (in the spring) which means I have to revisit my training regimen, not only with weights but my exercise ball as well (which I’ve largely abandoned since my personal trainer went on permanent maternity leave). I also like the 10-minute workouts on Comcast On Demand that I can do in the mornings before I take a shower and go to work. So that’ll be my immediate goal: simply to stick to a regiment that is consistent. I can finesse it later as I see what muscle groups need more attention, but for now, there’s really no excuse to do at least a little something every day.
Bingo. The best exercise is the one that you actually do. A lot of folks think that their choices are “Couch potato” or “Schwarzenegger Routine” and they go for the former since they can’t do the latter.
I recently lost roughly 40 pounds. I put on quite a bit of weight when I was drinking and after I stopped I decided it was time to get into shape.
Right now I am about the right weight. I am at ~155. I think I am going to try and drop another 5 pounds or so after Christmas. The thing is, at this point most of the fat is gone and I am now working on strength training. The strength training is going to put on pounds, muscle being heavier than fat. I am not sure exactly what weight I will end up at.
Anyway, I did this by doing two things.
#1. Changed the way I eat. Note, I did not say diet. I don’t think that diets do shit for most people because a diet is something you are on, which at some point, you will go off. Instead of dieting I decided that I am going to eat healthy. I started bringing salads to work (lettuce, chicken, cheese, tomato, onion, cucumbers) and switched to diet soda. Not only am I saving a ton of money, the weight just dropped off.
The beauty of not being on a diet is that, when I decide to eat something that isn’t all that healthy or loaded with fat, I don’t have the whole guilt thing going on. Instead of limiting what I can eat, I changed what I normally do eat. Instead of Taco Bell and Mc Donalds at work, I have a salad. I still eat out sometimes but I got in the habit of bringing lunch and it is working well. I haven’t counted a calorie.
#2. Started going to the gym. Going to the gym works for me for a couple reasons. The most important is that if I tried to workout at home I wouldn’t do it. I’d pick up my guitar or turn on the computer instead of working out. At the gym I dont have that choice. I picked a gym that is on my way home from work so I don’t have to go out of my way, which cuts down on the excuses for not going. Another handy thing is that I get a free appointment with a trainer every couple months. When I first went I told the guy what I wanted to do and he set up a workout for me. That workout included a lot of treadmill and a little weight lifting. I modified it a bit but it worked. Once I got the weight off I set up another appointment and got another workout setup. I am now working on strength training and it is working. It is taking a lot longer than the weight loss but I expected that. I am doing less treadmill and way more weights. I need to bump up the treadmill a bit, I’ve been slacking, but I think the workout is about right. The one thing I have really been slacking on is my abs. I hate crunches but I am getting back on doing those daily.
What I am doing works well for me. I never really had a problem with craving food. I just put on weight when I was drinking and got in really bad habits, eating out all the time and not working out. One of the things that I need to start doing is eating more often. I rarely eat in the morning and usually eat only twice a day. I do need to change that but I keep forgetting.
One of the guys I worked out with in college had one leg amputated below the knee, and was a very good swimmer. Most of his power was from his armstroke, so he used to say the leg would’ve just been dead weight, anyway. Breaststroke, he had problems with, but not the crawl strokes.
Also, swimming was how I went from ~220 lbs. back to ~170 lbs., ten years ago. I’ve crept back up to ~180 lbs. since, but swimming 3-4 times per week plus reducing soda and fast food have kept the weight off (a bit harder now, at 40).
As I’ve posted in the weight loss thread, I’ve gone down 13 lbs in the last 5 - 6 weeks by watching my food, reducing alcohol and expercising. I’m right at 190 lbs (and just a shade of 6’, so it’s not too bad.)
I’ve joined a local gym, which had me start off on 5 weight machines for legs, back, crunches and arms. Now I’ve gone three times, they’ve got a more detailed routine which I’ll get next time.
I’ve been running several times a week, and I did an 8-k in December.
At 45, my hope is to less to even look like I have muscles, than to be fit. We’re trying again for kids, and I want to still be able to play with them when they’re older than babies.
