thread of getting sw0le

creatine is totally ok you guys. not even remotely the same as roids. just saying.

i spend an hour making breakfast and packing food every weekday morning. :|

i swear half of my sw0le lyfe is grocery shopping, making food, doing dishes and doing laundry.

Has anybody had experience exercising on prednisone or other corticosteroids/glucocorticoids? I'm on a week-long tapered course of methylprednisolone for breathing issues (my left nostril and sinus cavity were clamped so tightly shut that the ENT couldn't even get the scope in to take a look), and it's making me unbelievably anxious. For reference, my embarrassing freakout on the severe anxiety thread was without this shit; that was just more or less what comes bubbling up to the surface roughly once a week. So today I tried to get back to the gym, since that helps a little; managed to almost drop the bar on my ribcage during the first rep of my third set of bench presses with a weight that I was able to lift six times with no trouble a week ago.

tl;dr am I going to injure myself if I try to get in my weekly exercise while I'm taking this?

maybe not because of anything intrinsically chemical but if it's affecting your breathing or making you nervous, probably best to wait until you feel entirely ready to lift heavy stuff over your body

So one setback I seem to be facing is that I'm just not losing a lot of fat, or at least it doesn't seem like I am. I'm about 2-3 lbs heavier than where I started working out in June (with full-on lifting starting around August). IDK if that means I'm just building muscle to replace the fat, but from what I've heard it's pretty unlikely to be able to build muscle and lose fat at commensurate rates. I kind of don't want to pack on too much more muscle mass without losing fat because I'm looking a little bit stocky. Concerned that maybe the heavy lifting is making me overeat.

Thoughts? One idea I have is just to try to quit refined sugar for a while -- sweets are a weakness.

I'm definitely stronger and definitely have more muscle than when I started though.

rarely drinking, fwiw -- I did have a few beers in the last week but in the month prior to that I probably had alcohol once.

It's early days. Worry in March.

xpost: My wife went through a major prednisone course a few years back -- working out kept her sane. She increased the percentage of the cardio at first, decreased weights and increased reps, made incredible gains that disappeared rather quickly when the steroid course was over.

sugar is no good

It's early days. Worry in March.

― Three Word Username, Monday, November 2, 2015 10:30 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hmm, so I need to give it like 6 months to see major visible body changes? I mean I do see body changes but it's mostly that I see some more mass and definition in my arms, shoulders and chest, whereas my trunk just kinda looks the flabby same.

I see some more mass and definition in my arms

awesome congrats!

u shdnt worry abt how long it takes just plan on working out for the rest of yr life

but eating less food wld work too lol

or different food

er didn't mean to drop shoulders and chest there

losing fat around the truck is, afaict, the absolute hardest thing to do. and there's 1m diff answers how to do it too.

lifting weights really only does one thing: makes you stronger. which is really useful for doing other stuff, but is not really related to fat loss at all.

one thing people do say is that having more muscle mass is "good" for fat loss because building and maintaining muscle is some kind of passive energy sink for your metabolism.

ps i'm v much enjoying my new lift 2x + run 2x/wk plan. it is great.

there is a certain 'i wanna be 70s big' sw0lebro disdain for cardio out there but i think the CW might be shifting; ppl talk about increasing 'work capacity' as a measure of strength, which includes cardio strength. you can't grind out those last reps if you're tired

ps i'm v much enjoying my new lift 2x + run 2x/wk plan. it is great.

niice, this is what i do too

i went to the gym

HI FIVE ME TOO :)

I did deadlifts just slightly over my bodyweight today which was cool. I did 5x5. Think I could have hit more reps but I didn't want to lose form, really paranoid about injury lately.

5 is a great number of deadlifts to do. you can do more weight and fewer sets in a week. i didn't deadlift very much today. i have a cold and my notebook made me realize i just took A LOT of time off. but it's funny how fast you can increase deadlifts. i love to deadlift!

Back days are still tough for me because my forearms/grip tends to get tired before everything else and my hands are still a little soft, so e.g. if I do deadlifts and then pulldowns and rows, the pulldowns and rows suffer because of my hands hurting and my grip being weakened.

i do deadlifts last always because yeah it's hard to do anything after them and mentally thinking i am going to do something else after this makes me not as good at them. the only thing i would do after them is overhead presses because my overhead press is pretty small. i don't split up body parts though.

yeah I start with my compound lift each day - deadlift on back day, squats on leg day, bench or incline bench on chest (I switch only because these two are always being hogged and I take whatever is open first). Occasionally I do my weighted lunges first when the squat rack is also being hogged but it's a little scary to do barbell squats when my legs already feel worked.

one thing that sticks in my head as somewhat true that i heard from a trainer / gym owner who seemed to know what he was talking about but was otherwise a derp is that "the bod" is 30% exercise, 70% diet. which is why it's hard to build muscle and lose fat at the same time since one generally needs a calorie surplus and the other generally needs a calorie deficit.

it is a total pain in the ass, but writing down what you eat for a few days can be illuminating. the initial work of changing your diet sucks because it means changing a few lifestyle choices as well, like making a lot of "clean" food for yourself at home or buying chicken breasts and quinoa salad from whole foods and not eating out, but it gets easier as your habits form and the looks your significant other gives you change from "you're crazy" to "oh you're doing that healthy thing you're committed to" and pretty soon you've lost 2 waist inches. night snacks and just pigging out on kind-of-ok stuff like milk or um cliff bars were a few of my problems.

yeah calories arent really "real" but its def educational to count them for a while

they aren't real?

well theyre a measure of lighting food on fire so in the that sense that they have made a fire theyre real

i can't count them for more than 2 days i am too lazy/cook a lot

A friend told me about some trainer he worked with who said you should go through periods of building muscle and then periods of "shrinkwrapping" the muscle (i.e. losing fat). IDK how well that actually works -- wouldn't the "shrinkwrapping" periods also result in muscle loss? There seems to be so much folk wisdom in personal training and fitness generally that I don't know what to believe sometimes.

i think if the goal is to "get stronger" or "get faster" or "get better at X sporting activity" then there's more actual, vetted data out there

if it's to "get bigger" or "get shredded" or "look better naked" then yeah i think there's a lot more folk wisdom

cleaned 255# yesterday!

damn, nice

gbx that distinction is interesting to me. don't quite know what to say about it. sometimes i feel a little crazy for liking the bodybuilding side of things so much but the more objective 'lift x', 'run x' goals tend to ground me.

i spend an hour making breakfast and packing food every weekday morning

thank you for giving me one more reason to double down on the unsw0le life

i like the routine.

yeah i totally know what you're saying. without a routine it's easy for me to just say fuck it.

cleaned 255# yesterday!

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Tuesday, November 3, 2015 7:55 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dog this is nuts

the only way I could clean 255# right now is with a damp cloth ;_;

lol keep in mind this is a oly style squat clean so a lot is predicated on technique more than just strength. I would not be able to power clean that without getting under it.

I can't front squat half of that so I am very impressed.

lol so today is the last time I do weighted box jumps not feeling 100% -- slipped and gashed the side of my head on the corner of another box. I was fine but there was blood everywhere, pretty awesome. Clinic literally next door to the gym, two staples and out.

o man!

i kinda want to start doing olympic lifts but like is there really any point ir is it just an injury vector

Yeah, daughter was sick, felt like I might have a touch of it, but I had gotten through my chest workout ok so I thought I was fine. Guess not.

It was kind of fun to walk around in a bloodstained white tee for a little while though.

definitely not too into the idea of learning Olympic lifts given my slightly klutzy history.

i can clean ok from youtube and practice. i'd like to be able to snatch but afraid to try on my own. the point is they look cool afaic.

i have been tempted by the powerclean, out of boredom, basically