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i 17M wanted to lose weight a few months ago
i wasnt really obese but didnt feel nice about myself
now that i have achieved it to a satisfactory extent
how do i maintain it
i know if i go on a deficit i will become too skinny
but i also dont want to do the mistake of overeating and regressing back
i also want to add on some muscle since i know thats the better option in my state So what do i do?
i lost fat majorly by walking 5-10km/every 2 days
equipment i have are 2 kettlebells of 8kg each and nothing else.
Look up your maintenance calories and stick to those. If you do it correctly, you should stay at your weight. To add muscle, prioritise protein in your diet. You should consume a gram per pound of your bodyweight per day. Combined with weight training you should get there
Safe calorie deficit?
Hello everyone, I am a 21 year old 6’6” Male who currently weighs around 300lbs. I would love to get down to 250lbs eventually. I lift weights and do cardio 3-5 times a week. What would be a safe amount of calories for me to consume a day to lose a couple pounds a week? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Extremely difficult to say with so little information. But I would try ~2k kcal per day for a month or so and then re-evaluate.
Losing 2 lbs per week should be pretty safe for your weight. I wouldn't go over 3 lbs per week loss, if I were you. Aside from that it depends on what kind of deficit is sustainable for you.
Are your arms supposed to be tucked against your body when you do tricep push up?
Should be pretty close
I’m 20F starting to lift weights/cardio to rid myself of skinny fat. I was and am eating 1200 cals a day since i was pretty sedentary. Is this enough calories? Do i need to be eating more? How do i know exactly how many to eat? I’ve googled and asked and I’ve gotten no help. I’m a beginner!!!
Look up a TDEE calculator
Yeah, but do i eat maintenance, cal deficit, surplus, if so of how much?
Well it depends on your goal. I could be wrong on this but i think the best recommendation is to first bulk and gain some muscle then cut and lose fat. But if you just wanna lose the fat now then you wanna be in a deficit
I want to build muscle and lose fat. I just want to get rid of my skinny fat build.
Did you read the wiki?
Yes it didn’t help. I don’t understand this stuff i need someone to actually explain it to me. Hence why i asked but apparently you aren’t supposed to?
What specifically do you not understand and need explained to you?
I was following for a year PPLPPL training. Chest/Biceps/Shoulder, Back/Triceps and Legs. But my arms didn't grow as much as i wished for like my chest, back and legs. I'm interested in getting into a 7 days training program, PPPPPPL, but I'm not sure the metabolism would work that way. As long as I don't feel my muscles overworked do I keep going or how can I check if I'm losing progress?
Horrible idea. If you want your arms to grow then dedicate more effort and sets. I personally do a program from GVS called Ravage. It's
Legs Chest/back Arms
Each twice a week, so 6 days total. You can find this program and many others on boostap
Thx
I'm curious if there is a social media app based on fitness, of course fitness subreddits are great but it's so easy to get lost on reddit and end up scrolling on random trash for a while so a social media app centred around fitness would be awesome
Create a second account on any social media platform and then follow only fitness accounts
Anyone experienced lower back pain due to overused muscles?
Yes
Hello I am looking for guidance on behalf of my 13yr old daughter.
She is becoming very active in soccer, and wants to focus on diet and fitness in addition to her soccer training.
Both my wife and I are now overweight and I certainly have food challenges having been a high level wrestler for most of my teens and early 20's.
I'd like to point her to resources she can read/watch about nutrition for a growing body, and general not sport specific workouts for overall fitness. When I lost 50lbs in 2019, I did it using MyFitnessPal, and a pretty restrictive diet, while I don't mind buying her MyFitnessPal, I am not sure if it is the right direction for a young person to be calorie counting so detailed.
When googling I find a lot of obvious grifters so I don't want her doing that and going down an unhealthy path. So I'm coming to Reddit for some group think help to set her up on a path to success and a healthy relationship with food, and exercise.
I got back into the gym after ~2 years off on April 3rd.
I weighed 180.4 lbs.
I have been eating at a surplus of ~500 calories, consisting of almost entirely meat, eggs, milk, and butter. Carbs come from coffee creamer and Huel shakes.
and my macro split has been approximately
35% Protein 40% Fat 25% Carbs
However, I also struggle with binge eating and approximately 2 days a week (at most) I had an additional 1000 calories of junk food. So over the past month and a half, maybe 10,000 junk calories on top of my bulk of basically meat, eggs, and milk.
I HAVE PUT ON 10lbs. I WEIGHED IN AT 190lbs THIS MORNING.
Realistically, how much of this is muscle? Do I need to slow down? Is muscle coming back quicker due to memory?
Obviously working on cutting out the binge eating, but that only accounts for like 3lbs worth of calories.
My lifts are going up really quickly and I would love to maintain this progress rate but don’t want to have to do a 3 month cut any time soon.
Essentially what I’m asking for is your personal anecdotal experiences with returning to the gym in regards to muscle growth, excess fat development, and diet
you need to chill tf out jfc get some therapy anecdotal advice
Out of the 10lbs, I’d say 2 or 3 could be muscle, 4 is probably fat and the other 3 is just holding water from being in the 500 surplus
Generally, a natural lifter can gain at most 2 pounds of actual lean muscle mass in a month.
What exercises are the best for straight up grip strength and bigger fore arms.
Currently I am only doing farmers walks after every session and also of course pullups and dead hangs, any more tips?
My forearms got huge when I started training handstands and handstand pushups. Takes a lot of dedication over a span of few months, but the finger activation used to maintain balance forces your forearms to grow and get stronger
one bit of advice I was given was to squeeze the fuck out of everything you pick up in the gym.
i rock climb too so I can’t say for sure the growth is from that, but I will say the forearm pump I get during lifts is nasty
How would you program in for rock climbing?
I recently began Starting Strength (for the second time, previously did it like 10 years ago) but I like to climb at least once a week. I've noticed that if I gym in the morning and climb in the evening I can climb to pretty much my max level (around a 6c). However if I climb the night before a gym session, even a relatively easy climb (two pitchs of Diff leading) my next workout is crazy hard almost to the point of the ridiculous for the amount of energy I felt like I spent the night before.
I know climbing is pretty much a full body workout, but I'm not that heavy (70kg) and the pitches aren't that hard. I can't quite work out what's going on but a few tests have made the pattern very clear. Any advice appreciated.
Well great that you noticed a pattern! In that case keep following it. Now for workouts, it depends on what your strength training goal is. If it's to improve in climbing there is no fixed workout routine for max improvements, cause that always depends on your weaknesses. For example if you notice that you can't really get your legs up in a controller way while hanging in an overhang, training abs will bring you fast improvements.
Honestly I've allowed my strength to collapse back to "novice" levels or worse, so at the moment my goal is simply "get stronger" on the basis that any improvement in strength will net performance gains. I definitely do need more ab strength though! And more hip felixibility (I have full normal range, but not the ability to put my hand AND foot.on the same grip 🤣)
I noticed that it didnt really affect my rockclimbing whether i worked out (upperbody) beforehand or not. Id suggest working out first before rockclimbing
Edit: when i do pullups I grip the bar with my palm and not my fingers, so I assume thats why my fingers are still strong for rockclimbing after
Interesting that the order didn't affect you but does affect me. As another comment pointed out my issue might be that Starting Strength has big, near max lifts, every workout. So even a small climbing effort might be just enough to throw off recovery.
I do my pullups/chinups the same way! I have no evidence that it makes a difference to saving my finger strength but I firmly believe it!
Well it may just be that my pull day doesnt affect my climbing because im pretty strong at pull, so even if i go really hard during the workout I still have a lot of base strength to work with. Im sure that if you can only do bodyweight pullups, then it will effect your pulling during climbing. My 1rm for weighted pullup is 110 so i still have a lot of energy for bodyweight pulling during rockclimbing
Yeah I've only just got back to 3x10 bodyweight pullups! So going to start adding weight now. My chinups are lagging a little behind at 10/10/8.
Nice one on the 110!
I do PPL and climb on days that I don’t wanna go to the gym and count those as my pull days. However my pull days are pretty neglectful to begin with, entirely focused on pull-ups with everything else being an afterthought once I’m completely gassed out on pull ups lol
But my bench and squat are my priorities right now
I might have to steal that idea! I guess it's probably "sub optimal" in that it's bodyweight resistance (I feel like rack weight isn't enough to count), but way more fun than gym :D
I would follow a routine that doesn't have me lifting heavy and close to my maxes every session.
5/3/1 For Beginners would be a good one.
Thanks :D Didn't realise 5/3/1 had a beginner version so will definitely check that out.
How can I manipulate my metabolism rate from slow to fast, I know I can't fully change it but I can change it a little bit How so? Please help
you could try playing with carbs, keto, and insulin development. would take some independent research to understand the interactions between all those things and then some trial and error to see how it all feels and affects your body personally
Over a long term, gaining muscle helps, but really, just become more active and make activity just part of your life and not specifically about burning calories.
Exercise and gain muscle.
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I run marathons and the way to run further without feeling how you do is to run slower. This builds your aerobic capacity so your lungs won’t ‘give out’ that quick. It’s not something that happens overnight but over time you’ll see the improvements.
Go take a look at the running sub and you’ll see a lot of reference to ‘Zone 2’ training if you search there, start from this point.
Also, why are you trying to get your heart rate high? Are you aiming for HIIT style running workouts or you’re trying to run for endurance / long distances? If the latter you shouldn’t be looking to get your heart rate as high as possible as that puts you into anaerobic territory and your lungs will definitely be suffering if you’re not trained and running beyond your current capacity.
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I think if you make sure on the ‘80’ runs you keep things slow you can push harder on the interval days. I find that my heart rate gets higher and higher on subsequent intervals, to a point. It definitely doesn’t drop - are you doing your fastest intervals last, like are you getting faster as they go on or slower / same pace because your heart rate might just be levelling off. For example I recently ran a marathon and my HR was fastest at the start of course and at the end when I pushed, it just kind of dropped and remained the same in the middle part.
I would say if it’s levelling off but you’re still hitting your paces that’s not a bad thing at all haha. You can go faster next time then!
Do more cardio of any kind, but not at the "all out" speed.
Is this normal or do I need to go see a doctor?
Started working out beginning of the year. Took 3 weeks off recently and went back yesterday and did lower legs/chest. Leg exercises were squats, Leg press, leg extensions
Went home everything was fine, went to bed, woke up the next day with stiffness in lower back but nothing too bad. Went to work where I am sitting all day long and noticed halfway through that my lower back was hurting so I stood up and took walks around the office to stretch my legs and back. Left work 5 pm and things like bending over to get into my car hurt
Went home, ate dinner and took a nap and woke up an hour ago and the pain is even worst - laying down a certain way hurts, sitting without support hurts, even walking feels strange, bending over to do anything hurts too. Like bending down to get in and out of bed hurts and laying down hurts.
The pain is mainly lower back / buttocks region as well as legs like hamstring and glutes
Did I throw out my back or injure myself or is this because I went too hard after 3 weeks off? Not sure if this is regular muscle soreness from working out or something serious
Rule 5. See a doctor.
Woke up today and most of the pain is gone. Going to assume I had DOMS or whatever it's called
Rule #5
Since the truism is "your compounds are only as strong as your weakest muscle", is it usually expected that triceps would need extra work compared to delts/pecs for improving bench?
No, a lot of people have a weak chest, which is why they cheat the range of motion.
Some people falsely assume that since their sticking point is at the midpoint that their triceps are the weak link, but often, it's that their chest wasn't able to generate enough force at the bottom.
It's the same with deadlifts. People think they are weak at the lockout when they are actually weak off the floor.
Realistically, weak points are individual to the person and take some analysis to diagnose, plenty of peope of weak triceps. I wouldn't make blanket assumptions outside of well executed isolation exercises.
I don't know if I would call it "expected", but on occasion, some people can benefit from additional triceps work.
Generally, though, simply increasing bench volume/frequency will do the trick.
don’t be afraid of benching 4-5 days a week instead of only 2x a week. Just lower volume and intensity on half the days and higher volume and intensity on the other half.
Candito is a very bench heavy program that I tried that taught me this. Easily my favorite program I’ve ever run, very excited to run it again soon
Hello, I’ve been struggling with putting on weight, so I think it’s time I finally find out what I really need to lean bulk. I work a moderately labor intensive job, (Home Depot lumber department if that matters), often for 8 hours standing and sometimes lifting concrete, logs, and always on my feet helping customers, after work on days where it’s necessary I hit the gym, and so on and so forth, (modified PPL), im ~5’9, 159lbs, 19 years of age and male. I’ve done all sorts of calculators but none of them really have a category that I found I “fit” in. Can anyone help me find out what my maintenance calories are?
THIS IS THE ANSWER
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/s/lwhgcQxf8w
In this link/post you will find an excel spreadsheet and instructions.
Essentially you will track your calories everyday and weigh yourself EVERY day. Both will be logged.
The spreadsheet will compare your caloric intake for the week to the change in your weight and help you calculate how many calories you need to maintain your weight.
The more weeks you log, the more accurate the data will be.
TDEE calculators are only going to get you a rough estimate. It's up to you to find out what your true maintenance level is. Nobody else can do that for you.
Start tracking your calories if you aren't already. Eat whatever the calculator tells you for at least a week or two and watch the scale. If your weight increases, lower your calories. If it goes down, increase calories. When your weight stays the same for weeks at a time, you've found your maintenance level.
I do PPL for hypertrophy. Can I do rope pushdowns and tricep kickbacks for better results? I am consistently hitting the gym for a little over 4 months now and my triceps are starting to have a shape. I used to do bar pushdowns and overhead extensions till now. But will the other 2 exercises make further improvements? Please help.
You have my permission.
Rope push downs are amazing, I’ve always been doing them in my PPL and my triceps is one of my strongest features.
Kick backs I think are a waste of time and Mike Israetel thinks the same.
When calculating protein and eating say 8 ounces of chicken, do you count 8 ounces of cooked or 8 ounces pre cook?
The nutrition label is usually the estimate of raw Meat unless stated otherwise. To be most accurate weigh raw, cook it, then eat it
Practically, pick either method and be consistent with that method
Use cooked chicken to calculate protein. If you want to eat 1lb of cooked chicken everyday for 5 days, then 5lbs of raw chicken won't cut it. Buy more.
Nutrition information on raw meat is for the uncooked state.
Did you eat 8 ounces of cooked chicken or pre cooked chicken?
I'm just new to this realm so when I buy 5lbs of chicken to meal prep I just wasn't sure if I can calculate it perfectly for 5 days meals and just weigh the difference out so it's not a guessing game to get 1lb a day on how much weight I lose in the cook
Yeah then just calculate the total protein in 5lbs of uncooked chicken and divide it by 5.
Anyone had success using the BB hacksquat as a main lift when doing 531? Thinking of having that replace Squats due to a hip labrum tear.
Not during 531, but I did use the barbell hacksquat as my main squat variant for a while. It's a fun lift and keeps pressure off my spine.
I’m looking for advice on gaining muscle.
I am 5 foot 10 and weight about 167. I’ve been lifting for near 7 months now and have noticed a small change in my physique, but I feel like I could be eating more or adding something to my diet to get more out of my workouts. I try to eat as much protein as I can (including a shake every morning) but maybe it’s not enough? I used to be about 225 pounds so I get a little worried if I eat too much sometimes. I work a blue collar job so bringing food to work can be difficult due to the fact I don’t have a way to heat up anything. I’m willing to try whatever I need to because I am tired of feeling like I’m getting nowhere. Thank you for any tips
Tons of meals can be eaten cold or room temperature. I've routinely mealprepped pasta, chicken and vegetables, and just eaten it cold. So go ahead and mealprep.
Thank you for the response! I went to the store today and will start meal prepping!!
All food can be eaten cold or at room temperature.
Looks like you're getting a lot of advice about protein and calories already, so I'll address another important question - how are you training?
Studies show that optimal number of sets per muscle group per week is 10-20.
Studies show that optimal number of set per muscle group per workout session is ~6-8. In combination with the previous point, this mean the optimal way to hit a muscle group is via at least two days per week.
Really only effective sets should be counted towards these numbers. Meaning if you're leaving more than 1-2 reps in the tank when you stop this wouldn't do much for your progress.
Do these points align with your training regiment?
First, thank you for the advice. I train upper body twice a week and the same for lower body. That being said I do think I may be doing less sets than you advised so I will try to up that number. Also I will try to leave less reps in the tank because recently I have noticed myself slacking on that especially on my back squat. Again thank you for the advice and response!
Rest and Eat more. Weigh yourself each week. Aim to gain 1/2 LB each week. If you're gaining more than that, cut back. That should be 2 LB's a month. When you feel too fat, cut. Repeat as necessary.
Thank you for the response! I will definitely be eating more and just see what happens! When you say rest, are you talking about rest day or sleep per night?
Eight hours of, (preferably natural), sleep or more each night.