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[Reelya]

Yeah, it's like when Yoink wrote about the amazing revelations he got from merely going to bed at a normal time and getting a proper sleep.

Once you make a big change in your lifestyle, you discover a different "normal". The trick is that if it feels like a chore to get fit you're probably doing something wrong. e.g. my tip with working out + anime is probably relevant to you, Joshua. That's how I motivated myself to watch Fairy Tail. It was my morning workout show. No workout, no show. Hold yourself to those little rules.

The same with "diets". "Diets" don't really work. What works is adjusting your regular diet. e.g. substituting more healthy things into the things you like to eat. That can be as simple as having one less spoonful of sugar per cup of coffee. Say you liked three sugars per cup, and you had three cups a day of tea or coffee. Clearly, right there is 9 x approx. ~16 calories = 144 calories a day out of your average male requirement of  2640 calories. Over a year, that caloric intake in the coffee adds up to the energy in 15 pounds of fat. And plenty of people have more than three teas or coffees a day. Just knocking down to one sugar is going to make a huge difference, and you'll get used to it in no time flat. Actually I don't sweeten my coffee at all now, I was originally a three-sugars person at one point, cut that down to one, then decided it was a waste to even do that.

[SalmonGod]

Creamer?

I typically use enough creamer to make it a tan color, then 1 spoon of sugar.  I've often wondered how bad the creamer is.

[Reelya]

Creamers often replace the milk fat with hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is the stuff the US government is banning from next year on. It's bad shit basically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-dairy_creamer

To replicate the mouthfeel of milk fats, nondairy creamers often contain hydrogenated vegetable-based fats

https://www.thespruce.com/do-hydrogenated-oils-contain-trans-fats-2246050

While scientists dispute the benefits or hazards of saturated fats, they are at least agreed that trans fats, or partially hydrogenated oils, are harmful. To this end, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is requiring food companies to phase out artificial trans fats by 2018, unless they can prove that their use is safe.

Foods that contain trans fats have "partially hydrogenated oil" or "hydrogenated oil" listed in the ingredients.

 Before trans fats were required to be listed on nutrition labels, from January 2006, this was our only way of knowing whether these harmful fats were present. Yet a number of products state "0g Trans Fat" or declare themselves to be trans-fat free but still have these oils listed in their ingredients. How can this be?

Answer: There are two reasons why foods containing hydrogenated oils may be labeled trans-fat free, or list 0g trans fats on the label. First, items that list partially hydrogenated oils in the ingredients but contain less than 0.5g of trans fats per serving are considered by the government to be trans-fat free.

It goes on to say that partially hydrogenated oils are the bad ones, while fully hydrogenated oils are ok, because the trans-fats are removed from those in the completely hydrogenated state. However, fully hydrogenated oils are solid and wax-like in consistency, hence I doubt they are water soluable. If the creamer is meant to dissolve in water it's almost certainly only partially hydogenated vegetable oil, hence it is trans-fat.

[Xantalos]

I'm gonna watch this and might tune in every once in a while to comment on flexibility stuff I'm trying (not exactly the topic of this thread but it's the closest one that fits and I don't have much to add to the workout parts that hasn't already been said).

[nenjin]

I don't mean to interrupt this avid discussion of swole science, but I suppose the largest problem I have is one of motivation. Most days I feel that just living life is just a matter of the wholly selfish reason of getting to personally enjoy it, with no reason otherwise. I feel it would be 'nice' to be fit, at least once in my life, but that's where the "raison d'être" ends, there's otherwise no pragmatic purpose to it. I don't have any face-to-face friends to enjoy in the hardships or achievements, and there's no useful end to being fit, as in my case I have a sedentary job and otherwise no physically difficult tasks that I'm expected to take on, so I'm left with just the vanity of it, but I'm not an especially vain person anyway. The human body is just a tool, but what point is there for a tool with no job to do?

I do make some headway, every now and again, but I can't help but feel that it's hard to maintain the level of motivation that led to those achievements in the first place, that I only accomplished them because "His wheels, spinning uselessly in the mud, finally gained traction for a second, only to get stuck again in the next mud patch."
I have one picture of myself when I was, as close as I could be, "fit", and it was probably the only moment in my life when I was truly motivated, and I accomplished it with almost no effort, but then that motivation dissipated into the cold air again, leaving me with my languor again. I get the feeling it's going to be another cold winter.

Believe me, I know where you're coming from.

My attitude has always been "Life is too short to spend it doing stuff you don't want to do." Life for me is about enjoying it, as much of it as I can. So many things in life are a burden, shit you don't want to invest your time in to but you have to. (Mainly school and work.)

Here's the thing: it's the results that motivate you. It's seeing a goal for yourself and reaching for it, and watching the change happen rapidly, right before your eyes, in tune with how hard you're working. A year ago I would have said "Working out? Feh. Maybe? But I won't enjoy it!"

Well, now I'm enjoying it. Stupid amounts of enjoyment. I don't feel right currently if I don't work out. I'd argue I'm enjoying working out right now more than hedonistically playing video games.

Finding "a new normal" is exactly right. You live so long one way you forget there's any other way to feel, any other way to operate. It's not like I completely upended my schedule, my nutrition or my free time. I just....fit something else in there and it has made a huge difference in my mindest. Even though I'm playing fewer games atm, or spend 20 minutes spacing off thinking about working out instead of getting to gaming, it's made my gaming better. I can game care free knowing I'm taking care of myself, that I've got other priorities that got met before I settled down to enjoy myself. I'm counteracting the ass-fattening effects of sitting in a chair 8 to 10 hours a day. That I'm not compounding the problem by cramming my face full of the highest calorie delivery food you can buy, multiple times a week.

And lastly...I mostly just started this to see what was possible. Can I really lose weight? Can I really gain muscle? Can I really look thin and fit and desirable and sexy? Can I do all that and still be the game loving nerd I am right now? The answer has pretty much been yes. And now it's taken on a life of its own. A simple goal of "lose that belly and hip fat" has become something else entirely. Now I want the six pack, although chances are I'll never reach it. Now I want the biceps, the chest, the shoulders. Now I want every part of the kinetic chain tight, strong, toned. And it all feels reachable. Stupidly, easily reachable because _I'm no longer the one holding me back._

Part of it was too, I just wanted a challenge. I wanted something to grit my teeth and dig deep to complete. Not an intellectual or a social challenge but a purely physical challenge that, if I was angry or raging or frustrated, I could pour all my energy in to, to beat. Now that's become the new norm for me, is seeing that challenge in front of me and attacking it until I either beat it or it beats me.

Like I said above, if you're at the "it'd be nice I guess" stage, then you're letting yourself stay stuck at the hardest part. You don't know if you want to sacrifice anything for this thing you're not ultimately sure you want. Well, I'm telling you: take the plunge, see what happens. Identify one goal for yourself physically and work hard toward it for a couple weeks. At the end of those couple weeks, if you don't see any changes and you don't feel any motivation to continue, after following the advice here, well, then you tried at least, right?

But if you truly want to look better, feel better and shake yourself out of a pattern you've fallen in to...and you're willing to work for it, then I think you stand more to gain than you're letting yourself believe otherwise.

Also, unrelated, but for coffee drinkers if you wonder what the sugar in your coffee is costing you....

A teaspoon of sugar is 4g of sugar. So I typically do about 10g of sugar per cup of coffee per day during the week, and ~30 to 40g per day of sugar on the weekend. Or to put it in more concrete terms, on the weekend I get as much sugar in my coffee as two bottles of coca-cola.

[Reelya]

I'll reiterate the point I made before. Joshua started the anime thread, he spends a fair amount of time just watching video. Wanna fit some exercise in but don't wanna lose out on anything else? All that slouching around time watching shows is wasted time right there. You can be doing "show plus thing" much more easy than "game plus thing".

Before even thinking about trying to cram extra exercise-related hobbies between your existing interests, just think about what times you're basically doing stuff where it makes no difference whether you're sitting or standing, or whether you're zoning out vs pumping weights or jumping around like a maniac. If you have a hobby that involves a lot of sitting still looking at things then that's a goldmine of workout time right there. You don't have to sacrifice geeky hobby time at all to get more exercise.

Here's a good start even if you're not up for weights. Try standing up for a whole show. You're burning more calories already. You can get creative from there (basically any leg movement is better than none, jogging on the spot, step up exercises are good). Then try and throw some more intensive circuit training in once a day while watching 1 show, e.g. mix in leg exercises with push ups and sit ups (crunches). You should be able to do all this while watching a show without missing too much.

[nenjin]

Anything is better than nothing, it's true.

That said, maintenance isn't very fun or motivating. I think that's why a lot of people start working out then quit. Because all they're doing is exerting themselves to not slide any further while watching TV or something. And eventually when you're not visibly gaining anything out of it, you start to question why you're getting sweaty and sore and out of breath in the first place, and why you just don't go back to what you were doing before.

That's why I'm advocating an active attempt at working out. A commitment. Setting aside distractions. Saying "this 30 minutes is for busting my ass, and busting my ass only." Making it a task to complete. I think people have a better chance at staying with it when approached that way, rather than when they try to ease or back in to it. Half efforts yield half results and half results don't keep people motivated to keep trying.

But whatever you find that gets you up and moving, go with it. These days though, for me, I'm of the attitude you should just tackle the hardest part first, which is motivation. Get that solved and the rest pretty much figures itself out. I don't expect anyone to conjure motivation out of the ether though. There's got to be a real, concrete, attackable reason to create it.

[Reelya]

Saying "this 30 minutes is for busting my ass, and busting my ass only." Making it a task to complete.

Hmm no, I'm seeing the opposite here. That would be demotivating for me. For the main part, because I have too many things to do. Watching anime is one of the things I want to do, but i have a ton of coding and reading and study I should be doing. There's just not enough time. If I took out 30 minute to do nothing but work out and that made no progress on either my hobbies or work then I'd spend the whole time wondering why I was wasting so much time when I have a pile of things I want to finish. At least getting through a couple of anime episodes while working out reduces my backlog a bit. I don't even play games or sit and listen to music anymore because I have too many other things to do. i'm not going to waste time working out in silence when I could just as effectively do that with a video playing.

The whole point of what I was talking about is building the workout into something you already do. e.g. in my case and other anime-watchers, you pick one show and only watch episodes of that show while you work out. It's still a task to complete but now you've linked a narrative to it, and you can get a visceral reminder of your progress because if you don't do the workouts you don't progress in the show (reasonably long shows are good for this). It's a reward system, but the reward is built into the workout itself, too, rather than some extrinsic reward. Also, i use a player that let's me have an OSD timer, which i use to judge time for rest between sets and changes in circuit training.

I'm not sure that "make your workout boring and disconnected from everything else you do" is the best advice for everyone. Personally I think people would be less likely to stick with a plan like that.

[nenjin]

Well I'm at a different place in life. School is way long over for me. I work a 9 to 5 and I have a routine.

But to my point, trying to do other shit while working out means you're not really paying attention to your workout in my book. Your brain isn't studying your reps, making sure you're getting the most out of them. Sounds more like you're just trying to get through a workout than actually do one. "Oh if I distract my brain long enough this will be over and I'll have not had to think much about it."

That's backasswards to me. I don't get through stuff that needs to be done by trying to distract myself through it. You attack it. That's where the fun is. That's where you don't get bored. You attack a workout, focus all your effort and energy on it and burn the fuck out, so there's nothing left afterward. No anxiousness, no doubts, no stress, no worries, no boredom. Just pure soul-purging obliteration through physical exertion. You pay attention to your reps. Make sure you're flexing and squeezing all the right muscles while you're working. You watch for shitty or half completed reps and do them again if you find them.

Put another way: I can't see anyone doing a serious workout, and I mean serious, if their face is glued to a TV or phone. Those two things seem completely incompatible. That's, like, treadmill effort in my mind. Not trying to denigrate your method, but.....do you think power lifters watch TV while they power lift? Distance sprinters catching some youtube while they work on their 200s? Swimmers getting some anime in while they're trying to beat their personal best? Gymnasts watching a video podcast while they work the parallel bars? Think Arx is watching something while they work on their thrust or their riposte? No, they don't. Because they're not there "just to get through it." They're there to improve, exceed, push what they're capable of. Again, the difference between just maintaining and growing. How can you form a mind/muscle connection if your mind is on Touhou and not your muscles? They may be athletes and the rest of us not, but truly the only thing that separates us other than time spent is the focus and effort we bring to working out and training.

And if you need to lose weight, or want to build muscle, you can't do it with half your brain on the job. Sure if you're already lithe and decently toned, yeah you can tune out, watch some stuff, burn some calories and stay lithe. But if you've actually got to put the work in to get somewhere, I do not advocate turning off the thinking part of your brain while you're doing it. There's a lot to learn and a lot to get right when you're just starting out, and you need to be vigilant against your own desire to give up. I managed through focus and determination. Every time I was on my knees panting and ready to give up before I knew I was done, I'd grit my teeth and make myself do another set. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere that I am now if I'd taken the "let something distract you from how hard this is" route. (Plus, most of the working out I do precludes standing still or staying in a fixed position.) Face the difficulty head on and see that all it is, is a decision on your part to keep going or not. Nothing more. Exercise your will, which itself is a muscle we don't work very hard these days. Get disciplined.

Again, not trying to tear down your method. I just don't see it, personally. What you're describing sounds boring, to me. Because I get everything I need right now purely from the struggle. It is its own reward. But I'm coming off of years of being extra-sedentary. Maybe if you've maintained a higher level of physical activity for longer, been disciplined, the experience is not as enthralling as it is to me. One thing I will say though is I'm never bored; I'm way too fucking spent to bother with things like boredom.

That and: I've never multi-tasked entertainment well. Playing video games and watching videos or movies simply isn't something I can do. If I'm consuming entertainment it gets all my attention otherwise I feel like I'm not getting the full experience from it. If I'm watching TV, I'm watching it down to the scanlines, drinking in the detail. If I'm playing games, I'm drinking in everything: the music, the visuals, the mechanics, the pacing, the story. If I'm working out, it is my whole world. Breathe in, rep up, squeeze, breathe out, control, rep down. Repeat. To me there's not much room for anything else there besides music. Shit I don't even let my friends wait around to hang out while I'm doing my workout because I don't like the distraction of feeling rushed to get through my workout so we can hang out. I tell them to go home and I'll call them when I'm done.

TLDR: For many exercises sure, watching something or paying attention to something else other than your workout might be fine. Treadmill, exercise bike, rowing machine, sure. But for actual resistance training, your mind should be on your body and on the weights and pretty much nowhere else while you're doing it.

[Yoink]

Damn son how many times you gon edit that post??


In other news, despite it being very hot and myself being very tired I just completed my first workout of the day, followed by a nutritious meal.
Hopefully I find the time and motivation to do this at least one more time today.

[nenjin]

How many years I been posting here? If it's not been editted 12 times for additional content, grammar and typos, I didn't write it!

[SalmonGod]

How many years I been posting here? If it's not been editted 12 times for additional content, grammar and typos, I didn't write it!

I do the same thing... I'll re-read my post and find typos, or decide that a slight change in phrasing would get whatever point across better... over and over again... I typically label edits that are serious alterations in content.

[JoshuaFH]

I'll reiterate the point I made before. Joshua started the anime thread, he spends a fair amount of time just watching video.

Hold on Reelya, I know I started the anime thread, but I don't want to accidentally imply that I'm the spokesperson for fat weeaboo neckbeards everywhere. I never reported back to you when you gave me your advice so long ago, but other than very manly and intense shows that focus on characters pushing themselves in physical activities, watching even good animes kinda drains my effort during a workout. For the last few days, I've decided to just use my headphones and listen to music while working out, though I did it of my own volition and not from anyone's advice, and my workout is a lot more focused and intense. I feel that your advice to me comes from a good place Reelya, but it may misunderstand where my difficulty actually comes from; in that my major concern is not the struggle and difficulty of doing it, but rather the nihilistic concern of WHY I am doing it. Is there any point to living? Is any pleasure or pain I get from doing things illusory? Am I being a willing and happy slave of evolutionary forces, a master that is billions of years old and rewards with insubstantive and pointless chemicals in my brain?

I'm sure this is an old song and dance for the people here, who would perhaps insist that life is what you make of it. That life is arbitrary but can be labeled and defined however we please. That in the meaninglessness of the universe, any definition of "Meaning" is as good as any other, and therefore not to worry about it and just be happy being the insignificant creatures we are and play the game of life on those terms. That anything else is simply pretentious in a way that implies that one wants to be either beneath being human, or above and greater than being human, both of which are inherently impossible, and therefore futile in a way that is innately pathetic.

When I feel depressed, as I'm wont to do as I'm sure you know, I suppose a lot of that stems from the very high expectations I've placed on myself. One of those expectations, to stay on topic, is that of being the "Manly Man", who is fit and able, not a paragon of masculinity, as I feel that that is vain, but atleast an exemplar, someone to be a role model to others. Obviously I'm not even close to this ideal, but I still jokingly and not-jokingly beat myself up over the fact that I'm not yet this ideal, that I've already failed, despite not having tried yet. But I feel that this exemplar already exists, inside of me, biding his time, waiting for the conditions to be met, waiting for those stars to align just-so, and when they do he'll burst out of hiding and take his rightful place as one of my legitimate personas. What holds him back however, what keeps him hiding in the shadows, is, I believe, my above mentioned nihilism; my unflappable belief that living life is playing a fool's game, that I'm an idiot just for participating, that even avoiding 'real life' and being hedonistic is just playing a wholly different game and being a wholly different fool, that in just being alive I'm trapped in a true lose-lose scenario. If I could shake off that belief, I have the odd feeling that I would be truly unstoppable, that even becoming a paragon would be no issue at all, that I could, almost overnight, become a master over the fool's game of life and laugh at it despite being its willing slave. That in being that willing slave, I would have all the power of the master, and therefore be totally peerless and be a master over the entire world of man. A fool's achievements in the fool's game, however, never make him not a fool, and so I always question what the point of everything is.

And besides being a Nietzsche-wannabe, as I apparently also cannot loosen my iron-fisted grip on my arrogance despite always claiming to be pathetic, I quite like my cake. It's always on sale at the grocery store down the street! Always! It's truly a devil's playpen. 

But I suppose until the day I can become the Ubermensch, I'll listen to Nenjin's advice and humbly focus on the task at hand, and find & focus on the simple pleasure of mastering one's own body through exercise. To its own end, of course.

[Jimmy]

Yeah, I'll never end up watching a TV show whilst exercising. Mainly because I don't own a TV.

So the other side of the entertainment/motivation coin is music. How do you folks who tune out while buffing out usually consume your ear-candy?

[Xantalos]

Yeah, I'll never end up watching a TV show whilst exercising. Mainly because I don't own a TV.

So the other side of the entertainment/motivation coin is music. How do you folks who tune out while buffing out usually consume your ear-candy?

Well, it’s not really a normal thing, but I tried the challenge associated with this recently. Not a bad challenge, all in all. Coincides with my recent decision to increase how many pushups I can do at once.