Guzzi

Oh really? **rushes off to check it out**

Hey! Welcome on board! Have you found your way around the forum ok? Just shout if you have any questions. Obviously your own personal mindset comes into this. If you’re the kind of person who couldn’t workout with a barbell without going all out for absolute strength gains then you will undoubtably find it (psychologically) difficult to eat at a deficit while lifting, but that’s not to say that you can’t lose weight while lifting/strength training. Do you workout with kettlebells at home?

No, it’s probably just my dodgy memory, lol! Muwhaha! We actually have a word for Doms in Shetland, it’s called “speggie” which is a wonderful word that can function as a noun or an adjective. So you can “have really bad speggie”, or you can “be really speggied”. Ooooh! Want to do a swapsie? I have loads of plant based recipes, I think I’m going to try and make that an official goal next challenge. We could even do a PvP (person vs person) challenge based on it if you wanted. Exactly! It’s all about improvement, not perfection.

Am I right in saying that you said in your intro that you prefer to use machines rather than free weights?

Oooh, ouch!

Ha! We just learned a line dance for this song on Tuesday night! Apparently it’s The Dance sweeping the country, lol!

Haha! Thank you! There is a downside to this gym though.... Everyone else who uses it is built like a brick sh*t-house! There are members who compete at national and European level for both powerlifting and strongman (and strongwoman) competitions. And then there’s puny little me, lol!

Holy crap!!! Congrats on the two year anniversary. I know from experience how much strength and mobility you lose by not being able to move, it’s a very long, slow journey back to fitness but I’m sure you’ve got what it takes to get there. Have you you found your way around the site ok? If you’ve got any questions then feel free to ask.

Yeah, got to admit the video slightly lessens my enjoyment of that song

Wednesday update This was a rest day due to the groin pain on Tuesday night. We did get for a walk because it was such a lovely day but I basically did bugger-all all day apart from studying (which I struggled with because I was fasting so my concentration was off). 1. Get organised. I did my studying, not at the time it said on my schedule though.... 2. Get moving Nope! Only got 7,940 steps for the day and no exercise. That’s ok though. Steps - 7,940. Total - 31,205 3. Get to bed Yes! Bed at 10:15 with a meditation and up at 6am, woohoo! Minutes late - 0. Total late - 0. Bonus points - 20 Total points - 30

I want to voice a different opinion on this. Obviously if you only eat OMAD you will lose weight because you are severely restricting your calories, but what about afterwards? Unless you learn to eat at a level where you neither gain or lose weight then as soon as you lift the restriction you will start to pile weight back on. I do 5:2 Intermittent Fasting (where you do 2x 24hr fasts a week) when I want to reduce my body fat percentage and find it really works, but I don't rely on it to keep my weight stable. I ditched the yo-yo dieting years ago and learned how to eat to fuel my body with the right nutrients, and my weight has remained stable ever since. Although this doesn’t give results as quickly it is far and away the most sustainable, healthy way to lose weight. I cannot see how OMAD can be in any way healthy (unless you are only doing it intermittently). It can be difficult enough to get the full amount of vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, antioxidants etc that you need for good health even when eating 3x balanced meals a day, dropping to one meal a day will, without fail, leave you lacking in essential nutrients.

Ohmygosh, I love this song!!! Or at least I love the line dance that goes along to it.

Have you considered waterproof socks? I’ve had a pair of MoD issue gortex socks for years and swore by them for the motorbike.

Some pics of the gym, just coz it’s awesome!

Whoops! I never saw these posts! Thank you, good to have you along! I find it really works, I’m not in the right headspace to eat at a constant deficit right now, and I’m not convinced that I would ever bother trying after experimenting with IF. There’s definitely a psychological element to it. Although you do get hungry at mealtimes I find that I’m not hungry at other times of the day, and not even as hungry as I can be at times when I’m just late making dinner or something. I have found that my concentration isn’t as good on fasting days so I wouldn’t want to do it on a day where I was driving a lot, or performing open heart surgery or something... Tuesday Update It was a beautiful day yesterday, but very, very windy! Colin and I walked up to the Gym (Shetland Weight Training Club) in our village where we have a membership and did a short workout each. This is an actual club rather than a commercial gym, there are no staff and decisions are made by a committee of members. I can’t honestly say that my workout was anything to write home about, but it got me out of breath and fairly tired, that’s good enough for me! 5 rounds of: 10x 12kg American swings 10x 7.5kg back squat (just trying to improve the movement pattern for now) 5x assisted pull-ups 5x 30kg deadlift. I made myself a wrap with sweet potato pakora (spiced with cumin, ground coriander, garam masala and chilli powder), baby spinach, onion, tomato, red pepper, jalapeños, and chilli mayonnaise. Although not a challenge goal I am trying to eat (slightly) less meat and (lots) more veg. The only downside to this is that my system isn’t quite used to having so much fibre. Hopefully next challenge I will be able to work on this in a more structured way (the goal that is, not the effects of eating more fibre!) We we got the grass cut for the first time this year on Monday but the recycling centre was closed with it being Easter so we took the cuttings there yesterday instead. We couldn’t get parked near the skip for garden waste and Colin opted to just wait until some of the other vehicles had left but I had other ideas and basically got several bonus “farmers walks” into my day by carrying a dozen bags of clippings two at a time through the warehouse to the skip. I also got a yoga session in the evening but over-stretched something in my groin (probably the adductor) and found it difficult to walk afterwards. This put paid to my dancing although I did stick it out for a little while in the hope that it would ease off, it didn’t - it got worse. I was really worried that I’d actually torn something but thankfully it was completely fine this morning, although I skipped my aerobics class today just to be safe. 1. Get organised I didn’t get any studying done because we went to the gym in the morning then took the grass cuttings to the dump after lunch, evening was yoga then dancing. 2. Get moving Walked to gym and back Workout at gym Yoga Half-hearted attempt at dancing. Steps - 11,366 Total - 23,265 3. Get to bed Went to bed at 10:15 but again no meditation, mostly because Colin came to bed at the same time and I feel that it would be unfair to inflict it upon him. Sleep was ok but I was still tired this morning. I did however wake up before 7am so I score my first bonus points of the week! 4. Get fast Doing this today (Wednesday) and I’ve had nothing but tea and coffee all day.

It sure will. Alcohol has 7 calories per gram, second only to fat which has 9 kcal/g. When you think that sugar only has 4 kcal/g then it becomes clear why alcohol has such an impact on weight, and cocktails often have sugar in them too in the form of fruit juice. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the sugar in fruit juice is ok because it’s fructose either. Fructose is actually the form of sugar that is really bad for us, it’s just that it’s normally bound up with fibre (when we eat fruit) which slows and reduces how much it is absorbed.

This just made my day!

Ugh, yeah! Been there too, lol! I think sometimes it’s like a viscous circle/virtuous circle thing. The more you do of “Thing A” the easier it is to do “Thing B” but the less you do “Thing A” the harder it is to do “Thing B”. Which, when you consider that the less you do one thing the more important it is to do the other, just plain old sucks! That’s a really good place to start then! I always find that eating healthier and exercising get easier the more you do it so cutting out the stuff now that doesn’t matter so much helps to make it easier to say no to something really good further down the line.

This is an awesome goal! It’s something I’d love to do one day too. I’m just going to echo what Grumble said. I don’t know how often you eat fast food or drink coke/juice, but if it’s something that you do (or did) fairly regularly until now then it might be too much to cut them out completely in one go. Usually this works for a short time, then your motivation takes that little wobble and before you know it you’re back doing it, and feeling like a failure (been there, got that t-shirt!). The trick to changing your habits is to take baby steps, for example - if you normally drink coke/juice then you could try only drinking it at the weekend as a way to cut down, or only allowing yourself 1 coke per day. That way you don’t have to go completely cold turkey, which is really difficult to do. At at the end of the day it comes down to you and your personality, as Grumble said. If you feel that it’s easier to go cold turkey than to cut down then that is obviously the way to go. What I’d like to get across is that if you find yourself unable to keep to these goals then don’t think that you have failed, you simply need to adjust your goals to make them more sustainable. Failure can be very good, because it is often a better teacher than success. Good of luck with your challenge!

This is so fantastic, well done!!!!

I weighed myself the start of the last challenge (just for reference) and the numbers were: Weight - 70.8kg BF - 27.7% So, no change over the last 5 weeks, at least not according to the scale, but as I said to Colin the other day, I feel different. I’m happier with my body and I feel as if it’s less jiggly, even though I hadn’t been eating less or doing any real workouts - just aerobics for senior citizens and yoga. But on Monday I was at the gym for a class and the instructor said to me “I see a difference in you, you’ve lost weight.” So obviously there has been some kind of change, which I’m delighted with! I’ve started 5:2 intermittent fasting as part of my 4 week challenge so that should deliver some results, but I’m going home for 10 days and my M-in-law will no doubt try to fatten me up while I’m there. I have also spoken to Norma (my old personal trainer) about doing a sort of intensive skills course with her while I’m there to try and improve my form on a few lifts so that I have more confidence to lift on my own. I have had a couple of 1-to-1 sessions with The Dude who works at the leisure centre but I’m not convinced he’s any good. He had me working on deadlift last week and I had to pull the pin when we got to 70kg and say “I can’t lift that” because my form had gone to shit. He also had me doing a lot of isolation exercises when I’d already told him I wanted to work on compound lifts. I’m thinking that instead of trying to work on Olympic lifts I should just settle down with a basic program like Stronglifts 5x5 and work on increasing my strength that way and just do some very light work on the Olympic lifts to get better form. I don’t think there is anyone here who would coach Olympic, apart from The Dude who supposedly can (but I think he knows fuck-all tbh). Today is a fast day, so I will be drinking lots of coffee!

Jitters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats interesting. My weight probably topped out at around 210 lbs at my heaviest and I know that I still had periods but I can’t honestly say if they were any heavier/lighter than when I was less overweight. It would be really interesting to know if they lightened as you got closer to your goal weight.

Monday update. 1. Get organised Im counting Easter Monday as holiday so no studying (even though I really needed to get some done). 2. Get moving Steps - 11,899 Classes - Synergy and yoga 3. Get to bed I got to bed on time and was going to do a meditation but Colin gave me a shoulder massage instead and I totally flaked our so it worked just as well. I didn’t wake up until 7:30 so no bonus points Minutes late - 0 Bonus points - 0 4. Get fast Fast planned for Wednesday and Sunday.

Wait, what is this???? **looks at Snarkyfishguts through slitted eyes** Where are you from?