Official Giant Bomb Fitness Thread

@kill: What is this Fitocracy thing and how can I get in on it? I can't check out the site on my phone right now.

I broke my foot a few weeks ago right before I was gonna start a regular routine. I'm closer to being able to exercise again.

Fitocracy is a social media/RPG lite website based around fitness. You track your exercise and receive XP towards levelling up. You can complete quests for more XP or aim for Xbox-style achievements based on feats of strength or cardio-based fitness. The official Giant Bomb group has quite a few people in it but is fairly quiet these days. The challenge group is purely for creating a monthly challenge for other Bombers, it can be motivating to have some competitiveness when it comes to fitness.

You can download the free Fitocracy app on your phone if you want to check it out, it only takes a second to make an account.

My biggest issue with fitness things is there's rarely any tips on how to gain weight, everyone is so obsessed with being skinny, they never spare a thought for the skinny people wanting to be chubs

GOMAD

I need to eat way more food. The problem is that the food costs money. Be poor. That is my solution to overweight.

@kill: that seems pretty crazy, I moved onto whole milk a year or so ago to try and gain, but I drink nowhere near that. I don't eat much due to lack of appetite, but milk I could do.
Thanks, I'll start drinking more to see how it goes :)

If you taper up slowly like the StrongLifts site suggests, your appetite will adjust to the increased calories and you'll start putting on weight. I gained from 63kg to 71kg in a handful of months by drinking whole milk and making sure to eat every few hours.

Managed 3 litres today, most of that was combined with oats.
I found that I get kinda sick drinking so much plain cold milk, but I dump a pint in a pan, throw in some porridge oats, maybe half a mug, let it warm up for a few minutes, not long enough for the oats to soak it up and become actual porridge, just adds some flavour and probably calories to the milk.

Also warm milk is way more appealing to me now, I see why Ryan Davis did what he did.

@kill: Saw that you duders put together a group on Fito -- just joined today.

Ok dudes, I've got a question. Right now I'm hovering between 210-204 lbs and have been for about two weeks. That's pretty normal for me. It seems like I stay at a weight for a few weeks to a month and then drop a ton of weight all at once. I'm also seeing a lot of gains both in how I look and how clothes fit. So I know what I'm doing is working.

But I figured it wouldn't hurt to actually track my diet rather then just assume I've got things under control So I downloaded an app for my phone, gave my weight, height, and age, and specified that I would like to lose 1.5 pounds per week. It stated that I should try to eat 2,080 calories in a day. Today I ate 2,160 calories. I apparently burned 869 calories. On this app it says that I have 789 calories remaining for this day.

With all that data in mind, is there a possibility that I'm eating less than I should?

I cycle a mile, dump my bike at a friend's house and walk an additional mile to my PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC LEARNING CENTER and back almost every day. Done it 8 times out of a possible 10 (the weather only just got dry/warm enough) and I feel great.

My life was missing a bit of non-weightlifting exercise. I don't run out of breath so easily and my mood is a lot better.

Soon I'll be done with education and I'll have nowhere to cycle. This disheartens me.

Tomorrow I am running my third marathon. Timewise I am feeling good, for my training, the slowest pace would lead me to 1 3:05 time. I would love to break 3 hours. I will let everyone know tomorrow.

And to everyone who wants to lose weight, I lost 80 pounds in high school by cutting junk like soda and limiting sweets and chips and running each day for a little bit. Just keep running, it doesn't have to be fast and you will start to see results. Just stick to it and you will be happy with how you look and feel!

5-3-1 from Jim Wendler, works like a charm for me. I do the "boring but big" variation that adds extra reps with less weight to help build tone. 4 days a week, with good variations and assistance exercises, leads to excellent pure strength. I'm pretty happy with my current weight so I usually just supplement my work outs with ON whey protein shakes, I'm not trying to get huge. I usually add 20-30 minutes of some kind of cardio or yoga type exercise afterward to keep myself from becoming too one dimensional.

Thought I might as well join in.

Used to lift for football, nothing crazy - bench, deadlift, cleans and squat as the core exercises.

I don't play anymore so I'm idling a lot more than I'd like and my fitness has tanked. Add to that knee issues which mean that my squat is near non existent now.

Thanks for the free motivation

Ran my third marathon. I did it in 3:09. I thought I would do better since I trained at a faster pace and was not sore or out of breathe during it, but I hit a wall at mile 18 and slowed down quite a bit. I was at the halfway point and was at 1:29 leading me to my goal time of under 3 hours. I am disappointed but my friends and family are helping me realize how great I did anyway. I expected more from myself but at the end of the day, no one really wins a marathon, you just do a little less worst each time.

Anybody else deep in a summer shred? I've dropped about 20lb since February. I'll probably keep it up until late July because I'm too broke to be eating enough to gain muscle.

Hope all your fitness goals are going well, Bombers!

It's up to you I suppose.

A higher deficit means faster weight loss, not sure if any risks are involved though.

Then again i'm no health expert, you could be not feeding your self enough!

So I've found out this new phenomena about losing weight. About 9 months ago I started exercising and eating better. At the time I was 250 pounds and had a 38 inch waist (I'm a little over 5'11). Right now I'm 185 pounds with a 32 inch waist. So I consider myself pretty average in size and weight. My goal was to reach 180 by the end of the year so I'm almost there.

I'm not over exercising or over dieting or anything. I'm running 2.5-3.5 miles 6 days a week and go on a 10 mile walk on one day. I strength train 3 days per week. I eat around 1800-1950 calories daily of healthy foods. I think that I'm living a healthy lifestyle and will likely continue doing this. I didn't go on a diet or start some temporary workout routine to lose weight so that I could go back to sitting around and eating bad foods again. I changed how I approach eating and exercise on a daily basis for the rest of my life for the time being (until it is too hard to do so when I'm an angry old man).

I've tried to explain this time and time again to a select few of my family but I still get the 'you're losing too much weight and have to stop!' or 'you look anorexic!' or 'you look skinny!'. Funny how I never heard any of these people say 'you look unhealthy and much too large!' when I was very overweight.

So who else has had this happen to them? How did you deal with it? So far I've been telling them not to worry about it, it's my body and I'll decide what to do with it, and that if you think I look anorexic you clearly don't know what an anorexic person looks like. But those things probably aren't all that helpful.

Samething happened to me aswell. When I was 330 pounds my family told me ''You need to get in shape and stop being such a fatass''. Now that I've lost 113 pounds and now weight 217 pounds. My family now tells me ''You lost too much weight, put some back on you look unhealthy.'' In the end their opinions don't matter to me. At the moment I have a goal to improve my body for the better, and I don't care what people has to say about it.

I'm all in it to make some solid gainz. I want to have a vascular aswome muscular body. If I'm going to fuck a chick I want to have something to show, and I'm willing to put the hard work in to achieve it.

Watching fitness vids gives me extra motivation.

@falserelic:

You know, I didn't really want the vascular look exactly I just wanted to be healthy. But now I have veins showing all over. Which my family believes is a sign of anorexia too. Ugh.

I started seeing mine when I lost abunch of weight, but I like it makes me feel like I'm getting strong. Sense I'm 6'2 and have noticeable muscle its a nice look for me.

As for the anorexia I've seen alot of people like that in the gym. People that have no muscle, low body-fat and look like a human skeleton. I'm sure your body is nowhere near that level.

Hurt my wrist a month or so ago, it's mostly healed now. Time to get back to it.

I just wanna put on weight ;_; I lift 5kg dumbells and do ab exercises for about half an hour every morning. And I try to eat lots. But i'm as fucking skinny as ever. I'm 21 years old now. Any hope for me? ;_;

I do not have a work out routine, I need to set one hope.

Hey guys, thought I'd bring this thread back to ask for some advice. A little over a year ago I decided to exercise as a well to help with alcohol cravings. That way, I could lose the excess weight I had gained while drinking and work through cravings keeping clean. I had started out weighing nearly 250 pounds (I'm 5'10) and am now down to 180 pounds. Right now I tend to change my workouts every other month. Every month I do two days of weight training for my upper body working opposite muscle groups (so chest, shoulders, and biceps one day and triceps and back the other). Every other month I run 2-5 miles two-three days a week and the other months I do leg strength training 2-3 times per week. My diet is pretty balanced, with most of my food being homemade, and around 1700-1900 calories per day unless I decide to take a day off and eat like shit. But lots of fruit, salads, whole wheat, lean meat. Also a ton of water, tea, coffee, and I use milk to go with foods to add protein.

Clothed, I look like a fairly fit, athletic guy with big shoulders, a big chest, and big legs. But shirt off, though I think I still look relatively athletic, I have a lot of stubborn fat particularly around my stomach. Granted I don't do any abdominal exercises so that might be a big piece I'm missing. But what else could I do to get rid of this stubborn crap?

@jasonr86: I think the term that people use to describe that are love handles. I think you can try searching online to learn how to get rid of that though for the most you have most of it covered. I'm guessing maybe try not to eat too late or try eating early (around 5 pm) and then working out in the evening if that's possible. And try adding in more ab exercises. Just curious do you also do exercises that target your obliques?

Also just so you know, you're in a much better shape than I am. Hehe! I weight about 188-190 now but I'm 5'7". I only got back to working out fairly recently after stopping around 5 years ago but I'm mostly focused on low impact (I've got knee problems) and cardio for now and not too much strength training.

@gaspower:

Yeah, I read that increasing strength training is a good way to tighten up skin and burn the extra fat so I'm trying to really focus on adding more and more weight and pushing myself where before I focused more on cardio. I need to focus on abs more I just run out of time during the weekdays and I really like not lifting a finger or using my brain at all on weekends because man that feels good. I think I hit the obliques when I do my pull ups but I don't have a dedicated exercise. I should probably do that too.

Thanks for the advice. I'm glad you're getting back into it. It's strangely addictive especially when you see results. When I first started my exercise was walking a mile three days per week and simply by not drinking my calorie intake wa less out the gate. It sorted of slowly escalated from there.

@falserelic: I've noticed that too, I still think I i could lose another 5 or 10 pounds , im 6'1 and 167 at moment. I think the difficult thing for family members is wanting to control how much weight loss success ya have. I would almost say these people tossing around anorexia 9 times out of 10 aren't qualified to make that diagnosis beyond sensationalism from sources like Dr. OZ . This week marks my first year since I started taking my health seriously. I'm hoping by next year i can feel like I've hit where i want to be. Should be feasible if i can avoid amateur mistakes i made this first year while learning about how to exercise correctly.

Hmmmm... gallon of milk a day sounds like something I should try. Seems crazy, but I'll try. Also, shit, that's like 60 bucks a month, or more, right? I haven't bought milk in awhile, but I'm pretty sure a gallon of whole milk is like 2 bucks or more. One more expense I can't afford right now. Guess I'll go back to eating tree bark and fried rat.

A gallon? I have like one to three glasses per day. A gallon...is a lot.

...unless you're kidding.

You're probably kidding. Right?

@jasonr86: Doubt he's kidding there's a diet called GOMAD (Gallon of Milk A Day) that is used for people trying to gain weight and bulk up.

http://www.jcdfitness.com/2010/04/gomad-gallon-of-milk-per-day-is-it-for-everyone/

I'm 199 or 198 now. Last year was abit of a pain since I was working alot, but this year I've started a new workout plan and not eating too much bad foods. Last year I've made some mistakes where I wasn't making progress, but since I've changed my routine it's been helping me for the better. Anyway, just keep moving forward with your weight goals until your satisfied, I wish you the best of luck with a smile.

LOL! Drinking a gallon of milk would probably make you throw up. On top of that you'll be taking in alot of calories, but nice joke regardless. If it's not a joke I wouldn't recommend it at all.

@jasonr86@krevee@falserelic Thank you all for the praises on my excellent sense of humor, but unfortunately I was not joking. Someone posted something about the Gallon of Milk a Day diet in here and thought it sounded appealing. I looked it up, though, and fuck that. First and foremost: I don't have the money. That's like 90 bucks a month if I'm paying 3 bucks for a gallon, which I probably will be. Also, milk turns me into a bottle rocket, but with farts instead of sparks, and I'm already on a high-fiber diet. I'd probably be shitting my pants on the reg.

@armaan8014:

Holmes, drink a lot of whole milk (red cap), put cheese on like everything, and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Go eat Chipotle also and get everything on that bowl, that's easily over 1000 calories.

We should have some basic diet, lifting splits, general fitness advice links stickied to the top of this thread :D

I recently got a Nike+ Fuelband. Anyone know if there is a GB group out there for it?

I didn't know we had a Fitocracy group! Awesome!!!

I work out 4-5 days a week. I jumped on the Dwayne Johnson Hercules workout program and really enjoy it. It's straight forward and with the equipment that I have currently in my home, it works out really well. As far as my diet goes, I don't eat much junk food & fast food as much anymore. I started to cook my meals (both breakfast & dinner) ahead of time so I am never really temped to order in or go to the drive thru.

Haven't been able to work much because of 12 hour shifts on patrol, but I think I leveled out at 300 bench, 375 squats, 400 DL around a year ago.