Health and Fitness Cult!

I don't think anyone could/should work out with a migraine. Way different than a regular headache.

I've been taking a fitness class and I'm "learning" all this stuff but I haven't had time to really apply it.

Yesterday and Tuesday I got to work out but I think I'm coming down with something. I feel awful.

Good news! That run is the day before my brother's wedding. I have an excuse not to go - to the race, not the wedding.

I worked out with a migraine and a heartburn yesterday. In sixty degree rain. No excuses!

I didn't know Pete was such a pussy about running.

Fitter than I'll ever be. But still. Pussy.

I really am.

It's okay, Pete. I'm a pussy about moving in general.

My left elbow was hurting a lot this morning and since I vaguely remember reading something about left arm pain being a symptom of some scary shit and I'd eaten Jack in the Box tacos for both lunch and dinner that day, I kind of thought I was having a heart attack.

Then I remembered leaning on it for a few hours while on the phone.

Oh and this weekend I went on a long ass bike ride with my sister. There was a group of super serious cycling people (all of them with Thag and/or Armstrong sized calf muscles) who we were trying to keep up with... but after about an hour, we stopped and I threw myself on the grass. My sister said, You know you're on an ant hill, right?

I did not care.

The pool was closed last week and I didn't eat particularly healthily. I think it's time for a detox.

Anybody changing things up for the winter?

My diet changes quite a bit. I eat a lot more - still healthy eating though.

I add in oatmeal and sweet potatoes and way more red meat. I up my carbs, and calories in general. Actually if you guys knew how much I ate, it would probably make you sick. haha

My workout doesn't change much. I mostly still do Jim Stoppani's 12 week "Shortcut to Size" program. I love that program - pretty much stay on it constantly.

I had to change up my workout for the last three weeks. All I'm doing is walking for half an hour in the morning. Hopefully I can get back to my regular workout soon.

What's wrong?

I think I got a concussion (I posted about it in the ailment thread). I sustained it the Monday before Thanksgiving. I've pretty much had a headache ever since.

I forgot to mention before, I do still get a light lift in on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Is there any reason you change these things for winter? Other than preparing for your yearly hibernation, of course.

Well, I'm allowed to eat dairy products and eggs during Lent, but not meat. So all I get is maybe once a week when I eat out. Basically I guess it's healthier, but I've also noticed I stopped exercising somewhere this autumn and it sucks. I need to work those hips because I only have two pairs of jeans left that fit right now.

The most exercise I've gotten the past month was today when I sprinted after the bus, made it to the stop as it drove off. I would have been pissed but I was out of energy.

I was taking pictures for the Christmas thread and figured that I would snap a couple of these while I was putting something back in the basement.
So, this was my room when we moved in but, as you can tell from the background, old baby things are starting to take over.

You have my Monday workout--punching bag--but I had to choke the chain up so it would fit. And this one has a hard disk in the top which turned to the side so you have to be careful where you punch.

Tuesday & Thursday is for lifting--the weight bench is behind the punching bag (my friend used to own a gym and sold me the bench and about 500lbs of weights for $200 & another friend gave me the weight rack after cleaning out his basement), the power-bands are hanging from the pole, and a jump rope I have no room to use (the ceiling's pretty low). I usually do low weight with a bunch of reps.

My speed bag is hanging from the ceiling--that rounds off my Monday workout.

And my treadmill where I used to run for a half hour every morning (for the time being I'm walking for half an hour)
In the back, I have a tv for while I run and a round clock for my Monday work out.

Wednesday & Friday (which is on hold for now) is for sparring at the gym.

Well, I just wanted to post some pictures. It's not much but, by far, my favorite room in the house.

You sure made the most of that small area. Nice set-up!

I'm totally jealous db, that's the kind of setup I want some day. Also we have no basements here in Central Texas, something about the ground being hard clay. Since Zoe came into the world I had to quit the gym as I had no time. I kept some of the muscle mass even though I lost like 20 lbs after no working out for a while (I was on a bulk anyways)

Basements all over the place around here. I didn't think I would work out with a set-up at home but I aven't missed more than a couple runs in three years.

I know what you mean about not working out, I hate being idle. It's been about a month since I did a full work out and I'm slowly gaining weight.

I've been working out pretty regularly, there's a little gym at the girlfriend's apartment. It's mostly weight machines and some cardio stuff. So far i can run a mile in like 12 minutes before i can't go any longer. Then i lift weights and do posture/ab exercises for fifteen minutes or so. It seems to be working.

And i know it's not really for working out but i've been supplementing with nootropics a little bit. They improve focus and have this sustained energy. I've been on piracetam and choline for about a year now, on and off. It works great for motivation and waking me up in the mornings. I've also been experimenting with phenibut here and there but i try to be careful with it because it's easy to become dependent on it or have really bad withdrawals from it. I take a gram or two a week of it and it eases my anxieties and elevates my mood a bit. I have to be careful sometimes though because i'll be a little too at ease and unfiltered and i'll say something inappropriate. Also, don't mix phenibut with alcohol, trust me. If i plan on drinking at all during the day, i won't take any phenibut because the one time i did that, it was the worst hangover i've ever had i think.

I have no idea what any of that stuff is you're talking about... I'm interested in hearing more about your experiences with piracetam and choline. I have a really hard time waking up in the mornings - no matter how much sleep I get. I'm sure it's mild depression or something.

I'd like to know more about your brain steroids too. I mean, is a nootropic is just a fancy name for vitamins?

Please show us the ways of these supplements Big S.

Also one of my mom's patients who produces vitamins has been giving her a lot of tips of what to stay away from. He spent millions of dollars to get his products on the market because he had to take a bill to congress that allowed him to list the benefits of his product and because they're all natural.

He's a lil' out there but overall seems like an honest genuine guy who knows what he's talking about.

I thought it was a bit insane but he said that you should take at least 1600 grams of vitamin C a day! He never took any of his kids to get immunizations and claims that none of them have never been sick a day in their lives. I'm curious to start taking more vitamins but it is all very intimidating to me.

How many oranges is that? I have a lot of oranges in my kitchen right now but I don't want to OD.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I love oranges but not that much and I don't think I could even down that many pills in one day.

They're pretty much vitamins, i take them in powder form (they taste really bad too). There are minimal side effects like some gastro stuff occasionally and sometimes there will be waves of sleepiness. I take about two grams a day, split into two doses of a gram each. One when i wake up and one in the afternoon. Sometimes i don't need the afternoon dosage. Piracetam takes a couple weeks to build up in your system and start working. It's weird, you don't really develop a tolerance to it, if anything, it's the opposite. Once it builds up in your system, you can take less and it'll have the same effect. It's best to do a bunch of research and experiment with it until you find what works though. They have it all over Amazon but i went straight to the wholesale place, www.hardrhino.com. They have the best value i've seen.

Take more choline than piracetam, as much as a 2:1 ratio. Otherwise you'll get wicked headaches, which i've experienced. Luckily, choline is much cheaper than piracetam. You don't want to just take piracetam, that's bad news.

Pete--didn't you try that insanity workout? (I thought I heard you talk about it before but it's late and I don't want to scroll back right now.) I've been thinking about supplementing it into my workouts for a couple of months now and was wondering what you thought about it.

I've tried a couple of the workouts from it. I suck at cardio type stuff. It's fucking insane. But you'll burn a ton of calories. I was wiped out from the warm-up!

So I've gained far too much weight for my own comfort... I haven't weighed myself in a good long while but I'm quite sure I'm back to where I was before I lost all my weight... or close to it. I don't like thinking about that because I worked so hard to get rid of all that weight. But the stress of the last year and moving and all these other factors have caused me to put on weight. And so far, I've been saying that the big issue is that I haven't had a place to start working out again. But the new place I'm going has a work out room, so I'll be using that.

However, I still have a bit of time before I'm moving there to live on a regular basis, and I've realized that my major problem at the moment is my inability to control my eating habits. So hopefully, really gonna try and do it, starting tomorrow, I'm going to start a new diet. I've made a list of foods with soluble fiber to help me control my appetite and I'm going to start eating less and eating healthier. Plus, that'll save me money. I'm just quite ashamed at how I've let myself get back to this state. I was 170lbs/85kg at my lightest. I was back to 95kg near the beginning of October, and I have only ballooned since then.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping, will be a new start.

No more late night snacks for you, pal!

Seriously, that shit is bad.

True fucking story. I got home around 8 30 last night from work, had to finish a paper, couldn't eat dinner until like 9 30, but it's hard to find the time to cook something healthy at that hour. what I need to do is do healthy food shopping so that the only things available to me are healthy foods.

I thought that said 'late night socks' and i was all ewwwwwwww...

I had a slice of bread with margarine and cucumber at 11 last night, but that was just because I'd been reading until then and couldn't put the book down.

It's not the croissants, I've actually only eaten one since I've been here. It's the goddamn CREPES. MMMMMMMMMM

My roommate in college went to France in high school for an exchange student program. She said she gained 20 pounds, during her stay in France.
Apparently they eat chocolate bars dipped in cocoa for breakfast over there. She lived on a dairy farm, on top of all that. She loved it - lots of cheese and such, but got a serious tummy.

Everything dipped in everything, that's France.

I don't know how "French" these foods are but my favorite sandwich is the French dip and my favorite soup is French onion.

French Onion is so good. Any time you find a reason to put an inch of cheese on something, you know it's going to be awesome.

I made a resolution to myself and my wife. Once the Holidays are over I'm going to stop getting the Whiskey and Coke I've been drinking almost every night and sell off the PS3 I just got and start up my high protein diet and get some workout equipment. Namely a good bench press and some good weights. Most of my workout routing is free weights anyways. I've already prepped this addon room in my house for this with some cheap carpet(it had just plywood floors before) and moved my office to its main room. So I will have my office then open another door and workout room. Hopefully this will help with my general mood and energy. Working out keeps me sane.

I finally weighed myself and the verdict is in. In the past 4 months, I've gained 20lbs-ish/9 kg. I'm quite nearly back at the weight I started at all those years ago before I lost it all. Starting in the new year (or as soon as I move permanently), I'm cracking down. Now that all the cookies are gone and I know what to buy to stay healthy, and have a gym at the new place, things will work out. No pun intended lol

I'm gaining a lot of weight--I need to cut the holiday eating. But I, too, am re-starting my workout schedule after the holidays (I've been headache-free for almost a week but chose not to try and workout until after Christmas).

Zack: when I first started working out at home, I would pick a date and start right in on a heavy work out. Each of those hadn't lasted over a week or two. This last time, I eased myself into it and have been going strong for about three years. Either way, good luck.

Sweet baby Jesus, I weighed myself and I'm back at 40kg. That's 88.something lbs.

I dropped 3kg after two days of Christmas? Or maybe it was the whole time mum didn't allow meat in the house before that? (the religious thing whose name I don't know)

I started working out again the day we got home. I ate a lot while I was with my family, and didn't actually do much. It's gonna be hard to go back to being strict with my food during the week days, but oh well, tough shit for me.

Health and fitness update:

No of myself, but my son, because I am so proud of him.

Gabriel began last summer at 270 lbs, at six foot even. He has always been an active kid, but he started putting on weight when he was about four and over the years, even despite his being active he went slowly from a chubby kid to a fat kid to, honestly, an obese kid by the time he was fifteen. I encouraged him to eat right and proper portions, but often to no avail, and I must admit my own cooking is not exactly designed for keeping healthy weight if you want more than one portion of anything. I could never bring myself to put him on an actual diet, even despite knowing he needed it, I was always torn about his emotional health on the matter.

He has always been a very determined level headed individual, though he takes his merry time to make a decision to be steadfast about. His own calm determination to examine life and make the most reasonable decisions with the facts and understanding he has available to him, since birth really, is probably one of the biggest factors in me being able to have been a successful parent at such a young age. I was blessed with a baby that was born and only whimpered then looked around and decided to be calm and wait for more evidence of something to cry about.

He had taken weight training last year and learned his own strength and when the summer began put in the effort to continue thinking about what he learned and making other healthy choices based on that. He cut soda out of his diet, then most other junk food and fast food.

Around the time the school year began he decided to become a vegetarian, which has had it's challenges for me, though I do not oppose it as it is how I was raised.

He begun to talk about how he found he could walk up the hill and not be worn out, we live at the top of a hill that is steep and near a mile once you reach the top. He joined football, though due to circumstances he was late joining and different things came up that caused him to miss a practice or two, between that and joining late it came to a point where he knew he was not going to be able to play a single game before seasons end (you must have so many hours training and practices in before you may play, for safety reasons) yet he didn't drop out of football even knowing he wouldn't play; he stuck it out and went to every practice possible until seasons end, as well as the games to be on the side and show support for his team he could't join on the field.

Since football has ended he has taken to taking our dog for hour long runs near daily, and going jogging with his friends several days a week.

We have had to buy him an entire new wardrobe nearly, as all his clothing was beginning to look like he just stepped out of 1993- falling completely off of him. The two new pairs of pants I bought him on Christmas are loose on him already.

As of the last time he weighed himself, a week ago, he is down to 204 lbs. A loss of 66 lbs all on his own effort and determination.

I am very proud of him.

Good job, Gabe! From friends' experience, determination is the key to weight loss. You don't just have to want to lose weight, but to actively do something towards that goal. And a diet is useless without exercise.

I have friends who were 25-30-35 lbs heavier than me and now wear clothes only a size larger than mine. That's pretty impressive.

And Amber, I think it's even tougher for a guy going through puberty, with all the changes and emotional storms.

Yes, we have learned about emotional storms, this past year in particular.

We have also learned about growing chin hair (he was all jokingly excited to show off the three chin hairs he has grown).

That's awesome amber. Good job Gabe!