Exercise enthusiasts and wannabees only !!!

[the harp unstrung]

Dave's Killer Bread is, In Fact, Killer!
It's been available in GA for about a year…worth Every penny…

and, yeah, his story is remarkable, and when we learned about the company's commitment to hire ex-prisoners, it jump started our commitment to Always having a loaf of DKB around.

 

[two fingers]

So this Summer is/was a blur. Weird vacation schedules, weird daily "routine" with one kid in volleyball three days a week, one kid in karate two days a week, a wife playing volleyball two nights a week, full-time jobs and a band. For about a month, I've been on a nutrition roller coaster. I'll do intermittent fasting during work weeks, then eat garbage all weekend. I celebrated my 50th birthday for about two weeks (not because I'm full of myself but because people kept coming into town to celebrate with me). So I had lots of meals out and WAY too many cakes lying around the house. This weekend I completely blew it out... odd eating schedule, too many sweets, etc. But I told myself that the party was almost over.

It's time to get back on the wagon. Low carb with intermittent fasting for the foreseeable future. I've got some minimal workout equipment in my office. I'll be doing some situps and pushups here. I have resistance bands for other exercises. I love to kayak. And I've been doing a silly looking (yet effective) standing row in my pool. I literally stand in the shallow end and use my paddle to row both forward and backward. It grabs just about every muscle in my body and forces it to get involved.

The best news???? My company's gym shut down completely right after COVID hit. And it's supposed to open back up any time now! (They were running bloated and in a financial/budget mess anyway. So reorganizing was needed to begin with. COVID just pushed them off the cliff.) Right before COVD I was in just about the best shape of my life. Being only a couple hundred yards from my office, that gym was just too easy to hit right after work before picking up my girls. I can't wait to get back in there!

 

[scott sinner]

Timely thread for me.

I definitely gained a pandemic 5 pounds. Never had a big weight problem in the grand scheme of things, but I feel like, in my mid 40s, I gotta nip this now or it will be harder to deal with later.

I'm also motivated recently when I was checking my wife out...she's like, gone the other way in the pandemic. Eating better because of home cooking and gardening. She's below what she was before we met 12 years ago, and pre-kid, and she was never big.

So I've been jogging almost every day for a few weeks. Haven't seen a big change, but damn it feels good. Feeling strong and alert, sleeping better.

 

[Briton]

If you are looking to lose weight then I would forget about diets and calorie counting and concentrate on 16/8 Intermittent Fasting and good excersize like 30 minute HIIT sessions on a excersize bike indoors. IF is the best way to lower insulin and lose weight.

 

[Clank Plank]

Not worried about losing weight.

Im currently about 282, but at 6'5" and with a 55" chest, 36" waist and 19.5" pipes I'm quite happy.

Still lifting heavy in my 50's, but no splits and every Sunday off.

Cycle about 150 milea a week 2, and my pulse os high 40's at rest, low 40's asleep, so im pretty happy with that too.

Aside from taking longer to heal from injury im as mighty as ever!

 

[MJ5150]

I only started losing weight when I stopped trying and instead started nourishing my body with the things it needed, not what I wanted. Which included intermittent fasting.
So far, 107 pounds disappeared from my body and I don't have a workout or exercise problem regularly. I do hike and swim quite a bit and just purchased a pair of adjustable dumbbells. I'm not interested in joining a gym to workout and there's no room in our tiny home for lots of workout equipment.

-Mike

 

[Briton]

I only started losing weight when I stopped trying and instead started nourishing my body with the things it needed, not what I wanted. Which included intermittent fasting.
So far, 107 pounds disappeared from my body and I don't have a workout or exercise problem regularly. I do hike and swim quite a bit and just purchased a pair of adjustable dumbbells. I'm not interested in joining a gym to workout and there's no room in our tiny home for lots of workout equipment.

-Mike

Good job!.......Gym memberships are a waste of money, all you need to fork out for is a set of dumbbells and an excersize bike. Intermittent fasting costs nothing!......Keep it Up!

 

[FilterFunk]

Not worried about losing weight.

Im currently about 282, but at 6'5" and with a 55" chest, 36" waist and 19.5" pipes I'm quite happy.

Still lifting heavy in my 50's, but no splits and every Sunday off.

Cycle about 150 milea a week 2, and my pulse os high 40's at rest, low 40's asleep, so im pretty happy with that too.

Aside from taking longer to heal from injury im as mighty as ever!

You, sir, are a very impressive physical specimen! And that pulse rate is something else! My lowest resting pulse rate ever was in the low 50s, which I took right after waking up. And this was before I sat up, so I hadn't moved except to put my fingers to my neck.

 

[Clank Plank]

A couple of years back I had a really bad cold and while I slept my Garmin watch recorded 35bpm, which worried me a bit at the time.

But I love clangin' and bangin', me versus gravity, me versus my own limits. It's a very meditative experience.

 

[Clank Plank]

Double workout today. Back and chest day at the gym, and then home to spend all day working on converting one of my garages into a gym.

I always thought I had a good grip (about 90kg, pretty crushing) from years of hauling olympic bars, but a day on the tools has left my hands aching.

 

[dwm74]

I haven't been able to post much at all here since April. Every time we get a server update at work it adversely affects TalkBass for some unknown reason. And then today, voila!, everything was working.

I'm still managing to stay at ±205, but frustrating that I'm not losing since I'm doing even more cardio than ever. Averaging about 90 minutes a day, seven days a week (treadmill/spin bike/rowing machine). Been trying to include another 20-25 minutes of strength training most days, but there's only so much fuel in the tank. Especially during the workweek when I adhere to an IF plan, only eating dinner, and that's after an 11hr workday followed by at least 60' of cardio. Then I'll do more biking/lifting a couple hours after dinner. But I've been plateauing longer and more often than I'd like...can't seem to drop any more lbs.

 

[Briton]

You need to change your routine if you have reached a plateu. Change your IF schedule for a couple of days or don't do any IF for a couple of days and binge. The problem with IF for some people is that your body adapts to it and a plateu occurs so you need to keep tricking your body by doing something different.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

The other thing about IF and plateaus is that ultimately, at some point, the idea is to plateau. If you are doing IF (I have been doing 14/10 for years) and not seeing any results, it might be good to look at what you're putting in during your "on" period.

 

[TOOL460002]

Started the IF thing in April (12-7pm), but added breakfast (banana/Greek yogurt) last month. Tweaked an old back injury, so exercise has taken a backseat to ice/rest. Keeping a consistent diet has kept me not just stable, but as of today, I am exactly 64.1lbs lighter than I was March 31st.

Paradoxically, I have also consumed more chocolate in these past months than the past several years. Found the healthiest brand. It's 72% cacao and has very few ingredients. My only cautionary tale there is to never, ever consume anything with erythritol. It's not "sugar-free Haribo gummy bears bad," but certainly not an experience I would wish upon anyone.

Lots of inspiring and helpful stuff in this thread, and hopefully I can post again when I am no longer considered overweight. That's a dozen pounds at the moment. It was also originally my year-end goal for 2023. Probably would've been healthier, but I know myself well enough to keep a good thing going.

 

[Clank Plank]

I'm having this week off to give my joints a rest, as I very occasionally do. I feel that I need it, and no point just pushing through until I injure myself and have to take months off instead.

 

[MJ5150]

I don't concern myself with the scale or weight loss. The pounds keep falling off as I go about eating right for my body, hiking, and swimming.
It's great and all that I weigh less, but I'm more happy I can get up from a chair without assistance, I can hike seven miles, with a 3,000 elevation gain in two of those, without trouble, or that I can smile and enjoy life knowing I am properly caring for my gut biome. That's a great feeling for me. If I lose weight too, that's an added bonus.
I tell all my friends who want to know my 'secret' to not worry about the scale. The scale will take care of itself.

That's a great idea @Clank Plank to give your body a week off. It will surely reward you for taking such good care of it.

-Mike

 

[TOOL460002]

I don't concern myself with the scale or weight loss. The pounds keep falling off as I go about eating right for my body, hiking, and swimming.
It's great and all that I weigh less, but I'm more happy I can get up from a chair without assistance, I can hike seven miles, with a 3,000 elevation gain in two of those, without trouble, or that I can smile and enjoy life knowing I am properly caring for my gut biome. That's a great feeling for me. If I lose weight too, that's an added bonus.
I tell all my friends who want to know my 'secret' to not worry about the scale. The scale will take care of itself.

That's a great idea @Clank Plank to give your body a week off. It will surely reward you for taking such good care of it.

-Mike

100% with you on gut biome/nutrients. Do you tend to keep to the same foods or mix it up? Like all diet stuff you hear it both ways and it's ultimately a little different for everyone, but your success and current state of mind/fitness cause me to value that opinion more than others.

 

[MJ5150]

100% with you on gut biome/nutrients. Do you tend to keep to the same foods or mix it up? Like all diet stuff you hear it both ways and it's ultimately a little different for everyone, but your success and current state of mind/fitness cause me to value that opinion more than others.

I have some core ingredients from the two veggie groups we pull from, but mix it up. Microbial diversity is important to gut health. My last score on the Shannon Diversity Index was 3.96. Max is 4.75, so I have room for improvement.
The challenge I face is the older I get, the less interested I am in trying new foods. I know what I like and prefer to stick with what I know. However, the wife and I have been doing good about introducing something new at least every couple weeks.

-Mike

 

[MJ5150]

Thoughts from y'all on fitness trackers/smartwatches/GPS?
I was looking at the fenix line from Garmin. I have a Fitbit Charge HR, but since we are doing extended hikes and I am swimming now (the Charge HR is not approved for swimming), it is time to upgrade.
I'm fairly certain I don't need one of the solar devices, although the Instinct Solar includes some of the features in the fenix series, but leaves out one thing I don't care about that the fenix offers, music.
Seems like I could get in on some of the advanced fenix features with the less expensive Instinct Solar.

-Mike

 

[hbarcat]

I recently figured out a way to get some semi-regular exercise and also solve a difficulty involving my recreative choices.

I recently got one of those little plastic boats that I intend to use for fishing on small local lakes and I've been dreading spending money on an electric trolling motor and deep cycle battery, plus acquiring a boat title and paying for the yearly registration fee.

Until I learned that, in my state, a boat as small as this, as long as it's unpowered, is exempt from needing a title and registration. So, I decided that I'm going to be doing a lot of rowing and paddling the rest of this summer.

I'm fully aware of what I'm getting myself into, as I have decades of experience paddling rowboats and canoes, while fishing or just exploring the waterway. The only difficulty is strong winds. It gets difficult to paddle against a stiff wind, and it gets exponentially more difficult as the wind speed increases.

My goal is to get 3 days a week in the boat for at least 2 hours each day, weather permitting, and I'd like to be able to keep it up into October.

This is a type of exercise that I actually enjoy. One of the few silver linings of the pandemic is the amount of time I've been spending in nature compared to before.