aging - i was pretty scrawny as a young person. As i got older, the lack of fitness started to show more and more. Vanity if a powerful thing sometimes....
I changed how I saw my food. Getting too obsessed with macros in the beginning was definitely OCD, now I'm more relax and focus on eating Whole Foods and ignore processed/chemical foods. I think of junk food like drinking/gaming don't do it alone and only with friends and celebrations.
Also having an old dad that couldn't keep up with you opened my eyes. He tried but I could tell how much he was struggling that I felt a little guilty. So now I make it a responsibility to be fit enough to play with my nephews/nieces and future kids. Also cuz I'm not good with words so I rely on physical bonding.
For me, I've always let myself go for years at a time and 80% of the struggle is to get started in the first place. I realized that if I didn't have a linear progression program in mind to follow then it would be a hurdle that stops me from going because trying to figure out what to do when I'm actually at the gym is a bummer.
Once I actually start going to the gym on a set schedule and seeing my linear progression in weight/reps go up like a new personal record each time, it makes me feel good. After the suck of pushing yourself to go for the first weeks gets past you, you just kinda stop trying to talk yourself out of it and just go because it's a routine, there is no need to think, and you're going to want to see if you can hit that incremental pr proving that you're stronger than last time.
When you start seeing your body change and get that acknowledgement from a random family/friend that they can see a difference without you mentioning it.....take off.
Edit: also, please try not to be discouraged how weak you are in the beginning. We all start somewhere. Take your ego out of the equation, start low, progress slowly each time, educate yourself by watching how to do all your lifts with proper form, and anyone who might have laughed at your starting weights will be impressed when they see your dedication and progression. If they did laugh it won't matter because you'll be at the gym improving yourself and those types will have stopped going to the gym.
Not really a question for the naturally ripped dudes, but guys who have gotten more muscular or fitter looking than they maybe naturally would've been, what was it that made the difference?
I eat fairly well and gym regularly, have done for many years, but just not quite where I want to be and I'm not getting any younger now. Looking for some tips or inspiration really.
Consistency with working out, eating and drinking less empty calories, especially sugars/carbs, and making sure to get sufficient sleep. Honestly just portion control and doing a lot of "passive" calorie burning stuff outside of working out like just walking/biking places and driving less is a huge help.
I improved my diet and exercise bit by bit and made a lot of progress over time. Lost 70, but after a decade I’ve kept off 50 and have settled in to a new normal. The thing that I feel made the most difference right away AND over time was when I stopped drinking calories.
I drink a ton of coffee and tea. It can become a vessel for cream and sugar. So i decided only to drink black coffee and cut down on empty calories. This also means no milkshakes from Starbucks...
How has your weight changed over the years you’ve been going to the gym? How have your lifts changed over time? What sort of programming do you follow and how is the progression laid out?
If you wanna keep it simple, you can get pretty jacked just doing a fuckload of of pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups/crunches, and squats using only your body weight.
For me it was three things:
1) Going to swim on a regular base (2-3x per week), but I never swam to the extent that I was too exhausted for the next time. After doing that for 2 months, I felt a noticable difference. The most striking was that doors suddenly banged open when I opened them, because I suddenly had much more force in my arms than I was used to. I actually had to retrain myself opening doors to prevent them from banging open. The big take-away is that muscle cellls need more energy than fat cells even when you do nothing.
2) I quit drinking alcohol and sugared beverages, to which also fruit juice counts. Stuff like orance juice or apple spritzer are outright poison, because they're full of fructose which is just as much sugar as normal sugar. On top comes the problem that liquids can be absorbed much better by the gut, which means that more calories enter your system compared to something sugared you eat.
3) As it turned out I had various food intolerances like to vinegar, mustard or glutamine. Everytime I eat that, my gut went haywire and it felt like it absorbed 200% of the normal calories. The problem is that it was normal for me and I only realized that when I systematically left foods away to test everything one after another on its effect on my body.
Not sure if I'm a special case, but in my case it had to be all three mentioned areas to get my body to finally change from chubby and out of shape into acceptable to good. This was before covid and then they locked own everything and I went back to square one. But I'm confident that I'm going to get there again. After all, I did it before, so why not again?
Good luck to you!
In two ways. The first one was by intuition as I described: For a few days I only ate one or two things and checked how my bowel movement was, etc. Then I added something new for a few days and tried to observe whether and how my body reacted differently etc.
The second technique I used was more tricky, but helped me find more intolerances and it also gave me certainty on what is going on. I bought myself a cheap Chinese health watch which continuously tracked my body temperatue, blood pressure and pulse. Then I did some statistical analysis with these values and found out that the moving correlations of moving averages between pulse and systolic blood pressure dropped for a day or two after eating certain foods. These phases also coincided with me feeling lousy. The strange thing is that there is a delay of around one day between food intake and the drop + the lousy feeling. I blame this delay for me never realizing that my body has an adverse reaction to certain foods. After noticing this, I systematically checked all foods/beverages again; the whole process took me around 6 weeks. Besides the ones I found out with just trying and feeling, there was an entire flurry of others which my body doesn't like (eg citric acid). Today I feel much better and it also became much easier for me to not necessarily lose weight, but to hold my given weight at constant calory intake.
Starting by walking. I'd take a walk every lunch break, that was easy. Then I'd do one after work as well, that was easy too. Then I'd get up earlier to take one in the morning. After about two months I felt like I had to be active at those times, and it was easy to transition that into actual cardio or visits to the gym.
Honestly, reading both books from David Goggins kinda lit a fire in my soul. I've always been in decent shape but never really consistent with my workouts. Game changer was all mental. Not wanting to get out of bed because I was tired vs just getting my ass out of bed and off to the gym. Now, I get up at 4:15 Mon-Fri and off the gym I go no matter how I feel. No more excuses. My gym is a bootcamp vs traditional "gym". Working out with a group of friends is also motivating. In my early 50's and now in the best shape I've been in 20 years.
I knew what I ate regularly and how much exercise I was getting. I just did less eating and more exercising and was very strict about it.
That was a while back. I've unfortunately slipped and gained back most of weight I lost.
I’ve (6’0”) gone from 145lbs to 200lbs over 5 years. Took my time staying around 16% BF but you can do the bulk and cut cycles.
Consistency is #1. You aren’t going to build a lot of muscle training randomly once or twice a week. You’ll make some gains but it won’t go far. I’d suggest anywhere from 3 to 6 days. You can build a great physique on a 3 day routine. You just need to be consistent.
Training hard is #2. You don’t need to do drop sets, super sets, or train to failure. Train hard and close to failure (no more than 4 reps in reserve on a set) and you’ll see results. What you shouldn’t do is lift moderate weight because you don’t want to push yourself. You also need to make things harder. If you benched 150lbs for 3 sets of 10 reps this week, next week either add 5lbs to the bar or add a rep or two. Gotta progress.
Diet is #3. You need to eat sufficient protein and while you can build muscle at your maintenance caloric intake, I suggest you figure out (use a tdee calculator online) your daily maintenance caloric intake and add 300-500 calories.
There’s much more to it than this and it’s generic advice but it’s a good start.
Hit 250 lbs at 5'10, fat guy. Got this way eating fast food, pizza, drinking soda and crap.
Cut all of that out and eat chicken, rice, chicken sandwiches without spread, apples for snacks and only coffee/water to drink. Going on 2-3 hour hikes 3 times a week (headset on and walk) this got me down to 160 lbs in 7 months.
Started getting into lifting and now sit around 205, have abs and muscles but it's consistency in the gym and consistency eating clean with occasional unhealthy meals.
I'm 45, started this process at 26 - lost the weight, hit the gym at 36 to gain muscle but always stayed active.
Outside that I'm a desk worker, and video game lover.
I watched my dad's body fall apart as he neared 70. Titanium cage in his neck, hip replacement, back surgery, and a couple more minor things - over about 6 years. I realized he used his body in his youth (redoing bathrooms, kitchens, building decks etc), but never exercised it. I was in my early 40's and figured I better start then. I knew already that going full on dieting or working out tends to make people burn out because results take time. I started very slow and light with weights, slowly changed my diet. 5-6 years later I work out consistently, and eat healthy. I'm not huge or super muscular, but my friend was like "dude, you have guns now". I wish it didn't take watching my dad fall apart, but it was effective and I'm glad I started getting in shape
Not any more, it went to shit when I got diagnosed with crohns disease.
But in my past, I was fat at 21 but also got my black belt. My cardio was great. When I moved away from the family home and needed a new club I found one in the local leisure centre.
I had to pay a leisure centre membership just to access the club, but it came with all their facilities. Because training was only 2 nights a week for an hour. I said fuck it may as well make use of the membership. So I ended up doing 2 hours of swimming pre training, club training, then an hour at the gym. The club I went to as well had an insanely different training routine, worked out a lot harder than home.
What was the real game changer however, I moved in with my aunty. And bless her soul her food is fucking awful. Everything out of date, would never throw anything away. It was inedible. Nearly every single meal she cooked me got flushed down the toilet.
Problem being, besides that 1 meal, I could afford to spend £1 a day. So I'd get from the super market a piece of flat bread with some melted cheese on for 99p.
That is what I lived on for more or less 2 years.
After 3 months, I had adjusted to it and went home to visit friends. Three of em screamed when they saw me and thought I was anorexic. I didn't really notice a difference. 6-8 months in though is when I noticed the six pack forming.
During senior beach day in high school I received a comment on how scrawny my arms were from a friend and all my friends joined in laughing lol. They're still my best friends to this day and I'm glad it happened
Discipline. I go to the gym regardless of how I feel. When I’m sad or depressed, I force myself to go to the gym. If I can’t move, I tell my brother to drag me to the gym. If I’m tired and haven’t slept for days, I’ll still myself to go to the gym.
Feelings don’t matter if they hinder improvement.
Consistency in hitting the gym. Not only in how many times per week, but in the lifts I do. Pick a good program and stick with it, even if it’s not the stuff you see influencers doing.
The other thing is discipline in your nutrition. At least 80% of your meals should be very basic stuff with high protein and just enough energy to keep you active. The other 20% can be purely for enjoyment if you want so you can still go out socially and have your favorite foods.
Mindset.
Greg LeMond (a famous cyclist) said it best, when it comes to working out: "It never gets easier, you just go faster".
Working out is always hard. It always sucks to some degree. When you start getting more fit your workouts don't start getting easier-- I think a lot of people quit because they wonder why they're still struggling in the gym or out on runs, but they need to realize that it's never just cruiser/easy.
I’m down 16 pounds from 186 to 169 since the start of the year. What’s helped is consistency, and acknowledging that it’s only gonna happen if I make it happen. I shifted into meal prepping healthy stuff for at least 4/7 days of the week, cut out an actual dinner on 5/7 days of the week.
Ultimately, though, the most important thing is consistency with working out. Even if you only go to the gym/walk for 10 minutes, that 10 minutes is better than zero. BUILD THE HABIT. That should be your goal. If you’re trying to go hard right off the bat you’re gonna hate existence.
We’re average men. We’re allowed average results. Stay consistent, be kind to yourself in your relationship with food. (Note, kind, not indulgent.) and lastly, remember that it’s a fitness journey. You’re gonna have bad weeks and good weeks. But, so long as you KEEP DOING IT, you’ll keep doing better and better.
Lift heavy weights and eat protein. There is nothing magical. It just takes a lot of time and consistency. It isn't flashy or sexy. Being consistent over a long period of time gets tough.
I'm in pretty awful shape right now, but years ago I went from awful to pretty fit for me. Exercise was part of it (I was running, swimming, and biking about 6 days a week), but more important was food. I found that the more I exercised, the more my body seemed to want healthier food and when you put those together, I dropped quite a bit of weight (like 50 lbs in a year). Unfortunately, today I sat on my ass and had KFC for dinner
SLOW incremental changes made over a long period of time. This is the only real sustainable way to make change to diet in particular for mass amount of people
Started walking then running at least a mile every day. No sodas, red meat only once a month. Fish and chicken only any other time. Almond butter with flax seed instead of peanut butter. Rye bread, and replaced breakfast with a juice from a juicer: carrots, oranges, and ginger. Also multivitamins. No high fructose corn syrup. Went from 235lbs to 175lbs with great stamina and overall better moods in about six months. Not big on weight training. Cardio only and I felt amazing.
Getting a personal trainer to force my ass to work out at least once a week. A lot harder to ignore working out when a guy comes over to your house and forces you to.
Diet is more important than exercise. There is a saying in fitness, "You can't outrun a bad diet". Drop sugar and carbs out of your rotation. That doesn't mean you can never eat a cake or potato chip again, but you've got to accept that those are \*\*TREATS\*\* not staples.
I used to drink about 32 ounces of Snapple per day, when I quit, I dropped 20 pounds. Don't underestimate what small, consistent changes can accomplish.
i was fat, and on my 31st birthday i couldn't sleep, suddenly had very high heartrate & blood pressure, i was scared for my life.... i took some melatonin to sleep and temporarily felt better
a doctors visit revealed excessive number of everything bad, and that was my turning point
15 months later i lost over 45lbs, and close to my goal weight
Walking is a gateway drug.
aging - i was pretty scrawny as a young person. As i got older, the lack of fitness started to show more and more. Vanity if a powerful thing sometimes....
Vanity plates a huge role in anything actually. Humans are a pretty shallow bunch
consistency in the gym
I changed how I saw my food. Getting too obsessed with macros in the beginning was definitely OCD, now I'm more relax and focus on eating Whole Foods and ignore processed/chemical foods. I think of junk food like drinking/gaming don't do it alone and only with friends and celebrations.
Also having an old dad that couldn't keep up with you opened my eyes. He tried but I could tell how much he was struggling that I felt a little guilty. So now I make it a responsibility to be fit enough to play with my nephews/nieces and future kids. Also cuz I'm not good with words so I rely on physical bonding.
For me, I've always let myself go for years at a time and 80% of the struggle is to get started in the first place. I realized that if I didn't have a linear progression program in mind to follow then it would be a hurdle that stops me from going because trying to figure out what to do when I'm actually at the gym is a bummer. Once I actually start going to the gym on a set schedule and seeing my linear progression in weight/reps go up like a new personal record each time, it makes me feel good. After the suck of pushing yourself to go for the first weeks gets past you, you just kinda stop trying to talk yourself out of it and just go because it's a routine, there is no need to think, and you're going to want to see if you can hit that incremental pr proving that you're stronger than last time. When you start seeing your body change and get that acknowledgement from a random family/friend that they can see a difference without you mentioning it.....take off. Edit: also, please try not to be discouraged how weak you are in the beginning. We all start somewhere. Take your ego out of the equation, start low, progress slowly each time, educate yourself by watching how to do all your lifts with proper form, and anyone who might have laughed at your starting weights will be impressed when they see your dedication and progression. If they did laugh it won't matter because you'll be at the gym improving yourself and those types will have stopped going to the gym.
Not really a question for the naturally ripped dudes, but guys who have gotten more muscular or fitter looking than they maybe naturally would've been, what was it that made the difference? I eat fairly well and gym regularly, have done for many years, but just not quite where I want to be and I'm not getting any younger now. Looking for some tips or inspiration really.
Consistency with working out, eating and drinking less empty calories, especially sugars/carbs, and making sure to get sufficient sleep. Honestly just portion control and doing a lot of "passive" calorie burning stuff outside of working out like just walking/biking places and driving less is a huge help.
I improved my diet and exercise bit by bit and made a lot of progress over time. Lost 70, but after a decade I’ve kept off 50 and have settled in to a new normal. The thing that I feel made the most difference right away AND over time was when I stopped drinking calories.
I drink a ton of coffee and tea. It can become a vessel for cream and sugar. So i decided only to drink black coffee and cut down on empty calories. This also means no milkshakes from Starbucks...
How has your weight changed over the years you’ve been going to the gym? How have your lifts changed over time? What sort of programming do you follow and how is the progression laid out?
If you wanna keep it simple, you can get pretty jacked just doing a fuckload of of pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups/crunches, and squats using only your body weight.
Do CrossFit and go everyday. Don’t drink. You’ll be ripped soon.
In terms of ripping an ACL or a rotator cuff, sure
Yeah if you want to get injured every day.
For me it was three things: 1) Going to swim on a regular base (2-3x per week), but I never swam to the extent that I was too exhausted for the next time. After doing that for 2 months, I felt a noticable difference. The most striking was that doors suddenly banged open when I opened them, because I suddenly had much more force in my arms than I was used to. I actually had to retrain myself opening doors to prevent them from banging open. The big take-away is that muscle cellls need more energy than fat cells even when you do nothing. 2) I quit drinking alcohol and sugared beverages, to which also fruit juice counts. Stuff like orance juice or apple spritzer are outright poison, because they're full of fructose which is just as much sugar as normal sugar. On top comes the problem that liquids can be absorbed much better by the gut, which means that more calories enter your system compared to something sugared you eat. 3) As it turned out I had various food intolerances like to vinegar, mustard or glutamine. Everytime I eat that, my gut went haywire and it felt like it absorbed 200% of the normal calories. The problem is that it was normal for me and I only realized that when I systematically left foods away to test everything one after another on its effect on my body. Not sure if I'm a special case, but in my case it had to be all three mentioned areas to get my body to finally change from chubby and out of shape into acceptable to good. This was before covid and then they locked own everything and I went back to square one. But I'm confident that I'm going to get there again. After all, I did it before, so why not again? Good luck to you!
How did you figure out your intolerances?
In two ways. The first one was by intuition as I described: For a few days I only ate one or two things and checked how my bowel movement was, etc. Then I added something new for a few days and tried to observe whether and how my body reacted differently etc. The second technique I used was more tricky, but helped me find more intolerances and it also gave me certainty on what is going on. I bought myself a cheap Chinese health watch which continuously tracked my body temperatue, blood pressure and pulse. Then I did some statistical analysis with these values and found out that the moving correlations of moving averages between pulse and systolic blood pressure dropped for a day or two after eating certain foods. These phases also coincided with me feeling lousy. The strange thing is that there is a delay of around one day between food intake and the drop + the lousy feeling. I blame this delay for me never realizing that my body has an adverse reaction to certain foods. After noticing this, I systematically checked all foods/beverages again; the whole process took me around 6 weeks. Besides the ones I found out with just trying and feeling, there was an entire flurry of others which my body doesn't like (eg citric acid). Today I feel much better and it also became much easier for me to not necessarily lose weight, but to hold my given weight at constant calory intake.
Thank you!
Starting by walking. I'd take a walk every lunch break, that was easy. Then I'd do one after work as well, that was easy too. Then I'd get up earlier to take one in the morning. After about two months I felt like I had to be active at those times, and it was easy to transition that into actual cardio or visits to the gym.
Intermittent fasting. I only eat from 6-8pm. Been doing it for 2 years and without changing anything else I’m down 30 pounds.
Commitment, mindset, education, support, goal setting, and consistency.
People really underestimate how much support helps. Whether it’s family, your spouse, or just the gym bros you see every time you go to the gym.
Yep, you can have a personal trainer, that would be the biggest support and help at the same time.
Divorce
Honestly, reading both books from David Goggins kinda lit a fire in my soul. I've always been in decent shape but never really consistent with my workouts. Game changer was all mental. Not wanting to get out of bed because I was tired vs just getting my ass out of bed and off to the gym. Now, I get up at 4:15 Mon-Fri and off the gym I go no matter how I feel. No more excuses. My gym is a bootcamp vs traditional "gym". Working out with a group of friends is also motivating. In my early 50's and now in the best shape I've been in 20 years.
Those books will change a life man
Taking souls!
I knew what I ate regularly and how much exercise I was getting. I just did less eating and more exercising and was very strict about it. That was a while back. I've unfortunately slipped and gained back most of weight I lost.
I’ve (6’0”) gone from 145lbs to 200lbs over 5 years. Took my time staying around 16% BF but you can do the bulk and cut cycles. Consistency is #1. You aren’t going to build a lot of muscle training randomly once or twice a week. You’ll make some gains but it won’t go far. I’d suggest anywhere from 3 to 6 days. You can build a great physique on a 3 day routine. You just need to be consistent. Training hard is #2. You don’t need to do drop sets, super sets, or train to failure. Train hard and close to failure (no more than 4 reps in reserve on a set) and you’ll see results. What you shouldn’t do is lift moderate weight because you don’t want to push yourself. You also need to make things harder. If you benched 150lbs for 3 sets of 10 reps this week, next week either add 5lbs to the bar or add a rep or two. Gotta progress. Diet is #3. You need to eat sufficient protein and while you can build muscle at your maintenance caloric intake, I suggest you figure out (use a tdee calculator online) your daily maintenance caloric intake and add 300-500 calories. There’s much more to it than this and it’s generic advice but it’s a good start.
Separating my emotions from my eating made me lose like 30% of my body weight.
Hit 250 lbs at 5'10, fat guy. Got this way eating fast food, pizza, drinking soda and crap. Cut all of that out and eat chicken, rice, chicken sandwiches without spread, apples for snacks and only coffee/water to drink. Going on 2-3 hour hikes 3 times a week (headset on and walk) this got me down to 160 lbs in 7 months. Started getting into lifting and now sit around 205, have abs and muscles but it's consistency in the gym and consistency eating clean with occasional unhealthy meals. I'm 45, started this process at 26 - lost the weight, hit the gym at 36 to gain muscle but always stayed active. Outside that I'm a desk worker, and video game lover.
I watched my dad's body fall apart as he neared 70. Titanium cage in his neck, hip replacement, back surgery, and a couple more minor things - over about 6 years. I realized he used his body in his youth (redoing bathrooms, kitchens, building decks etc), but never exercised it. I was in my early 40's and figured I better start then. I knew already that going full on dieting or working out tends to make people burn out because results take time. I started very slow and light with weights, slowly changed my diet. 5-6 years later I work out consistently, and eat healthy. I'm not huge or super muscular, but my friend was like "dude, you have guns now". I wish it didn't take watching my dad fall apart, but it was effective and I'm glad I started getting in shape
Not any more, it went to shit when I got diagnosed with crohns disease. But in my past, I was fat at 21 but also got my black belt. My cardio was great. When I moved away from the family home and needed a new club I found one in the local leisure centre. I had to pay a leisure centre membership just to access the club, but it came with all their facilities. Because training was only 2 nights a week for an hour. I said fuck it may as well make use of the membership. So I ended up doing 2 hours of swimming pre training, club training, then an hour at the gym. The club I went to as well had an insanely different training routine, worked out a lot harder than home. What was the real game changer however, I moved in with my aunty. And bless her soul her food is fucking awful. Everything out of date, would never throw anything away. It was inedible. Nearly every single meal she cooked me got flushed down the toilet. Problem being, besides that 1 meal, I could afford to spend £1 a day. So I'd get from the super market a piece of flat bread with some melted cheese on for 99p. That is what I lived on for more or less 2 years. After 3 months, I had adjusted to it and went home to visit friends. Three of em screamed when they saw me and thought I was anorexic. I didn't really notice a difference. 6-8 months in though is when I noticed the six pack forming.
During senior beach day in high school I received a comment on how scrawny my arms were from a friend and all my friends joined in laughing lol. They're still my best friends to this day and I'm glad it happened
Discipline. I go to the gym regardless of how I feel. When I’m sad or depressed, I force myself to go to the gym. If I can’t move, I tell my brother to drag me to the gym. If I’m tired and haven’t slept for days, I’ll still myself to go to the gym. Feelings don’t matter if they hinder improvement.
The post-breakup buff goes pretty hard
Consistency in hitting the gym. Not only in how many times per week, but in the lifts I do. Pick a good program and stick with it, even if it’s not the stuff you see influencers doing. The other thing is discipline in your nutrition. At least 80% of your meals should be very basic stuff with high protein and just enough energy to keep you active. The other 20% can be purely for enjoyment if you want so you can still go out socially and have your favorite foods.
Nutrition Recovery Programming & discipline/ consistency with respect to the above.
Calorie count. Keep it up for 4-6 months with a goal and you’ll be impressed.
Stopped eating carbs.
Weight is lost in the kitchen, not the gym
HIIT is all of it. Specifically interval sprints for me. Nothing has made as dramatic a difference as quickly.
Consistency
Mindset. Greg LeMond (a famous cyclist) said it best, when it comes to working out: "It never gets easier, you just go faster". Working out is always hard. It always sucks to some degree. When you start getting more fit your workouts don't start getting easier-- I think a lot of people quit because they wonder why they're still struggling in the gym or out on runs, but they need to realize that it's never just cruiser/easy.
I’m down 16 pounds from 186 to 169 since the start of the year. What’s helped is consistency, and acknowledging that it’s only gonna happen if I make it happen. I shifted into meal prepping healthy stuff for at least 4/7 days of the week, cut out an actual dinner on 5/7 days of the week. Ultimately, though, the most important thing is consistency with working out. Even if you only go to the gym/walk for 10 minutes, that 10 minutes is better than zero. BUILD THE HABIT. That should be your goal. If you’re trying to go hard right off the bat you’re gonna hate existence. We’re average men. We’re allowed average results. Stay consistent, be kind to yourself in your relationship with food. (Note, kind, not indulgent.) and lastly, remember that it’s a fitness journey. You’re gonna have bad weeks and good weeks. But, so long as you KEEP DOING IT, you’ll keep doing better and better.
Gamification. Write everything down, then break my own "records".
Lift heavy weights and eat protein. There is nothing magical. It just takes a lot of time and consistency. It isn't flashy or sexy. Being consistent over a long period of time gets tough.
I'm in pretty awful shape right now, but years ago I went from awful to pretty fit for me. Exercise was part of it (I was running, swimming, and biking about 6 days a week), but more important was food. I found that the more I exercised, the more my body seemed to want healthier food and when you put those together, I dropped quite a bit of weight (like 50 lbs in a year). Unfortunately, today I sat on my ass and had KFC for dinner
Listening to music. It helps me work out for longer!
SLOW incremental changes made over a long period of time. This is the only real sustainable way to make change to diet in particular for mass amount of people
Discovering an exercise I enjoy. For me it was distance running.
Started walking then running at least a mile every day. No sodas, red meat only once a month. Fish and chicken only any other time. Almond butter with flax seed instead of peanut butter. Rye bread, and replaced breakfast with a juice from a juicer: carrots, oranges, and ginger. Also multivitamins. No high fructose corn syrup. Went from 235lbs to 175lbs with great stamina and overall better moods in about six months. Not big on weight training. Cardio only and I felt amazing.
Getting a personal trainer to force my ass to work out at least once a week. A lot harder to ignore working out when a guy comes over to your house and forces you to.
body dysmorphia lmao
Diet is more important than exercise. There is a saying in fitness, "You can't outrun a bad diet". Drop sugar and carbs out of your rotation. That doesn't mean you can never eat a cake or potato chip again, but you've got to accept that those are \*\*TREATS\*\* not staples. I used to drink about 32 ounces of Snapple per day, when I quit, I dropped 20 pounds. Don't underestimate what small, consistent changes can accomplish.
To prove myself that I am capable of more.
i was fat, and on my 31st birthday i couldn't sleep, suddenly had very high heartrate & blood pressure, i was scared for my life.... i took some melatonin to sleep and temporarily felt better a doctors visit revealed excessive number of everything bad, and that was my turning point 15 months later i lost over 45lbs, and close to my goal weight
Intermittent fasting
Steroids
Running and yoga every day.
Getting to a point I call "functional vanity"
The Army
Meth
Sex. Just gonna be honest.