Speaking of Physical Fitness

Hasbro wrote: ... a bunch of awesome stuff ...

Sounds like a pretty good life!

I didn't read the whole thread, but I do have this to add. If you are going to continue drinking as much as you do you need to drastically cut down on your calories to lose weight. It can be done, but it sucks and could easily be argued is bad for you. Being fat is worse for you so make your choice. 300 calorie breakfast, 300 calorie lunch, 300-600ish calorie dinner, booze in the evening. Nothing else. No cheating on the weekends. The weight will fall off.

drink less vodka, eat more Bob Costas. everybody's a winner!

There’s a gym by my work. I lift weights at lunch 4-5x a week, and am seeing results. I haven’t lost a ton of weight, but I am also improving my appearance a little at a time. I didn’t get where I am in 6 months and I won’t look like an Abercrombie model in 6 months, either. It’s OK, that’s not the point. We bought a treadmill a few months back, after the kids go to sleep at night I hop on it and walk (mostly) for a couple miles at a relatively high incline, 8-10% - while watching TV. That cuts down on the boredom, couldn’t do it without the TV. I have started running intervals on that incline, as well- I’m actually a little amazed that I can run uphill for a 5-4-3-2-1 interval without dying. That alone is a huge improvement from a few months back.

I work 40-50 minutes from home, and like you, am leaving before the sun is really up, and getting back well after dark, then trying like hell to spend some good time with my kids before they crash for the night. You can fit the exercise in, you just have to make it a priority- for me it takes going somewhere, and about the only time I have that’s really “mine” is my lunch break at work. YMMV.

Side note- my appearance has changed enough in the last 6 months that my wife has noticed and is following my example. She’s lost 15# in the last 4 months. She looks great. I will not post pictures. :p

Recommendations: Count your calories. I use MyFitnessPal because it has an app, I always have my phone with me, and I am a gadget nerd. You can plug recipes into it and get your nutritional information, OR (and more to the point for a lot of people), if you eat something out of a box or restaurant, you can look it up and plug it in. You’ll know pretty quick if your calories are out of line or not, and once you have a baseline on what you eat for a couple weeks, you can start making adjustments and see what they do. Prefer low tech? Carry a note pad. Write stuff down. A pound of fat contains about 3500 calories. Once you start to think in terms of man, that would take me a day to get back ni line from, a 400 calorie donut isn’t so hard to avoid.

Drink water. 2 quarts a day is a good medium amount, that’s the old 8 glasses a day thing. You may find that if you get where you can drink water and aren’t thirsty all the time, it’s easier to abandon soda, which is a thing that everyone needs to do. Even diet soda is not good for you for a number of reasons. Water is what you are made to drink. Drink some. I normally drink water and black coffee. I’m working on abandoning booze, but it’s not the easiest thing. Cutting back on liquid calories will yield easy results, if you’re up for it. If you drink soda, stop. If you drink alcohol, stop. If you drink coffee with 11 sugars and 4 creamers in it, stop.

Lift weights. Cardio exercise alone won’t do much unless you put a lot of time into it, and most people don’t want to do it – as you noted, it sucks. Plus, your metabolism is set by how much you weigh, and muscle is more metabolically active than fat. Do enough cardio and you’ll start to burn muscle tissue as well as fat- meaning that you’ll wind up needing to further trim calories to stay the same weight. Unless you hate to eat and or are Christian Bale, this is usually considered to be a bad thing.

Last thing – read. The internet makes a ton of information available to you for your consumption. Read stuff. Read studies, read blog posts, read fitness websites, read recipes, read nutrition blogs. Use your noggin- it’s the best tool you have for getting back in shape. Some of what you see will be complete BS, but you get to where you can sort that out quickly. I would also recommend you take a look at the metabolic use of alcohol, since that’s a big portion of what you’re taking in as calories on a daily basis. Without belaboring a point you say you’re stuck on, that is a huge obstacle to your getting in shape or even just dropping a few pounds, for a lot of reasons.

If it’s not obvious- I like talking about this stuff and am finding myself fascinated by it as I get further in.

i've seen the location of your shop. go outside and walk for 30 minutes at lunchtime. take your lunch with you, eat as you walk. 30 minutes a day up and down those hills will do you good, you berkeleying fat E36 M3.

Vodka neat > Vodka and DIET tonic water. What what?

I swim. I'm getting back into it, I started making excuses for not going and missed a good four or five months. That was dumb. It's pretty hard (though not impossible) to damage joints swimming and you don't get overheated or whatever like running. What I really miss is going to the gym provided by my employer back when they ran crazy hours; I would go between 9 and 10 PM, swim, then go to bed pretty soon after getting home. It was great. If you can find a gym like that near you, I highly recommend it.

Probably help if you spread your calories out a bit, like a bigger breakfast, and keep the lunches light like you've been doing.

I'm not even gonna get into this discussion. All my exercise is from flying off the handle and losing my temper.

Well, there is one thing: I heart beer. I find that if I drink decent beer I get fat(ter). That means light beer. Yeah, I know it's a sin and not natural etc...

Read about the way sugar/alcohol acts on your insulin levels and how that hampers weight loss.

But it's hard to keep the drinking to only Fri/Sat night.

I know all too well.

In reply to poopshovel:

FWIW, I do my routine literally right before jumping in bed. Start and finish with a stretch and stretch between each item. I start with sit-ups (feet under the dresser), I'm up to 40-50 at a time now, then push-ups (10 at a time max, 2 months post-up on the elbow), then repeat if you can.

I also take the stairs every time (I work on the 3rd floor) and park far away (saves on door dings and headaches and makes you walk some more). I'm also lucky to get a real 15 minute break in the afternoon, and I just go for a walk around the area where work is (on a river dike that's pretty nice).

I need to try doing stuff in the morning first thing to "kick start" things, it's supposed to be the best time to do stuff.

I did forget the cup of coffee in the morning. Puts me closer to that 2k mark.

z31maniac wrote: Read about the way sugar/alcohol acts on your insulin levels and how that hampers weight loss. But it's hard to keep the drinking to only Fri/Sat night. I know all too well.

I tried for a little while. I'll get back there at some point. Just need something to slow the overactive brain down. Happy pills are okay recreationally, but I dunno about every day. The green leafies would be good if they didn't make me paranoid, hungry, and crave a cigarette worse than booze.

Personal trainer with a BS in Exercise Science and almost 20 years of experience here. Besides the normal client weight loss plans I ran hundreds of people through weight loss groups in a 2-3 year period.

2k daily is maintenance at your age, drinking, and activity level. Adding in the typical 1-4x a week where most low calorie eaters deviate and eat 3-5k and you are on a constant weight gain cycle. You aren't going to lose much of anything until you get to 1500 or below every day with cheats no more often than 1-2x a month. Diet is the most important but exercise will always help with strength training being the most helpful.

In reply to poopshovel:

Can you try a different alcohol that's less bad for your weight/metabolism? (Just thinking out loud here) Or maybe a stronger one so you only drink one instead of 2-3?

AngryCorvair wrote: drink less vodka, eat more Bob Costas. everybody's a winner!

Can that go in the magazine? Because it should.

poopshovel wrote:

z31maniac wrote: Read about the way sugar/alcohol acts on your insulin levels and how that hampers weight loss. But it's hard to keep the drinking to only Fri/Sat night. I know all too well.

I tried for a little while. I'll get back there at some point. Just need something to slow the overactive brain down. Happy pills are okay recreationally, but I dunno about every day. The green leafies would be good if they didn't make me paranoid, hungry, and crave a cigarette worse than booze.

Same here, I would also prefer something of the herbal variety (at least some of the time, unfortunately the wife and I can't always find the "off" button ), but my current job actually does the random drug testing. Just not worth it to lose a primo gig.

OH and beer, especially darker ones, are the absolute worst thing for your blood sugar.

Hell, a piece of white bread has more of an effect on your blood sugar than SUGAR!

Javelin wrote: In reply to poopshovel: Can you try a different alcohol that's less bad for your weight/metabolism? (Just thinking out loud here) Or maybe a stronger one so you only drink one instead of 2-3?

Vodka neat is the least bad thing.........but not particularly exciting to drink.

nocones wrote: What about "Clean" eating? Everyone I know who Eats "clean" does so while downing 90oz of Tuna blended with 2 cups of wey protien with a side of 6 hardboiled eggs while trying to pick up my car just because they need to max reps before coming into my house so they are not as easy to relate to as they could be. It's hard to pull the good info out when they are so busy doing squat thrusts.

Well, I attempt to eat as clean as I can. Biggest reason you see the weight/fitness crowd clean eat is that is unprocessed and easily digested. Plus with all that protein they eat it is easily absorbed over just being competed with all the other crap in processed food, which just kills the kidneys.

Basically clean eating boils done to natural sugars, and not refined white sugar, minimally processed, and it should only have ingredients you can pronounce and even at that, should be no more then 4 or 5 of them.

MrJoshua wrote: Personal trainer with a BS in Exercise Science and almost 20 years of experience here. Besides the normal client weight loss plans I ran hundreds of people through weight loss groups in a 2-3 year period. 2k daily is maintenance at your age, drinking, and activity level. Adding in the typical 1-4x a week where most low calorie eaters deviate and eat 3-5k and you are on a constant weight gain cycle. You aren't going to lose much of anything until you get to 1500 or below every day with cheats no more often than 1-2x a month. Diet is the most important but exercise will always help with strength training being the most helpful.

I'd believe it! Gville is ghey. You should move to north GA and give me the GRM discount! If I dialed back the booze, 1500 cals a day would be no problem. Maybe I should revisit that idea.

In reply to poopshovel:

You can lose weight and drink, it just sucks. Eat 1200 a day or so and stick to liquor and non caloric mixers and you will lose weight fast.

Javelin wrote: In reply to poopshovel: Can you try a different alcohol that's less bad for your weight/metabolism? (Just thinking out loud here) Or maybe a stronger one so you only drink one instead of 2-3?

Booze is booze.

You're looking at about 160 calories an ounce of pure alcohol, so a stronger drink will have more calories (unless you were mixing it with pure sugar or olive oil or something).

MrJoshua wrote: In reply to poopshovel: You can lose weight and drink, it just sucks. Eat 1200 a day or so and stick to liquor and non caloric mixers and you will lose weight fast.

BTW-all my calorie recommendations are not including the alcohol calories.

In reply to Osterkraut:

You've overshot that by at least 100%; everything I've read says 65 to 80 calories for most distilled spirits like vodka, whiskey, scotch etc.

It's still not "good" calorie intake and when you mix things in it gets a lot worse.

Osterkraut wrote:

Javelin wrote: In reply to poopshovel: Can you try a different alcohol that's less bad for your weight/metabolism? (Just thinking out loud here) Or maybe a stronger one so you only drink one instead of 2-3?

Booze is booze. You're looking at about 160 calories an ounce of pure alcohol, so a stronger drink will have more calories (unless you were mixing it with pure sugar or olive oil or something).

pres589 wrote: In reply to Osterkraut: You've overshot that by at least 100%; everything I've read says 65 to 80 calories for most distilled spirits like vodka, whiskey, scotch etc. It's still not "good" calorie intake and when you mix things in it gets a lot worse.

No he didn't. 160 calories per ounce of pure alcohol. That would be 200 proof. Seeing as most spirits are 80-100 proof, he is right on target.

I DO enjoy sports.

Although I'm not a big sports person, there is ONE thing that really helped me get my ass in gear. Setting a goal.

As a youngin' I really liked to play soccer but wasn't particularly great at it and stopped playing at the high-school level. Played a little after college locally, but lost time to participate with work, cars, family stuff, etc. Well, I decided to join a local league and my personal goal was to be able to get out there and not totally suck wind.

A simple thing a goal can be.

Took about 6 months to go from couch potato to being in decent shape. Mixed cross training (elliptical) with a couch to 5k program to get my legs back under me. I can see how people don't like running, but it was a huge benefit getting outside and ramping my activity and impact level pretty linearly.

At the end of about 6mos I started to add some mild lifting and then high intensity lifting. It's amazing how adding this has helped with my overall fitness level

During all this I took a look at what I was eating (my wife was starting to nerd out on food at this point, which was a giant help!) Made some simple changes to dinner: sub all our red meat meals for chicken and fish, and sub most others with complex carbs and beans. All sides are just veggies, plain veggies. Cut out things like high starch and baked goods (huge help!). Be very aware of dessert (and booze!) as those things add up quickly and its easy to not pay attention. Haven't had to change breakfast/lunch much as I was always a cheerios/fruit and a simple PB&J lunch guy. Helped to add good snacks like almonds/walnuts in the afternoon to get through "sleep time" ~3pm.

So, what were the results? About two years ago I weighed 225 and got down to 175 at my lightest, but have added some weight back in muscle since then putting me right under 185... which is what I weighed in college when I was "in the best shape of my life." Good side benefit is my cholesterol, which was horrible, is now at a decent level. Bad side is that I've had to buy all new clothes twice now.

Results are possible, but you need to start somewhere. Find something you like to do that will be a challenge. Figure out what you need to be able to do that thing. Create a reasonable plan to get there.

In reply to mtn:

You're both correct, my mistake.