brendanwhite84 Member

Vegetarian (11 years) triathlete and weightlifter, currently on a bulk. Give me an add if you like.

Gotta say, dropping a few hundred bucks on a power rack, barbell and plates at home is one of the best decisions I ever made in terms of workout consistency. No more dragging myself to the gym and dealing with crowds. Get home after work, spend my hour lifting, eat, done.

Congrats, you look healthier. Might I suggest full-fat milk as a possible choice for bulking?

I started running after going through a particularly difficult emotional period of my life. I've always run without music or other distractions, and preferably by myself, so I find it very pacifying. Long distance cycling, which I got into later, has a similar effect on me at least. Those emotional conditions were due to a…

I cannot stress enough how important this mindset is. Quantitative correctness in eating is vastly more important than qualitative 'correctness' in terms of the average person's habitual diet.

Welcome back. Feel free to add me if you like; I'm out of the cutting fat stage and onto the bulking muscle stage, but I like talking to people and I think I have some decent input to share for some folks based on my own experiences in the last few years.

Weighing / logging food, and logging the particulars of exercise, are tasks that improve the precision and accuracy of your information about your body's energy balance. There are people who weigh and log everything with a high degree of accuracy, and who run with a heart rate monitor to get the closest possible…

Notwithstanding your fluctuations in exercise like the prior poster mentioned, this number is a point-in-time projection based on how closely you stuck to your goal. Speaking from personal experience, when I account for my food meticulously using weighing, scanning etc., and account for my exercise calories using a heart…

Agreed - if you've had experiences with sudden drops in weight before I'd definitely suggest as high a BMI as reasonably possible, for the sake of a little padding. :)

I'm bulking and strength training aggressively, and when I walk to work (~5 KM) I use a weighted vest that allows progressive overload. Right now I'm at 35 lbs, max on the vest is 60. I've notably improved my squat numbers doing this. Cardio killing gains is a bit of a broscience myth. Just make sure you eat enough to…

+1 for this. You could even frame it in terms of doing it for the sake of a good married life, not just a good wedding.

Largely depends on your activity level. If you're sedentary you might want to consider eating those back. Although if I were losing weight instead of bulking, I'd avoid eating back exercise calories if I could avoid it without feeling weak.

You might have had a non-tissue (eg. water or waste) weight fluctuation that masked your actual loss. I fluctuate between 5 and 10 lbs in a single day. We can give you tips on how to weigh yourself properly if you like.

Not to be a gatekeeper here (I haven't been lifting so very long myself in the grand scheme of things) but I have no idea why someone would deadlift with 5 lb dumbbells. I'd encourage you to keep going with the empty barbell for starters - I know women who DL 300 lbs. Edit: 300 lbs being more than my 1RM lol

Depends partially on the fast food restaurant but you can eat properly (in a quantitative sense) on a fast food diet. The advantage is that chains all publish detailed caloric information. My concern would be making sure that I wasn't eating too much sodium, unhealthy types of fat, or the like, and that I was getting some…

Wendler 5/3/1 with a six-week deload cycle and Boring But Big assistance work.

Deadlift is supposed to help with posture. Anecdotally I think it's helped mine a bit.

I was a bit let down when I had to lay off weightlifting for my big triathlon this summer, but I'm happy to be back at the heavy stuff for the winter off-season. :) Good luck with the marathon - a race like that is always really satisfying to finish up.

This might be a bit too abstract (or too broad) but it looks like the Compendium of Physical Activities lists the MET values for weightlifting: https://sites.google.com/site/compendiumofphysicalactivities/Activity-Categories/conditioning-exercise As far as cardio goes, MFP tracks that well, although I use a heart rate…

Speaking of speedwork, I have an anecdote: Ran a sub-20 5K last fall having put in a bunch of speedwork on top of training for a half-IM. Then I did my full IM this August and coasted for the better part of a month after with only minimal running, and no speedwork at all. Ran that same 5K again this September and only…

I don't target a percentage for protein; I do 1 g protein per lb of body weight every day, and my target gain is .5 lb per week (overall - obviously no guarantees it's all muscle). I don't focus very much on fat specifically but it wavers a bit between 20-30% of my macros. I know some lifters emphasize fat intake over…

Uggggghhh I had to do a few three hour trainer rides by myself in the last bit leading up to my IM and I couldn't possibly do more without at least having a partner to chat with.

I'm about 10 weeks away from my current goal of 173 lbs (BMI 22). I'm entertaining the idea of bulking up to 180-185 or so after that depending on how I feel about my physique. I'll be maintaining / recomposing at whichever goal weight I remain at. I am a frequent runner and cyclist in the warm months however so I think…

+1 for distance. That said, I would want to put a bullet in my head if I had to run further than 15K on a treadmill. Good luck; the jump from 10 to 21 is a lot easier than 0-3 or 3-5.

+1 for the little circular silvery Ozeri model. Works really well for me.

I can't speak for this doctor's overall practice of medicine but my girlfriend got some very quackish weight loss advice from her endocrinologist, namely that she could only lose weight by eating below 1400 calories a day (regardless of her current weight etc). I wouldn't have objected if she'd arrived at that by doing…

Talk to your doctor or pharmacist about creatine. Leaving aside the hypertension angle for now, creatine has been tested extensively for healthy people and is safe for extended use. I take 5 grams per day of creatine monohydrate and have seen its positive effects. It is one of the few bodybuilding supplements worth taking.…

I'd practically call a digital scale a must-have in the first few months before the user starts figuring out reasonable estimates of their intake. Coincidentally, PixelPuff, do you mind telling me if you had an original goal weight higher than 104 when you got started? I ask because my GF is getting her weight down and I…

For me, five pounds frequently, up to ten pounds on days where I've eaten heavily or had water weight fluctuation to go with it.

+1 for this. Wandering around the gym with no focused agenda is a recipe for wasted time.