Animosity
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Just curious why you are doing so much cardio if you are trying to add mass and not have hunger through the roof?
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Weight Loss Thread
- Thread starter Sean_sl
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Its a long story and more a topic for the health problems thread but the short answer is cardiac rehab after a heart attack.
I do 30min daily cardio with specific heart rate goals/limit 7 days a week plus 1 hour 3 days a week (mwf) of monitored cardio (at the hospital while hooked up to an ekg)
I also do 1 hour of yoga 5 days a week(m-f). This one is voluntary rather than doctor ordered and yoga is more a mix of cardio and calisthenics but leans more cardio to me. I could quit the yoga but it's the only one of the 3 activities I actually enjoy doing.
So I end up doing 2.5 hours of cardio mon, wed, fri, 1.5 on tue/thur and 30min a day on sat/sun.
I dont know if that's a lot or not cus I've never been big on doing gym cardio so it seems like a lot to me. Until recently I've always relied on my physically demanding job plus activities to cover my cardio needs but for the last 2 years I been working a sedentary office job so gotta do it.
I'm starting to add wt training with a little home gym I got setup
Cad
scientia potentia est
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Its fine to do the cardio (and good for you given your situation). You just need to eat more to compensate if you want your body to have available calories to build mass. You want to make sure you get enough protein and eat in a surplus while lifting in addition to your other workouts.
You don't need to go crazy lifting, just be consistent. You don't have to lift super heavy, do medium-ish weight and more reps rather than trying to lift heavy, less injury and more sustainable.
Also yoga is really good for you in general so thats a great thing to do.
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zombiewizardhawk
Potato del Grande
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Captain Suave
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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Koushirou
Log Wizard
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Went ahead and signed up at my local gym. Current plan is just to go in a couple days a week and work back up to an hour on the elliptical each of those days to complement the 2-3 hours of walking I do 4 days a week at home. I really don't know anything about other workouts or any kind of strength training, so could use some suggestions on something basic I could start on so I'm not embarrassing myself. I'd also like to start tracking calories again and I know a while back someone had suggested an app to me for it, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was and lol, search function, so if folks have suggestions there, too, that'd be awesome.
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Khane
Got something right about marriage
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MyFitnessPal is probably the most widely used food tracking/diary app.
Get a food scale, weigh your food. Measure in mass, not volume (i.e. grams not cups)
Put it into MyFitnessPal
Done
Exercise is great for cardiovascular health, injury prevention and overall fitness level. It won't help you lose weight. Overweight people tend to have trouble with portion size and self-control when it comes to food. Exercising makes you hungry. Overweight people tend to overeat more the hungrier they feel. Getting your food intake under control is the key to losing weight.
Get a food scale, weigh your food. Measure in mass, not volume (i.e. grams not cups)
Put it into MyFitnessPal
Done
Exercise is great for cardiovascular health, injury prevention and overall fitness level. It won't help you lose weight. Overweight people tend to have trouble with portion size and self-control when it comes to food. Exercising makes you hungry. Overweight people tend to overeat more the hungrier they feel. Getting your food intake under control is the key to losing weight.
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sleevedraw
Revolver Ocelot
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MyFitnessPal is alright. It's a freemium app and there will be occasional nags to upgrade, but just for the sole purpose of calorie counting, it works fin--ninjaed by Khane.
The more diligent you are with logging everything you eat, the better. The Science
is very clear that people who log meals the majority of days lose more than those who do not.Something else I would do is get yourself a cheap kitchen scale, ideally one that has both imperial and metric. It will make your logging easier.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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I know girls are very averse to it but I'd lift weights rather than do elliptical for an hour.
You can do everything you need to with dumbbells and never have to do barbells or anything dangerous for anything. If you've never really worked out before, just google up some dumbbell workouts for women.
Elliptical will do nothing really besides burn calories, what you really want to do is build at least some skeletal muscle which is what gives your body its shape. If you see old ladies even when they are skinny, they just look like a bag of bones? Thats what you don't want, your muscle wastes away as you get older unless you take positive steps to keep it.
I'm not talking about getting big or being a bodybuilder. You should be doing heavy enough weight to almost fail at 10-12 reps (which will be light). You're not going to get big. You just not going to waste away into a bag of bones.
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Koushirou
Log Wizard
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Yeah, I still have my food scale from the previous weight loss attempts. MyFitnessPal is what I used last time, but definitely got a bit grumpy with it when they switched to charging just to use the damn barcode scanner and then despite paying for premium, started having tons of performance issues with it. I know the diet is more important than the exercise, but I've noticed in my past attempts, at least, that I don't have nearly the same level of food cravings when I've even just taken walks vs. not doing anything. Doesn't make sense to me, since I'd just assume I'd be more hungry, but seems a good enough reason to keep some level of activity going.
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Depending on how overweight you are you could save the gym for later down the road and get by with just your regular walks. I dropped 54lbs in the last 6 months. The first 3.5 months I just bit the bullet, signed up for My Fitness Pal premium and limited myself to 1500 calories with no sugar or garbage ingredients (can't pronounce it or don't know what it is). Doing that, I dropped 42lbs in that first 3.5 month stint. At that point I was getting lean enough that my body resisted and slowed down the weight loss. That's when I started back at the gym and bumped my calories to 1800.
When I started the gym, I kept it simple to just be active and get my muscle used to working out. I did light cardio and used whatever machines there were from top to bottom, meaning I did machines for legs, then core, then chest, then shoulders, then arms, etc. After a month of that I did the same the second month but just added an extra set and more cardio time. In the third month I started doing target areas like upper or lower body days.
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Daidraco
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Do you have a buddy that already goes to the gym?
It sounds like you've tried to go this route before and have struggled with consistency. So a buddy may be more important than anything. If you dont know anyone that goes to the gym that you can tag along with, then be talkative to other girls at the gym and try to be a social butterfly. If you dont want to do that, sign up with a trainer and go that route.
We can go into the sciences of diet, and how many calories are burned doing certain exercises and all that fluff. But seriously, another person right there with you - encouraging you - making you compete with them, maybe - etc. Makes a world of difference. Use an app if you want to. But outside of meal prepping, the second best thing for you to do with the gym is to make it consistent. When you're on the stairs and you get to 11 minutes in and you feel like "FUCK THIS" - and your buddy is right there with you, going through the same bullshit - you'll stick with it. When you're on the computer shooting the shit with the bros - your gym bro will send you a text asking where you are. You can always lie to get out of it, but thats more of a morals problem at that point.
Koushirou
Log Wizard
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I've tried the weight loss multiple times before and have only had temporary success (lost 30lbs over a few months in college watching what I eat and hitting the elliptical after getting off my lab shifts a couple nights a week. Lost 30 when covid started just watching what I eat again and going out for walks every day. I can do it, I just can't seem to do it forever). Haven't done the gym thing in a while, but yeah, no buddies to go with (unless I want to go with the husband who also signed up, but yeah, that'd be awkward, heh). Part of this is also to just get the fuck out of the house, too, and around people again. Thought about maybe doing a class once a week and maybe can meet a gym buddy there, but if not, I wouldn't be opposed to getting a personal trainer, too.
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Cad
scientia potentia est
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It requires adapting to someone's schedule (and they adapting to yours) but I'd make a girlfriend to go to the gym with and make it a friend activity to go regularly.. it's far less of a slog. When I used to go by myself I would get bored so easily. Getting bored means it becomes work and then you're more likely to quit. Go with a buddy and it's actually fun.
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Fogel
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Sounds like you need to do root cause analysis on why you fall off the wagon as you've shown you can lose weight in the past. One mistake people make when going on a "diet" is going on one they know they can't live on forever. So they set themselves up for failure thinking they need to starve themselves and eat salads forever. Your "diet" needs to be just what you will be eating for the rest of your life with small tweaks to portion size. You need to ultimately find what works for you but start looking for plans that are high protein and fiber which will be filling but not loaded with calories. Think meats pared with vegetables but little in carbs so not much in the way of rice etc.
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Captain Suave
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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Yup. Temporary changes yield temporary results. Your body adjusts to whatever you ask of it and fuel it with.