The Health, Wellness, weight loss, and fitness thread

[Jwar]

I'll breakdown what I eat everyday. LOL.

4 eggs, 3 egg whites

6 ounces of chicken, 1 tablespoon of olive oil or avocado oil, 1 cup of broccoli or asparagus (about 8 spears)

6 ounces of chicken, 1 cup cooked brown rice, 1 cup of broccoli

60 grams of protein from a shake (if I'm on a workout day I'll have 1/2 serving of carb replacement during and after my workout)

6 ounces of chicken, 1 tablespoon of oil, 1 cup of broccoli

3 eggs, 5 egg whites (usually I'll put jalapeno's in the evening eggs)

That's my whole day. LOL! Boring as fuck! Sometimes I mixed it up a tad, but not much. Oh and each week I get a re-feed meal and another meal with 40 extra grams of carbs. So basically a cheat meal.

The thing about low carbs is you have to have enough fats and proteins in order to have energy. With me timing on food is everything. I have to eat every two to three hours or else I'm tanking and my body starts to basically shut down.

For someone like yourself, it probably more just making healthy choices and making sure you eat enough. 6 small meals will speed your metabolism up and keep you happy where as 3 meals a day can make a lot of people stall and feel like crap.

[deusexmaxima]

I gained like 5lbs and it ain't much but it's enough to keep me out of the territory of physical exhaustion 24/7

[popvulture]

I'll breakdown what I eat everyday. LOL.

4 eggs, 3 egg whites

6 ounces of chicken, 1 tablespoon of olive oil or avocado oil, 1 cup of broccoli or asparagus (about 8 spears)

6 ounces of chicken, 1 cup cooked brown rice, 1 cup of broccoli

60 grams of protein from a shake (if I'm on a workout day I'll have 1/2 serving of carb replacement during and after my workout)

6 ounces of chicken, 1 tablespoon of oil, 1 cup of broccoli

3 eggs, 5 egg whites (usually I'll put jalapeno's in the evening eggs)

That's my whole day. LOL! Boring as fuck! Sometimes I mixed it up a tad, but not much. Oh and each week I get a re-feed meal and another meal with 40 extra grams of carbs. So basically a cheat meal.

The thing about low carbs is you have to have enough fats and proteins in order to have energy. With me timing on food is everything. I have to eat every two to three hours or else I'm tanking and my body starts to basically shut down.

For someone like yourself, it probably more just making healthy choices and making sure you eat enough. 6 small meals will speed your metabolism up and keep you happy where as 3 meals a day can make a lot of people stall and feel like crap.

Dude! Is your cholesterol cray after eating all those eggs every day?! Intense! Not that I'm surprised—I know bodybuilding calls for some gnarly routines.

Also, thanks for jogging my memory on the smaller/more meals plan. I've enjoyed doing that in the past, as I'm not a huge fan of feeling too full.

[Jwar]

Nah cholesterol is perfect. The eggs thing is a myth and has been debunked by science! Yea science!! Also I'm 195 now.

[Jwar]

I do know it! LOL! I've been doing it for quite awhile now. It's still fascinating thing though. Most people have the misconception of if you eat less, you'll weigh less, which isn't always true. In fact a lot of people are under eating. My wife for one. I wrote her a nutrition plan and she's down 5lbs in two weeks. Not bad at all! She didn't eat nearly enough.

Also I'm down another pound. 194...

[Jwar]

there are upsides to eating smaller meals more frequently but speeding up the metabolism isn't one of them.

So maybe I should clarify what I mean. By speed up, I mean, it will equalize your metabolism to a normal rate. If you eat one time a day, which a lot of people do for some reason, you will most likely stall and be overweight. Whereas if you eat several times a day (for me 6, for some 5), it maintains a healthy metabolism and helps to increase the productivity of your body.

Now if you eat 6 meals a day and it's like 5-6k calories, of course it's not going to go faster.

For instance, my metabolism decreases when I eat in excess of 3k calories, but if I eat 2.5k or less it goes insane.

There are obviously a TON of factors involved other than food intake though.

Water intake, exercise output, sleep (you have to keep your cortisol levels in check), and a hundred other things.

So if you eat small meals and your body is not used to it and you don't have any thyroid issues, I promise you'll have results. It's all about getting it right for you though. Which is tricky.

[gunslinger_burrito]

I'm not sure if this needs its own thread, but here goes:

I'm fucking tired. Like, all the damn time. I sleep a minimum of 7 hours a night, and I've been trying (with patchy success) to sleep more. My schedule is packed to the gills most days of the week and right now I have zero days where I can sleep in. I have to wake up to an alarm every damn day. The only times I feel alert and ready to go are when I work out, which is mostly early in the morning (it's when my classes are). Then I'll feel good for an hour or two after, only to crash mid day-late afternoon. I try not to exceed two cups of coffee per day, but occasionally I'll have a yerba mate or something. I hardly ever drink caffeine after 12noon in hopes that I'll sleep better..... But I don't usually wake up in the middle of the night . Since I have to wake up to an alarm all the time, I often have a haaaaaard time getting up to go and have to have my first cup of coffee right away. I only ever feel annihilated after workouts if it's in the afternoon and I've already worked at my job that day, or I was super stressed or something..... which leads me to STRESS. I'm trying to reduce it, change my mindset, etc.... But my life is super busy and my workplace is an absolute shit-show. And part of the cycle is that I'm too tired after work/working out in order to focus on a job search, not to mention I hardly have the time.

That's a really long way of asking if anyone has any ideas of why I might be exhausted so much. Obviously if I can reduce my stress it should help.... I'm looking into a sleep tracker or recorder to see if I have sleep apnea or something (I think my dad does or did at some point), and I've been examining my diet too....mainly my ratio of carbs to fats. I feel WAY more alert if I skip carbs, but then I get the brain-crash because my glucose levels drop. And I strength train often (even though it's mostly body weight/gymnastics), so I'm not sure that going low carb would be advisable......

Thoughts? I'm just sort of throwing this out there....

[ChetMagongalo]

I swear by yoga dude, makes me feel really good, helps my flexibility, and makes my muscles not sore. really important for people like me who sit down a lot.

[Iommic Pope]

Yoga is great, especially for sleep. I'm out of practice by more than a few months now and I really miss even the basic lamo shit I was doing.

I am fast becoming the King of Pull-ups and hanging leg raises though.

I did 42 over as many sets as it took until I failed on Monday, with an additional two sets of ten before that after a hydro session with a client, where I get to pack in some underwater leg raises (using the side of the pool to hold my weight up, got to three sets of 16) and a bunch of water running, towing my client in a truck tyre (2x16 laps, backwards then forwards).
I did some real hanging leg raises after my pull-ups later and got to 24 over three sets, before my weak ass quit.
Probably lame for everyone else but I felt the good soreness yesterday and got that sense of vague achievement.

[popvulture]

Yes, yoga is so damn wonderful if you get into a solid routine. A couple year ago I was doing vinyasa flow about 3x a week, light jogging on off days—was the best I've ever felt in my life. Been trying to get myself back on a plan like that ever since. Moar discipline!

[echoraven]

...Thoughts? I'm just sort of throwing this out there....

Perhaps it's the quality of your sleep. One of the gifts I received when I got older was being unable to sleep after exercise (which matches perfectly with no metabolism).

Obviously try melatonin and magnesium. Both natural. If that doesn't work, try sleepezz (something like that, from the makers of NyQuil) not habit forming.

[echoraven]

...Thoughts? I'm just sort of throwing this out there....

Perhaps it's the quality of your sleep. One of the gifts I received when I got older was being unable to sleep after exercise (which matches perfectly with no metabolism).

Obviously try melatonin and magnesium. Both natural. If that doesn't work, try sleepezz (something like that, from the makers of NyQuil) not habit forming.

[gunslinger_burrito]

I feel like I'm sleeping okay.... I don't have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. I just crash every day mid day (which is very frustrating because I want my free time to be spent on things I love....). Sometimes it's late morning, if I was up early for gym, sometimes it's after noon..... I always feel more alert later at night. I know that can be one sign of adrenal fatigue, but I don't have a lot of the other symptoms, so I'm not convinced of that just yet. I usually, but not always, feel alright if I'm up and moving around, and the couple afternoon workouts I have each week go pretty well, even if I crash after my post-workout meal.

I'm going to keep researching, and maybe experiment with my diet. I'm also going to make a real attempt at recording my diet, workout, and energy levels each day to see if I can find a correlation.

[ChetMagongalo]

do you smoke weed frequently? I've recently cut back on that pretty hard because it was making me feel tired. also sounds like you have a lot on your plate, I had a really hard time working 20 hrs a week + school + hobbies + social stuff + sleep, so I cut back on more than one of those things to help me feel less stressed.

[Jwar]

I'm not sure if this needs its own thread, but here goes:

I'm fucking tired. Like, all the damn time. I sleep a minimum of 7 hours a night, and I've been trying (with patchy success) to sleep more. My schedule is packed to the gills most days of the week and right now I have zero days where I can sleep in. I have to wake up to an alarm every damn day. The only times I feel alert and ready to go are when I work out, which is mostly early in the morning (it's when my classes are). Then I'll feel good for an hour or two after, only to crash mid day-late afternoon. I try not to exceed two cups of coffee per day, but occasionally I'll have a yerba mate or something. I hardly ever drink caffeine after 12noon in hopes that I'll sleep better..... But I don't usually wake up in the middle of the night . Since I have to wake up to an alarm all the time, I often have a haaaaaard time getting up to go and have to have my first cup of coffee right away. I only ever feel annihilated after workouts if it's in the afternoon and I've already worked at my job that day, or I was super stressed or something..... which leads me to STRESS. I'm trying to reduce it, change my mindset, etc.... But my life is super busy and my workplace is an absolute shit-show. And part of the cycle is that I'm too tired after work/working out in order to focus on a job search, not to mention I hardly have the time.

That's a really long way of asking if anyone has any ideas of why I might be exhausted so much. Obviously if I can reduce my stress it should help.... I'm looking into a sleep tracker or recorder to see if I have sleep apnea or something (I think my dad does or did at some point), and I've been examining my diet too....mainly my ratio of carbs to fats. I feel WAY more alert if I skip carbs, but then I get the brain-crash because my glucose levels drop. And I strength train often (even though it's mostly body weight/gymnastics), so I'm not sure that going low carb would be advisable......

Thoughts? I'm just sort of throwing this out there....

A few thoughts. First have you ever had your thyroid checked? If not, perhaps it's time. If you have an underactive or overactive thyroid, you can feel like absolute shit no matter what you do.

Second, your adrenal glands could be shot. I have known lots of folks with adrenal issues, and I myself suffer with them. If you are having an adrenal issue, that would explain the lack of rise and shine especially.

There's a TON of other shit that could be going on though. I would advise you to go get your hormones checked by a doctor. That's the best route IMO.

You could have a sleeping issue as well and not know it. I have sleep apnea and it doesn't matter if I'm 230 or 170, I still have it. Without a CPAP machine I will not go into REM sleep, which means I'll never get restful sleep. Plus if you have apnea, you could be not breathing while you sleep. Which is what I do.

Another thought is your cortisol levels might be too high. You can combat this a bit with melatonin, but really you do need a doctor to diagnose the root.