bokodasu Member

I reward myself with fitness gear after certain amounts of time - so after my first week of not missing any workouts, I bought some nice ankle socks, and after my first year, I got a personal trainer. (With various treats between those two, obviously.) It's been nearly three years, and I compete in a gear-intensive sport…

Sleep => Gainz. But... babies are temporary. Better to lay a foundation now, even if you can't reach 100% of your genetic potential, than say "oh well, can't be perfect so might as well not try". As long as you're walking in the right direction, you'll get there eventually. Work hard, listen to your body, take rest days…

If you're looking for goals, the strength standards are a good place to start - http://exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/StrengthStandards.html I am exactly where I should be, statistically speaking, on that chart. Except for the stupid overhead press, which is my nemesis, but I'm working on it. In fact, I have until August…

It's called a squat rack Please do your pushups elsewhere Go outside, it's nice

Be aware of what the numbers are so you know what to take into the dressing room, but don't care about them. Caring about fitting into an "8" or a "6" or whatever is Old Navy's plan for world domination - for the same size pants, the number on theirs is anywhere from 2-4 sizes smaller than anywhere else you go. (And don't…

That doesn't sound entirely unreasonable - if you're a 200-lb young man, 400 calories in half an hour would be half an hour of really hard work, but possible. 200 is probably too low, unless you're pedaling so slowly that the thing barely registers.

It will, but not enough to worry about tracking. If you want to get a better estimate, pick up a HRM - with Christmas coming up, I've seen a lot of sales on them lately so now's a good time.

There's "enjoy" and then there's "enjoy" - sometimes you just have to go with the thing you dislike the least. And with most types of exercise, you won't really enjoy them until you get a basic level of mastery, which means doing stuff you hate for some period of time. Don't give up too soon! That said, try to figure out…

Haven't noticed that so much - the thing I see much more often is men loading up the bar with ridiculous weights and then doing quarter squats. It's an ego thing. There's only one guy at the gym that I see and think, wow, that is a well-executed squat (and he is no newbie). Fully 50% of the women I see regularly do them…

If you like them, then you should wear them - that whole "dressing based on arbitrary calendar dates" went out in the Victorian era, I'm not sure why it's still a thing. But you're wrong about them looking good. They're a terrible, awful monstronsity of a pants. Like their spiritual sisters the jeggings, they make every…

Kind of both-ish? Intensity is sort of a better measure than straight up calories burned, because science*, but doing either a short, intense workout or a long, leisurely one is going to get you to pretty much the same place in the end. But 90 calories in 30 minutes is really quite low, unless you are a very tiny person.…

Lift heavier things, then you can lift them for less time and it's over quicker. Make sure you're doing a progressive program - if you're just doing the same thing over and over, of course that's boring. Meeting and beating goals is more fun. Switch up your splits, try different techniques for increasing your weights - do…

Don't forget that LBM is not "muscle", it's "everything that isn't fat". If you're a 250-lb woman with 150 lbs of LBM, and not nutritionally deficient, a lot of that is going to be water, bone, skin... stuff you're not going to preserve by lifting heavy. (Well, bones yes, but not the water and skin and not even all your…

13.9 would give you 103 lbs of FFM, and 23 would give you only 92. Both sound unlikely, but there's no way to know without other measurements. Neither is exceptionally accurate, but I'd just do calipers, average the three, and call it a day. (Unless you are rich and really want to get a DEXA scan, then you should do that.)

Get one with a chest strap - they're much more accurate & easy to use than the ones without. (Also, you don't actually have to use the strap part, I found it actually worked better when the elastic bit broke and I just started putting the monitor under my bra band.) The way I did it was wait for a sale - I found mine on…

Seconding Craigslist - the other day I found a complete bench + weights set, new in box, for free to anyone who was willing to haul it away. If I had somewhere to put it, I would have been there in a minute. And bodyweight. That's how I started - I used "Never Gymless" but "You Are Your Own Gym" is good too. They will take…

Pretty much there are two categories: 1 (most common): "I want to lose weight! How did you do it? What do you mean, going to the gym and watching what you eat? But no, really, what's your secret?" - sometimes that last part is only implied, but they're always disappointed. 2: "I'm losing weight by [taking these magic…

Vegan protein powders, in order of general awesomeness: pea, hemp, soy. There are premixed ones (Vega One, Sun Warrior) but they're super expensive and, oops, Vega One just had a recall for undisclosed milk products. ANYWAY. I can and have done 30% protein from whole vegan foods, but it takes a lot of planning and I…

Don't think of them as bad? The less emotional you get about food, the less power it has over you. Eat what you like and take responsibility for it. And the usual suspects - are you restricting so much you binge afterwards? Are there other areas of your life that are stressing you out? Are you burning out your willpower on…

If there were, bodybuilders everywhere would do nothing except yell about how great it was. Sadly, that's not the case. Creatine (5g/day, every day), protein (1g/lb of bodyweight), and maybe beta alanine (I'm not convinced yet, but there seem to be a few more studies supporting it lately) can help, but you still have to…

The trick is to sleep lightly, and if you get caught, raise your head slowly, open your eyes, and say, "Amen".

Ah, I was wondering where the "muscular" option is, that is total BS. To get the model to kind of match what I look like I have to set it 10 lbs lighter than I am, which is annoying but I guess understandable - I'm 10 lbs heavier than when I got married but my dress fits the same. Funny how that works.

Everyone's gonna say it - less cardio, more weights. Heavy weights. A lot of it is going to be just losing weight, but if you're not doing much resistance work that weight will be closer to 50/50 fat/muscle, and that won't help your bf%. I went from 35% bf to around 22% doing mostly lifting, minimal cardio (1 or 2 20…

NROL does use free weights - it was also one of the first mainstream proponents of "lift very heavy things" and I think it's a great program to start with. C25k is good, if you want to be able to run 5k - but go by how you feel, if it says "run for 2 minutes" and your joints hurt, stick with the walking. (If it's just your…

Are you eating back your exercise calories? Because normally I would say "do that" but looking at your workout routine, I would say "don't do that". What you're doing is mostly very low intensity - which is what you should be doing if you've got some kind of knee problem, but it's not great for making a calorie deficit.…

You are setting yourself up for hyponatremia, don't do that. When you sweat, you are losing salt + water. When you rehydrate with distilled water (bad!) you are just adding pure water. Yay, now your blood is full of water and no salt and all your cells will try to suck up that water and your brain will swell up and you…

I feel like doing one of those 5-minute before-and-afters - walking around at work, I have normal female arms. Give me some NO and a couple of bicep curls and I will look like Muscle McVascularity. I avoid looking "bulky" by not lifting at my desk. (Or lifting my desk, except in extreme cases of work-related rage.) There…

You can go in and tell him just that ("I want to lose weight and be stronger", leave out the bulky bit 'cause as you know it's not gonna happen), and (if he's any good) he should be able to put together a program that will get you to your goals. It will help if you can figure out what you like and want to do. Do you want…

If you're looking for bodyweight/home workout exercises, "You Are Your Own Gym" is a great book, and there's an app that you can get for a couple bucks that goes with it. It also goes over the nutrition, which you can take the basics from and veganize. But if you don't want to invest the $15 for book and app, there's a ton…

Cheese sticks are for when you want to eat cheese, and protein bars are for when you want a candy bar. Plus they're usually easier to find at gas stations. And if you're in the habit of packing all your food everywhere you go, they're more shelf-stable. So there are reasons to eat them, but if those aren't things you're…