Hey, have you been working out?

[Az]

So, after finishing business school, I decided to get back into my army shape, at the very least. I decided to do this for a number of reasons, the strongest being my lack of sex with women when I am fat, and my extensive debauchery when I am fit. Women just want me for my good looks, and I am empty husk of boredom on the inside, I guess. I have started training intensively, and eating a balanced, tightly controlled regimen.

I train 4-5 days a week, in all of them I lift weights, but I concentrate alternately on arms shoulders, and stomache, with the other being, chest, back and legs on the other day. after each training, I do an intensive interval regime on the eliptical.

I eat a miniscule amount of carbohydrates. around 15 grams per day, except the weekend, where I eat only carbohydrates, to replenish my glycogen reservoirs. This diet is amazing.

I have managed to lose 19kgs (42lbs) since mid may, and gain muscle and strength. shirtless pics are due in october.

post your sports and dietary routines here.

[Sirotnikov]

how do you manage not eat carbs?
what do you eat?

[Al B. Sure!]

Azazel, I'm about to go to the gym before it closes so I don't have time but We got to talk about your exercise regimen and what you're doing wrong, buddy.

It's interesting because you're so close to what I'm going to suggest, looks like especially in the diet, but so wrong in the exercise portion.

And what does this mean?

I decided to do this for a number of reasons, the strongest being my lack of sex with women when I am fat, and my extensive debauchery when I am fit.

Several women have told me that I'm the wrong body type for them... some say they prefer big (ie- fat) guys (big huggable teddy bear crap) and others say they only like skinny men. Very few like muscle oddly enough Maybe 'fit' to you is skinny or something?

[Az]

how do you manage not eat carbs?
what do you eat?

Meat, fish, eggs, non-starchy vegies, cheese, especially cottage cheese.
spaghettis, potatoes, and all of that is weekends only.

Sweets only on weekends, and they are preferably fat free.

Al, I am all ears, because you seem to know your stuff, but I know nothing about lifting. ( I know my cardio, though)

Several women have told me that I'm the wrong body type for them... some say they prefer big (ie- fat) guys (big huggable teddy bear crap) and others say they only like skinny men. Very few like muscle oddly enough Maybe 'fit' to you is skinny or something?

I don't know, man. maybe cultural differences, maybe something else. But I can't go skinny. I am very tall, and bald. I have to go swole.

[Flubber]

Several women have told me that I'm the wrong body type for them... some say they prefer big (ie- fat) guys (big huggable teddy bear crap) and others say they only like skinny men. Very few like muscle oddly enough Maybe 'fit' to you is skinny or something?

I call BS if this is happening a lot unless you are viewed as ridiculously overmuscled -- The majority of women I know would not reject a guy for being fit or even very fit if they liked him otherwise

[Al B. Sure!]

AZ, spaghetti and potatoes are all carbs, man. I stay away from the stuff. Because I'm currently concentrating on strength, I do eat a bit more carbs than I should in the form of flatbread wraps and dairy (also fruit).

Overall though, you're on the right track about your diet. I subscribe to a fitness/nutrition philosophy called Crossfit. The nutrition aspect is two(possibly three)-fold... there's Zone which is the idea that the optimum ratio of calories from carbs: fats: proteins should be 40:30:30 and Paleo which is that we should eat like our prehistoric ancestors did; that is the diet that humans evolved to eat (ie- high in meats, vegetables, and fruit with very little carbs; there is also dairy paleo which is paleo but adds dairy). There is also a third concept called intermittent fasting that also represents the eating habits of prehistoric hunters who might go an entire day or more without eating anything but generally this feast or famine idea is thought to lead to increased body fat so it's not generally suggested for everyone; some people do seem to thrive off of it.

As for the fitness aspect, you got to check out Crossfit, the fitness philosophy used explicitly by the Canadian Army and unofficially by the US Marine Corps (our Physical Training Instructors referred to the stuff we were doing as Crossfit but, since it's trademarked, Training Command doesn't use the term officially). What is Crossfit?

The New York Times called it "God's Workout". Here's wikipedia:

CrossFit is a strength and conditioning fitness methodology that promotes broad and general overall physical fitness. CrossFit combines weightlifting, sprinting, and gymnastics.[1] CrossFit says that proficiency is required in each of ten fitness domains: cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination, and accuracy. It defines fitness as increased work capacity across all these domains and says its program achieves this by provoking neurologic and hormonal adaptations across all metabolic pathways.[2][3][4] [5]

CrossFit athletes run, row, jump rope, climb rope and carry odd objects. They frequently move large loads quickly over long distances, using powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting techniques. CrossFit athletes also use dumbbells, gymnastics rings, pull-up bars, kettlebells, and many bodyweight exercises.[6] CrossFit is used in nearly 1,700 gyms worldwide and by many fire departments, law enforcement agencies and military organizations including the Canadian Forces, and the Royal Danish Life Guards.

Crossfit.com hosts a WOD (workout of the day). The WODs are on a 3 days on, 1 day off schedule. Generally, most Crossfitters who follow the offical WOD do 3 days on, 1 active recovery day (ie- jogging, skill work), 3 days on, 1 complete rest day with a light week (in which you do the WODs but at reduced intensity) after every 4 weeks. There are a hundreds of Crossfit affiliates who post WODs online, some of which are geared towards specific applications (ie- Crossfit Football, Crossfit Endurance, Sealfit [which is crazy bad ass]).

Some Crossfit affiliates have broken away from the pack for various reasons, however, including militaryathlete.com and Gym Jones. If Gym Jones sounds familiar, that's because it's where the actors of the movie 300 worked out at to get into Spartan shape.

Now, of course, you don't have to follow the daily WOD but it is highly suggested for beginners (who should actually look for the 'Brandx' scaled difficulty WOD which can be found as a link on the mainpage) at least to learn what good WODs entail and how they should be organized. Once you get a feel for it, you can switch to your own programming, as many Crossfitters do.

The basic belief of Crossfit is that what you're doing with the division into upper and lower days is bullcrap. You know, Azazel, from being in the military, that fitness is full body and that body parts never work in complete isolation.

Think about it... why are your legs getting 1/2 the days of your arms, shoulders, and chest combined? You know that legs are the most important part of your body. You need to be squating and deadlifting far more than benching and bicep curling, man!

Crossfit has its priorities in the right place. I'll give you an example so you understand what Crossfit workouts entail... this is this past week:

Saturday:
6 rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
25 Burpees

Sunday:
Five rounds for time of:
135 pound Squat clean thruster, 5 reps
10 Chest to bar pull-ups

Monday:
Three rounds for time of:
50 Double-unders
25 Wallball "2-fer-1s", 20 pound ball

Tuesday:
Rest

Wednesday:
Snatch, 1 rep (you'd do try get your max here)
Clean and jerk, 1 rep
As many rounds and reps as possible in ten minutes of:
55kg Squat clean, 6 reps
12 Pull-ups
24 Double-unders

Thursday:
Three rounds for time of:
Row 500 meters
30 Box jumps, 24 inch box
25 Back extensions
205 pound Deadlift, 20 reps

Friday:
Five rounds for time of:
5 Muscle-ups
115 pound Overhead squat, 10 reps
15 Toes to bar
20 GHD Sit-ups

Now, as you can see, if you're going to follow Crossfit.com strictly, some of the lifts are technical and you'd need to learn them (I haven't gotten around to some of them myself, for example) and some things like Muscle-ups are incredibly difficult to do (for something like this, you can substitute some pullups followed by dips for each muscle-up).

But also notice the type of work. Saturday's 6 rounds for time of sprints and burpees... that's one that will wear you the hell out. It's for time meaning you're supposed to go balls to the wall. The next day, you're also going balls to the wall for time, but notice, you're knocking out 135lb thrusters and pullups. You generally don't think of yourself getting a cardio kick out of lifting weights and doing pullups... but boy would you find yourself wrong!

See that is something called metabolic conditioning. It's what Crossfit is famous for. You see, by combining high intensity intervals with strength movements, you're training yourself to recover faster, conditioning your metabolism to more efficiently get rid of waste and get your muscles ready for the next exertion. When you do metcon, your muscles are being worked hard but so is your heart and lungs.

Now, this week didn't have any specific strength training and was metabolic conditioning-heavy but you will see some days where you do something like Push Press 5-5-5-5-5 which means you do sets of 5 going up to find your max on that lift. It's not about time. You can take all day on something like that. It's about improving your max lift and being stronger.

Obviously, something like Crossfit Football is geared more towards strength and something like Crossfit Endurance is geared more towards getting better at distance running, rowing, cycling, etc.

As for myself, right now, I'm not doing much Crossfit exactly. I'm doing one of the Strength programs associated with Crossfit called Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe, a Crossfit gym owner and one of the leading figures in the community. It's considered the best way to get stronger and concentrates on only the most basic lifts: squats, deadlift, bench press, and press.

[Al B. Sure!]

I call BS if this is happening a lot unless you are viewed as ridiculously overmuscled -- The majority of women I know would not reject a guy for being fit or even very fit if they liked him otherwise

They must not like me otherwise... explain this to me, then:



I was getting rejected left and right like that. I haven't tried in a while though but I have recently gained almost 30 lbs since that picture was taken by concentrating on strength. I'm up to 217 now. Since I've gained 30lbs in 2 months and haven't been running much while rehabbing my fractures, my six-pack has withered away so this is not where I want to be yet but I'll concentrate on strength for a little while more (til I'm squatting say 300 [I have some muscular weaknesses which I'm correcting such as in my hip flexors and rotator cuff which are limiting my gains]). Once, I get to where I want to be on strength and my weight gains stabilize, with the introduction of more running and metabolic conditioning, I'm confident my six-pack will re-gain definition but I'll maintain 6'1" 225 around that mark which I think is ideal. So this is me a few minutes ago at pretty much my fattest and heaviest:

[C0ckney]

I call BS if this is happening a lot unless you are viewed as ridiculously overmuscled -- The majority of women I know would not reject a guy for being fit or even very fit if they liked him otherwise

the women are likely just saying this to spare his feelings...

[ZEE]

AZ, spaghetti and potatoes are all carbs, man. I stay away from the stuff. Because I'm currently concentrating on strength, I do eat a bit more carbs than I should in the form of flatbread wraps and dairy (also fruit).

Overall though, you're on the right track about your diet. I subscribe to a fitness/nutrition philosophy called Crossfit. The nutrition aspect is two(possibly three)-fold... there's Zone which is the idea that the optimum ratio of calories from carbs: fats: proteins should be 40:30:30 and Paleo which is that we should eat like our prehistoric ancestors did; that is the diet that humans evolved to eat (ie- high in meats, vegetables, and fruit with very little carbs; there is also dairy paleo which is paleo but adds dairy). There is also a third concept called intermittent fasting that also represents the eating habits of prehistoric hunters who might go an entire day or more without eating anything but generally this feast or famine idea is thought to lead to increased body fat so it's not generally suggested for everyone; some people do seem to thrive off of it.

As for the fitness aspect, you got to check out Crossfit, the fitness philosophy used explicitly by the Canadian Army and unofficially by the US Marine Corps (our Physical Training Instructors referred to the stuff we were doing as Crossfit but, since it's trademarked, Training Command doesn't use the term officially). What is Crossfit?

The New York Times called it "God's Workout". Here's wikipedia:


Crossfit.com hosts a WOD (workout of the day). The WODs are on a 3 days on, 1 day off schedule. Generally, most Crossfitters who follow the offical WOD do 3 days on, 1 active recovery day (ie- jogging, skill work), 3 days on, 1 complete rest day with a light week (in which you do the WODs but at reduced intensity) after every 4 weeks. There are a hundreds of Crossfit affiliates who post WODs online, some of which are geared towards specific applications (ie- Crossfit Football, Crossfit Endurance, Sealfit [which is crazy bad ass]).

Some Crossfit affiliates have broken away from the pack for various reasons, however, including militaryathlete.com and Gym Jones. If Gym Jones sounds familiar, that's because it's where the actors of the movie 300 worked out at to get into Spartan shape.

Now, of course, you don't have to follow the daily WOD but it is highly suggested for beginners (who should actually look for the 'Brandx' scaled difficulty WOD which can be found as a link on the mainpage) at least to learn what good WODs entail and how they should be organized. Once you get a feel for it, you can switch to your own programming, as many Crossfitters do.

The basic belief of Crossfit is that what you're doing with the division into upper and lower days is bullcrap. You know, Azazel, from being in the military, that fitness is full body and that body parts never work in complete isolation.

Think about it... why are your legs getting 1/2 the days of your arms, shoulders, and chest combined? You know that legs are the most important part of your body. You need to be squating and deadlifting far more than benching and bicep curling, man!

Crossfit has its priorities in the right place. I'll give you an example so you understand what Crossfit workouts entail... this is this past week:



Now, as you can see, if you're going to follow Crossfit.com strictly, some of the lifts are technical and you'd need to learn them (I haven't gotten around to some of them myself, for example) and some things like Muscle-ups are incredibly difficult to do (for something like this, you can substitute some pullups followed by dips for each muscle-up).

But also notice the type of work. Saturday's 6 rounds for time of sprints and burpees... that's one that will wear you the hell out. It's for time meaning you're supposed to go balls to the wall. The next day, you're also going balls to the wall for time, but notice, you're knocking out 135lb thrusters and pullups. You generally don't think of yourself getting a cardio kick out of lifting weights and doing pullups... but boy would you find yourself wrong!

See that is something called metabolic conditioning. It's what Crossfit is famous for. You see, by combining high intensity intervals with strength movements, you're training yourself to recover faster, conditioning your metabolism to more efficiently get rid of waste and get your muscles ready for the next exertion. When you do metcon, your muscles are being worked hard but so is your heart and lungs.

Now, this week didn't have any specific strength training and was metabolic conditioning-heavy but you will see some days where you do something like Push Press 5-5-5-5-5 which means you do sets of 5 going up to find your max on that lift. It's not about time. You can take all day on something like that. It's about improving your max lift and being stronger.

Obviously, something like Crossfit Football is geared more towards strength and something like Crossfit Endurance is geared more towards getting better at distance running, rowing, cycling, etc.

As for myself, right now, I'm not doing much Crossfit exactly. I'm doing one of the Strength programs associated with Crossfit called Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe, a Crossfit gym owner and one of the leading figures in the community. It's considered the best way to get stronger and concentrates on only the most basic lifts: squats, deadlift, bench press, and press.

can you please record this post in vocaroo?

[Az]

Great post, Al, very informative and I agree completely, that a perfect training program has plenty of different apsects of fitness included in it. Maybe I didn't go deep enough in my explanation of my routine. The general thought is doing excercises that are using multiple muscles, however, it is quite obvious that there are main groups of muscles in action. free weights are optimal for this, although certain, newer machines involve this also.

I must admit that I don't do enough gymnastics, but I feel I am not quite there.

Diet-wise, I stick to paleo, basically, minus fruit (fructose sucks balls). I eat some carbes for a day or two rather intensively, but that is because I realized that gaining strength will help me lose weight during ketogenesis. it's carbs that never reach the fat stage - after a week of working out, I am out of glycogen, and I eat a couple of bagels, or some rice or some cornflakes to get me the glycogen, and I am done. on the week, I eat cheese and salty foods for the electrolytes, I drink coffee (no milk, no sugar) in the mornings and before training.

I love me eggs and fishies. those are the best. and those tiny GM tomatoes with cottage (no homo)

[Az]

can you please record this post in vocaroo?

I am sorry, this is the fit bro zone. fat 4chan anime **** is the other way.

[Al B. Sure!]

I find the no eating of fruit strange. What's wrong with fruit? I say fruit should be a staple although you should be careful about dried fruit (especially dates) because they are high as crap in sugar and it's easy to eat too many of them. Fruit is just one of those things that primates always eat.

I went to OCS with a guy who was a Sealfitter (I can't reiterate enough how bad ass Sealfit is)... he used to do this thing where he would eat very clean during the week but he would go on a carb overload on either every weekend or every few weekends where he ate the most absurd stuff like piles of pancakes and waffles, whole boxes of sugary cereals, and hordes of cakes and pastries. He was a physical beast to say the least though I tried it one weekend and felt sick as hell.

If you're looking for general fitness (what Crossfit called GPP; general physical preparedness), I think Crossfit is the best way to go. If you want something specific, I say Crossfit is still the best way to go but look at one of the more focused affiliates or programs. If muscle and strength is your concern, Starting Strength and Crossfit Strength Biased are great.

[Az]

I find the no eating of fruit strange. What's wrong with fruit? I say fruit should be a staple although you should be careful about dried fruit (especially dates) because they are high as crap in sugar and it's easy to eat too many of them. Fruit is just one of those things that primates always eat.

As I bet you know, the body accepts energy in two currencies only: Glucose and Ketones. Fructose is not one of them. Fructose is only consumed as energy after it has been stored as fat.
Fructose=stored fat. There is no turn arounds, no other ways.

If you think of it in terms of human evolution, it makes perfect sense: fruit have a very short shelf life (unlike starchies and meat jerky), so you have to eat them all as soon as you have found them. This is also why fructose does not induce a leptin reaction: you have got to keep eating them all, because winter is just across the line, and if you won't store it, you'll be dead.

[Al B. Sure!]

Azazel, I want to share with you the stuff Sealfit is about...

This is typical from the other day:

Warm Up: Bar Bell Complex 4 rounds (start at 75# add 10# each set to105#)

Strength: Work to 1RM Bench Press (BP), then do 4 rounds of 5 x BP @ 85% 1RM, 10 x Ring Dip, Hip Mobility and Shoulder Pass through with PVC.

Work Capacity: CrossFit Cindy - AMRAP 20 minutes of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 air squats

Durability: Sprints: 5 x 200M (:30 sec rest), 10 x 100M (:15 rest). 50 x GHD Situps, 50 x Back Extension

That's a hell of a lot of work (though typical for military applications ). AMRAP means As many rounds as possible so you're going balls to the wall.

[Al B. Sure!]

I find the no eating of fruit strange. What's wrong with fruit? I say fruit should be a staple although you should be careful about dried fruit (especially dates) because they are high as crap in sugar and it's easy to eat too many of them. Fruit is just one of those things that primates always eat.

As I bet you know, the body accepts energy in two currencies only: Glucose and Ketones. Fructose is not one of them. Fructose is only consumed as energy after it has been stored as fat.
Fructose=stored fat. There is no turn arounds, no other ways.

If you think of it in terms of human evolution, it makes perfect sense: fruit have a very short shelf life (unlike starchies and meat jerky), so you have to eat them all as soon as you have found them. This is also why fructose does not induce a leptin reaction: you have got to keep eating them all, because winter is just across the line, and if you won't store it, you'll be dead.

I get you but fruit is just something that humans and our ancestors have been eating for millions of years. It's kind of going against the Paleo concept to avoid it like the plague.

Although this may be a case of something where it was available back then but not available anywhere like it is today since it used to be seasonal. People would go months without eating a single fruit whereas today, you can eat it all the time. Nuts are another thing like this where you can easily consume far more nuts than would ever have been possible by our prehistoric ancestors.

That's a tricky thing.