LiftAndBalance Member

For bodyweight training, you can also look into Mark Lauren's 'Body By You', Al Kavadlo's stuff and Paul Wade's 'Convict Conditioning'.

I second Shock Absorber, especially the 4490. I wear a UK size 30G and you can pry mine from my cold dead hands cause otherwise I won't give it up.

Ah, that sucks. (But glad that your doctor (or you yourself) obviously educated you on hormonal birth control, it drives me nuts how often women have no idea what's going on so it's almost a reflex to point these things out.) If the weight actually doesn't come off (beyond water retention), being stricter with your logging…

Water retention is also a common side effect of hormonal birth control. (And you don't menstruate in the actual sense of the word when you take hormonal contraceptives as they repress your cycle. This also means that hormonal water retention doesn't follow the same patterns as in a natural cycle—if you're unlucky it can…

I think both are viable options. Continue increasing reps with the lighter weight, for example, until you can do even 3 reps or so with the heavier weight and then start building again from there. Or do one set of however much you can with the heavier weight and then two with the lighter weight and more reps for now…

This.

Look here for what you can do bodyweight training as well as some resources. You don't need a gym for progressive strength training.

Other suggestions: Strong Curves, New Rules of Lifting for Women, Nia Shanks (she also has a bunch of good stuff for free).

I was going to suggest a menstruation cup, too, if that's an option for you.

In Scandinavia, it's generally recommended to take a generic vitamin D supplement in winter as we get so little sunshine and it definitely makes a difference to me. I'm less tired and less prone to depressive moods. You should check with your doc about the dosage to correct your deficiency.

Too lazy to read the entire thread so sorry if someone already posted this: http://www.precisionnutrition.com/fasting-restriction-life-extension 'Drawbacks of CR: * [loss of muscle mass] * Depleting our growth, insulin, and thyroid hormones * Age-related muscle wasting (aka sarcopenia) * Having less bone mass and more…

You're supposed to meet your goal since the goal IS at a deficit. You said initially you're usually around 5–50 kcal below your goal so that puts you in the preset deficit plus 5–50. How long have you been at this? What are your stats (age, height, weight, activity level, exercise, calorie goal) and how much do you want to…

So basically you meet your goal every day? That's what you're supposed to do. Meeting your goal puts you in a deficit. How big that deficit is depends on the data you put into MFP.

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Ah, the irony. Most countries (including almost everyone in Europe) actually use a comma as decimal mark. Though there are probably more people growing up with a dot. See here. Still more about languages than continents: English-speaking countries generally use a dot. Oh, and I haven't used Excel in years but OpenOffice…

I've had the unflavoured whey powders from Pulsin and Foodin and liked both, no weird textures or aftertastes. I generally don't like protein powder in fruit smoothies, though, so I can't judge that.

Nia Shanks has two programmes that say the workouts only take approximately 30 minutes each: 3x3x3 and Better Body by Minimalism.

I just wanted to say thank you for posting that, some really helpful advice there!

I just dropped you an email :) I've been maintaining over the last couple of months but have started eating at a deficit again this week.

Thanks for the response! I'm gonna try to shoot a decent video of me this weekend. In general, I tend to upp my weights more by how I feel than a strict plan, within the prescribed rep range. For OHPs I'm still stuck with tiny dumbbells so increments of 1 kg per side. First, I tried to get over a plateau by cheating a bit…

Awesome information, thank you so much for doing this, Steve! I was wondering how you would go about strengthening the shoulder muscles? I don't do a lot of upper body work, and have just started Strong Curves after doing AllPro's and some templates by Nia Shanks. Strong Curves includes horizontal push/pull twice a week…

This calculator is a decent starting point too: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/conversions/grams/gram

It's not on the label, no. Thanks, SingRunTing. The two entries are the same, though!? Strangely enough, when I search the database to actually log it, the entry doesn't show up.

You know that feeling when you descent into a squat and simply cannot get up again, your body just cannot do it no matter how hard you push?

Start tracking accurately and honestly, weighing your food with a food scale. Read the 'Announcement' posts in this subforum—this is a good starting point; you might also wanna read this. Set an appropriate calorie goal and track every single thing you eat or drink (tracking water, unsweetened herbal teas and spices is…

How do you eat half a nut? I just looked at one day admittedly but you have 1.5 macadamias and half a walnut logged there—seriously?

Omg, I can't even imagine. You can do this—for your son and for yourself!

Hormonal contraceptives make my thyroid go completely crazy so I guess I'm somewhat biased but please get an appointment with a good endocrinologist. Gyns really aren't the right doctor to see about that kind of hormonal issues and it's not part of their training. If your hormones are out of whack, you need to see an…

If you train with compound moves, you'd probably find it very hard to entirely separate your upper and lower body. Think deadlifts, for example. The lower body only programme in Strong Curves mainly works like that if I remember correctly—there aren't any specific upper body exercises but you do have deadlifts and squats.