Show me ur heavy lifting results please!

Damn, Yoovie! BTW - How tall are you?

You got a mighty impressive shape on you. And I'm really glad I've started lifting - lol.

BUMP!

Amazing job everyone! This gives me inspiration to be more consistent with my lifting!

Are there any 50 year old women willing to show before and afters for lifting?

What is the main culprit when you don't get these results? Heavy lifting 2x a week (on occassion 3x) Did my own thing for a while, then switched to New Rules for women routine beginning of Oct... and now on Stage 3.
Too much cardio? Not eating enough? Not up'ing the weights fast enough (bf says I'm lifting too heavy)

Awesome job everyone... really wish I had some progress to show along side you all!!!

Are you eating right? How is your form? How heavy are you lifting? It's hard to know for sure without more detail.

This, and a lot of these results are over a longer time period than ~2 months. Are you taking progress photos?

During Stronglifts, I've been taking pics every two weeks. If I compare them side by side, there's barely any change, but comparing the first week to the most recent, there's improvement. But it's not the kind of change that's going to get oohs and ahhs.... I have to really LOOK for changes.

There is one year and a half between my 2 pics. It take patience and persistence

Yep all of this^.

In the beginning when I was losing weight pretty quickly. I was also getting some newbie gains and some swelling from water retention. I thought OH MY GAWD I am getting ripped. LOL You soon realize that that will not continue long and you just have stick to a program. Dont just fiddle around from one machine to the next and expect to see anything happen. You have to progressively get stronger. Sticking to whatever rep/set structure your program has you on. I used a bodybuilding program the vast majority of the last year which had my reps at 8-12. Once you can lift that weight for that amount of reps/sets its time to raise it. Wish I would have chosen a strength based program with lower rep ranges now but the results were still good. It was enough to promote muscle retention while in a moderate deficit.

Hitting your macro and nutrition goals is just as important. If you are in a deficit it should not be so large that you have no energy for the actual workouts. Dont over do the workouts either. More is not always better. 3-4 days a week depending on the program you choose is enough. If you choose to do cardio dont over do it.

I started this weight lifting idea back in March, I weighed 170 and I'm 5'7". I was doing my own workout using mostly free weights and a few machines. I was eating around 1500 cals. March-Aug... no weight loss, and not really seeing strenght improvement. In August I up'd my cals to 2000-2200 after reading up on the group eat more 2 weigh less.I also started more cardio and trained for a 10 mile run at the end of Oct. In those 3 months my weight got up to 183-185ish.

Oct I started the new rules for lifting program and Nov I lowered the cals to 1600-1800 since I was done training for the run and doing less cardio. All the while kept up with 2-3x a week weight lifgint.
I'm keeping up with the protein as #1 priority... 40% is usually where I'm at. I've played with low carbs and higher carbs... maybe I didn't stick to 1 long enough, but didn't appear to make a difference.

How heavy am I lifing... example, bench press 35lb db, bent over row 60lbs, squat bar +60, lat pulldowns 70lbs. The new rules has each stage so far either 2-3 sets and reps in the 6-8 range. I see strenght improvement as I move through the stages... but still no weight loss, no inches lost and no pics showing anything good.

I'm concerned that somethings not right and I don't want to continue down the same path if its not working. I would expect something to have gotten better over this time. I realize many progress pics shown here are over a long period of time... but it's not like I just started a month ago either...

I hope this is some good add'l info that will get some suggestions!

I had my rmr tested and it's kinda low 1260... so that could explain why the weight gain when I was at 2000-2200... but should also mean that I should be losing now... and still not.

I was told during that test my body never went into fat burn which may explain the stregth gain, the inches gain and no weight loss...
How do you get your body to start burning fat?
Thanks everyone!!!
Karla

Gosh you were always a bombshell, great progress lady!

Wow- so motivating and inspiring....everyone looks friggin amazing...I need a program for lifting...so strong lift is simpler than NROLFW? I just started to read the book yesterday....

The routine is. But the front part of New Rules is still a good read.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/4618-stronglifts-5x5-for-women

Bump...

Calorie deficit lifting for one year.




The Mrs.

You both did an amazing job of transforming yourselves!! I especially love her back muscles

Bump, great stuff here!

Great results, everybody!!!

I started at a little worse than this:



I gained about 8-10 pounds between that photo (July 2010) and starting here in December 2010. Mercifully, there's no photos from other angles, although it would be fun for comparison's sake.

Lost weight doing mostly cardio and a little bit of body weight and 5 pound dumbbell circuit stuff. Started lifting heavier in July of 2011, but mostly used machines at the gym because it was Planet Fitness and their free weight selection sucked. In July of 2012, I quit the gym and got free weights for home. I putzed around for a couple months not following any program, then started Stronglifts in September. The last photos are at the end of week 10 last week.







And one more. Yay, squats!

FRIKKEN AWESOME....and a good way to show how FREE WEIGHTS are phenominal!

This may seem like a silly question, but I'm uncertain about the terminology here. What, exactly, is "heavy lifting"? Is it a specific type of weightlifting, or a particular weight lifting program? Or does it just refer to any type of exercise that involves using weights? People keep mentioning it on the site and I was wondering if there is any difference between "heavy lifting" and just weight-lifting.

"Heavy" is different from person to person, but it's a weight that you're able to maintain good form, but still be challenged. And it should be progressive, too. IE, when I started Stronglifts in late September, I was squatting 45 pounds and that was heavy and challenging for me. Today, I did 147 pounds... about 100 pounds more than I started with, and THAT is heavy for me now.