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Favorite healthy snack?

Tuna and water 8 50.00%
 
Tuna and water 3 18.75%
 
Tuna and water 5 31.25%
 
Total:16
ganoncrotch said:
ReimTime said:
@ TheProf: Those Tough Mudder's look like lots of fun, but also lots of pain lol. I want to try one someday.

@Ganon: That's good to hear! A huge part of losing weight is honestly changing your eating patterns.


When I was gaming before I had a terrible habbit of leaving snacks near where I played games, replaced those snacks with a fruit bowl for magic results!

Still not just losing weight tho, since I'm coming down from being close to 20st or 127kg I want to keep the muscles I had which let me carry around that big belly :D so yeah been doing some very basic weight training and squats with my 10st wife over my shoulders, she makes for good gym equipment!

You just lose sense of how much you ate while your watching TV or playing video games (if you can free up at least one hand) but it makes food and what your watching a lot more entertaning! It's great that you replaced snacks with fruit because takes a lot will power to get used to natural sugars if you regularly eat sugary snacks.



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Great thread, i am planing to have a cardio on afternoon before finishing my fasting day on Ramadan this month, I am using this chance so i can combine with fasting (diet). and also why i am going on afternoon because it's close to break fast ( if i am doing it on the morning i am afraid i am not going to make it).



ganoncrotch said:
ReimTime said:
@ TheProf: Those Tough Mudder's look like lots of fun, but also lots of pain lol. I want to try one someday.

@Ganon: That's good to hear! A huge part of losing weight is honestly changing your eating patterns.


When I was gaming before I had a terrible habbit of leaving snacks near where I played games, replaced those snacks with a fruit bowl for magic results!

Still not just losing weight tho, since I'm coming down from being close to 20st or 127kg I want to keep the muscles I had which let me carry around that big belly :D so yeah been doing some very basic weight training and squats with my 10st wife over my shoulders, she makes for good gym equipment!


People weights, eh? I like that idea haha



#1 Amb-ass-ador

SvennoJ said:
I'm very much into cycling. It always takes a bit of time to get back into it after winter but last week I was back up to 80km this Friday. Last year I easily did over 4000km total, probably more. Some of my routes are up to 110km, 4 hour ride. I try to go out at least 3 times a week. I'm itching again already, didn't go out this weekend cause of a local 2 day festival with the kids.

I lift weights every other day, just at home. Nothing too fancy, 20, 40 and 60 pound dumbbells. I recently had an injury with 40 pound overhead triceps extensions, dislocated a rib, very painful for weeks. I had been doing those for years, not anymore after that. The nerves in my left arm still haven't fully recovered.

Goal is to stay healthy and it feels good. I'm lucky that I never had a problem with my weight. I only have to make sure I eat enough after cycling for hours, or my bmi will drop under 21.

In winter time I try to keep myself in shape with ddr, kung fu live and dragging the kids on their sleighs through the woods on 1 to 2 hour hikes. Deep snow and hills, that will warm you up fast.

Btw any tips for sore knees from cycling. Sets in between 60 and 80km mark. It's not a big hindrance, yet it's getting more noticeable as the years go by. It's probably because I prefer a low cadence, resulting in a lot of force on the knees.

I quite like riding my bike too. My preference is Mountain Biking, although where I'm from there aren't any mountains for about 1000 km XD. I grew up in the countryside so I would just ride my bike to friends' houses, or to the river to fish, or to the forest to go for walks. It was fun. Now I'm in the city and I don't have the time to ride my bike anywhere, unfortunately. It's back in my University city anyhow. Hoping to get back into cycling.

As for the knee problem, I am not very well versed on kinesiology, so I am not sure what to suggest. Perhaps a spandex knee brace would help? Not too sure.



#1 Amb-ass-ador

Cool thread, I'll start working out again soon, it'll be fun to see other people's progress.



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ReimTime said:

Q: What is the best diet to follow?

A: NONE! Diets plain suck, man. They are temporary and shitty. If you want to eat healthy it is pretty simple; consult a food guide and eat your recommended dosage of each food group (more or less depending on what you are trying to do with your weight) while avoiding excessive consumption of oily foods and refined sugars. You can create your own food plan quite easily. IMPORTANT: Once you have balanced your eating and found out what your body requires, THEN you can consider restrictive eating programs if you so wish.

I thought I'd contribute my own view on this issue.

There are situations where a temporary diet is appropriate. However, any such diet should have two properties: they should be sustainable (which keeps them relatively healthy) and they should be carefully designed for achieving the desired goal in a healthy manner. Most diets, including all of the fad diets, are intended to achieve the goal as quick as possible, which means that health tends to get thrown out, as does sustainability.

My own approach, if the goal is reduction of body fat with minimal impact on muscle, is what I consider to be the simplest and most effective rule of thumb possible... and it's this:

Don't eat empty carbs (much)

Now, you're probably wondering what I mean by "empty carbs". It's simple - don't eat a food classified as a "carb" unless it provides other health benefits along with it. Most fruits have a lot of other vitamins, minerals, etc, that make them great, despite being "carbs". Most vegetables are even better... but stay away from regular potato, it's pretty much nothing but starch. If you want something similar to potato, go with sweet potato (despite the name, it's closer to carrot, and has a lot of benefits similar to those of carrot).

Note that fruit juices are a judgment call, but I'd probably put them in the "empty carbs" category. The fiber is probably the most important part of the fruit, and that gets lost when you juice it.

Other things to keep away from are sugars/lollies/candies, any kind of sweetened water (there is a possible exception, here, for natural, non-caloric sweeteners, like stevia), and a lot of the grains - wheat especially. Rice is a judgment call (personally, when I'm holding myself strictly to this approach, I avoid white rice, but permit wholegrain rice). Some grains, like oats, come with extra benefits (but try to stick with wholegrains, anyway).

Oh, and alcohols are carbs, too. But then, if you want to be fit, I suggest you don't drink (there are a lot of things about alcohol that are counterproductive if you want to be fit). I'm a teetotaller, myself.

Obviously, don't drown your food in oils and fats, but there's nothing wrong with naturally fatty foods - especially things like nuts and meats. Dietary fats are essential to your body, especially for guys (it's a key ingredient for your body's production of testosterone - especially dietary cholesterol... just don't overdo it). Egg yolk is the most nutritional part of egg, and egg white alone has components that can be detrimental to your health unless you eat some yolk with it.

And of course, protein is generally good.

If you're going to go very strict with this approach to eating, then you should allow yourself one "cheat" per week - not only does it allow you to eat one of those foods you like, but aren't permitted, but it also keeps your body from adapting completely. But you only need to go this far if you're aiming for something more than just "healthy maintenance". If you are just wanting to be healthy, and have no specific target in mind, just use the above as a general rule of thumb, allowing yourself a bit of empty carb as needed - just don't have too much.

"Too much", of course, is something you need to judge for yourself, but a good way to think of it is like this - only have potato a couple of times a week, and don't have a lot of it on your plate. Don't refuse dessert when you're out with friends, but keep it small. If you have a deep craving for, say, some ice cream, let yourself have a bit. But not a large amount. And if you splurge once in a while, and have a large amount of empty carbs at one point - don't punish yourself too much, but rededicate yourself for a little while, and eat a bit cleaner for the next week or so to compensate.

For instance, I had some family up that normally live quite a distance away, because of a wedding. The night prior to the wedding, my immediate family had these people around for dinner, and there was dessert. I decided to partake. And I also had dessert at the wedding, of course. So my next week is going to be kept strict.

When I last followed this approach strictly, I managed to lose about 4 kg in 4 weeks (which is right around the optimal healthy rate of fat loss), with no apparent loss of muscle, and lost another 4 kg in the next 8 weeks or so after that, again without any apparent loss of muscle. I got very close to my goal. I've since ignored it, and gradually put on weight (although I think I've gained a fair bit of muscle along the way).

 

One more thing. If you're going to change your diet, it's best to do it in a more gradual way. Want to follow my above suggestions strictly? Give yourself a few weeks lead-in, where you gradually cut back. Sudden changes to diet can cause your body to react as though it's going into a famine - it'll start saving up fat, slowing your metabolism, and will thus be counterproductive. And it'll eat into your willpower as you feel hungrier, and then when you stop following the 'diet', you'll return to your normal eating pattern, but with a slower metabolism, and things will get worse. This is the reason for "yo-yo dieting" occurring the way that it does, and why people who go through it generally get gradually larger/heavier with each cycle.

For those who are curious, I currently weigh about 88 kg. Last time I went strict with my diet, I started at about 82 kg, and worked my way down to somewhere around 74 kg, and I was getting close to the point where abs would start to show. I'm thinking that abs will show somewhere around 78 kg now, due to muscle gains along the way. If people are interested, I'll keep them updated.



ReimTime said:

I quite like riding my bike too. My preference is Mountain Biking, although where I'm from there aren't any mountains for about 1000 km XD. I grew up in the countryside so I would just ride my bike to friends' houses, or to the river to fish, or to the forest to go for walks. It was fun. Now I'm in the city and I don't have the time to ride my bike anywhere, unfortunately. It's back in my University city anyhow. Hoping to get back into cycling.

As for the knee problem, I am not very well versed on kinesiology, so I am not sure what to suggest. Perhaps a spandex knee brace would help? Not too sure.

I've got a great mountain bike trail along the river nearby, hilly terrain, good shade. I got lucky moving to Ontario, awesome trails here all around me.
http://www.brantford.ca/Parks%20and%20Trails%20%20Documents/The%20Hub%20of%20Ontario%20Trails.pdf
2 great lakes, follow the river to the north or head west through rolling fields to a smaller lake. I usually check the wind direction and pick a route that has the wind behind me on the way back. From running into all kinds of wildlife to experiencing the seasons up close, to getting caught in some epic thunder storms, it's always different.

I grew up in the Netherlands so I've always cycled to school. I went to university in Amsterdam, fastest way to get around is on a bicyle. No hills there though, too much rain and way too busy for my liking. Since I've moved to Canada it feels like I'm on a permanent holiday :)
It's great excercise, it's too bad cities in NA don't do more to promote cycling. It would solve a lot of traffic problems as well. 20 minutes cycling to and from school and you practically have your daily excercise accounted for. Here I've got to put my kids on the schoolbus as it's just not safe.



 

Aielyn said:
ReimTime said:

Q: What is the best diet to follow?

A: NONE! Diets plain suck, man. They are temporary and shitty. If you want to eat healthy it is pretty simple; consult a food guide and eat your recommended dosage of each food group (more or less depending on what you are trying to do with your weight) while avoiding excessive consumption of oily foods and refined sugars. You can create your own food plan quite easily. IMPORTANT: Once you have balanced your eating and found out what your body requires, THEN you can consider restrictive eating programs if you so wish.

Snip

Thank you for your contribution, it was a good read. I will update the FAW with a link to your post for added visibility



#1 Amb-ass-ador

SvennoJ said:
ReimTime said:

I quite like riding my bike too. My preference is Mountain Biking, although where I'm from there aren't any mountains for about 1000 km XD. I grew up in the countryside so I would just ride my bike to friends' houses, or to the river to fish, or to the forest to go for walks. It was fun. Now I'm in the city and I don't have the time to ride my bike anywhere, unfortunately. It's back in my University city anyhow. Hoping to get back into cycling.

As for the knee problem, I am not very well versed on kinesiology, so I am not sure what to suggest. Perhaps a spandex knee brace would help? Not too sure.

I've got a great mountain bike trail along the river nearby, hilly terrain, good shade. I got lucky moving to Ontario, awesome trails here all around me.
http://www.brantford.ca/Parks%20and%20Trails%20%20Documents/The%20Hub%20of%20Ontario%20Trails.pdf
2 great lakes, follow the river to the north or head west through rolling fields to a smaller lake. I usually check the wind direction and pick a route that has the wind behind me on the way back. From running into all kinds of wildlife to experiencing the seasons up close, to getting caught in some epic thunder storms, it's always different.

I grew up in the Netherlands so I've always cycled to school. I went to university in Amsterdam, fastest way to get around is on a bicyle. No hills there though, too much rain and way too busy for my liking. Since I've moved to Canada it feels like I'm on a permanent holiday :)
It's great excercise, it's too bad cities in NA don't do more to promote cycling. It would solve a lot of traffic problems as well. 20 minutes cycling to and from school and you practically have your daily excercise accounted for. Here I've got to put my kids on the schoolbus as it's just not safe.

That's another reason why I love cycling so much; I ran into wildlife (not literally) every day, and got to see some great scenery. I grew up in North-Central Saskatchewan (La Ronge first, and then northeast of Prince Albert second) and have since been moving back and forth between Saskatoon and Lethbridge. All have some great trails for biking! I quite like biking to school as well; it keeps all that gas money in my gradually deflating wallet haha.

*edit*

Here is a picture of my late dog Duke (and my hand lol) sitting on the rocky western shore of Lac La Ronge, taking a break from a hike. You can get a vague idea of the scenery you can encouter in Norther Canada through this picture. Will try to find more.



#1 Amb-ass-ador

I've taken up surfing this year to compliment snowboarding in the winter :)
will stick around for this thread i guess

I do a fair amount of weight training on my arms too, 6kg each arm, rep till failure, 5 min rest, rep till failure, 5 min rest, rep till failure a third time, switch arms and repeat, then again in the evening.

When i started out at 6kg failure for 1st, 2nd 3rd were around 15, 8, 5 and now around 85, 70, 60