qqemokitty

Check out Leslie Klenke! She's a young female paleo person, and her website and book are designed for girls in their teens and early twenties seeking health and fitness advice through paleo / primal (she is associated with Mark's Daily Apple, another site I like that has a lot of gender neutral advice but some specifically for women as well.) http://leslieklenke.com/ Another one that you mind find interesting is Stephanie Ruper, Paleo for Women. http://paleoforwomen.com/about/ When researching fitness for women, you will find a lot of crap, a lot of conventional American diet stuff, a lot of schemes to get skinny quick and so on. It can be so disheartening. I offer the links above with the assumption that you are open to the Nerd Fitness philosophy which embraces paleo - not all people do here, but it is certainly something that I believe in even if I don't follow it religiously. If you are specifically looking for exercise stuff, then generally, the advice is unisex. You want to build muscle and burn fat, you have to lift heavy, period. Men or women. I am someone who is obese and working to change it, but I find the assault about losing weight quickly and targeting belly fat and so on equally off-putting... the more I really dig into fitness and nutrition the more I begin to see what a sham all that stuff is, and not just fake but kind of evil. It's a bit like seeing the Matrix. Once you take the red pill, there is no going back.

You don't have to eat breakfast food for breakfast. It's so arbitrary the way we decide to do that! I love eating steak and veggies or chicken and potatoes for breakfast. You can eat salad, or meatloaf, or chicken wings, or fruit, or whatever you want for any meal. The idea that lunch and dinner foods are not to be eaten for breakfast is balderdash! =) That being said, I adore eggs. Especially over easy, with the yolk broken over a portion of steak or pulled pork (though pork may again be difficult for you, eggs with carnitas is my favorite breakfast food).

Are you tired or flagging in any way? Is your work, family life, or workout being negtively impacted by the amount of sleep you get? If not, maybe that is enough sleep for you. I used to be happy with less but now I like having 8 hours a night, I don't think I could handle my schedule (morning workout, hour long commute to work, hour long commute home, then second job (women do this, too, ya know!)) on less hours of sleep on a regular basis. Maybe you can get your wife to help out with some of the kitchen chores if she is home earlier than you?

LOL no problem! And no I am not a motivational speaker or a speaker of any kind, but that is flattering, thank you Supportive. This week is.. well. I just sat down at work fresh from the gym and I did kill my workout today. 25 minutes on the treadmill and 2 full rotations through the circuit room. Yesterday I skipped the gym (and regretted it of course) because we went to Legoland on Sunday an my body was beat down from walking and sunburn. I should have gone though, I felt like funk all day. (and not the good kind of funk...) Real talk, today I sat outside the gym in my car and cried because I didn't want to go. I am too tired, too achy, and I am very stressed right now because my best friend Miss Kitty (spoiler: she's a cat) is sick and we don't have any extra money right now to help her, so we are scared of the outcome of today's vet visit. She is old and fragile due to feline asthma and it's just a big hot mess. I did force myself into the gym though and I am so glad I did because my body feels energized and two full rotations in the circuit room was something I wanted to accomplish this week.

Wonderful! Congratulations. =)

Yar. And I mean.. it has taken me years of struggle with my weight and fad dieting and giving up and being dumb and failing and flailing etc to finally figure out my magic formula. The nerd fitness blog is an AMAZING resource that really speaks to me as few places have before. *group hug*

Forgive me if this is the wrong place, but is anyone else doing a Whole30 for the month of May and seeking buddies for it? I would love to have some new friends to obsess about this with via forums / text / email / Instagram etc. =)

Thanks for the /hi5's all around! =D I didn't start out with any specific goal and I didn't pay for a personal trainer or anything like that. What I did was train myself for 6 weeks to get up earlier, that's how long it took to push back my wakeup time from 6:30 AM to 5:15 AM. Once I achieved that goal, I set a goal of joining a gym. I asked around / looked online and decided to join the Chuze Fitness by my work. Once I achieve that goal, I rewarded myself by buying some nice towels, treating myself to dinner, bragged on Facebook etc. New goal was then: Go to the gym for one month to build the gym attendance habit. It didn't matter AT ALL what I did once I got there, as long as I went every work day. I started out just walking slowly on the treadmill, learning how the machines worked. And I walked. That was it. As noted in my other woot room thread, I started out doing less than a quarter mile in 15 minutes before falling off the machine to completing 1 mile in 30 minutes. Regularly I rewarded myself with the hydromassage beds the gym had. I bragged about every step of the way on Facebook and basked in massive lavish amounts of praise. By the end of week 2 I started to feel the high that people say they get from exercise. Week 3 I started adding some body weight exercises and yoga poses after my cardio. Week 4 I finally braved the weight machines. And here I am today! I don't know if it's the same for everyone but for me at least, I had to start really slow. Nothing about my mind or body is ready for an intense program of any kind. I don't react well to people barking at me, or videos of well muscled people effortlessly doing things my body is absolutely incapable of in it's current state. It had to be a long, methodical, layering process. Like building those sand jar things. Remember that as an out of shape person, you don't need to make as much effort as an in shape person to get an effective workout. You have to do something appropriate to your body / physical & mental status or else you will hurt yourself or give up.

this got posted wrong somehow =[

Hi Team! Not to abuse the woot room or anything buuuuut I am proud. I set a personal challenge to attend the gym for 4 weeks to build the habit and today was the last day of that challenge! I have successfully built my gym habit, now it's on to other challenges. I was 200% sedentary before and now I am active 5-6 days a week. The changes I can see in how I move and breathe are awesome. I won't see any body changes for awhile until I ramp up my intensity but that's okay. Slow and methodical will last longer!

Does a bear shit in the woods? =P Con Man looks funny!

Some of the machines challenge me a lot more than others, that's for sure. Most of the machines I do at a resistance of 4-6. I looked up the particular set of machines online to find out the best route to go about getting started with them, and it said this basically: Week 1: Complete one circuit at a resistance that feels comfortable to learn the movements Week 2: Complete two circuits at the same resistance Week 3: Complete three circuits at the same resistance Week 4 and Onward: Complete three circuits at a resistance where failure occurs at 15 reps, and increase resistance as needed. This week I did a weird thing where I did cardio + circuit monday and tuesday, didn't go to the gym at all on wednesday (had a cat emergency) and cardio + circuit today and probably will tomorrow as well. I think next week I will do this instead: cardio warmup + 2 circuits M/W/F 30 minute cardio T/T Soon I will also be adding yoga once a week, most likely on Saturday mornings. :3

Congrats you look amazing. =) I am so impressed that you can benchpress your own weight pretty much.

I would love to add some NF friends to my battletag for WoW. =) I had to take a big step back from it to level up my real life, but now that my gym habit is established I am working on adding some WoW time back in, very casually. I raid on Sundays with a casual group and log in a few other days a week. Mostly Horde, now. PS, we are recruiting DPS for our Sunday raid. 5-8 PM pacific time. 8/10 normal BRF. xD qqemokitty#1191

Well I did it both yesterday and today. It's so fun omg. :3

Thank you, I appreciate your reply! =) I will keep doing what feels fun and not worry about much else. I am definitely someone who can get lost in over-analysis, so I should avoid that!

That sounds like permission to lift every day to me!! WOOT!

Hi Team! So I am super excited about all my learnings at the gym and today I finally gave in and tried the weight machines in the circuit room and OH MY GOD I am hooked, instantly. I hear a lot about leg days and rest days and yadda yadda but I just want to know... Is it safe for me to do the circuit room weight machines every day and pair it with a cardio warm up and cool down? Do I have to skip days on the weight machines? Should I still cardio those days, or should I do nothing? I have been doing cardio for the past 3 weeks every day M-F as a habit builder, easing into the gm habit with great success. Will it be detrimental to my goals (getting strong and losing weight) if I use the circuit room every day? I feel adrift. :3 Mostly I just really want to use the weight machines again because it was so much fun. This was a circuit room at a chuze fitness if that means anything to anyone. =P TLDR give me permission to lift heavy things everyday?! =P

that sounds like a very complex emotional sequence. =P but I do believe you are right, I am hooked!

Thanks everyone! I have to admit I don't really like walking in general but doing in in the gym is more palatable. Maybe it's the TVs. =P (scary shades of wall-e!) I have done the mile again on Thursday but today I am focusing on body-weight exercises since I think I hurt my toe a little yesterday. All the little aches and pains of being active are quite satisfying after years of sedentary life.

I don't know anything at all about eating/exercising to gain other than the obvious "eat more, lift heavy" advice. You say you have no time or money for the gym, but I have to call BS on that one. We all have to make the time for our goals, yes? If working out and putting on some muscle weight is your goal, you ARE going to have to work out. I work 2 jobs and have an hour long commute to and from work. It took me a month to train myself to get up an hour and a half earlier so I could start my day at the gym. I know myself, and working out at the end of my work day is just not going to happen - I have a ton of energy and will in the morning though, and exercising in the morning makes me feel really good all day. I would never have believed this before I started. We all have to make sacrifices in pursuit of our goals. Maybe it doesn't have to be the gym but... paying for and going to the gym is really helping me. I am enjoying the ritual of it. And the membership is only 20$ a month. So you should definitely read this: http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2015/01/26/why-you-need-to-be-selfish-and-put-fitness-first/ And you can start with this, no gym required: http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2009/12/09/beginner-body-weight-workout-burn-fat-build-muscle/ Good luck! =)

You're right, perspective is everything. =) I have always felt like online I was my truest self. I found such intense joy and freedom in MMOs because finally, finally I was in a venue where I could be judged first on my skill, my personality, my humor, or really ANYTHING about me that was not my weight. I had many online friends and flirtations over the years who had no clue of my body or my struggles with food and that escape was magical.

It's so strange to think about how most of us have NEVER been healthy and we have no idea what it feels like to be 'normal' or 'average' bodied. What a different journey it must be to have known what it felt like to be healthy and slender once - I feel like those memories would be very motivating to me, should I have any such. I just picked up this eat slower app that someone mentioned elsewhere on the forum, I am going to try it to slow down my food intake.