Sorry for the rushjob this week. We just moved into a new office with zero privacy, so I don’t have the luxury of polishing this off during downtime at work. I’m trying to get this written up before I leave for work.
As we approach the end of the first GlibFit challenge, I hope your goal is close to being attained. For me, I’m a creature of habit. If I can establish a habit, things will go really well. If not, I’m going to constantly struggle. I don’t know whether that’s a universal human thing or only for certain personality types.
I’ve had a really hard time adjusting to the zillion schedule changes that have happened during this challenge. I started out in a temporary office in a decent routine, but when we moved out of that office, things went to shit. One week Two weeks Three weeks Three and a half weeks of work from home later, the new office was finally opened yesterday. Of course, this new office was originally slated to be ready when I started this job over a year ago, but let’s ignore that.
To some extent, this is just an excuse. It doesn’t truly matter what your schedule is, you can eat a healthy diet and find an hour to pound out a couple miles on a treadmill. However, establishment of habits requires a bit of stability. The purpose of this challenge isn’t to be healthy for 10 weeks, it’s to give us a bite sized goal that is long enough in duration to cement healthy habits into place permanently.
Anyway, I’m gonna try to close out this last week on a positive note, and I encourage those of you who have also had trouble establishing the habit to end the challenge with a bang so that you’re in a good place to cement your habits into place when challenge #2 starts up in a few weeks. (Additional details to follow)
Hopefully not you…
*Cracks open a beer and eats another potato chip*
*hands Brochettaward a cigarette.*
*smokes a joint and heads out for a 10 mile run*
That would take me about six hours.
4 weeks on a Vape box, and all my cheating added up to 2 packs of smokes, I feel Great!
still at 138 lb though,
?
Nice job, Yusef!
Well done. Giving up cigarettes is the best thing you can do for yourself. I’ve had plenty of clients over the years who succumbed to COPD. It’s damn awful. Best to avoid it.
I’m at 312. This is higher than I started at. I’m at a weird body shape where the upper profile of a given major area is decent, and the lower is all flab. It looks worse than when I was just fat.
You’ve been lifting though right? Are you doing the tape test as well as just measuring pounds? Possibly you’re seeing more of a swap of fat for lean mass.
http://fitness.bizcalcs.com/Calculator.asp?Calc=Body-Fat-Navy
That navy calc claimed I had more lean mass and less fat when I was 360 pounds before any diet and exercise was applied because I had a thicker neck then. It’s not going to give anything resembling realistic data.
Also, my waist line has changed a grand total of 0 inches.
That reads more snide than I intended.
I was merely trying to rattle of facts.
Anyway, yes I know some proportion of the wait gain since 275 has been muscle mass, otherwise the contours of my shoulders and upper arms would still be the ill-defined curve of subcuteneous fat.
No offense taken.
I assume you are measuring your food with a food scale and not with cups and spoons?
Doing anything special diet-wise? I am a proponent of keto/low-carb/atkins style diets eve though my goal is to put on weight at the moment. I have seen how effective it is for my wife and I am on the diet as well because I feel less bloated and it has completely eliminated heartburn/reflux issue I had a while back.
My special diet – Eat less.
You lost 48 pounds? Take a bow.
Made it…but next round is going to be really hard.
Not a player, but Mrs. Dean decided to do a “cleanse” diet, and to be a good sport I went along. Basically a veganish diet with supplements. Because she is an excellent cook, I haven’t felt deprived. In five days I’ve lost 6 1/2 pounds. Two more weeks (although we get to start adding meat, cheese, nuts, etc. next week sometime).
To prepare for the return of meat, I did a sous vide pastrami – 10 days of marinating, and @ 40 hours in the sous vide. Took it out this morning. Ho. Lee. Fuck. does it look and smell good.
Do you have the recipe for that pastrami?
Sorry, don’t have it in postable form. Its from this cookbook, which has been absolutely excellent. Not a single meal that we have done out of this book has been anything but fantastic.
My wife did that, but we compromised and allowed for lean meat. That was aggravating simply because there’s only a handful of things you can eat. So you eat the same shit, over and over again.
Yeah, I figure I can tolerate it for a week and a half, then the meat light gets lit, I punish this pastrami, and life will be on its way back to normal again. With a bonus, apparently, that I will shed at least 10 pounds before its done.
This is probably sad, but if you told me that I could either get meat or alcohol back today rather than on schedule for this diet, I’d probably vote for the booze. Did I not mention that booze is also verboten during the “cleanse”? Actually, I don’t have any objection to taking a vacation from drinking periodically.
We did it for a month. I drank significantly less beer, but I wasn’t following it religiously. My eating what she ate was a function of not wanting to make two different meals. Neither of us lost a lot of weight, though she lost a few inches form her waist.
This is a three week deal, that tapers off after the first ten days. Mrs. Dean isn’t doing it for weight loss (she is scary fit), but for other reasons. I’m sticking to the plan for moral support purposes (plus the fact that if I come home and do my usual happy hour while she sits and watches, she will eventually kill me in my sleep). The fact that I am losing weight is a nice side effect (I could probably stand to lose another 20 pounds).
In the right lighting, I have abz again. All is well.
I’m all about those ceiling lights.
Pics or it didn’t happen!
Give me 6 more months and you won’t be able to stop me pistin’ Pix!
Well… they do have the ability to edit your posts.
True. I’m enjoying Lucid Blue. I like the hangman and Hephaestus the most. Something about crazy old guys makes me happy.
I’m glad you’re enjoying it.
Postin’*
Stupid phone.
Aww, I’m sure Jesse feels let down now. Was probably looking forward to the piston pics.
Eight weeks since I blew out my knee. And I managed to not gain weight while severely restricted on physical activities. We’ll call that a win.
How’s the recovery coming?
Five weeks since surgery. I see surgeon next week. Hopefully, the leg brace comes off and therapy begins.
The knee seems to be getting stronger.
That’s good to hear.
THE-RAPEY STEVE SMITH OFFER AFFORDABLE, NO COMPLAINTS
Excellent news!
Didn’t have a specific challenge goal, but I’m down to 194 from a high of 225 at Christmastime.
Nice work!
Awesome. What have you been doing?
I’m at 134 from 143, but all I did was get the flu and start eating more salads after I recovered. Double Quarter Pounders are still an occasional temptation though.
Hope you get back up to a healthy weight!
Hah! This is actually perfect for me. I’m only 5’6″, and I’ve always been on the thin side. I weighed 118 lbs. all through high school, and ‘bulked up’ to 135 as a freshman in college due to a weight training elective class. Lost it all after the class ended and went right back down to 120. I’m 44 now, so fat had accumulated, but now I’m pretty pleased.
Managed to behave myself last week in the sun and gained zero weight!
I’m gonna drop some more weight, so a new challenge sounds great. I found out that I have a degenerative foot condition that has fucked up my right second metatarsal, so carrying less weight will definitely help.
This Machine’s insane MTI program inspired me to try one of their offerings. I’m going to do a six week bodyweight program. It looks pretty hard, but I want to improve my overall agility and speed. Oh, and no beer for 6 weeks 🙁
6 weeks? Jesus … I thought 4 days was rough. Good luck to you, sir!
Let us know how it goes. I’ve been reading a lot about bodyweight exercises and was planning on doing reddit’s BWF recommended routine at some point (https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommended_routine)
Will do. I’ve been lifting consistently for several years now, but have really neglected some of the things I dislike (cardio!). I like the idea of a little reset while I drop weight anyway.
Down 2.2 lb this week, for 58% of GlibFit goal and 27% of overall goal. Almost makes up for the previous week, in which the wife was out of town and I was correspondingly undisciplined — including taking a crack at deep dish inspired by Pompey.
Cutting back big time on beer and completely on wine; that’s been an adjustment.
Also, I discovered a couple of days ago that I have a diastasis recti (I think). Weird, disconcerting at first, but not serious. On to core-strengthening exercises after GlibFit challenge and before softball season.
Nice work! Yeah, cutting out the beer sucks, but it sure works well!
Rough week. I had a sore muscle in my back that had been getting better tell me that calisthenics for old people (tai chi) was unacceptable. So all I’ve been doing is grip strength exercises and walking. Big ups to P Brooks for posting the engineer’s hammer workout. Being an engineer, I already had one. Holy hell, rotations with with those are rough. And the old trick of tying a piece of rope around a cut-off broom handle and a weight on the other end of the rope and rolling up the rope.
I weighed in last weekend at 349.8, so it would be technically correct to say I came in at under 350. Technically correct – the best kind of correct. That also marks losing 10 lbs in 2 weeks, putting me back on my historical trend. Also, 350 is a nice big round number, and about what I weighed when I started grad school. Next up: 320 – which will be 100 lbs down and the weight I was when I started undergrad, I think.
I’ve spent the week on the road. No access to a gym. Actually, I’ve had access because the local Y said they would take me. But I forgot my gym shoes and only have a pair of boots with me. :/ So I did my PT at home and skipped lifting and cardio this week.
Yesterday, I went with the kids to the zoo. It was kind of amazing how differently my body works. We walked about 5.25 miles across 5 hours or so, all of it up hills and down hills. My knee (where I have tendinitis) was pain free. My legs didn’t get worn out. My back hurt, partly because my wife didn’t ask me and just told my daughter that I’d lift her up on my shoulders. So my back went from stiff to hurting about hour 3. But holy shit, my cardio/aerobic conditioning is *so* much better. My 8 year old ran out of energy and needed a break before me. That’s never happened before.
Then we got home, and I crashed. Hard. I almost fell asleep during dinner. I went to bed at 8:00. Walking that long on a 2k calorie deficit was like hitting a wall. I ate an extra 300 calories with dinner and went to bed. Slept for 11 hours. I don’t know how accurate it is, but the internet tells me that walking 5 miles would burn on the order of a thousand calories. That’s more than half of what I eat in a day.
But today I feel great. No lingering pain. No lingering exhaustion. That’s also new and cool.
Nice!
Congrats.
thumbsup
**Edit Fairy applied em tag**
Alright! Sounds like a great day.
Congratulations!
Really great! That’s what its all for, right?
Great work!!
Oh wow. Congratulations, dude, Keep it up.
Love hearing stories like this.
Excellent, Leap! Walking might be the single best thing you can do for your fitness. It’s massively underrated.
That’s awesome.
OT — Interesting Venn Diagrams:
http://eblong.com/zarf/thod/38.html
A classic
Well that didn’t work…
Here’s my favorite
I switched to lite beer one weekend and then vomited. That’s about a pound or so. Well done on my part.
OT: The best take about the Kevin Williamson firing was delivered by…….Robby Soave. In Fruit Sushi we trust.
https://twitter.com/robbysoave/status/981968532652154880
The balls on Soave. This kid doesn’t deserve half the grief he always gets.
The sun shines on even a dog’s ass some days
This kid doesn’t deserve half the grief he always gets.
He deserves 99% of it.
With the stuff he’s written about, no amount of “to be sures” in his articles are going to win him over with the censorious Left. Just for even addressing how wacky the college Left is, he’s probably blacklisted from most mainstream publications. Robby Soave’s career died for our sin of insisting that he provide no quarter to the left-wing mob. Even if he still fails to meet our demands.
Eh, I prefer to just take each statement on its own merits. So, even if he deserved all of the shade thrown his way, that doesn’t make this particular comment less true.
Soave falls into the same category of “look, we can be reasonable people, living in pluralistic society, while still acknowledging mistakes (on the left) and beyond-the-Pale behavior (on the right), we can discuss issues without rancor” that Sam Harris, for example, belonged to prior to his altercation with Ezra Klein.
What he doesn’t seem to accept is that ground is shrinking, and his “to be sures” are not going to save him. It’s a fine thing to outrun the guy next to you, rather than a bear – but this bear won’t stop chasing. He’s probably hoping for controlled opposition post in a liberal-ish paper (The Atlantic might get him, they still publish Connor Friesdorf), I’m just with you in that he’s probably gone too far already.
My issue with Soave is that he never challenged the assumptions of the progs/SJWs. If you don’t challenge where they are coming from, then you wind up arguing around the margins about just how fast we should all get woke, and whether its strictly necessary to include dragonkin as a legitimate gender category alongside the other 18.
If they loaded him onto a train to death camp, his complaint would be that a private trucking company would be more efficient and cheaper?
Oh wow, it’s that time of the month when they drag out Stephanie Slade for the five minute “we totally have a
Jesus thumperdifferent thinker in our ranks” parade!But it’s hilarious how once one of his tribe, the Real Serious Journalists, gets gored, all the prevarications and the trust in the good intentions of MSM disappears. No “I was told Sargon was alt-right by Vox” here!’
The absolute top response:
Neo-Nazi/Israel alliance is real!
I switched to lite beer one weekend and then vomited.
So you’re bulimic?
I’m grouchy because I’m tracking my intake and cutting back on the carbs again starting today. My modified goal is to get rid of the 2 lbs that I gained in March and an additional 1.5 to 2 lbs by next Friday. If I can finish this challenge at 282, I’ll be in great position to make substantial progress in challenge #2.
I fell off the wagon. I’m over my booze limit, I’ve snacked, I haven’t been to the gym yet this week. The cough and congestion from last week’s illness are lingering, but I think are starting to get better.
Wish I could do heavy lifting again, but my left shoulder is all fucked up inside. Been to three or four specialists over the years, but they don’t help much. Was a pitcher (baseball, you pervs) from middle school through high school and I’m sure that is the cause. A year or two of lifting and then, bam, the pain comes back. Take a half year off and try again, and repeat. I’ve given up on it and just do cycling. About 100 or so kilometers a week. 6 foot 3 and 180lbs. Not bad for a 48 year old.
Have tried having Mr. Miyagi clap his hands together and rub your shoulder?
Ah, straffin-san. Wax on, Wacks off. Done correctly, none can defense.
Can you do bodyweight stuff – push ups, planks, pull ups, etc?
Yep. That’s about the extent I can do anymore. Do it at the park with the old farts.
My right shoulder is a mess. My arm will pop out of the socket regularly because of the damage I did to the socket. Tore my rotator cuff real bad last October and was told I would need surgery (and 18 months of therapy/recovery) to use my arm again. Told the doctor the same shit they told me back when I had the original “accident” that fucked up mu shoulder, knee and back some 25 years ago and they told me I would need back surgery to walk again: hold my beer and watch this.
Been doing push-ups like they are going out of style (5 sets of 50 pushups a day) and my arm is back to 95% use. Lifting real heavy things is still an issue because that has a chance of my arm popping out of my socket.
I’m there with my back. Can’t do any powerlifts ever again, doctor’s orders. I do all body weight stuff and low impact cardio.
And calorie restriction.
I highly recommend drunk walking late at night。
That’s just because you can drink up the cab fare, isn’t it?
Or I drink up the cab fare so I can walk home. Either way, I burn the shit off.
Take a look at AthleanX. There are tons of videos on YouTube. The guy who does it trains pro athletes. He has stuff on how to lift to avoid injury and how to do different lifts if you have an injury. It may be that if you did different lifts for the same body parts that you could do it with injury. FWIW, I screwed up my right shoulder. During my college years (decades ago) it interfered with my lifting. With this program I’m able to lift.
OT: My drummer and his “friend “ (ex-lover) have started to reconcile. She’s a pretty talented musician. She has a great look. My band may have a rock solid rhythm section very soon. Bonus: I like both of them and they have great musical tastes. Really a plug and play situation. A few practices and then we could start gigging immediately.
That’s awesome! I hope I can time a visit to catch a show!
“Really a plug and play situation”
That’s what she said.
You never disappoint Q.
Good news, you fat fucks. There’s a new Messa album.
I am one lazy SOB – I haven’t exercised-exercised in years, mostly because it bores me senseless and I just haven’t knocked a hole in my day to do it. I think a bodyweight thing I could do at home could be something doable for me. Recommendations?
This is wordy, but the workout is pretty quick.
That looks like a good starting place for this fat old man.
This is wordy
Gotta push that SEO, brah.
Join a sports team. I still play basketball half the year. Almost any sport works as long as it’s fun. Doing it alone at home makes it too easy to quit.
Well, they say the best all-in-one bodyweight exercise is the burpee, because it uses pretty much every major muscle group and acts as cardio as well. You can do all kinds of variations, so you can mix it up and add bits in to focus on building strength in particular areas.
Pull-ups are probably a close second because they do everything but your legs and they’re a really good test of strength, but a lot of people have trouble doing pull-ups if they’re not already in pretty decent shape. Or even if they are but are just really big. As a case in point I have a buddy who squats 450 for reps without breaking a sweat, but can’t do a single pull-up. He’s 6’4″ 280#. Great big dude, strong as hell, but just can’t pull himself off the ground.
Can’t go wrong with planks, either. And bodyweight squats or lunges, although I prefer squats because my knees aren’t great and the return from the lunge position puts some strain on them for me. Oh, and planks (and pull-ups) are good if you’re largely sedentary, because they help counteract the tightness in the hips you get from sitting for long periods of time.
Good advice, but leaving out vigorous sex lowers your grade.
Thanks. That’s helpful. Mrs. Dean is a pull-up machine ( think she can do 20 at a time; it may be more), and so we would both use the bar for that (just need to get and mount one). She’s also mentioned getting a good rowing machine, which I might use as well. My challenge is fundamentally finding/making time and making it a habit.
If lunges hurt, you front leg is probably going too far forward. At least that’s what strains my knee.
The original P-90. Not the X, not Insanity or any of that shit. Just get the DVD and Tony will show you the way.
Down to 180. Starvation works!
You should market it: Body by Bataan or something.
For me, I’m a creature of habit. If I can establish a habit, things will go really well. If not, I’m going to constantly struggle. I don’t know whether that’s a universal human thing or only for certain personality types.
This is certainly true for me. If I can establish a routine, I can usually stay on it. For some reason, this winter has completely derailed what little self discipline I have left.
Spring skiing in Montana sucks. I only ski when the sun is shining, and it just keeps on snowing. I managed to ski once, last week, and that’s likely to be it. The fucking ski area is going to close with a SHITLOAD of good snow.
I think a bodyweight thing I could do at home could be something doable for me. Recommendations?
Now and then I wonder if grabbing a used Total Gym would be worth it. I don’t really know enough about what muscle groups you can effectively work on them, or more importantly what you can’t do.
Think you’d be better of just getting a good set of dumbbells to start.
what you can’t do
You can’t get Christie Brinkley to give you personal instruction like the infomercials.
Lifting has some odd fringe benefits. Since I started, I am more interested in watching lifting videos and such I come across randomly. Such as this gem.
And for the lulz
Jesus, that guy is lucky he didn’t break his neck.
Like this girl.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5630295/instagram-fitness-model-marcelle-mancuso-break-back-sit-up/
That sucks. At least she wasn’t doing anything as stupid as those pull ups.
That’s what you get for kipping.
Would. The girl, not the dog.
It has been almost two years since they chopped and channeled my neck (anterior cervical corpectomy, for those of you keeping score at home- I don’t recommend it, but I guess it’s an acceptable alternative to creeping total paralysis). Football-related? Who knows? It seems like it took a year and a half before I started to see any significant improvement at all. That’s about when I stopped feeling really fragile. My left arm is still pretty useless especially above chest-high, but there is starting to be recovery of atrophied muscle in my back and shoulders. If spring ever comes, and the temperature in my “wight room” goes above forty…
I’ve got an olympic bar, and plenty of free weights. I just wonder if some of that pilates-style stuff on the total gym would provide better flexibility. Some stuff I can do, some I can’t. I “aspire” to bench what I used to warm up with. I should be able to manage that this summer. I do some half-assed light deadlifts, and focus on contracting the muscles across my upper back, and rise into a shrug. I can’t push myself too hard, because sometimes when I strain I feel like I going to break the screws in my neck loose. Getting old sucks.
I’d recommend body weight stuff to start. A lot less chance of injury.
“anterior cervical corpectomy”
I just looked that up. Holy shit, that is a major procedure. I’m guessing recovery has been a bitch.
Reads like they took a dead body out of your neck. That’s gotta hurt.
Not much fun. If you’re looking for a Munchausen Syndrome ailment, I’d advise you to pick something else.
Well, I never officially joined this, but I did start regularly working out back in July last year. Must say I look a lot better than I used to. I would alternate through various Cathe Friedrich workout DVDs, but this week I decided to checkout the P90X workouts. I’ll give the other ones I didn’t do this week a try next week, and after that I think I might try the official 90 day rotation. See what happens.
This has been a tough week. Observing Passover has limited my food options and the dog started on a new medication leading to me getting up 2-3 times per night with him. So, not much working out but will hit it again next week. I had been consistent up to now. The irony is this is the week I discovered several pairs of pants need the waist taken in and I have to pull my belts a notch tighter.