re: Arkansas health and fitness thread

When you lose weight, you're going to lose both fat and muscle. There's no way around it. You can still gain some strength while you're losing weight since a smaller, trained muscle can be stronger than a larger, untrained muscle.

Body weight stuff may be a decent way to start to ease back into things, but I would add barbells sooner rather than later. Trap/Shrug bar deadlifts are fantastic for core strength, for grip strength, AND for improving your pull-ups. Pull-ups had always been a weak spot for me, until I added deadlifts. Something about pulling and holding a few hundred pounds off the floor just made everything else feel lighter, including pull-ups.

If you've hit a plateau on weight loss, it's probably time for a small tweak to either your exercise or diet. Nothing drastic, just add a walk to your routine or cut back on (but don't eliminate) something like beer, pizza, french fries, or something like that.

Thanks LRHF.

I believe my plateau is a direct result from inconsistent diet and training. I only workout at lunches (busy with kids before and after school). I need to incorporate more weekend training from home, I just don't have the weights at home. I don't have a membership to a gym either other than the boxing gym where I work out.

I have been eating very poorly, I need to jump back on the wagon.

lost 4 lb's in the past month.

i've been working out more consistently, but i attribute most of the loss to not drinking for the past 3 weeks. that cut at least 1200-1500 calories per week out of my diet from just the beer, no telling how many fewer calories from eating out less (shitty food either late at night to sober up or the next day when hungover, or more often than not both).

I've been home sick. Never had a sinus infection give me a fever before.

my ex goes there. it's the same as all the rest. just like 24 hour fitness and Lifetime. just different colors.

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Miz Piggy

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Thanks! On the mend.

Lost 0.8 lbs last week. Between getting my son off to college, becoming an empty nester, and celebrating my girlfriend's birthday, I had a lot of big meals last week, so I'm pleased that I didn't gain. I also hit my first arm bar in class last night, so all-in-all a pretty good week.

I'm about to wrap up my second week back in the weight room. One of the benefits of lifting at home is not being embarrassed as I work back through the wienie weight stage. I'm excited about getting back into a good lifting routine! The idea now is to keep improving in BJJ class so that, by the time I get some strength back, I'll know how to use it.

What's your setup like at home?

Smoke free for 5 months now. I started a weight gain diet, yes, weight gain. I've gained 6lbs in the last 2 months. My goal is 180, I'm about 170 right now.

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What's your setup like at home?

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It's a fairly basic but nice set-up that I've accumulated over the years. A power cage, olympic bar & weights, olympic shrug/hex bar, lat pull-down machine, a few sets of dumbbell handles, and a treadmill.

It's ridiculous how inexpensive and versatile a power cage can be, and I absolutely love the hex bar for deadlifts.