ManicSpider

So I'm going to PAX Aus in 77 days (woo!), and I've also been struggling a bit recently with eating habits and injury so I've decided that I can convince myself to do the right thing in the lead up to PAX. Basically it gives me a window to change my habits while not struggling with the "I have to do this for the rest of my whole life?" thing. Then I'll set another event to aim for and try and do it again, so hopefully keeping one step ahead of my psyche Basically my goals are: 1) 2.5 litres of water a day. 2) Track my calories every day, never going over 2000. 3) Sleep for at least 7 hours a night. 4) Do my physio exercises and mobility stretching every day. 5) Walk for half an hour every day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. When I get home tonight I'm going to put up my measurements and weight so I've got a baseline.

@Elastigirl - I've started to pay more attention to how I feel after eating certain foods, and I've learned that garlic bread is my worst enemy. I feel like I've eaten concrete afterwards. I'd never really put the two things together until I started to think about it. @DerekP - Definitely. Whenever I've had a bad day, I try and give myself a treat to cheer myself up. It's the whole "I give up on the world and all I want is Twisties" kind of thing. Also if I'm stressed I try and eat quick and easy takeaway so I don't have to focus on cooking. I had an assignment due yesterday (I study nights) and I kept this forum in mind and made myself oven fish and microwaved some rice rather than ordering pizza.

I can't thank you all enough. To be honest, I wrote it in a moment of weakness and I was half expecting people to be annoyed at my being such a wuss, but you all have been so awesomely inspirational and I'm really grateful. I've never seen Any Given Sunday but wow, that speech just blew me away. I was upset because I know I haven't been doing the stuff I'm supposed to be doing - I've been hit and miss with my physio exercises, I've blown off a lot of my mobility work and yesterday I could really see it was having a negative impact even in my bodyweight squats. I've been eating more chips, sleeping less, and drinking less water than when I was going to training for two hours a couple of times a week because I've been sitting around more. @Draken50, it's interesting you bring up smoking, because I literally did just one day stop. I had pneumonia and when I got better even the smell of cigarettes made me so nauseous I just haven't had one since. That was over two years ago, and just last week I wanted a smoke really badly in my head, but my stomach revolted at the idea and so I didn't. I guess that's what I mean - I don't have any faith in my ability to tell my body "no" in the long-term. Brain wants a smoke, body says no? Body wins. Brain wants to eat healthy but body is going to complain constantly until we have KFC? Fine, we'll have KFC but just tonight and we have to be good tomorrow. Body wins. I guess I have to come up with a way to let my brain win more often (if this stream-of-consciousness isn't making me sound like a crazy person). I think sleep and water are the key parts. I get so tired I don't do my exercises, but if I'm sleeping enough and drinking plenty of water I will be less tired and have to get up off the couch more at least just to pee. I'll start with those two and go from there, and hopefully I'll be back at training in the next couple of weeks. Seriously, all of you:

This may be a little depressing, but what do you do when you know you can't lose weight? I've tried so often with so many different methods. I'll do well for a couple of weeks then fall back into my old habits. I get so frustrated with myself and I feel disgusting that I can't even just stick to even 2,000 calories a day, which should be plenty. So what do you do when you can't convince yourself you have even the smallest chance of succeeding? I have been lifting for about a year and in that time my weight stayed steady (at 127 kilos) but now I've been out for two months with a shoulder tear and I'm gaining. I keep telling myself all I have to do is eat right and exercise. I don't know why I suck so much.

Had a really good day today. I went to the gym, telling myself I'd take it easy (I'm still on antibiotics) and ended up getting a new PR in squats at 5 x 55 kilos (121 pounds). Then had bacon, eggs, salad and mushrooms for dinner.

Thank you Sozzielou, that really helped. I was sitting here this afternoon feeling awful and I saw this and thought "Bugger it, just go to the gym. If you go today, you can still finish the first page of your challenge sheet next week." While I was getting dressed my brain kept saying that I felt too weak today to do any lifting ("That's cool, we'll just do really light weights, and we can go whenever we get too tired"), that I should be cleaning up instead ("We cleaned yesterday. We can do more tonight."), that a nap would be awesome ("A nap would be MORE awesome if we were tired."), that I just ate a really bad lunch and so I might as well chuck the whole thing and just wait till the next challenge. Even right in the gym carpark my brain was saying things like "maybe we should go to the markets first". But in the end, I got a new PR in Deadlift (50 kilos, woo!) and I had a pretty good afternoon. Then for dinner I had bacon, eggs and mushrooms and an apple. Success!

I haven't been around in a while, and I also haven't done anything in all that time. I felt really lethargic and tired. I had so little energy that even picking up my bag was exhausting. I've been struggling ever since. I don't want to be a complainer, but I just feel so down and like there's nothing I can do that will make anything any better. I feel kind of hopeless. I know there are ways to fix it, but I can't bring myself to do anything apart from sleep and work.

Is a superset just keeping going one after the other? I can completely understand how you feel about the two minutes. I find especially when I think I can get a new PR I have difficulty making myself wait two minutes between sets BTW, what's the difference between an overhead press and a push-press?

That's a great idea. I might try and get a video at the gym next time.

For Ventolin? That's just... weird. I mean, apart from the fact you probably perform better when your lungs are working I have asthma but since I started exercising more this year I've had less difficulties with it. Also it possibly doesn't hurt that I haven't smoked in a year a and half. Competing is still a fair ways off for me in any event, and possibly it's a bit of a pipe dream, but still I'd like to aim at it. At the moment I think the qualifying totals for my weight are 235 and 55 for BP-only, and I'm at 137 (from memory) and 43 for Bench Press. Still, I've only been going for about 10 weeks so I'm fairly happy with how I'm progressing. I'll definitely cheer you on when you finish your 6 months waiting period!

Your food all looks so good! I also like the idea of taking pictures, it sort of makes you mindful (I'm assuming) of what you're making for each meal because you're going to have a visual record of it. And congratulations on wearing the dress so successfully! I had a similar moment last night. Mum and I went to Sydney to see Opera Australia put on South Pacific and I wore this dress I'd bought myself about 6 months ago. It fits so much better now and I wasn't at all self-conscious about wearing it all night. That and I was feeling pretty neat because my hips weren't rubbing against the edge of the chair like they were the last time I went Which Mass Effect one-piece did you end up getting? I saw your Coursera thing. I absolutely loved Maus - did you finish it?

That's not to say I'll suddenly stop lifting. I'll just have to be awesome without officially competing :-)

Oh gosh, I hadn't thought about drug testing! I was getting all excited thinking if I worked hard I might be able to compete, but I take dexamphetamines for ADD. In fact it's the reason I've managed to stick with something longer than three weeks :-) My brain wanders off on its own when I'm not on them. That's such a let down.

That's awesome, congratulations! Yeah, they don't like it when you fall asleep on the floor of the computer science department. When I do it they're all "Who are you?" and "How did you get in here?"

Me too. They're SUCH a nuisance.

Thanks! I hope so I was freaking out for a bit about having "done so badly" on Tuesday, but I sat myself down and I said "You know, 10 weeks ago you could lift just the bar. You're doing awesome, and sometimes you don't know if you can do it or not till you give it a go". Which sounds a bit trite but it helped. Are you competing this year? I was fairly in awe when I saw your workouts on Fitocracy

*lol* No, I hadn't seen that Oatmeal comic! That's very funny. Next time I go to the gym I'm sure I'm going to be looking at people and thinking of that I agree, a PT is a good idea. I'm a member of the gym already (it's one of those gyms where if you're a member you can go to a whole bunch of different gym locations) and they did actually ask me if I wanted to have an 'assessment'. I asked what that involved and the girl behind the counter said "Oh, they just show you how to use the machines and stuff". I asked if they could do form checks and she looked at me a bit blankly, so what I've decided is that I'm going to go to the next local Powerlifting competition in November and see if I can get hooked up with a trainer there. And I won't try for any more PRs on the Bench Press without a spotter

Yeah, 80kg is going down! And it's good to put the basework in with form. How's GTA V going for you?

Mostly the reason I've been nervous about going to the gym is I'm fairly large and people tend to look at me funny. I went in on the weekend just to see if I was okay with it and I'm going to try going in either tomorrow or Friday. The main reasons I want to go to the gym are that I want to be able to go heavier on my squats, deadlift and bench press and there are reasons I can't do that at home at the moment. Funny story, I went into a smaller gym that I have reciprocal membership to during my lunchbreak the other day and it was a bit of a disaster. I felt really uncomfortable, the highest barbell size was 45 kilos (they only had pre-prepared weights and even the 45 kilos bar was chained to the rack and I had to get them to unlock it ) and then I tried to up my bench press and failed fairly spectacularly so I had to ask the burly guy doing squats in the rack next to me to help me not get crushed to death! Then because I was so embarrassed my form on my next set was pretty poor so I fled pretty soon there after *lol* It's so much less humiliating to fail at home! As I said, I'll try again tomorrow at my main gym and see how that goes!

Ohhh, that is so pretty! Now I want one too!

Had an AMAZING session today! I threw some bench-presses in at the end (done on the coffee table with my husband spotting and my 5-year-old son counting for me) and I got a new high of 4RP at 30 kilos and 44 kilos (97 pounds) 1RP. I was on such a buzz! Though I had a look again at what people have been doing in local competitions and I felt a bit like this Hamster was mocking me: On the bright side, I found out that you only need to be able to BP 55 kilos at my weight to enter the local powerlifting competitions and it seems pretty likely I'll get to 55. Hoping I have a good session on Sunday again!

*lol* You get such good pictures We just finished a session just then (it's 3am in Australia) and there was some more system tweaking. What's your game of choice? I used to play a little D&D before our wizard moved to America and also a fair bit of Seventh Sea.

I completely know how you feel! Actually, I have a gym membership that I am supposed to be cancelling. I got the barbell because we figured it would be cheaper if I worked out at home. Also, because I tried walking into the weights section and people looked at me like "WTF are you doing here?" so I bolted I'm tempted just to go in on the weekend and try again - and if I can't I'll cancel it then.

Aww man, I am so jealous! If I come up with anything good I'll share

Today's training went well in that I hadn't slipped during my time off The worst part was the Barbell Squats. My Dad would have killed me, he only got me the barbell on the proviso that I wasn't an idiot with it. But I was fairly sure I'd be alright with 31.5 kilos. I got it on my shoulders, but then after my set of 5 I couldn't lift it back over my head. I ended up having to roll it down my back and onto the table which I would NOT recommend. I think the next time I want to up my weight I'll have to make sure I have a spotter around. Which is frustrating because I am so sure I can be doing more in the squats. After my work out I was STARVING. I love that