The Diet and Exercise Thread

I started Krav Maga classes last week any holy shit are they kicking my ass, but in a really good way. Last night I nearly put out the eye of the dude who was sparring with me and actually made him bleed (I cut my fingernails down as far as I could soon as I got home - promise!). I was falling over myself apologizing to him when the instructor came over and I thought I’d be in trouble, but instead he said it just meant that the guy (who is a much more experienced student, he’s testing for his first certification in a couple of weeks) hadn’t kept his guard up properly. The guy was like “she’s brand new, I didn’t think I’d have to!” which failed to impress the instructor, who suggested he go take care of his eye and then do 25 pushups, LOL.

Also my shoulder is killing me from breaking choke holds for 30 minutes and I got bopped in the side of the face accidentally (because I too suck at keeping my guard up!). I'M COVERED IN BRUISES BUT I FEEL SO ALIVE Y’ALL

 

I'm excited on your behalf - this sounds AWESOME.

 

Krav Maga is great! It was also my introduction to self-defense/combat sports. 11 years later and I’m still as excited as ever about hitting the tatami. (and the reason my nails have been short ever since, lol). Though nowadays I do muay thai but KM did start it all. I’m not surprised you love it. Wear your bruises and sore muscles proudly.

 

@Laurin Kelly : That sounds badass. Good going!

I work an office job. I recently found out that my employer offers a 20% discount on gym memberships— and on top of that, they pay me $2 each time I visit the gym. So basically, if I buy a gym membership, I get a discount and get paid to use it.

So on a whim, I bought a gym membership. So far I’ve convinced one coworker to join me. We started doing BodyPump classes together. I actually really like it.

Weight loss continues, very slow and steady. It’s been 11 weeks and I’ve lost 14 pounds... I am 15% done.

At my current rate, I will lose the remaining 73 pounds in roughly 12 more months. It feels like a long time, but I keep reminding myself this is a marathon, not a race. In the meantime, I’m trying to learn more about exercise and fitness so I can work out better once I’m smaller.

 

Does anyone know how to alleviate muscle soreness?

I'm an idiot. I think I overdid it at the gym. I could tell I was overdoing it, but I kept working out anyway. I woke up this morning, and my lower back and upper calves are in intense pain. I can walk just fine, but it's difficult and sit down, stand up, or bend over.

I'm 100% sure it's just muscle soreness and it'll go away in a couple days. But Christ it hurts.

So far: I've taken a couple ibuprofen, ate a whole chicken breast, and took a two-hour bath. I think it helped a little.

 

Other than the hot bath and ibuprofen, I think just gentle exercise/stretching? Hang in there!

 

Ohhhhh, I have been there. One thing that doesn't so much reduce the pain but helps it not to linger so long is to try to do a gentle physical activity like walking or yoga, so make sure you keep your blood moving through your muscles. If I don't do that when I've overdone it (I seriously thought I tore my rotator cuff at Krav last week) I get sooooo stiff and it takes much longer to recover. Hope you feel better soon!

 

I take magnesium citrate, try to keep moving, and foam-roll the sore muscles. I get sore muscles weekly cos I’ve begun pushing past my comfort zone, and in a way I almost look forward to the pain... as long as it’s not debilitating. More like the kind of muscle soreness that tells you you put them to work and can expect results (provided you eat enough!), not something that keeps you from working out for a week. I ran stairs a week ago and managed to overwork the muscles in my calves. The pain was unreal. Next time I’ll stretch.

I feel I’ve made some progress condition and strength wise for the past month and a half. Just have to remember to stretch and eat well. My two weaknesses (my diet is still rubbish).

 

It's too bad I wasn't there, I could've helped clean the bleeding wound up.

 

Me too. I really enjoy exercise... and I like to feel a bit of soreness, because it makes me feel like I’m getting stronger.

But this is definitely debilitating. I physically cannot move without intense pain in my lower back.

I tried some very light, very slow exercises, and I think it helped. No doubt it’ll be better tomorrow.

 

My goal is to break the world record raw bench of 739 pounds

Incline bench 675x5 raw

Close the gillingham high performance level 10 gripper

Pinch three 45 pound plates off the ground

One hand lat pull-down 1000 pounds

 

So I figured out how I “disabled” myself at the gym.

I did the rowing machine for an extremely long time. Then the next day I had extreme pain in my lower back, right? Hurt so bad I couldn’t stand up or bend over.

Well I looked up info on rowing machines. It turns out that if you overuse the rowing machine and have bad rowing form, you get... *drumroll*... back injuries! It’s the most common injury from rowing machines.

Lesson learned.

I ate a ton of protein, took some magnesium, and slept it off. The pain is completely gone. I must have just been very sore.

 

Those are some lofty goals! Powerlifting has always fascinated me, mainly because I'm an ex-football (American) player and my brother holds two national records in it for his weight class, lol.

 

Krav continues to be awesome and kick my ass, but I wish I'd thought to take a class earlier in the week than Wednesday. I've got my 2nd 5K of the season tomorrow and my legs are still super sore from class. I fear I may be in a world of hurt on Sunday morning.

 

I haven't been to the gym in over a month but I'm going back today. PRAYERS PLEASE.

This is the hardest I've fallen off the wagon in a couple years, and the last time was because I had walking pneumonia so I feel like that was a pretty good excuse. This time it was a mixture of being busy, having colds-that-sucked-but-at-least-weren't-pneumonia, and also a bruised heel bone that meant I couldn't wear anything but open-backed sandals for several weeks. Okay, as I type it, this is starting to sound like a pretty good excuse after all. But there was some straight-up laziness involved.

Today I'm out of excuses. But still, I don't wanna gooooo. *whine*

--
Update: I went. I did not die. In fact it went pretty well. I am back on this train goddamnit.

 

Just did a 3 mile obstetrical obstacle course mud run with Mr. Kelly! We flipped tires, climbed walls, hiked up multiple downhill ski slopes, waded through mud and scaled cargo nets among other feats of daring and strength. My body is like one giant bruise and I'm so sore I'm hobbling, but man do I feel like a badass! I just found out there's an American Ninja Warrior style gym pretty close to me house, so I think once I've used my 10 pack of Krav classes I might shift over to that for a while. I really need to work on my upper body strength as I failed on every single hand-over-hand obstetrical and needed a lot of help getting over the walls.

 

Obstetrical?

Obstacle, I understand. Obstetrical makes it sound like you're giving birth, which... would be quite a workout, I guess, but...

 

LOL, darn auto correct!

 

Ah. I thought maybe it was a new trend!

 

I'm updating to say that I have been managing to go to the gym regularly since I climbed back on the wagon a couple weeks ago. Been walking and hiking, too. Being able to wear proper shoes again really helps, would you believe it.

 

This has been dormant for a while, but I stopped looking at it after that little unpleasantness on the first few pages. Anyway, for the last month or so, I've been doing the 16:8 fasting thing and having good results. Basically what it is is just an adjustment to the timing of your diet: You go for 16 hours without eating, and then you're allowed to eat exactly what you normally would, but only during the next 8 hours. Lather, rinse, repeat.

With my job, I find it a pretty easy routine to follow. Basically, I just skip breakfast (which is another variant). My lunch break is set and locked for between 12:15-1:15 pm every weekday, so if I have my first meal then, all I need to do is finish eating dinner by 8 pm or so. Zero calorie drinks are allowed, and I actually like unflavored soda, so that and a black coffee are my breakfast, and I munch on sugarless mints (and have for years) during the morning lessons.

If I kept up the plan on weekends I'm sure my weight loss would be dramatic, but as is, I'm down about ten pounds in the last month, which fits into the healthy range of weight loss. I've included, from time to time, McDonalds, beer, beef bowls, Snickers, gummi bears, and all kinds of crap in my eight hour eating window with slightly less encouraging results, but still generally continued to lose weight.

 

So the semester ended, and after three and a half months of 5 day a week 16/8 (pushing 20/4 most days TBH), the results are in. Weight loss between the first and last days of the semester (15 weeks) is 6.2kg/13.64lbs. I let myself slip a bit towards the end and gained back some of my losses, and there was a heavy outlier day near the start of things, so the max weight difference, highest to lowest during the counted period was 8.8kg/19.36lbs. My goal was 25 pounds, realistically 20, but I'm still satisfied with the results. As long as I can keep myself from completely going to shit over the break, I should definitely be able hit my target by midsummer.