Regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[LOGiK]

Thankfully I'm still employed and creative enough to make my role needed (we're doing what very few schools are doing and doing live re-airs of classic games starting tonight at 7) so full time I'm still good to go. My part time jobs with the local minor league baseball team is shelved, obviously. Same with freelance gigs doing high school and college basketball, football, baseball around the country. But I still have a steady pay check!

All that matters at the moment. Well, health first, but they go hand in hand. Also it's so healthy to keep busy during this shut down. I tried oil painting, playing wii, playing pc games, watching movies, watching series, going for walks, going rollerblading... I still miss work... no clue why either, very weird. -- Maybe it's my programming kicking in... =P

Networks should just play all games from good seasons during quarantine. Maybe only games where their team wins... I donno... just a way to put a positive attitude in those stuck at home. We of all people know how self destructive this place gets over a loss and even further down the rabbit hole in a schlacking loss.

 

[Mr Jiggyfly]

As someone who lost about 80 lbs, I can tell you that you're right that it is simple, but it is also VERY hard to change those habits. Simple doesn't mean easy.

Even when I have heathy habits, I'm still like a drug addict that craves my fix... pop and pizza.

I have my vices on my cheat day and try not to have like 6 slices... I try to only have 3 slices, but it's always hard... my wife bought those smaller pop cans, so I'm only drinking one of them a week as well.

But I think about pop and pizza almost as much as sex. I have a problem.

 

[LOGiK]

This may be a stupid question... but in my quest for killing time I was looking at the time zones.

Why is Kiritimati 8 am Saturday (+14) right now, but down the ocean block in Honolulu it's 8 am Friday (-10)?

Why is the sunrise over the pacific considered the start of the new day and not the atlantic?

Is it because the american's are considered the 'new world'? Anyone know?

 

[HandshakeLine]

I think it had to be with Greenwich England being the place where time was standardized in the British Empire and then they just empirically observed that the farther East you went from there, the earlier the sun rose. Good question, though.

 

[WayneSid9987]

I lost 60 pounds over 2 years til last summer and i didn't really feel all that great in the mind or body. Was a tough summer for me, actually but since i've put back on 15 to 20, i feel like i'm in my sweet spot. Know exactly my limits on eating and cheat a little here and fast a little there.
Things have been alot better.

 

[LOGiK]

Even when I have heathy habits, I'm still like a drug addict that craves my fix... pop and pizza.

I have my vices on my cheat day and try not to have like 6 slices... I try to only have 3 slices, but it's always hard... my wife bought those smaller pop cans, so I'm only drinking one of them a week as well.

But I think about pop and pizza almost as much as sex. I have a problem.

Sounds like normal healthy human thinking to me.
Who doesn't like soda sex and za

 

[Don'tcry4mejanhrdina]

Even when I have heathy habits, I'm still like a drug addict that craves my fix... pop and pizza.

I have my vices on my cheat day and try not to have like 6 slices... I try to only have 3 slices, but it's always hard... my wife bought those smaller pop cans, so I'm only drinking one of them a week as well.

But I think about pop and pizza almost as much as sex. I have a problem.

Pop is a big problem for a lot of people. My siblings will complain about losing weight while downing 4 cans of pepsi during a single visit. If they did what you do, they'd be good. That's most of their excess fat gone from 1 single change in their diet.

 

[LOGiK]

I think it had to be with Greenwich England being the place where time was standardized in the British Empire and then they just empirically observed that the farther East you went from there, the earlier the sun rose. Good question, though.

Greenwich also makes me think of time zones too.. you may be on to something there. I just mean... you can go east ... ya know... forever... and wind up back in the same place. So they had to pick somewhere as the line... I only did a quick search or two and couldn't find the answer. I may not be phrasing the question correctly.

When I was in the Navy I always wished I'd get my shellback. Unfortunately, I never had that opportunity.

 

[Mario_is_BACK!!]

Twice in my life I've had huge weight drops. Out of high school I became very active and got in to hockey and lacrosse. I dropped about 65 lbs. Then a combo of a car wreck, turning 21, and being a devil-may-care 20+ year old meant by the end of my 20s I had to lose weight. I lost 75 more lbs. Then I started dating my wife. Some relationship comfort and dating/marrying in to a Filipino family saw me put on 50 lbs over seven years. I'm in the process of losing some of it again. I'm okay not dropping 60+. I'm a small guy at 5'6" and I was around 155 and 150 those times I was active and lost weight. I'm currently around 190, already having lost 15 lbs. I want another 15-25 and I think I'm in good shape (literally, figuratively).

 

[LOGiK]

Pop is a big problem for a lot of people. My siblings will complain about losing weight while downing 4 cans of pepsi during a single visit. If they did what you do, they'd be good. That's most of their excess fat gone from 1 single change in their diet.

Pro tip:
If you quit drinking soda pop straight out and replace it with water you will shed weight rapidly.

Also, my mother was an alcoholic for 40+ years and would barely eat anything.. yet she was 250 or so... pretty big. She got sent to the hospital for system failure and had to quit drinking or die... her two options. She surprisingly chose to stop (never thought she would) and over her recovery months lost 100+ pounds. She is back to her original build / mass from when she was 20 years old.

I'm not sure what really happened there, but her body transformed, truly incredible. Didn't even exercise once... shes a recluse. Walking around at around 120 as of recently. 130 pounds from dropping liquor.

 

[Don'tcry4mejanhrdina]

I lost 60 pounds over 2 years til last summer and i didn't really feel all that great in the mind or body. Was a tough summer for me, actually but since i've put back on 15 to 20, i feel like i'm in my sweet spot. Know exactly my limits on eating and cheat a little here and fast a little there.
Things have been alot better.

That's another thing, find what you really want and what feels good for you. If running kills your knees, stop running. If lifting heavy hurts your joints, don't lift so much. If being very lean makes you feel worse, eat a little more and find that sweet spot. I mean, is having abs really going to improve the quality of your life? I for one like being very lean and feel best when I am because I have several back injuries and even carrying around an extra 10-15 pounds makes it significantly worse.

 

[Ogrezilla]

Even when I have heathy habits, I'm still like a drug addict that craves my fix... pop and pizza.

I have my vices on my cheat day and try not to have like 6 slices... I try to only have 3 slices, but it's always hard... my wife bought those smaller pop cans, so I'm only drinking one of them a week as well.

But I think about pop and pizza almost as much as sex. I have a problem.

1 pop a week? I'm happy to have cut back to 1 Coke Zero a day. It's no sugar or calories, so its not bad for weight, but I'm sure it's giving me cancer or something

My biggest problem is snacking though. Mainly when I watch TV or movies. I can sit and play video games or hang out with people and not even think about food, but put a movie on and I am craving whatever the f*** I can get my hands on I only buy snacks in the individual size bags now like you'd pack a kid for lunch. I generally have the willpower to buy the right things, but put a family size bag of chips in front of me and that shit is getting eaten.

 

[ZeroPucksGiven]

How I feel

 

[LOGiK]

Twice in my life I've had huge weight drops. Out of high school I became very active and got in to hockey and lacrosse. I dropped about 65 lbs. Then a combo of a car wreck, turning 21, and being a devil-may-care 20+ year old meant by the end of my 20s I had to lose weight. I lost 75 more lbs. Then I started dating my wife. Some relationship comfort and dating/marrying in to a Filipino family saw me put on 50 lbs over seven years. I'm in the process of losing some of it again. I'm okay not dropping 60+. I'm a small guy at 5'6" and I was around 155 and 150 those times I was active and lost weight. I'm currently around 190, already having lost 15 lbs. I want another 15-25 and I think I'm in good shape (literally, figuratively).

It's horrible isn't it???
I too fell into the softening comfort of fatherhood / family life. Man..... marriage'l kill ya one way or the other =P
I didn't gain weight much, but boy did I get soft and stopped doing a lot of physical activity.

 

[billybudd]

If you want to lose weight, lift some weights. More muscle on your frame=more calories burned every day, including on your off days. Some people don't want to look bulky but lifting weights isn't going to do that for you unless you're REALLY get into lifting weights. It's very, very hard to build bulk muscle.

Oh and fix your damn nutrition. You can't outrun a poor diet. Find good food that you really like and is good for you and cook in bulk so you have healthy options already made for you when you're tired/feeling lazy. Don't starve yourself, EAT. Just eat good, nutritious food that you enjoy. It's so simple. People just need to toughen up their mind and don't avoid something just because it's difficult.

Great stuff. Cardio is wonderful for heart/lungs/endurance, with HIIT being better than steady state (especially when you factor in time as a resource). Cardio as the central pillar of a fat loss strategy is entirely impractical. Even a trivial change, like using wishbone light italian dressing instead of butter for 2 pieces of toast, would be the equivalent of 20 min of LISS. A person eating (edit: a lot of) cookies and iced cream would need to do a triathalon every day (and probably more on top of that) to see the same calorie benefit as someone eating clean and not exercising at all.

To be clear, I'm not saying don't do cardio. Cardio's great. It's just a major misconception that cardio is a good way to get leaner. It's a terrible way to get leaner. Completely inefficient. Do it excessively and you start f***ing up joints, too.

The best cardio is the cardio you can find time to do and don't mind doing. If that's sprints on a hill, great. If that's 30 minutes walking on a treadmill while you watch a TV show, also great. But you do it for your cardiovascular system, not your love handles.

 

[LOGiK]

1 pop a week? I'm happy to have cut back to 1 Coke Zero a day. It's no sugar or calories, so its not bad for weight, but I'm sure it's giving me cancer or something

My biggest problem is snacking though. Mainly when I watch TV or movies. I can sit and play video games or hang out with people and not even think about food, but put a movie on and I am craving whatever the f*** I can get my hands on I only buy snacks in the individual size bags now like you'd pack a kid for lunch. I generally have the willpower to buy the right things, but put a family size bag of chips in front of me and that shit is getting eaten.

Now you gotta try zero coke 1 day and then coke zero the next day and rotate.

I only have pepsi on special occasions... it's like crack to me. I get ramped up and go out of my mind from the sugar and caffeine like a 10 year old. The next day is the worst... hungover and feel weird in the head... slight headachey feeling.

Caffeine itself is a nasty ****ing drug too. Most people don't realize they are severely addicted to it and can not stop their intake.

I don't drink caffeine at all... unless like I said, special occasions... and man.... it was not easy to quit.

I posted before, the massive headaches borderline migraines ... sleepless nights... the spacey head space feeling.... quickly agitated... oh man... caffeine is nasty stuff.

 

[billybudd]

I've done a couple rounds of circuit training with dumbbells but I just don't feel like I get the same workout with those as I do at a gym.


This might have more to do with me losing a few pounds than anything else. Yeah I'm running but I'm just eating less. Not being super strict, though the sweets have really been cut down. But I'm just unintentionally eating less and drinking less.

You don't actually need to eat less. Just different. I was eating quite a bit more on a thousand cal deficit than I was before I fixed my diet. Most people gain fat from empty calories they don't realize they're ingesting. If you drank a 20 oz pepsi and ate a chocolate chip cookie, that does nothing to make you less hungry, but you've basically just eaten the equivalent of a 16 oz sirloin (without any of the benefits).

 

[ChaosAgent]

And as for cardio style - yeah I'm ALL in favor of a 10-15 minute tabata style HIIT burnout. You will burn insane calories in a quicker time. Especially if you go for it.

I agree @ColePens but you can burnout on the Tabata workouts and you can also mentally "burn out" of them after your 10,000th burpee. Just as you can of running. I did the Tabata style stuff for about 3-4 years, ate like absolute shit and was young: didn't gain weight. So it's definitely helpful there. But it does get boring in its own way after a while.

 

[SouthGeorge]

My only tips.. Look big picture and don't cut your calories too much or you will pay for it in the long run. Keep your protein high to maintain muscle while you lose weight. Don't try to cut out carbs, you don't need to. Find good recipes... One day of eating for me. French toast, 1lb of ground beef, cheeseburger flat bread pizza with some of ground beef for day, bag of popcorn, protein ice cream, apple and protein spread. That's like 1.8-2k calories and hits my macros. Need a goal... A lot of people yoyo because they just want to lose weight to fit in clothes or look good then they are like I can eat whatever I want for a year then grind back to this in 1-2 months. Building muscle and weight training is the obvious good goal to have but it could be anything.

 

[ChaosAgent]

Great stuff. Cardio is wonderful for heart/lungs/endurance, with HIIT being better than steady state (especially when you factor in time as a resource). Cardio as the central pillar of a fat loss strategy is entirely impractical. Even a trivial change, like using wishbone light italian dressing instead of butter for 2 pieces of toast, would be the equivalent of 20 min of LISS. A person eating (edit: a lot of) cookies and iced cream would need to do a triathalon every day (and probably more on top of that) to see the same calorie benefit as someone eating clean and not exercising at all.

To be clear, I'm not saying don't do cardio. Cardio's great. It's just a major misconception that cardio is a good way to get leaner. It's a terrible way to get leaner. Completely inefficient. Do it excessively and you start f***ing up joints, too.

The best cardio is the cardio you can find time to do and don't mind doing. If that's sprints on a hill, great. If that's 30 minutes walking on a treadmill while you watch a TV show, also great. But you do it for your cardiovascular system, not your love handles.

I agree that nutrition comes first and foremost. However, I think at an intermediate level or better you need to be visiting the grocery store frequently and stocking up on the good stuff. Neither of which are necessarily advised right now.

So I think doing some running or HIIT to get back to even on CI-CO is perfectly reasonable. Though I do agree with those who have said that exclusively running is a terrible idea given how much it wrecks your joints. Particularly if you live in the Pittsburgh area where you'll be running down hills which are knee destroyers.

 

[Ogrezilla]

Now you gotta try zero coke 1 day and then coke zero the next day and rotate.

I only have pepsi on special occasions... it's like crack to me. I get ramped up and go out of my mind from the sugar and caffeine like a 10 year old. The next day is the worst... hungover and feel weird in the head... slight headachey feeling.

Caffeine itself is a nasty ****ing drug too. Most people don't realize they are severely addicted to it and can not stop their intake.

I don't drink caffeine at all... unless like I said, special occasions... and man.... it was not easy to quit.

I posted before, the massive headaches borderline migraines ... sleepless nights... the spacey head space feeling.... quickly agitated... oh man... caffeine is nasty stuff.

I'm not worried about the caffeine since 1 pop a day is such a small amount. I don't drink coffee or anything else.

 

[ColePens]

Man just some f***ing awesome info being discussed on fitness. @Ogrezilla and his success story proves there is no 1 way to successfully be healthy. @Mr Jiggyfly @billybudd @Don'tcry4mejanhrdina all with amazing science backed posts. Love love love.

Ill leave you with this. I celebrate anything leading to a healthy and safe lifestyle. My brother found running, crossfit, and gymnastics worked for him. I was completely opposite with athletic hiit training mixed with lifting. My brother enjoyed keto. I enjoy int fasting a couple days a week.

We were completely opposite on everything and we both have lean muscle builds PROVING what works for you is best for you. Success can be had in sooooo many ways and it's better to create a sustainable healthy life than it is to fad diet or workout.

 

[Ogrezilla]

You don't actually need to eat less. Just different. I was eating quite a bit more on a thousand cal deficit than I was before I fixed my diet. Most people gain fat from empty calories they don't realize they're ingesting. If you drank a 20 oz pepsi and ate a chocolate chip cookie, that does nothing to make you less hungry, but you've basically just eaten the equivalent of a 16 oz sirloin (without any of the benefits).

the key for weight loss, as far as I know, is all calories. It's easier to lose weight if you eat a good healthy meal of veggies and meat because you will feel fuller than if you have a cookie and pop, but if they are the same calories, won't they have the same impact on your weight? Obviously there are other differences in terms of nutrition.

 

[LOGiK]

I'm not worried about the caffeine since 1 pop a day is such a small amount. I don't drink coffee or anything else.

That's small, yeah.

Really? No caffeine for you? Do you actively avoid it or is it just in drinks you don't enjoy?

 

[Ogrezilla]

That's small, yeah.

Really? No caffeine for you? Do you actively avoid it or is it just in drinks you don't enjoy?

It started because I just hate the taste of coffee. I've tried it a bunch of times and a bunch of different qualities and just hate it every time. But now that I see how much other people rely on it, and how I don't, I just have no interest in ever acquiring that taste. The most enticing thing about it is just having a warm drink in the winter.

That said, it smells so damn good. I like being around other people drinking coffee