damien

Thanks Athena. Once again I think you've hit me with what should have been an obvious insight but what I have completely failed to see - Do I really need the snacks? I've got a terrible relationship with food in general. Maybe the snacks are another crutch I'd be better off tossing to one side. Hmm. Being hungry is not such a terrible thing. I tend to find I have lunch around 11:30 - 12, and then around 3 I get hungry.. but then we eat dinner around 5:30 (thanks again to the presence of small children in the house) so maybe I'll just man up and put up with the hunger. Gotta be worth a shot, anyway. A bit of discomfort is good for the spirit

Heh, in my defence I did say regarding the weight loss goal that I have no excuses on it. Especially because, as I said, to achieve it I really needed to do less, not more. The move has affected my exercising, and it's certainly affected the likes of my posting on this forum or focusing on and researching these goals like I'd prefer to. But yeah, I have no delusions about who's fault my misses on these are That being said, I hear what you're saying, and I appreciate you taking the time. I think pre-planned snacks are an excellent idea, although again I find myself unsure of what to go for that'll give me good protein and not be carb-tacular. It really needs to be something I can keep in my desk at work as well.. although after the move I suppose it'll get easier. Food for thought, certainly.

Okay, from where I'm sitting there's one more week in this challenge, and I can't say I've done as well as I'd hoped. I'll go through each thing and try to identify the problem. The biggest thing is I've decided to move interstate with my wife and our two kids. I'm not sure what "interstate" means in the US, but for us it's about a 700km move. With that comes me changing from full time to contract, starting a small business, working out what to do with our current place and where to live after the move.. lots on my mind. Where usually when I had a free half hour every couple of days I'd exercise, now I find myself wanting to pack, or clean, or any of the myriad other jobs that are required. I suppose it sounds like I'm making excuses, and maybe I am.. but yeah, I'm sure you've all discovered that it's very hard to focus on more than a few things at once, and with this move something was going to suffer. Lose 5 kilos Status: Heading towards complete failure. I have no excuse for this. I know I should be eating differently, and the exercise doesn't even factor in - it's something I should manage by doing less, really, not more. I've just had real difficulty staying motivated and focussed and thus resisting the delicious toasty bread in the evening or a muffin from the awesome bakery over the road in the morning. Also, and I wonder who else has experienced this, when I fall off the wagon I pretty much give up on the entire day. I know intellectually that I could eat well for the rest of the day and still be okay, but I just don't manage it. I also tried using protein bars for snacks, but inevitably I'll eat too many, so I still have problems. All up I'm sitting on around 88 kilos. I can't see me getting to 85 in a week and a bit. Future plans: I'm reading more on Primal Eating. I've recognised the protein bars as a bit of a cover for a larger problem, especially when they taste sweet and chocolatey. I'm trying to get moving again and planning on sticking with fruit and nuts for snacks, as I said originally I would. Do 5 pull ups Status: Not getting off the ground Okay, I followed the 20 pullups thing, but I found after the first couple of weeks I was still unable to do more than one. I don't know what to do. I've tried going back to the other steps towards a pullup, such as inverse rows and negative pullups, but to no avail. I can get to 2.5 at most. Future Plans: I feel the same way about pullups as I do about pushups - after being unable to do even one for so long I'm going to make sure I keep doing them whenever I can so as to not lose what progress I've made. I wont actively try to increase my max though. Do 50 kettlebell clean and presses Status: Unsure I managed 30 on each arm before I switched to a 24kg kettlebell (and dropped back to 1). I don't know if that's the right thing to do.. I asked here but nobody gave me advice. It seems like a better use of my time, anyway. I'm up to between 5 and 8 with the 24kg kettlebell. I'll try for a run of 50 with the 16 towards the end of the 6 weeks (Next week). I have bruises on both my wrists so for the last week or so I haven't done much. Future Plans: Man I love the kettlebells. I've pretty much planned my whole routine around them - swings, lifts, squats and one legged romanian deadlifts. I'll keep it up, it's pretty much my only piece of fitness equipment. Save $500 Status: Done This, it turns out, has been a very timely task to set myself. We're going to be eating into the savings to get through this move, and then I'm not sure how much work I'll have once we're settled.. so every little bit counts. Future Plans: Keep on saving. We need it.

We recently had our dishwasher break, and the dishes -piled- up. In the end I decided I should at very least wash the new dishes for that day, and then where possible get to the other stuff. I found that meant the whole job didn't overwhelm me quite so much.. and it turns out you can get through a lot in half an hour. I've read that for cleaning as you walk through a room you should pick up/tidy/otherwise improve at least one thing, and over time everything sorts itself out. However we've got a 3 year old and a 1 year old, and they often follow us through the rooms pushing over at least 5 things so it doesn't work so much for us

Okay, I did some quick tests last night so here's my starting point and ongoing plan: Lose 5 kilos I'm currently just under 90, so I'd like to get to 85. The diet I've been following with some success (I was 98.5 at the end of May) involves eating 1378 calories a week, with a macro breakdown of 730 from protein (183g), 318 from carbs (80g) and 33 from fat (36g). This is based off my maintenance being 1632, which I know is quite low but I have a job where I'm sitting down all day, and apparently that kind of level isn't so unusual. It works, anyway. Breakfast is usually yoghurt, protein powder and some dried berries Lunch is tinned chicken and salad Snacks are protein bars, almonds, maybe a bit more dried fruit. A glass of milk at the end of the day. Dinner depends on what my family is having, but tends to involve meat, plenty of steamed veges and maybe rice if it fits my macros. Do 5 pull ups Okay I did one last night. One and a half, really. I might have made two but after reading the article here I realised I need to go all the way up and then all the way down, which is damned hard. I might try to follow this http://twentypullups.com/ starting at week -2, it looks like that should get me to 5 by week 4 (which will be 6 weeks) Do 50 kettlebell clean and presses I tried this out and got 10 on my left arm and 13 on my right. Not a great starting point. I might have done more with my right, but my 3 year old was riding around on his bike and I had to stop whenever he came over to see what I was doing 6 weeks.. Really I need to try to add one a day. I'd love any advice from people here about whether it's better to do something like this every day or every other day, and whether I'd be better off doing less reps with the 24kg kettlebell before trying for the 50 with the 16kg, or if it's an endurance thing so I'll need to get higher reps. Save $500 Well, I'm starting from point 0 on this one. I'll automate my bank to put $75 a week into the savings for the first couple of weeks and see if that's sustainable. With a mortgage, bills, a wife and two kids and me being the only one working this may prove impossible. That said all the goals look impossible right now.

Thanks cactuscat. I did look into Paleo, but I feel like it's either for singles, or couples where they're both keen to do it. I'm not going to make my kids go Paleo I do refrain from eating bread, and eat less rice if we have it.. keep my carbs down around 80 grams a day, which is low but not paleo-low. The rest of the approach I'm all for - eating more meat, not being afraid of fat, and generally sticking to food that doesn't come from a box. The protein also does make me feel more full, which is great. Thanks for that pull-up progression article, I followed that method to go from bent-over rows to a single pull-up, so I can vouch for it. Linked from that I also saw this one - http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2009/07/31/how-to-do-a-proper-pull-up-and-why-you-need-to-do-them/ which has a bit more good information too. You've helped me with this week 1 mini challenge, so I'll give you a third thanks for that too

Hey all, I've been easing up a bit on the healthy eating for the last two weeks, and I really need a new goal so this is perfectly timed for me. Here's my back story: I've been fat pretty much forever. I managed to lose about 40 kilos to get down to 75kg, but I hadn't learned any fundamentals, and as often happens once I finished my "diet" I put a lot of the weight back on. We also had a couple of kids, which really cut down my time to exercise. I tried a bunch of vague "eat better" diets without any success, and had resigned myself to remaining fat and just focusing on fitness. I started doing weights, body weight exercises and the like - I figured since I wasn't hitting any weight loss goals I needed some other way to track improvement or I'd give up on the whole thing. I had peaked around 100 when I decided to have another shot at it. This time I did my research, looked into the fundamentals of fat loss, macros and the like. I built myself a diet based on lower calories, emphasising protein first, then sharing the remaining calories between fat and carbs. I've discovered one problem from doing things randomly - I have a bad insulin response, which means that when I eat carbs I get a bit spike then I'm hungry again pretty quickly. Eating when I was hungry was resulting in way too many calories. Following my own diet I've lost about 10 kilos in the last couple of months, which is awesome. I've continued the body weight stuff (from YAYOG) and recently picked up some second-hand kettlebells to play with as well. However this last couple of weeks I've struggled with sticking to my own diet, and so my weight loss has stalled. So here's my 6 week challenge, brought to you by the number 5: Lose 5 kilos (from 90 - 85) (2 CON 1 CHAR) Do 5 pull ups (I can currently do 1 - 2) (4 STR) Do 50 kettlebell clean and presses (50 on each arm) (I struggled with 10 on Monday) (3 STA 2 STR) Save $500 (3 WIS) I'm not sure how plausible these goals are to be honest. I only did my first ever pull up a couple of weeks ago, and my back still screams when I do one. I think the first and last are going to be the hardest though.. If you guys have a better suggestion for something kettlebell-based I'd love to hear it, I'm new to using them so I really have no idea what would be appropriate. I've been studying Iaido for about 8 years, so I'm going with Samurai Adventurer.. with plans to work towards other classes

Heh, thanks Pat.. For a while they actually went with "Adelaide. You are here".. which kind of says it all

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm most fortunate in that my family actually eats pretty well.. generally a ton of roasted or steamed veges and then some kind of meat and often rice. My wife's Mum is Filipino, so veges and brown rice have been a staple for a while now. I think I was making my mistakes at work, eating stuff from the local bakery for breakfast and lunch, and I find once I plug in the numbers and account for our dinners it tends to leave me enough to have fruit and yoghurt for breakfast, chicken salad for lunch, and almonds or dried fruit during the day. Obviously much fewer grains than a muffin for breakfast and a bread roll for lunch though. My wife is very healthy, so I'm the problem I've brought some tinned salmon and roast chicken in to work to up my protein, as well as the yoghurt. Still I'm only getting about 100g, when I should be more like 215g.. and as a result my total calories are far too low too, in the area of 1000 for the day. I may need to look into protein shakes.. do you guys have any advice on that front?

Heh, apparently this was all a bit much as an introductory post. What I meant to say was hi! I'm new here!

Howdy all, I'm a 31 year old Australian Dad and I've been struggling with weight for quite some time. I was about 115kgs, and managed to get down to 75 for a glorious few weeks but once we had our first baby and I wasn't gymming and running every day I put the weight back on. That was 3 years ago, and since then we've had another baby too. I'm currently at 98 and aiming to reach 90 by the time my daughter is 1 (so in 3 months). I've been reading a fair bit recently here, on Mark's Daily Apple and Fitocracy. I'm keen to make a change. For exercise, I have one more month of a gym membership so I'm using that to really try to step up the weights - focussing on squats, lunges, chest and shoulder presses.. all that good stuff. I cannot do a single pull-up. I can't really afford to keep the gym membership up, so I've been introducing more and more body weight exercises, and my post-gym plan is a combination of pushups/crunches/lunges/squats/dips/dumbbell rows with 30 second sprints/jumping jacks. I am a huge fan of exercising for functional muscles - I don't like feeling trapped in my body, unable to make it do things it should be able to do. I also practice and teach iaido, but that's less of an exercise and more just recreation For food, I've just (yesterday) started to be a bit more scientific. Previously I've counted calories in a half-arsed manner, but never got a result and inevitably gave up. I tried Tim Ferris' slow carb for a month and lost weight, but also felt tired and irritable and I couldn't maintain the loss since I didn't permanently change my bad habits. With two kids and a loving wife I'm not about to do something that makes me -more- tired or makes them suffer bad moods from me. I've also tried to slow and steady, removing junk from my diet and eating more veges and the like, but again I think I've been too half-arsed about it and not stuck to my guns. I need an eating plan that works around what we have for dinner (I can't ask my family to change their eating habits, which are fine for them and I can't cook an extra meal for myself because it's hard enough with the kids) so all my work has to be done on the other meals. I've started paying close attention to both calories and macronutrients. A few calculations have suggested I should have 215g of protein, 81g of carbs and 36g of fat on my rest days, and 215g/157g/70g on my workout days. That means about 1510 and 2120 calories respectively.. numbers higher than I was previously trying to hit (about 1200 a day) but -much- less carbs.. I know it's not full paleo but it allows me to fit dinner in first, and then plan my day to match that. So far it's also meant my mood has stayed normal and I'm only as tired as usual with regular wake ups during the night. For the more experienced recruits here, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my plan. I'm trying to keep the carbs to wholemeal rice and fruit, the fats to cheese and almonds, and so far haven't hit my protein goals at all (I don't eat eggs).. I know I've gone from very vague to very specific, but it gives me a much greater feeling of control and it's much easier to stick to - all the onus is on me, not on some iPhone app, and I plan my whole day out in the morning or even the night before so I don't get as tempted. Hmm.. if you're still reading thanks, that was more than I planned as a first post.. but hi!