whyflysouth Member

Yup, well about 30 minutes away from the city in a suburb west of Chicago called Westchester.

Man, I hope Casper's ok. Get better soon Casper! I had the craziest weekend... my entire neighborhood flooded on saturday morning. Here's the view from my front lawn: My basement was flooded up to the trusses of the first floor of my house and I didn't have any water pumps so I called the plumber but my city was declared a…

I can't remember the last time I've had soda. It's one of the first things I let go of. I think for the most part I'm avoiding the bulk of refined sugar, I have a cup or two of tea each day and I take it w/ Stevia so there's no sugar in it...I think I had a few "Wheat Thins" yesterday so that stuff probably has sugar... My…

Casper - I'm not doing much supplementation, I've started taking Creatine Monohydrate powder that I'm mixing with grape juice, and 3.2g of CLA in pill form, and I'll have the occasional protein shake to get protein if there's little meat around, but other than that, trying to eat 5-8 ounces of chicken breast per meal, and…

Rob, that's increase in arm and shoulder size is water - I've experienced the same thing, I've been lifting very heavy these last 4 weeks and after the first two weeks or so my shoulders and chest broadened, my arms got bigger, and my shirts got tighter. It's happened before, it's not muscle, it's water, water will be…

What he said. "It's gotta come from somewhere." It's most probably water, you'd be surprised by how much water your body can hold when you're putting yourself through a strenuous routine. To give you an idea, I weigh 152 in the morning when I'm pretty dehydrated, I eat at caloric maintanence (meaning I burn through…

on the topic about eating 1200 cals for a guy... When I first started with 22 lbs to lose I tried that for about 2-3 weeks, it was really rough, I was basically eating salad & chicken breast for every meal and that was it. I was also drinking tea w/ stevia the rest of the time to keep my appetite suppressed. I lost about 8…

David- thanks for the advice. Yeah I notice that after arms day my triceps are sore for the rest of the week, while my biceps are good to go. But I'm sure it affects my perf on the back and chest exercises. I might look to modify the split to do chest & back before the supportive muscles. disneyfetishboy - totally. I…

How long has your plateau been for? If it's like 3-4 weeks it's not long enough for you to be too concerned. Also, is it just in weight or is it in your measurements too? I noticed when I was losing, I'd be eating w/ a deficit of 2 lbs/week and stay at the same weight for a month at times, and then all of a sudden in one…

I take it. Look it at on wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cla ...tells you all about it. But basically if you want to know my experience with it, I'd say I take it because I trust the studies done on it, and even if there's no weight-loss w/ regards to it, it's still a healthy fat (like the omega-3s) and it's still a…

It could be possible if you choose to have all your meals placed directly into your stomach from a feeding tube inserted through your nose. But don't expect to have the energy to be able to do much else than lay around your house all day. Everyone else has told you what's realistic, so I won't dwell on that, but I will…

I'm back. Sry to be missing from the forums for some time. Been focussing heavily on lifting heavy and eating enough so I build muscle and not just stall. It's official, when it comes to weight/fat loss, I'm at maintenance for the time being. I'm actually hoping to gain weight as long as it's muscle so the hard thing has…

Congratulations! That's pretty cool. Yeah I notice a similar thing with my heart rate when doing the elliptical vs running. When I'm running, I can easily get that rate to climb up into the 170s, and if I sprint for a long enough distance I can get up to about 185, but on the elliptical, I could be pushing myself to the…

Well, to update from the original post. I hit my goal weight roughly a month ago and as of late I've been focussed on reducing % body fat and increasing muscle mass. my BMI is 23.5 which is in the healthy range and my body fat % is at 14% and I'm looking to get it to 9-10% to get the six-pack abs, lol. I'd like to get to…

Yes, it is very true - this actually becomes a problem for people who suffer from starvation b/c their stomach atrophies to such an extent that they no longer feel hungry, simply because their stomach has shrunk to the size of a walnut, so although their bodies are in dire need of nutrition, with a few crumbs of food they…

It gets easier Casper, honestly I was the same way, always huffing and puffing, seems like my heart rate goes up much more than most normal people... Even after I got better at it, I still huff and puff... I just do so for the entire hour while running. Idk what's wrong with me, my stamina is good enough to keep running,…

Man! Good motivation casper, sounds easy... i found a 10k race that's on the 4th for $30 so I'm gonna register for it.

I think I put way back when we started this challenge that I'd have ran a 10k by now... hmm... time to find a 10k to run this weekend, lol. Haven't prepared for one, but eh, i sort of just like to fall into things last minute.

Hmm... that'd be 155g of protein/day, yeah I'd have to seriously ramp up the intake to make it there. In the case where you're more concerned with building muscle than losing weight, what benefit do carbs provide? Or to put it another way, are carbs necessary (say for replenishing a muscles glycogen stores) for building…

i've got a similar problem but w/ the weight machines. On one lat pulldown machine I can do 10 reps at 165 with ease, on the other machine I can hardly squeeze out 4 reps at 150, and 165 is impossible on that one. Kinda makes me think the first machine is lying to me and trying to give me a false sense of confidence, who…

Yeah, you're right, I think this is the part of the game where the real journey begins. My brother has been an athlete his whole life and he got pretty surprised when he saw how quickly I lost the weight that I seemed to put on gradually over the last decade, but he was surprised by how "flabby" I was at the same time...…

kicklikeagirl - yeah idk i get the impression that some people posting here think I'm a woman... I'm a guy (that's me & my daughter in the profile pic), so while 14-15% bf is good, the scale is a little different for us - I'm at the 'fit' level but not the athletic level (6-13%): Description Women Men Essential…

Yup. and the best way to have is to make it yourself. it's super easy to make just google any homemade mayo recipie, takes about 5 minutes to make and it tastes delicious.

No energy... feeling that way this morning too, even with me upping my calories. But the food I've been eating has been fish, chicken breast, spinach, and broccoli, so I think it's a result of too few carbs. So far I've had a bowl of wheaties, a mars bar mini snack size, two handfulls of the kids honey nut cheerios mixed…

Hmm... yeah with the cardio, I used to go running or get on the elliptical for an hour every other day, I did P90 for a while and it was good but I felt that lifting weights every other day didn't give the muscles enough time to recover. Also it was hard to keep it up, it's pretty boring following the same videos over and…

Hmm... I wouldn't say I wholly fit into one or the other, probably a combination of ectomorph & mesomorph, that is, for most of my teenage life I was lean but not skinny and not athleticly built. My avg fat % has always been around 16% before graduating college and living the sedentary lifestyle that made me overweight.…

5 - 7 lbs, if that's it and you've got such a tight deadline, then you're probably not gonna want to lift weights much or do much muscle training because initial changes in training muscles actually have them retain water until they adapt to the workout. If you started lifting now you'd notice an initial increase in weight…

Weight check-in: 5/21: 153 5/28: ??? - was sick 6/04: 152 6/11: 151 6/18: 147.7 - GOAL REACHED - 6/21: 147 6/25: 149, +2 lb gain So I gained 2 lbs since Monday. It's probably water, I've been lifting heavy this week and I've stopped doing cardio during the week, only doing cardio during the weekends. It's weird to be…

Ironic isn't it? The one's you feel comfortable around are the ones you should be worried about. I think the key is to be pro-active and gather enough information upfront so you can properly assess your situation. There's no harm in asking him why he wants to know whether you consistently come to the gym at 10. If he's…

Exactly! The weight will differ depending on your strength and you keeping going up if it gets easy enough to do more than 6 reps so initially if you're not sure how much weight to do you spend a week or so experimenting with weights, if you can't at least do 4 reps, the weight is too high. It's interesting, while you're…