Posts by cpontifex

I think that it was pretty naieve of you to choose to have a child with a man you had only been dating for four months. You didn't really give him a choice when it came to being a father. Did you really expect it to end up happily ever after?

Like you said, you wanted to do it with him, or without him. Looks like you have to do it without him.

I am at the final stage of New Rules of Lifting, love the results, and the strength that comes with it. People tell me I have a sexy back now, which I had not previously ever heard before. Not to mention the round perkier bum, shapely legs and tiny waist. I was skinny before, and you know what, men didn't particularily find it more attractive. Now I'm 10-15 lbs heavier (from 114 to 129), and my figure definately receives a lot more positive attention then it ever did when I was thin.

If she follows through with it, she won't be disappointed.

I think that if you were to ask anyone with Anorexia as to wether or not their decreased energy needs were a direct result from a very low caloric intake, they would tell you that was in fact the case. Their doctors would tell you the same thing too.

And for the average person, who isn't Anorexic, it's impractical and unsustainable plan anyways.

I think that if someone had one particularily low calorie day once every 7 days or so and managed to averaged their maintenance calories for the rest of the week, then yes they would lose weight without destroying their regular metabolic functions.

An athlete will have a higher caloric requirement than the average gym goer because they are eating for performance. Typically they will be eating a surplus to increase strength, endurance, speed etc. The average gym goer on the other hand is probably trying to lose weight, thus eating in a caloric deficit.

Nutritionally, however, in terms of the types of food you should be eating. It's pretty much exactly they same. You need to eat clean healthy foods and you need to eat often.

Universally its pretty easy to say that no matter what your goals are (unless your goal is to be fat) you need to eat clean and unprocessed foods as much as possible. Cut out the middle men of excess sodium, preservatives, unnatural flavor enhancers, monosodiumglutamate, etc etc etc and you will improve your physique, health and performance.

There is no specially prescribed diet for "an average gym-goer", which is probably why you won't find it in a search. There are only healthy and sensible choices, which you are perfectly capable of determining on your own. Or with a little research.

Check out Tosca Reno's Eat Clean Diet.

Everyone seems to be forgetting a very important rule...

EAT CLEAN.

The surest way to uncover your abs (paired with weight training). If you want it you have to give up processed foods. Just doing ab exercises alone with tons of cardio seriously won't make it happen.

Honestly, there are hundreds upon hundreds of ways to improve your appearance. There was a time when people were absolutely stuck with what they were given, but not in this day and age. You do have the ability to completely change your appearance if that is what you so choose. There are many people out there who lived much of their lives as wall flowers, and being overlooked by prospective partners and people in general can be internally damaging.

It might take awhile, but if changing your outward appearance is what it takes to make you feel good all around then do it. It's not a matter of simple vanity, it's more about becoming the person on the outside that you already are on the inside.

The thing is it will take time, and money and dedication. Losing weight is just the first step. Think of your face, your body, your skin and hair all as malleable physical traits that only require the right kind of degrees of manipulation.

The overall body, naturally, will come first. Losing the weight first and foremost is like prepping the canvase. Not only that but when you lose the weight, and become a healthy individual people see that too. Being healthy is attractive. Next, skin and teeth. If you have problem skin consult a dermatologist and see if they can provide you with some kind of hormonal treatment. A beautiful smile is also a great feature. Whitening and braces are also going to be important.

These are all things I had to go through, I had 10 teeth pulled when I was 13, was overweight and had acne. I was called ugly more than once, I would find notes about people talking about me calling me ugly. It hurts, I know. But there is no reason for you to suppose that you can't be that hot bitch one day.

Ultimately it made me a better person, now the man that I'm with see's the genuine kindness in me and that just makes him all the more crazy about me. Because the easiest way to ruin a beautiful person is to give them an ugly attitude.

Remember, Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.And don't forget that you are probably already both.

You have only been going for 6 weeks, YES that is a start! But it isn't nearly long enough too see the ultimate result. Everyday I want you to envision the way you see yourself in two years or three years or five years. You don't have to live your life in perpetual saddness wishing that the person you see in the mirror was someone else. Change her. Don't give up. Because you can.

Yes you can absolutely lose weight if you eat fruit there is no doubt about that. Unless you are already below 16% body fat and you are trying to get leaner than that there is no plausible reason to suppose that you should not be eating fruit. That is nonsense. It's an excellent choice, prior to and just after training with a combination of lean or whey protein.

Remember your trainer probably isn't a nutritionist or a dietician. However, if you really want to speed things up with weight loss cutting out all simple carbohydrates will probably get you there quicker, but it is not required.

You can drop weight like crazy if you cut out complex carbohydrates like grains and simple carbs like fruit, and instead eat nothing but vegetables, lean protein and healthy fats, but hell, that takes discipline. And unless you're in contest mode for a figure cometition it really isn't recommended.

Bottom line to take away from this, is fruit bad for you? **** no. 

NO no no no no nononono! You're diet is not perfect (its healthy and thats great), but if you want to build abs you need to build muscle. That means you need to eat way more protein than you are currently taking in. If you want to build muscle you need a calorie surplus. If you want to lose the fat you need a calorie deficit. Not only that but you need to train with heavier weights. I do lunges with 115 lbs on my back. 12 lbs isn't going to cut it. It's all about compound movements my dear.

Weight train and eat more protein and you can prevent catabolic break down of muscle tissue while you are trying to lose weight.

Even better, do circuit training, or use supersets. Work out at the highest intensity possible.

Lift heavier, and the more you run the more you will burn away at your muscle tissue. Long distance running is not the key to abs.

You don't have to cut out your carbs but you do need a proper balance between your macronutrients. 30% fat 40% protein 30% carbs. It doesn't have to be exactly like that and you will need to find the right ratio for you, but for your dinner I'm noticing two whole cups of rice. thats twice what you would need.

I would recommmend consulting the experts on muscle building at

www.figureathelet.com

Melkor! If I did strength training on Monday and HIIT on Tuesday and I'm going to the gym again today, but my lower body is still pretty sore, is it still ok if I strength train again today?

Yeah provided your nutrition is on the right track I would say for sure, you probably even gained a little more than that. If you can see the difference, you can be sure that the changes are beginning to occur. It's even possible that you lost a few extra pounds of body fat and gained closer to 4 lbs muscle in a four month period.

I would like to add though that I wouldn't put too much faith in body fat scales either, the problem with them, is that most of them simply send pulses through your feet so the current will only account of the amount of body fat in the lower half of your body and it will estimate the rest of your upper body fat % based on some of the information you plug in at the beginning. So if you carry more fat on the lower half of your body then your % will read a higher estimation. As far as I understand it.

The best kinds are the ones where you step on the scale and you hold onto hand held devices at the same time. They're a bit more accurate.

I've physically watched myself get leaner, but the scale I have doesn't seem to reflect the changes I'm seeing. Hydration levels will screw with it too. I guess my point it, I feel like my progress isn't really showing up on the scale, but it is showing up in the mirror. 

Original Post by specca:

you guys shouldn't criticize her. i'm pretty sure there are lots of guys out there who get buff and roided out only go to look good or impress other people, so stop being such hypocrites.

anyway...i understand how you feel. actually, my problem is that im trying to buid up my glutes but maintain slim legs. for me, this is impossible. so i agree with melkor: low intensity, long duration exercise on an empty stomach. its the best way to waste leg muscles.

 

oh yea, and i just wanted to add something: if you think having slimmer legs will make you more beautiful, then go for it. strength comes from your attitude within, not with the bulky muslces on your legs.

 No one is being critical. We are just trying to put emphasis on the fact that muscle is not the enemy. Fat is. There is nothing wrong with slim legs, but there sure as hell isn't any thing wrong with muscular ones either. We're just trying to make the point that muscularity is attractive too. There is no one singular idealized version of beauty.

Besides, how is that even hypocritical? You've gone and completely misconstrued the point.

Btw, there is such a thing as slim muscular legs, those are sexy too. It's not as if there isn't any middle ground between muscular and slim. You can have both.

Original Post by melkor:

Original Post by smartjock256:

Well said. Expresses my feelings about people wanting to lose muscle perfectly.

 If you absolutely must; long duration low intensity cardio in a fasted state.

The High rep low weight advice is actually pretty much counterproductive - that trains the cytoplasmic energy system in the legs and causes size increases.

Generalization #3: Low rep leg training builds bulky legs, whereas high rep leg training brings out the detail and will build nicely toned legs.

Truth: For the majority of muscle groups, performing reps of 10 or below does seem to work better for mass, but legs are an exception. Assuming you're training close to failure, nothing builds "bulky" legs faster than performing intense sets of 20-50 on squats, leg presses, lunges, and other hard movements.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but keeping the reps low when training legs is more conducive to "tone" than to "bulk." I can't stress this enough.

The girls who come to me complaining of stocky legs are almost always doing sets of 20 or more on legs. I simply switch them to lower reps; over time, the legs stop blowing up, and daylight starts peeking through between the thighs. Hallelujah!

Ten Training Truths You Need To Hear
by Jen Heath

Strong women are awesome. And to quote Geoff Girvitz: "Staying weak because of how it might make you look is the same as staying illiterate for fear of appearing nerdy. Stop it. You’re better than that." (Strength without size: How to get stronger without getting bulky)

"Truth: For the majority of muscle groups, performing reps of 10 or below does seem to work better for mass, but legs are an exception. Assuming you're training close to failure, nothing builds "bulky" legs faster than performing intense sets of 20-50 on squats, leg presses, lunges, and other hard movements."

I agree completely to the above comment. When I said high reps I should have specified the 12-15 rep range. And I should also have stressed occassionally.

Doing 48 jumps squats, or hell even just 48 plain old squats will kick your butt -literally - in a good way... at least when it comes to my own personal goals, but clearly not for the OP's.

I mentioned the high reps because I was recalling an article I read in a female fit mag either oxygen or fitness rx, this one woman had incredibly large legs, and for contest prep she really had to focus on creating a better balance between her upper and lower body. Because her legs were so big she had to try to de-emphasize them by keeping her lower body in the high rep (12-15) range, thus keeping them 'toned' without building them up unnecesarily.

The following is another excerpt from a T-Nation article, 

"When I used to oversee the personal training department at a fitness facility I'd have weekly meetings with the trainers. I'd devise scenarios and ask them how they'd respond. I'd say, "So Mr. X comes in and wants to build bigger quads, what are some of the parameters you'd choose?" One trainer said, "I'd have him perform full squats, walking lunges, and leg curls three times each week with 75-85% of his 1RM." That's a decent answer.

But then I opened up my book of artifice. I asked this same trainer what lower body parameters he would use on a female who was trying to slim down her hips and thighs. His answer? Squats, lunges, and leg curls.

Don't think for a second that this paradox is limited to the trainer I mentioned. This happens all the time! I see trainers and females using the same parameters to shrink their thighs that men use to build their thighs.

From a training perspective, if a guy is trying to build up his quads, the worst thing he can do is spend 45 minutes running on a treadmill every other day. Why? Because long-distance running will shrink your thigh muscles quicker than anything else. So if you're a female who thinks your hips and thighs are too big, you'd benefit from long distance running.

My point is that if you're a woman and you don't want bigger thighs, don't do what men do to build up their thighs. And if you want slimmer thighs, then do the things that men avoid when they're trying to build up their thighs — long distance running, for one."

He goes on to prescribe a training plan for women trying to acheived the tiny waist and small yet perky bum, and most of the exercises remain within the 12-15 rep range.

Sorry I don't know how to link it! But the article is by Chad Waterbury if anyone cares to look into it. I think this plan might be right up the OP's alley. Give it a look over Melkor and see if it will work for her, you would know better than I would.

I worked real and I mean REAL hard to get the definition in my stomach that I've always dreamed of. What on earth is the point of spending hundreds of freaking hours in the gym if I don't get to show off my results!?

I wore a sports bra - without a shirt over top for the first time this week.

And it felt amazing.

And I don't care what anyone thinks about it. I looked hot. Woo-hoo.

I did it a couple of times, but it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me because you have to wait for the hair to grown so freaking long before you can get it done. I'd rather just keep it short and save myself a lot of time and money by just shaving and using a roll on disinfectant afterwards to prevent razor burn.

Yes it hurts. It's not really that bad on the outer edges, but when it gets closer to the sensitive areas it can be a little painful. For me it wasn't totally unbearable. It feels pretty good after though.

Like I said before, it's a pain in the bum waiting for it to grow out again. I'd only consider getting it done again if I was going on vacation or if I up and decided I wanted to be a porn star. Which isn't going to happen in this lifetime.

Other than those reasons it doesn't seem really very practical for the day to day. and it starts growning back faster than you'd expect. 

The beautician will make you feel comfortable though. That is her job. If you're really modest and you get embarrassed easy don't get it done.

You will be very sick if you try to get down to a weight like that. At 5'8 110 pounds is a totally unrealistic expectation. It is neither fit, nor is it healthy. Please for the sake of your health do not try to achieve a goal like that. Try for maybe 125, and if you want to get a lean looking body without the low weight then build muscle, it's much more attractive.