The Workout Thread

[Satsuki]

Okay—I'm going to try to see if I can't start getting more serious about losing some of the weight I've put on from working a desk job for too many years in a row. It's so hard for me to get motivated for all of this, but I really need to.

First steps:
* Try to get more regular exercise. I've been working from home for the past seven months, which has given me even more of a chance to not get up and do much. I've got a stationary bike that I'm going to start riding, and while I don't think it'll be enough to make a huge impact, right now I think it's better for me to at least do something to help brake the cycle of being so sedentary. I love going out and riding my bike, but I currently live in an area that I don't feel comfortable doing that in (too many busy streets), which really sucks.

* Eating better. I'm not hopeless when it comes to eating junk food, but it's too easy for me to fit into the "I'm busy, so I'll just go pick us up something" position, and I hate having the feeling of "fast food is fun, homemade food is boring!" I think one of the biggest issues currently is carbs. When I'm making food, I have trouble figuring out how to really beef up meals without turning to rice or pasta. Plus, white rice isn't going away anytime soon, due to being married to someone being from Japan.

Any suggestions for this? I try to use whole wheat pasta and brown rice as much as possible, but what are some other options people use to avoid so many carbs? Should I be focusing on fixing other things first?

* Cola. Ugh, one of my big vices. I don't drink disgusting amounts of it or anything, but even drinking diet, I know I just need to cut it out. I feel it when I try to get myself off of cola, and it's just been too easy for me to fall back into drinking it the times I've tried to cut it out. My low-level brush with drug addiction. *heh*

<3 to shidoshi. replace carb driven meals with proteins! this one is hard for me too bc rice and pasta is my life. Like, you think of a rice bowl or something, you have 2/3rds rice and 1/3rds protein. up the protein and lessen the rice, add more vegetables always. I've sort of restructured my thought process to make the meals around the vegetables and protein.

a stationary bike isn't actually bad at all!!! check out the hundreds of videos on youtube that are interval training routines (and don't forget to abuse the resistance button on the bike, never keep it at 1 only!!) I've been using ones like these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSFY...U&spfreload=10 that have cool background stuff going on. It's the best for a shut-in like me, i can see all this cool scenery while not actually leaving my house, haha. Don't forget your warm up and cool down stretches!

and good luck with the soda thing, i can never cut it out entirely. one diet soda a day! ;-;

[Josh]

Zombies Run will work with your stationary bike too!

[Satsuki]

it will??? oooooo yes, i will try that too!

[Joust Williams]

pomegranate juice, orange juice

nope

might as well drink soda

[Josh]

it will??? oooooo yes, i will try that too!

Dude, it's so good.

[Josh]

might as well drink soda

That's a bit much.

[cigsthecat]

nope

might as well drink soda

I think it's important to mix in some substantive things here and there. If you try to subsist entirely on water you just won't make it. I'm also not drinking a gallon of pomegranate juice or OJ every day. I usually have one of the small bottles of POM every few days. When I drink a thing of orange juice it usually ends up replacing a snack or two that day.

Anyway it's working for me really well. I was never a big soda drinker, but lately I've been making a lot of small changes that I can stick with. Been doing it for about 5 months now and I'm pretty thin as a result.

[Josh]

I exclusively drink coffee, alcohol, and water. Best team.

[Joust Williams]

I think it's important to mix in some substantive things here and there. If you try to subsist entirely on water you just won't make it. I'm also not drinking a gallon of pomegranate juice or OJ every day. I usually have one of the small bottles of POM every few days. When I drink a thing of orange juice it usually ends up replacing a snack or two that day.

Anyway it's working for me really well. I was never a big soda drinker, but lately I've been making a lot of small changes that I can stick with. Been doing it for about 5 months now and I'm pretty thin as a result.

No I am cool, I am just saying that those are much closer to soda than they are to water.

I don't give a damn though, I love soda. I stopped drinking it for a long time but got back into it. Just don't go apeshit on it. It's best not to deny yourself those things anyway until you're totally locked in otherwise you will crash really hard.

[mollipen]

<3 to shidoshi. replace carb driven meals with proteins! this one is hard for me too bc rice and pasta is my life. Like, you think of a rice bowl or something, you have 2/3rds rice and 1/3rds protein. up the protein and lessen the rice, add more vegetables always. I've sort of restructured my thought process to make the meals around the vegetables and protein.

Yeah, I was starting to get good about doing that kind of thing, and need to get back to it. We'd always go out for lunch at the EGM offices, then I started trying to nix that by bringing in my own lunch. Brown rice, ground beef or chicken, and then frozen vegetable mix all together. Even though they're kind of boring, I've come to really depend on the frozen vegetable bags, because it's an easy way to add more volume to a meal like you say.

I think one of the things I need to do is just come up with more ideas of what to do. It's easy to fall into a rut of making the same thing over and over and get bored of it.

a stationary bike isn't actually bad at all!!! check out the hundreds of videos on youtube that are interval training routines (and don't forget to abuse the resistance button on the bike, never keep it at 1 only!!) I've been using ones like these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSFY...U&spfreload=10 that have cool background stuff going on. It's the best for a shut-in like me, i can see all this cool scenery while not actually leaving my house, haha. Don't forget your warm up and cool down stretches!

Huh, interesting! I never know about those kinds of videos. That's kind of neat. I don't watch a lot of TV, but I do tend to watch the 10PM hour of Seinfeld reruns, so I've been thinking that'd be the perfect time for me to get on the bio and do what I can then.

Stop drinking soda for a month or two and it'll taste like cough syrup. It's really gross. Drink tea or something.

Yeah, I got to that at one point, which I thought was hopeful. But then I think I got really stressed about something that was going on, and I tend to go back to caffeine when I get stressed. I've definitely been getting better about drinking more water, and I'm a big green tea drinker, which is something that helps when I'm craving something that has flavor to it.

Get some Soylent for those lazy bastard meals.

I've seen your posts about that, and I've been kind of curious about it.

The rest of the time eat food. Eat beans (beefy as fuck), lentils, quinoa, and barley. Eat reasonable portions of chicken and fish. Eat seitan and tempeh. Marinate tofu and bake it. Learn to cook Indian food. Don't be Shidoshi Sweet-Tooth. Carbs aren't evil, you just need complex carbs. The key is being smart and making changes in your diet at a reasonable pace.

One good part is that I'm not starting from a 100% hopeless situation. We actually eat pretty decently when we eat at home. We usually don't buy pre-packaged foods or frozen meals, and don't do a lot of deep frying of things. Snacking can be a problem, but I'm big on popcorn (made on the stovetop), so I need to get back to turning to that more than cookies or sweets or whatever else.

So, beans. How do you buy them? I tried making black beans before, and it was a pretty involved process. Do you do canned, frozen (?), or do you go the full way and make them from dry beans? I've tried barley in soup, but haven't done much with it beyond that, and I never knew quinoa was even a thing until I got out here to LA. *heh* That's something else I need to play around more with.

Lift weights. More muscle = more calories burned just sitting around. You're not going to get too big, so shut up.

Yeah, I guess I do have this mentality that any sort of weight lifting equals getting super bulky or whatnot.

The Zombies Run app is fucking KILLER for this, btw. The story is well acted, and pretty good. You don't have to run (unless you turn on the chases) and it'll run for 30 minutes or 1 hour at a time. It alternates between story and your music. There are also supply missions where you listen to a bunch of supplemental material and pick up upgrade materials for your town/base/thing based on distance. It's fucking sweet, and I really recommend picking it up.

Hmm. I DO love zombies, and I've been curious about it for a while now since hearing about it somewhere. Maybe I should finally get around to checking it out.