Troper Fitness Thread

If that is so then where do the whole fruits, veggies and meat come in?

Veggies and fruits have minerals and vitamins that are important to your body mechanics, but are mainly carbs, that will act as fuel for your body mechanism if yenough physical activity and will become fat if not.

Meat are mainly proteins, with are the main components for muscles and aminoacids and fats, that are energy reserves for your body

Macronutrients are fats, carbs and protein. Based on your specific goals, your necessary daily intake of these will change. For instance, if you wanted to gain muscle you would eat more protein, if you wanted to gain weight, you would eat more carbs, stuff like that. Getting the right balance of macros is basically a numbers game since it's based on your daily caloric needs (so say you need to eat 1500 calories a day, from this you can calculate the amount of fat, carbs and proteins you need either based on your height/weight or your current body fat percentage). There is some individual adjustment since everybody's body handles things differently but it's pretty easy to get a starting point and seeing how you need to adjust things based on your own personal metabolism.

Micronutrients are things like vitamins and minerals that your body needs to function properly (such as vitamin A, calcium, dietary fiber, etc). These things are usually found in vegetables and such.

But the types of food you eat are important too. Say I was magically able to match my macro needs based on various Mc Donald's foods. I'd probably be missing a lot of micronutrients from eating Mc Donald's and plus since their food quality isn't the best, I wouldn't get the full benefits (wouldn't build muscle as effectively, wouldn't lose as much body fat, whatever).

A great exercise I just discovered is Russian kettlebells. The nice thing about them is you can do kettlebell swings pretty much anywhere and still get a good workout. The kettlebell swing is also good because it gives you a total body workout but doesn't play hell on your joints.

Kettles are good for strength trainings

OUT, DAMN BELLY FAT! THOU SHALL NOT BE WELCOMED IN THAT BODY! RELEASE ABS!

I hate running and know nothing about it, but been walking around quite a lot during the weekends lately. So I'm thinking of getting myself Zombies Run app. it says that it works with walking, but I wonder if anyone actually tried it

I use NOOM. Its free, measures my distances very accurate, and has a lot of other really cool features.

Well, I'm looking for fun more than for technical details

Then by all means, zombies! :)

For some reason I keep finding myself hungry. Very physically hungry, and very suddenly. That is unusual for me, as I rarely feel physical hunger, even if I skip breakfast and so on. I haven't been restricting food for the last week - in fact, I decided to never do it again. But I wasn't really physically hungry during diet days - deprived of nice things, oh yes, hungry as such - no.

So I wonder what the heck is going on.

So I am gonna be taking a circuit training class in just a little while, in addition to my gym membership.

I am no longer so shy as to avoid beaches. I gotta say, the advice of my therapist is helping - I am starting to feel my dislike for my body image disappearing.

Good on you, mate.

How do you stay motivated for exercise and keep your weight down? I would to exercise but I haven't gotten the motivation for it or even to stop eating junk food. I like pizza, burgers, fries and fried chicken although I don't even them every day, only days where I have money to do so.

Motivation is a passive matter, not active. Large-scale lifestyle changes like adjustments to your diet and exercise habits come with significant costs, such as time, effort, pain, and living with less of your favorite junk foods than you might like. Accordingly, it's up to you to find the arrangement that makes you the happiest.

If you find that a certain level of exercise causes you more stress and pain than the results would be worth to you, you're probably best off cutting back a bit. Same for going on a restrictive diet that ends up being more than you bargained for. Start small, and keep in mind that your happiness is the whole point. Washboard abs and an exceptional bench press won't do you much good if the price is your emotional well-being.

Now. If you take some small steps within your comfort zone, accept the cost, and get used to the changes in your life, then you might find that your preferences change a bit. You'll probably find yourself a bit less interested in food and less apprehensive about exercising. Then you can push things a bit further and expand your comfort zone.

Sooner or later you're going to hit equilibrium; getting a little bit healthier for a little bit more work is going to get less and less appealing until you break even, and it'll no longer be worth it to make sweeping lifestyle changes. When that happens, keep doing what you're doing.

Most people think of healthy food as bland or uninteresting and thus find it difficult to "eat healthy" but I have not found this to be the case for myself. I make the majority of my food, so I can craft it specifically to both my needs and my tastes. I really enjoy the food I make and over the months and years I have lost interest in junk food in general (mostly things such as fast food). Every once and a long while I'll get some kind of junk food for my cheat meal but it's almost always really disappointing. You just have to find foods you like and go from there. It takes a little bit of effort, sure but it's not difficult. I make my own pizza and burgers for example, they are much healthier than what I would get from a fast food place and I enjoy them much more as well.

As far as exercising goes, start off easy to get yourself into the routine. Maybe only do something for 15-30 minutes a day. Even if you don't want to/feel like exercising, just do it anyway, this will help to get you over the inertia of not wanting to exercise. Once you get into the habit, it's much easier to keep up and you probably won't find yourself lacking motivation. And don't expect results super quickly either. Having realistic goals helps to keep one motivated. Sometimes writing things down and keeping track of one's progress is a good motivator for some people.

Like Eg said, you have to find the balance that works for you and make sure you feel like what you are doing is worth the result. Evaluate your goals (try to make it specific; don't just say "lose weight" but say something like "lose 10 pounds by the end of the year" or something) and compare that to how much effort you have to put in/how many changes you have to implement (actual effort put in, not just how much effort you anticipate you'll have to put in). Start by making small changes that are easy to adjust that way you can fine tune it best to your needs and that way you don't get overwhelmed and frustrated.

Without being too militaristic about it, it's a good idea to mentally train yourself not to view food as solely a fun treat. Food is primarily fuel for your body. It's important for food to be tasty and palatable because it motivates us to eat more and therefore not die, obviously. However, in today's day and age, we've conditioned ourselves to view nearly every meal and snack as something to be decadently enjoyed to the fullest extent rather than something to keep us going.

It's not easy, but you can really save your waistline, your health and your wallet by not treating every meal like it's supposed to be an amusement park. I love food, but I often find it best to consume something less than exciting like a piece of chicken breast and some oatmeal or frozen vegetables mixed with beans and rice. It's not a "fun" meal, but I save money, time and my health by not buying fast food whenever I have the munchies.

I believe that breakfast should be your high-calorie, savory meal for the day because you've been fasting in your sleep and you need some high-octane sustenance to prime your body for the rest of the day. It has been observed credibly that people in poor health and those suffering from obesity tend to not have breakfast or they have an insufficient breakfast. Breakfast is the one time of the day where I try to cut loose and load up on protein, carbs and calories. Having a sub-par breakfast has a noticeably negative impact on my ability to get through the rest of the day and it affects my performance during training.

Being athletic is rather hard when you are a foodie

Color me surprised. Is this a sign that basketball will end up becoming an intergender sport? That would be an interesting thing to see.

So I gave birth over a week or so ago. Been trying to head to the gym. Get back in shape and stuff.

edited 18th Jun '14 1:33:30 PM by unnoun

Oh,Congratulations!

It wasn't mine. I was a surrogate for friends. Congratulations are unnecessary. Thanks for the thought though, I guess?

I mean, it's not like you could have known. We just met. It was a reasonable assumption, I suppose.

I've been trying to start with core exercises.

edited 18th Jun '14 2:16:23 PM by unnoun

~Awkward silence. Mrs Ratched goes to try social adecquacy with his plushies~

It's not a problem.

I'm still sorta recovering, so I can't do an intense workout like I'd like to.

The gym was closed today anyway, and the weather wasn't so good.

edited 18th Jun '14 3:04:56 PM by unnoun

Congrats on giving birth. As someone who has done it I know that isn't easy so kudos.

I will also encourage you to hold off on the abdominal work for at least another three weeks. Give your insides time to heal and move back to their normal position. Depending on what kind of labor and delivery you had I would say better to be slow than hurt again or do serious damage.

It's not enough to just feel better, your hormones will need time to readjust too and that can cause problems.

edited 18th Jun '14 6:18:36 PM by Gabrael