turboseize

I don't usually watch ESC, but somehow I still can remember the polish milkmaid! (Slavic women are hot.)

I might have expressed myself a bit unprecisely. While middle-eastern was included in the sentence about gluten, and technically carried over to the next one regarding lactose, this was meant to be qualified by "the farther to the north, the less probable is lactose intolerance", which should have implicated that lactase persistence in the mediterranean is considerably lower than in scandinavia. Forgive me, english is not my native language.

Lactase persistence (the mutation that allows the body to produce lactase in adulthood) is a relatively recent one; evidence (including DNA samples from skeletons) hints that lactase persistence has spread through Europe between 5000 and 8000 years ago. According to the german wikipedia entry (I know, I know... wikipedia is not a quotable source...) 75% of world population is lactose intolerant, while only 15% of the population in german-speaking reagions are. And in Sweden, it is only 2%... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laktoseintoleranz (scroll down, there is a table comparing different populations.)

Hiking is strongly approved. Koolaid and lack of vegetables not so much.

strength theory (now renamed, but still run by Greg Nuckols): http://www.strongerbyscience.com/

Find ick knorke!

Whenever I noticed me gaining a bit of weight back in the army days, I'd just make sure to ban cookies from every meeting i was hosting, and I'd skip the Feierabendbier.* These two alone would get me down ~3-5kg within a few weeks and without much effort. Time to quote old Paracelsus again. "All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison ." The overwhelming majority of people of middle-eastern, sub-mediterranean or european ancestry are not gluten-intolerant. Nor are they lactose intolerant (the farther to the north, the less probable is lactose intolerance). And even far less people are fructose-intolerant, as fruits have been part of the human diet since before humans could be called humans.... The classic test for fructose intolerance is to administer the patient 50g of fructose and then measure the hydrogen content of the gas he exhales - if he cannot digest fructose, it will ferment and hydrogen will be set free. To take up 50g of fructose via natural food, however, you would have to eat nearly one kilogram of cherries. At once. It is totally doable to eat a kilogram of cherries, but you'd probably need an entire day for that. You would never take in 50g of fructose at once with a diet of whole foods. That is only possible with refined sugar. Refined sugar is one half glucose, the other half fructose. 100g of refined sugar will bomb you with the fructose equivalent of one kilogram of cherries. HFCS can be even worse. And sugar hides everywhere in processed food. (I've even seen syrup been added to dark, sour breads... WTF?!?) It is very probable that you can tolerate sugar (whatever kind of sugar), but that you were just overdoing it. Two snickers bars a day alone would be 100g of sugar... Now eat some baked stuff, have a salad with a store-bought salad dressing, or have some ketchup with a meal, drink one glass of soda and one glass of juice, and you have just taken up fructose equivalent of several kilos of fruit and berries. I'd not be surprised if we have similar story here with gluten. Gluten has been in the human diet since the invention of agriculture. Probability is high almost anybody in the western world does tolerate gluten. But wheat and rye have only been a part of a grain-based diet - don't forget oats, for example. Then there is millet. And pseudo-grains like buckwheat. But since the industrialisation, wheat has replaced most of these in the western diet, meaning we probably eat a lot more wheat then our ancestors did. And on top of that, a lot of baked goods have extra gluten added to them. If a bread is extremely "fluffy" or soft, it probably has some extra gluten in it. (Sometimes disguised as "wheat glue", "wheat protein" or similar in the fine print.) Eating gluten is probably all right, just not in the ridiculous amounts most of us do nowadays. * I have no idea how to translate this. Basically, it is a german tradition to pop a beer after work, be it either with your coworkers (or comrades, if in the miltary), or when arriving at home. Anyways, it is custom law that you open a beer when you are done with your day's work. Except in Bavaria, where it is totally fine to drink the first beer during lunch break.

Don't get anxious over a few missed workouts. There will be plenty of opportunity in the future. And nutrition is - short term - far more important than exercise. Regarding nutrition; where were your vegetables on wednesday?* * Was the salad an actual salad with lettuce and vegetables and such, or just tuna mixed with something else? Sorry, if this questions seems silly, but I whenever I hear "salad" in context with something else, I get vigilant. I attribute that to my russian in-laws, who basically mix a protein source (eggs, cod, herring, whatever) with sour creme or mayonaise and call that a "salad". Hmm, if I think of it, we germans are the same. Slice a sausage into tiny stripes, mix with mayonaise, and you get "meat salad".)

So you seem to be heel striking? Well, in that case you have two choices: 1) buy padded running shoes like everybody else and hope you'll only ruin your tendons/ligaments/joints in a far distant future, like 10 years. 2) learn proper technique and change to forefoot-striking running style. You running experience will suck for a few weeks/months, as both learning the new style and letting your legs adapt to the new demands will take some time. But in the long run, it will be healthier. Bonus: you'll get calves.

turboseize is a bilingual play on words - I own a 600.000km Saab 900 turbo 16 (16 reads "seize" en francais). And I have actually had to replace several turbochargers during my automotive career ...

There is a difference in pain/discomfort between "meh, I Just dont like exercising... can't we just chill a bit?" and "STOP! Something is going to break. DON'T YOU DARE!" Unfortunately, it often takes some experience with training hard or at least physical labour until you can reliable differentiate between the two and know what your body is trying to tell you. Even more unfortunate, mistaking a "STOP" for a "not used to exercise, I'd rather sit on the sofa, like all the years before" can result in crippling yourself, if not for the rest of your life, then at least for a longer time - be it weeks, months or even years. For example, my achilles tendons took more than 2 years to heal completely. Been there, done that. And with nearly two decades of sports background at the time of the injury, I should have known better... but I still managed to ignore the warning signs. Mistaking the "just chilling"-discomfort for "STOP!", on the other hand, only looses you one day. When you weigh the risks, it's obvious that you would always err on the side of caution. And remember: a day not at the gym need not be a lost day. You can still take a walk. You can still try some light exercises for your core at home (sometimes that helps ease the pain, sometimes it doesn't, then stop immediately). And most important, you can still get your diet right.

I added the protein shake because I wanted more protein - the oats alone would just have provided 19g, with the protein shake I could double that. I do not have a weightloss goal, I want to get stronger. This means I need plenty of protein - by trial and error (let's call that "experience") I have found out that I need at least 1.5g protein / kg bodyweight to gain muscle. So I need >160g protein per day. Just throwing in a protein shake here and there makes that so much easier (and cheaper). In your case, the situation is a bit different. You want to use shakes to replace a meal. That would in theory allow you to keep protein intake high, even if you reduce your total caloric intake. However, the shake is just protein and some simple carbs. There are NO micronutrients in it. You seem to eat very little (but still get lots of empty calories from processed stuff). If you cut out a meal and replace with a shake, you might get a enough protein to protect your muscles in a caloric deficit, and the fact that the shake is mostly protein and not much else will probably also spare calories and help in the goal of creating a caloric deficit. So far, so good. But there is the danger that the remaining few meal(s) will not suffice to provide you with all the vitamins and minerals you need, especially when you are 1) a picky eater and 2) surrounded by other picky eaters. So my advice is: do not fall for the shortcut. Get your nutrition right. Eat real food. Cut out all the empty calories. (You already eliminated soda! Good job. Now get rid of the rest.) Break the addiction to processed stuff. Start to read the small print on the labels. Learn to cook. Reprogram your taste. Build a habit of eating healthy. Then, slowly, all the rest will fall into place. Be patient. For 25+ years you ate badly. It will take some time to reverse that. You won't see change over night. Learn a bit more every day, make one better choice every day... it will add up, eventually. Life is no sprint, it's a marathon. Slow and steady wins the race.

It is not only Americans falling into this trap, it is us Europeans, too. Only recently the results of a survey done for our departement of agriculture came out - showing that about 1/rd of Germans preferred fast food and processed stuff, and also, that only 2/3rd ate vegetables and fruit daily. Sad...

^ This. Also, oats are cheap. As is buckwheat. And millet. If kept in a dry space, all these last forever. Heat some water, throw in stuff, cook to pulp. With oats, add some fruit shortly before you're done, with millet, add some vegetables (millet + pumpkin works fine, for example). Buckwheat can be eaten as a pulp (my wife loves that, I hate accept it...) or it makes an excellent side dish - put some vegatables o the plate, two fried eggs, and some buckwheat, and you have a healthy meal with protein, carbs, lots of vitamins, fibre and micro-nutrients for less than 2€/person. Oh, and leftover buckwheat pulp may be reheated in the pan - it will take up some flavour from whatever you fried in that before and taste much better. I'm a full time student without a job and I live solely on my savings, so money is an issue for me, too. My lunch right now is two bowls of cooked oats with an apple, some cinnamon and a pinch of butter, plus a protein shake. 150g of oats (11.5ct), 20g butter (10ct), 1 apple (18ct), cinnamon (0.5ct), tap water (cheap and the ampount used for cooking is nothing compared to a shower etc, so ignore the price). 1 scoop of whey for the protein shake (50ct). Protein 39,9g; carbs 67.8g, fat 29.8g, 740kcal in total. Also some vitamins (less than I'd like, but I'll eat more green stuff in the evening), plenty of fiber and minerals, and a nice mixture of unsaturated (oats) and saturated (butter) fatty acids. .. all for less than 1€.

Oats actually have a pretty strong, peculiar flavour and texture. But taste is actually aquired.* Most processed foods are full of sugar or artificial sweeteners, salt and flavour enhancers. Don't forget "natural flavours", which can be derived from anything. If you eat, say, a strawberry yoghurt, what you are tasting is neither the yoghurt nor the strawberry depicted on the packaging, you are tasting the "natural strawberry flavour" which is, by the way, extracted from fungus that grows on a substrate of saw dust (fungus is natural, hence "natural flavour"). And you are tasting the added sugar. And being constantly exposed to over-flavoured and/or over-sweetened stuff, your taste changes. You aquire a tolerance. Now you need this frontal attack on your tastebuds to perceive anything. If you then try something that is not artificially taste-enhanced, it tastes bland. It takes a few weeks of withdrawal to reset your taste. Skip all processed stuff, skip sweetened drinks, and after a few weeks vegetables, oats, buckwheat, millet - whatever! - will surprise you with very distinct flavour and texture. You'll just have to endure the withdrawal period. . *Yes, you can train yourself to like vegetables.

Which is no small feat in itself.

A good place to get started would be the NF beginner bodyweight workout. Or try my minimalist whole-body-workout. (Both can be done at home). Take your time, read a bit, look up video tutorials on youtube regarding certain exercises. And then.. start doing something. If you are insecure, film yourself and aks for help/evaluation in the form check sections of this forum. On your "now" pictures, you are clearly overweight, but you somehow still manage not to look too fat. That is either a very clever clothing choice, or favourable genes. (Or both.) I'd not be surprised if you could easily gain some muscle... Girl! Go lifting! What a potential! Regarding salads, I have found that herbs and spices make all the difference. A bit of thyme and/or rosemary can make a dull salad exiting. Oregano also works with the classic oil+vinegar dressing. Regarding dressings, here are two ideas: 1) sprinkle salad with olive oil and vinegar. Done! 2) take a bit of sour cream. Add some spoons of olive oil. Add some chopped garlic and pepper. Mix with a spoon until you get a mayonaise-like stuff. Done. 2a) you can experiment with the cream+oil template. You might add bavarian sweet mustard. Another day, you could add chili powder. Or everything else you can think of. Just play.

Oh, and Kool-Aid... I had to google that. (Never seen that in Europe). From what I can gather online, that, too, seems to be mostly sugar. Conclusion: Don't drink the Kool-aid.

Granola is 30% sugar. Tastes nice, but you'll be hungry soon again. Regarding Soda: good job on weaning your self off that stuff. But if you don't like it, why do you even drink it? ;-) The very best drink ever is water. Just plain tap water. (But hat depends on the shape the water distribution network in your area is in and also the climate. If they overdo the chorine stuff it tastes ... not so good.)

If it says "100% whey", then it better be. If not, that would be downright fraud. Sometimes the manucaturer does not print the amino acid profile on the package, but it can be found online on their site. (e.g. myprotein whey...)

Eggs are beneficial not only because of the protein, but also because they contain some nice fat. And cholesterol (which your body then happily builds testosterone from). And zinc (which regulates the production of aromatase - an enzyme that degrades testosterone to estrogen. Low zinc- > elevated aromatase -> lowered testosterone, raised estrogene.) So don't skip eggs. Protein powders are a cheap way to increase your protein intake. Glycine spiking / amino spiking is bad in a sense that it morally dubious - glycine is a very cheap amino acid, but it is not involved in muscle growth. Adding glycine to a protein powder will result in a higher reading, when you analyse the product in a lab for protein content, although only a part of that total protein can be used for muscle growth. So the consumer buys 1kg of protein powder and, looking at the label, expects maybe 900g of this to be "useful" protein for muscle gains. Bit if this is amino spiked, he just might get 800g... On the other hand, glycine is beneficial: joints and ligaments, but also the immune system seem to react positively to increased glycine supply. Glycine is therefore even sold as an individual supplement.. Amino spiked /glycine spiked protein powder will still work (just requires a bit more...) and is safe to consume (it might even have some additional benefits!), it is just a somewhat shady business practice. Personally, I appreciate it when a manufacturer publishes the amino acid profile. (This will be different for any protein source, i.e. whey and casein based powders will have a different distribution of the same amino acids, and some plant-pased powders might even lack some essential amino acids.) Then, when you compare different powders, you might find that one has A LOT of glycine more than the other, and you might take this as a hint that some amino spiking is going on. And then you have the choice. If you consume gelatine in your diet, be it aspic or just gummy bears, you might not need additional glycine and feel cheated when someone mixes it i your whey. If, on the other hand, you planned on supplementing glycine anyways, than you might just as well go with the spiked powder... If you have the information, that's up to you. If the manufacturer does not provide an amino acid profile and spikes gylcine, than you are fooled and might not even know... Valine, Leucine and Isoleucine are branched amino acids. These play a crucial role in protecting your muscle during catabolic phases. Leucin is also involved in the pathway of stimulating elevated protein synthesis after exercise. In simple terms, the body sees "ah, there is plenty of leucine here... so no shortage of proteins. I can afford to rebuild that muscle, and I'm making it tougher this time!" Regarding local shops: can you buy online?

Skip the soda entirely. I'd also skip cereals ( i assume you mean corn flakes and similar processed stuff) - that's mostly simple carbs as well, and not very rich in nutrients. If you have sweet tooth, you might instead try oats. Oats and milk. Or overnight oats. Or you boil oats in water until you get a pulp. If that tastes to boring, you can add some slices of apple or whichever fruit you have around. (Add last, so you just warm them a bit. You don't want to overcook the fruits.) Then, sprinkle with cinnamon and let a little bit off butter melt over it. Dirt cheap (500g of oats are 0.39€ where I live), a bit of fat, full of complex starches and fiber (these three keep you full for a long time), some vitamins, even decent (for plant-based stuff) protein.

8-15$ for a salad? WTF?* I do not know about price structures in the US, but that is just insane. For example, I can get a head of iceberg lettuce for 0.79€, 3 sweet peppers for ~1.5€, one kilogram of onions is 1.5-2€... Other vegetables are also cheap: 500g of carrots vary between 0.8 and 1.8€, 1kg of spinach can be had for ~2€. Rootbeet is not that expensive, and cabbage is dirt cheap, too. Over here, protein is the expensive part: 200g of feta 1.7€, a can of tuna 2€... bacon around 10€/kg, ground meat 5€/kg, and a steak >20€/kg. But I could also easily pay double or sometimes triple for that. It pays off to pay a bit attention where you shop. Grocery prices can differ wildly... Regarding sports: you should definitely keep strength training. I also have a slight scoliosis, which I could get under control by strength training. I was diagnosed when 13; but on the x-rays made for the medical examination for the army 5 years later my spine was back close enough to normal. Whenever I stop working out, be it a high-stress-phase on the job or illness or injury, I notice that my posture deteriorates rapidly and back pain creeps in. As long as I can strength train regularly, everything is fine... Focus on stuff that strengthens your core. Planks, side planks, bridges, quadruped extensions, that kind stuff. When working with weights, prefer free weights over machines and focus on compound movements (multi-joint movements). Make sure your work all aspects of the body. Press in front, press overhead, squat, deadlift. Pull horizontally and vertically (i.e. rows and chin-ups). Muscular disbalances wreak havoc with your spine. So identify them and work on them. You might need the help of a good personal trainer or physical therapist for this - expensive, but worth it. Oh, and one last thing. Please don't obsess about weight. Weight alone tells you nothing about body composition. I once had a girl gain 6kg while she simultaneaously went down two clothing sizes. Eat healty** and focus on what your body can DO. The rest will fall in place, if you allow enough time. Form follows function. * In a restaurant, the price would not be that outrageous. There, you are paying for the service and convenience, not for the food. But if you prepare food yourself, that that price range is unacceptable. ** Lots of vegetables, some fruit, sufficient protein. Most females struggle with the protein.

If you don't like working out or if you like to work out but can't find the time, one way to get in or stay in decent shape is to skip working out, but instead integrate more physical activity in your daily life. Take my mom, for example... When we lived in the Ruhr area, she just did not have the time nor energy for daily exercise after a busy work day. She was glad when she could squeeze in a gymnastics class once a week. But one day, she figured out that while her daily commute did take extremely long in a car, the distance wasn't actually that long, but most of that time she was just stuck in traffic. And then she worked out she could shave off 1/3rd of the distance via narrow streets through residential areas and, most important, a bike path on the track of a decomissioned railway. (No steep grades, no corners, no intersecting traffic... the bike equivalent to the Autobahn.) They had a bathroom at work, so she could change clothes and get fresh again. So what if, instead of sitting 30-60 minutes (depending on traffic) in a car, she could just take the bike and be there in 50 minutes? As she was a bit out of shape, she started by keeping the car at work and going back by public transport (which is horrible in the Ruhr and takes forever, at least when you cross city borders, which is the reason why she took the car in the first place). The next day, she took the bike and drove back with the car. Then, drove to work with the car, left the car at work and came back with the bike. Thus she managed to keep the training volume manageable... but after just a few weeks, her fitness had improved considerably, and she would take the bike every single time. Be it thunder, lightning, or rain... And she, who had no background in competitive sports and never competed in whole life, suddenly started to care about time and average speeds. And suddenly she would brag about being able to follow the guys in spandex on their obviously expensive racing bikes. Or she would tell that on her way home, she suddenly had the urge to make a slight detour to the river to get some more km in. And then some day, she would brag about being faster than some of the spandex guys... Voilà: here you have a working mom suddenly doing 10 (!) cardio sessions a week... (And saving a ton of money by not driving a car. Fuel is expensive in Europe.)

At the beginning of december, a guy at the boathouse mentioned this particular event during a conversation in which I complained about my severly lacking endurance. "In january, Hellas-Titania (a neighbouring rowing society) is hosting the pasta sprint... distance is absurdely short, and every athlete get's three bowls of pasta for free. You're the biggest guy in the room with the least endurance, and you're always hungry. Sounds like the perfect event for you... shall I put you on the enrollment list?" So it was both an opportunity that came up on short notice, but during this short time I did indeed train for it and I changed my programming so as peak on the day of the event. A bit extreme for a not very serious "for fun" event, but I guess I just wanted to prove myself that I still know what I am doing.