aj_rock

ETF: the situation I was trying to get at was mindless eating, where you continue to consume snack-type foods without any feedback from your stomach in terms of satiation at all. Like you set up to watch your favourite show, grab a bag of chips or popcorn, and before you know it, 800 calories or 1200 calories are in your stomach and you don't even recall really eating or enjoying them. Sorry, I phrased that wrong the first time.

Ok, I would like to see some studies or peer-reviewed journal that state that organic farming methods are better than modern agriculture. If what you say is true, I'll sit down and shut up and agree with you. A glaring flaw with believing that organic farming is better is that organic products are still a niche market. Using the principles of capitalism, every company that produces food is going to want improved/efficient agriculture, yet they are sticking with 'modern agriculture' rather than organic. The only reason organic food as a market is sustainable right now is because a select % of the population is will to pay through the nose for organic benefits that end up being 99% gibberish anyways because the FDA is so lax in their tolerances of what defines organic food. On a more personal note, I cannot see how 1 acre of organic corn can yield more than 1 acre of fertilized, pesticide sprayed, GMO'd corn can. The reason we HAVE these practices in the first place is to improve yields; more yield = more $$$. Secondly, specialization is what makes modern technology possible. You agree to grow my food if I agree to build house if he agrees to keep it warm if she agrees to provide entertainment etc etc. So right there, home farming isn't really an efficient use of time. I agree that people should get off their fat lazy butts and do something more productive; indeed, if all that wasted time was spent instead say, focusing on finding more efficient, sustainable farming methods (in other words, every single person in the western hemisphere took up agricultural R&D as a hobby), then we could find a better solution very quickly. Such is not the case however, and specialization is still the more efficient path rather than everyone trying to do everyone else's job. Also, I highly doubt that home gardening is feasible in metropolitan areas; I cannot conceive of a home-grown plant being healthier than me if the air the plant takes in is 50% smog. Finally, for any/all bacteria/virus induced pandemonia, I still sincerely doubt the effectiveness of many concievable illnesses. Plague was a problem when we weren't clean; disinfection, sterilization and whatnot give us disease containment. Immunization gives us disease prevention. THE MOST virile form of the flu, H1N1, with the highest capabilities to spread across populations, failed to manifest itself in more significant portion of our population than maybe 1% (I think it was less than that even). So no wipe-out. Like I said, we should stabilize and decline around 9 billion in population anyway.

That's just P90X being silly and not using progressive overload very well. If you lifted more weight on your lunges every workout, you'd get stronger.

It's too bad you had such a bad experience with the team sports! Just know that it differs from team to team, and depends heavily on the level of competition. Pick-up basketball on an outdoor court or at a university, friendly. Trying out for an adult AAA basketball team, and everyone's out for themselves. If you don't like one team though, try another! I've never had the same experience from team to team even within the same sport

Unless you have access to a squat machine, there's not much you can do in terms of adding weight. Have you tried lunges?

The 2000 calories thing is not neccessarily true. If you eat healthy yet still gorge yourself, you can and will gain weight. The #1 rule of losing any weight, whether it ends up being muscle or fat, is that you have to expend more energy than you take in. That's why you track calories in the first place no? Anyway, the situation you described in your first post is one of being a habitual eater. Chances are that when you have free time, after a long day working/at the gym/ doing other stuff, eventually you sit down, get bored while watching tv or a movie or browsing the internet, and reach for something to eat. The best way to keep your mind off the food is to keep it on other stuff. Find a hobby, or only watch tv shows that are reaaaaaaaaally reaally interesting. Another solution is actually to eat bigger meals. Don't stuff yourself, but if you find yourself getting peckish after dinner, maybe making your dinner a little bigger helps. Get something lean and full of protein that takes a while to digest so your body doesn't get a chance to send the hunger message. Finally, if you can't cut down the food, you must exercise more. Energy in versus energy out, so you have to eat less or exercise more (or some combination thereof). Good luck!

Ok, had a chance to watch it now. Be careful how you set up on top too, getting it on your shoulders there? You're way too high on your neck. You want to sort of make a 'cushion' for the bar of sorts with your back muscles, and set the bar on that, using your arms to keep it pushed forward, not up. Basically that's a bit more descriptive of what spezzy said. Knees are going a bit far forward, but their motion seems generally correct... It's definitely hard without seeing your feet. I *suspect* that you are putting too much weight on your toes, because your back isn't quite in the right spot either. Keep your center of balance right over your mid-foot, not too much to the heel or toe. For future reference, when taking video of yourself, use an ISO view if you can. So like, on an angle, and looking down, getting the whole body and allowing the viewer to see all parts of the mechanics.

lutzy: Fat loss is strongly correlated to what your current fat levels are. Obviously it is much easier to shed fat when you have a lot to shed than when you don't. Another thing is that lean mass is almost guarenteed to be lost when attempting to lose fat, and this ratio of fat loss to lean mass loss increases the leaner you already are. So you understand it's hard to stick a number on it. If your picture is accurate, I'd say just eat healthy and exercise and you'll see body improvements one way or another As for muscle gain, I would point you to this article: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html Very good estimates by a few experts.

Actually, there have been studies showing the non-feasibility of paleo diets for those living below the line: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21745626 If article is TL;DR, it shows that the paleo diet isn't feasible at lower incomes without vitamin supplementation, and maintaining body weight is difficult as well (good for your average obese person, bad after you've reached your target) Fact of the matter is, paleo has a lot of very good ideas in it, that just aren't always practical. Of course, a LOT of what paleo teaches us are things that you can practice without subscribing to the paleo mentality: - eat things you either know and/or suspect aren't good for you in moderation. Life is too short to not have a pringle once in a while, but pop the whole thing too often and your life will BE short - limit your total food intake. Paleo as a study-able science is relatively new; the benefits of 'fasting', read, limiting total caloric intake for bigger individuals, have been known for lim(x->0)[1/x] Beyond that, should it really, really matter whether your diet is low versus high carb? After all, the paleo diet itself can vary from low to high carb depending simply on your ratio of fruits/vegetables to nuts/meats/seafoods consumed. People have had success in meeting their body composition goals doing both. Now I could argue all day about how grains and milk especially are uneccessarily demonized, but I think we can agree to disagree on that. End of the day, put the damn fork down and go outside.

15#? No problem, as long as you're ready to play a game called 'hide the 6 pack'

To be completely fair, a girlfriend or any other willing girl (not while you HAVE a girlfriend) is a perfectly acceptable source of aerobic workouts

Plague from the north? Hey that's my country you're talking about! Most population estimates actually have us topping out around 9 billion, so pandemics aside, the population will most likely stabilize. It's mostly attributed to low affluent reproduction rates and maxing out the possible population support in 3rd world countries. I didn't mean to put the problem on Carjack's shoulders, sorry if it came across that way. I just wanted to make it clear that the solution is never that simple. Sustainability is definitely part of that solution, but true sustainability is so very difficult to obtain. As for farming, maybe I implied the correlation-causation wrong. BECAUSE of agriculture, we were able to support much larger populations, and there is no way to decrease our dependance on agricultural technology without a reduction in population back to pre-agricultural levels. You would also need to reduce other technological areas, because you can't support urban technology development when you depend on a food supply that operates at a much lower efficiency. Soooo that's basically our options. Either reduce our entire civilization back to paleoithic conditions (I suppose some people would call that a good thing), or barrel on blindly forward and hope that our search for sustainability yields more fruitful results than it has in the past. Personally, I suspect that a) we will never voluntarily reduce our tech levels (especially YOU, my fellow nerds ) without some drastic reduction in 'working' population, which I believe has a much lower chance of happening than it appears some of you have. In order to reduce our 'working' population low enough to truly affect agriculture (remember, most of our losses would come from populations easily defined as non-working), you would have to wipe-out an extremely large percentage of 1st world populations, which are the best insulated against any massive die-offs. So it will never happen. Alternate methods of acquiring energy are probably going to need to be found off-earth. Once we develop reliable wireless power (and believe me, it's in the works!), this becomes much more feasible than currently. c) Unless we find a way to approach theoretical energy efficiencies, the Earth will go up in flames as heat-death comes into effect anyways. EDIT to say awwwwwwwww ETF Don't worry, nothing terrible will come to pass in our lifetimes anyway! Gotta believe that human ingenuity will pull through in any case.

I can't see the video (stupid work restrictions on youtube ), but I have to say 5 sets of ten for squats is a LOT. If you're just working form that's fine, but such sheer volume for the legs is agonizing and not really neccessary (IMO of course). If you're new, take some weight off and get form down FIRST. Get a trainer at your gym to watch you.

I can understand not wanting to take measurements, but I do feel it's neccessary, especially if you're still a rookie trainee. Think about it: you keep benching more and more, but your pecs don't get bigger. Then all of a sudden, you hit a plateau that you just can't seem to break. No matter how much strength you manage to get, muscle circumference and area plays a huge part in limiting how much you can lift; after all, that's why almost no one who has trained consistantly for years is going to curl as much as they squat (juiceheads aside). However, since fat loss can mask true muscle size, I think combining tape measurements with calipers is the best way to go. Of course, if you like what's in the mirror too, more power to yah

Carjack: what do you propose the solution is then? By your logic, we have: population explosion, causing need for short-cuts in producing food, causing deteriorations in health. Right now, most of us are trying to correct step 3. Genetic modifications and 'unnatural' growth conditions are keeping up with step 2, although I will admit modern capitalism doesn't help. Step 1 cannot be fixed, unless you're suggesting a worldwide cull. The point is, a worldwide population of 8 billion+ people is a very real future for us, and paleo eating simply isn't sustainable for a population of such a size. That being said, these technological advancements also account for why we live 30-50 years longer than our ancestors did as well, despite the rampant obesity and what not. Life span begin to decrease again, but overall, the least healthy of us still live far longer than our paleo ancestors did. These same advancements are what says we aren't going to get plague outbreaks due to overcrowding too. Nice try though If we were to die by pandemic, it would be something far more insidious.

Well, my suggestion would be to find out what areas you are least flexible in, and find out what the standards are and compare. For example, say you have poor hip flexibility and can't squat lower than 95deg. Your target would be to squat down past parallel. If you know the standard for sitting toe reach is to touch them, then work on that. I'm no expert, but I know for sure there are quite a few flexibility standards that exist to prevent injury at least.

... >_> SLAPPA DA BAAAAAAAAAASS that is all.

This sounds awesome Tom! I suggest trying to make all your goals concrete and measureable, including your lifting goals. Do yoga 20 a day = good, get 48 hours of sleep/week = good, continue on 5x5 will get you... maybe aim for five pounds per exercise per week?

As a guy who plays rugby, I feel ashamed that other members of this sport would go out of their way to make people feel unwelcome. If it's a bigger gym, I think you could stay out of each others way, and I hardly think that any gym staff with even HALF a brain would stand for one of their new members being intimidated by some juice heads. You got people on your side use them! If anything, I know meat head prime time tends to be from 5-8 in the evenings, so you can always find a different time to go. I went to my gym from 9-11 all year before I started working.

I think caco meant how will you tell exactly how much more flexible you get? Plan on getting a protractor out and measuring how much more angular bending you get?

I admit, if EVERYONE ate paleo, we might run into trouble. HOWEVER most models don't really account for all the freed up space and carbon impact from re-tooling existing snickerdoodle and twinkie factories into vegetable packaging and chicken torture. I've used this analogy before though: If I'm not allowed to crack my women over the head with a club and bring them back to my cave, I don't see why I'd want to eat like the guys who did.

I've done some water manipulation in the past, and managed to easily drop/gain 10 pounds over a couple days. Pure water. Normal fluctuations can change your weight by roughly 3-4% a day, so 1.5 lbs is absolutely nothing to sweat about.

Dude, those are HAYUGE gains for one month of work. Congrats!

I was thinking more that a ladies only section would involve more complaints about being ASL'ed by 8 year olds on xbox live.

Cool beans! Now to see if Google has it cached somewhere...