Random health and exercise thoughts

1. general physical preparedness

3. i disagree with this based off my personal experience, i operate much better at or above maintenance (n=1 yea yea)
4. i also disagree with this, but it depends greatly on the person. im hungover if i eat like ****. i eat a lot (at least 1g protien/bw) but clean (and i rarely eat salads)

as far as more cardio, if you are already doing max efffor your body doesnt need the added stress of distance running or hiit. unless you are sleeping (and eating) a lot, this isnt effective in the long term.

Originally Posted by TrH

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One sets goals and then works to accomplish them. For some that means adhering to a restrictive diet, where everything cannot be eaten ad libitum. I do agree that moderation is pretty much key - that is, if you want to maintain weight & body comp. If those need to change, then usually the diet needs to as well. Self-torture... no.
of course. but some of the **** talked about in this thread can only be described as sophisticated forms of self-abuse.

Originally Posted by jarude

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yeah **** doing stuff for personal gratification
come on now. you know damn well that I'm not advocating working towards goals. its this contrived regimented dieting that some of you guys are talking about. its silly.

Originally Posted by not_a_virus.exe

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2. why not just condition yourself with a conditioning weight training routine? i do agree conditioning is helpful, and i don't ever recall advising against conditioning.
I think conditioning as an afterthought would help with a normal weight routine, instead of conditioning with weights ala kettlebells. True say, I think I have a hair-trigger response to anyone involved in weightlifting who says anything bad about cardio in general

Originally Posted by Rambo

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come on now. you know damn well that I'm not advocating working towards goals. its this contrived regimented dieting that some of you guys are talking about. its silly.
Still, the best way to reach those goals, say if they're bodyfat% oriented, is a regimented diet. Sucks yeah, sustainable no, but ya gotta grind through it

jarude, explain to me what the heck GPP is lol. it's not a new fad fitness program, is it? if not, i think we may actually be on the same page, but you're calling what is i already implicitly recommend as "GPP." jaydc7, it's true that you will have more ENERGY the closer you eat at maintenance due to higher and faster replenished glycogen levels. also, theoretically, there may be a caloric requirement to optimally grow muscle (this requirement is somewhere below maintenance), but even if that theory is true, we still don't know how much of a difference this optimal caloric level makes. the truth is that when it comes to building muscle, there's still a lot of stuff we don't know (don't let anyone else tell you that we have muscle building down to an exact science) mainly because it's so difficult to test, measure, and study the complexity of muscle synthesis (don't confuse surrogate endpoints with actual results). practically speaking, whatever extra gains you get from eating closer to maintenance is probably not much, but what we do know for a fact is that eating above maintenance (a.k.a. "bulking") provides no extra benefit (unless you consider getting fat a benefit lol). even more practically, if you're trying to lose fat and grow muscle at the same time, there's no reason why you can't, but if you believe in the theory above, yes, you would have to decide between losing fat faster or growing muscle faster. if you believe in this theory and you already have the body fat level you want, just eat at maintenance and you'll have more than enough calories to optimally grow muscle. from personal experience, i gained 3 inches in my shoulder circumference in several months while eating at an average of 1400-1600 calories a day. could i have gained more if i ate closer to maintenance? maybe, maybe not. it's just an unproven, but credible, theory at the moment.

GPP is General Physical Preparedness !!

i know what it stands for now, but still have no clue what it is lol!!!

It's not a program or anything its just your baseline fitness level and can be achieved through hiit etc...

Crossfit is a good example of a style of routine that has GPP elements. Not saying CF = GPP... GPP is like your overall level of strength, fitness, endurance, conditioning etc. Its commonly lumped in with conditioning

Originally Posted by not_a_virus.exe

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it's mostly psychological. you won't know until you try it though. right now, you're too psychologically afraid to even try it.

I did a pretty big cut earlier this year (15lb)... it was absolutely brutal.

Originally Posted by not_a_virus.exe

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try making fat loss a sprint rather than a jog (no pun intended) so you get it over with quicker. also try eating just once or twice a day. you can also look into intermittent fasting (glad someone here brought that up). it's harder to blow over your calories in one meal than over 3 or more meals. once you reach your goal, you can back to eating at maintenance. the nice thing about having a six pack is that you only need to look in the mirror and if you see your six pack disappearing you know it's time to eat less donuts.

There's no quick way to lose 15-20lb (1-2lb a week), which is what I think I'd have to do to get to a level of leanness that I want. I definitely will try IF when the time comes to cut, though, again, it's pretty much torture.

Originally Posted by not_a_virus.exe

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if you genuinely enjoy cardio, i think you're lucky. just be careful that all that exercise doesn't actually make you eat more (exercise can increase your appetite).

whatever works for you is the best system (and usually, that is the simplest system with the least amount of rules). i just hate it when people think cardio is the ONLY way when in fact, for most people, cardio is actually the worst way to lose fat (would you rather not spend 5 minutes eating that 1000 calorie burrito or would you rather spend 3 hours running off those 1000 calories?).

Cardio is def not for everybody. But I watch my weight pretty closely, and have a handle on my calories for the most part... so I should be OK.

Originally Posted by not_a_virus.exe

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if you genuinely enjoy cardio, i think you're lucky..

This is something i take issue with.



It's like a ********* saying "O you're so lucky that you like broccoli and chicken breast! Unfortunately chocolate cake is the only thing that satisfies my taste buds!"


I ******* hate doing fitness work when i'm unfit. But you have to do the work to get there. No other way around it.


i love being fit, and i love the feeling of achievement and the high you get post-cardio workout.

i was just trying to make a point that cardio is not necessary for fat loss. if it's part of your goals to have higher endurance, i think it's great. i just see so many people with misled and/or unrealistic expectations with cardio. as for the above posts about conditioning, i think it's good to mix up your regiment with different training styles. i also think a better conditioned body is a great goal.

Originally Posted by Cool The Kid

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I did a pretty big cut earlier this year (15lb)... it was absolutely brutal. There's no quick way to lose 15-20lb (1-2lb a week), which is what I think I'd have to do to get to a level of leanness that I want. I definitely will try IF when the time comes to cut, though, again, it's pretty much torture. Cardio is def not for everybody. But I watch my weight pretty closely, and have a handle on my calories for the most part... so I should be OK.
you can lose 1-2 pounds of fat a week. it'll just be even more brutal than your 15 pound loss lol. i think the most important lesson with IF is that you learn that you don't need to eat every 2-3 hours. most people eat when they don't even feel hungry, but they eat anyway because either it's "lunchtime" or because if they don't, they think their metabolism will plummet (lol i can't believe so many people believe this). equally offensive is how people think breakfast is the most important meal of the day (this must be a big victory for cereal and oatmeal companies lol). on the pragmatic side, fasting for 24 or however many hours just lets you eat more of what you want to eat on your eating days (it's psychologically easier to not eat for 24 hours than to try to convince yourself that you're only gonna eat 400 calories today). not that you couldn't eat what you wanted before, but you just can eat more of it. the idea is to try to give you more freedom to eat and worry less about calorie counting. ultimately, it's just one of many techniques to control your eating. also, when you do binge (it happens to everyone, plus, when you're with friends, you don't want to alienate yourself with anti-social eating habits), you can fast the day after your binging (or if you know you're gonna binge on a certain day, also fast the day before - if you don't want to fast, you'll just eat less calories on the days before and after). bottomline: your body can't get fat from just a day of overeating, so calories should be counted on a weekly rather than a daily basis.

Originally Posted by not_a_virus.exe

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i was just trying to make a point that cardio is not necessary for fat loss.

if it's part of your goals to have higher endurance, i think it's great. i just see so many people with misled and/or unrealistic expectations with cardio.

as for the above posts about conditioning, i think it's good to mix up your regiment with different training styles. i also think a better conditioned body is a great goal.

Yeah but I cannot comprehend not caring about endurance. I realize I should care more about my sprint speeds, but I love working on both strength and aerobic power.

Originally Posted by Kajak

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Yeah but I cannot comprehend not caring about endurance. I realize I should care more about my sprint speeds, but I love working on both strength and aerobic power.
my goal is to look better by attaining a shoulder-to-waist ratio of 1.62 while having a six-pack. endurance is not required. most people exercise to look better but won't admit it. if exercising didn't make you look better, would you still do it? those who are the exception and do it for the functional training have different goals, but otherwise, most people actually have the same goal but have no plan whatsoever on how to achieve it, let alone even know what looking better actually looks like. moreover, many of these same people believe you have to do a lot of unnecessary stuff...like cardio, eat every 2-3 hours, take a post-workout whey protein shake, etc. etc. etc. if i haven't worked out for a long time and suddenly dive into it, i can be so sore that i can't lift weights for a week. that kind of intense DOMS is a lack of conditioning. it doesn't mean i have to embark on some new conditioning program. in my case, i kept at my 4 workouts a week regiment and eventually, i was conditioned through repetition to not have any problems with 4 workouts a week. it all depends on what your goal is, how important it is to you, and how quickly you want it. and yes, becoming fit and healthy is a natural byproduct of developing an attractive body. after reaching my goal, i may choose a new one(s), like maybe endurance, better overall conditioning, strength, speed, etc.

Originally Posted by not_a_virus.exe

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most people exercise to look better but won't admit it. if exercising didn't make you look better, would you still do it? those who are the exception and do it for the functional training have different goals, but otherwise, most people actually have the same goal but have no plan whatsoever on how to achieve it, let alone even know what looking better actually looks like.

People absolutely lose sight of their goals when it becomes a hobby.

I have 2 good mates who initially took up lifting to look good.

Now they're both >100kg and won't lose weight because they "don't wanna get small". It's also likely that they just can't be fucked with dieting.

In the end massive arms don't look good unless you're also lean. They need to stop worrying about their biceps shrinking and get focused back on their original goals.