GIFt us your lifts! (or other achievements!)

Vent away, lady, vent away.

"Ever" is a long time…you'll get there. Until then, priorities exist for a reason: to help us realize what's most important in life. And number one should always be LIFE. Take care of your son, take care of your father; their lives outweigh housework by a country mile. Pay a neighborhood kid $10 to mow your lawn (there's always a kid needing work for money), and apply college rules to your laundry: the "sniff test", where unless it stinks or is stained, it's eligible for re-wear.

The gym is patient: it will wait as long as it needs to see you again. Go when you can, don't guilt-trip yourself when you can't. Exercise is supposed to ENHANCE life, not BE life; would you feel guilty because you did not eat your favorite meal, or would you eat what you can and move on? Sure, you would prefer to eat what you want, but life must go on.

So I had a very strong lifting day on Monday, moving almost everything up weight and adding an additional exercise. I ate pretty clean that day and did my normal workout fuel routine (pre workout, bcaa during workout, protein shake with protein powder immediate post workout). Great news, still no real pain or DOMS, just mostly leg muscles complaining about working more (stairs) that night and maybe early in the am.

The scale the next am was >+3lbs. I usually go up weight the morning after but never that much. Do any of you weight every morning and have seen that kind of spike? Stuff I have read suggests that you weight more because the body is keeping and sending more resources to repair the mini-tears, muscle inflammation builds up with blood cells, and glycogen restoration which causes extra water retention. I get all of that and usually see a spike or 1-2 pounds but generally not 3-4 lbs. Good news was that by Thursday morning my weight was under where I was Monday morning.

I guess I am asking about other's experience to see if I need to reset my expectation as I keep increasing the lifting activity.

this is my understanding as well. You’ll also see this type of fluctuation when you’ve been eating clean for an extended period of time and you have either a cheat meal or a refeed day. You’ll have a very predictable bump of 3 to 5 lbs over night. This is also water retention from the extra sodium and glycogen stores. If you continue your clean eating afterwards that water will clear in 48 to 72 hours and will often be at a new low weight if you’re in a deficit. Which obviously means that while your body is holding that extra water and extra weight on the scale you’re still burning fat stores. This should provide hope for those that think that if they cave once they’ve blown their diet.

😅 had to google Carnac the magnificent.

I agree that there is a likely correlation between heavy sessions and a spike in weight gain / inflammation. Probably not as significant of a bump as a refeed day.

I don't lift heavy, but I can tell you that the day after my sprint triathlon at the end of August, I hit 167 (a pound loss from the day before), then two days later, was at 172 lbs. Yes: a 5 lb increase over Labor Day weekend. It took about ten days to get back down to 167. Some of that was eating all the foods over the holiday weekend, some was probably water retention, but this is why I weigh every day, not once a week: so I don't freak out over the little ups and downs (or bigger ones) in the course of a month. My weight is not steady at all, not even when I'm eating maintenance calories.

Good job on the lifting Sandy and the Yoga. I have tried that app you suggested, but quited again after 3 day's, dunno why actually. Should start again, because my mobility sucks, and i think it will help with my lower back problems if i can stick with it.

Drinking enough water can be hard. Yesterday i had a perfect day with almost 3 liter of water (ordered a liter and a half at the bowling, so that helped)
I drink it at home with a little bit of flavour in it, because just water get's boring sometimes. It's a zero calories drink (so with sweeteners) but it's not as dull as just water.

I have my current lifting program on hold, because my lower back/hip is acting up again.
So instead of my lifting routine, i now go for 30 minuts threadmill walk, and use machines for some muscle work, but no free weights.

Mostly because i do not like doing 60 minute threadmill walk,lol
Hopefully recovered in a week or 2 again, so i can resume my program

One of my favorite literary characters is Drizzt Do'Urden, a dark elf in fantasy lit. Point here is he was born in an underground society, and many times in his adventures he has to navigate the tiniest cracks between rocks to reach safety. My imagination always goes bonkers every time I read one of these scenes, and I'm always nope, guess I would have died in this scene, because there's no way I'd even attempt what he just did.