Happy New Year to anyone stopping by here
This is the time of year when people make resolutions to change their habits for the better. That's a good thing, although of course you can decide to do that ANY day of the year! Right now though, is the time when we actually ponder what we want to improve, and decide to grit our teeth and set about doing it.
With that thought in mind, I decided it might be a good idea to make a New Year's Day Resolution Gym Log entry, for anyone who happens to swing by in search of some motivation/edification/amusement.
If you decide that you're going to turn over a new leaf and begin exercising, I applaud you! We are on the same journey toward fitness and wellness, just on different parts of the path. I thought it would be useful to take a moment and share some hard-earned knowledge about traveling that path effectively.
I'm not speaking as an expert, but rather as someone who has screwed up in many, many, different ways. If I manage to keep someone from wasting their time and effort going down a blind alley, then it will be worth it!
Read on, if you are still interested...
1. The TV says that after a certain age, you should speak with your doctor before starting an exercise program. That's solid advice. Here is some more advice: You should also get a doctor's advice before you decide to stop exercising. I'm pretty sure your doctor would recommend you stick with it.
2. Muscles don't grow at the gym. They get damaged at the gym. They grow while you recover afterwards. During that time they require rest and feeding. Building muscles is similar to building up a callus on your hand. If you overdo it, you end up with a bloody hand and no callus. Same with exercise. 30-40 minutes of tearing down your muscles should be plenty. And then, give them ample time and protein to heal and grow stronger.
3. You cannot out-exercise a crappy diet - you just can't. If you eat even minor amounts of sugars or simple carbs (starch), you are either going to see NADA, or seriously interfere with your fitness goals. I can't state this strongly enough: Diet is the key here. Keep an iron grip on what you eat, and you will get results. Or cheat - but don't complain about your results!
4. Exercising Abs really hard won't remove the fat from your abs. Bad news: Your belly fat will be about the last thing to go. From what I've noticed, fat tends to disappear from the extremities first, or maybe it's just more obvious at the extremities because there wasn't as much fat there to begin with.
5. Along with the above item, don't waste your money on an ab machine. Fat doesn't metabolize like that. If you want to lose fat faster, exercise your butt and quads instead. Those are big muscles, and working those hard will burn more calories than your abs ever will. But back to point #3, proper diet is what causes fat to disappear. Exercise is a distant second.
6. It's up to you to decide how to go about losing weight and getting fit. It's possible to do both simultaneously, and it's probably the most difficult path. I'm doing that - but I'm kind of impatient.
7. If you are more patient (and smarter) than I am, and decide to lose the fat before attempting to build muscle, just go keto and stay there. But you will also need to watch the calories. Fat has a lot of calories, and your body still has to process them - if you eat a lot of LC cheesecake every day, you are going to have a hard time losing weight. It will certainly slow down the process.
8. When/If you decide it's time to put on some muscle, and you start exercising, you are going to be absolutely ravenous. Increase your protein and reduce fat. Add in a moderate amount complex carbs that have fiber - like steel-cut oats.
9. Not all protein is created equal. Casein (cottage cheese) is sort of a slow-digesting time-release protein. A little cottage cheese just before bed time is excellent. That way your muscles get a good supply of amino acids all night long to help them grow.
Whey protein on the other hand is like throwing gasoline on a fire. It's good right after you've lifted (not after cardio) to replenish your damaged and depleted muscles quickly. It causes an insulin spike, which helps to transport the nutrients into your depleted cells more quickly. A whey-induced insulin spike after a hard workout is actually a good thing. Insulin is anabolic, meaning it aids muscle growth.
Animal protein is in between the two above, and a good staple. Beef, chicken, pork, fish, it's all good - except I don't care for fish, so there's that.
10. Cardio. It's important, but don't overdo it! After a while cardio will induce stress hormones and tip your metabolism to catabolysis, meaning that you are metabolizing muscle tissue! You need that muscle to stay put so that you can burn fat!
Stick to 20-40 minutes per session. Das it. No mas. If you are super motivated, you can probably do 2 cardio sessions, but space them several hours apart so that catabolysis doesn't set in. Why even bother with cardio? To keep your cell mitochondria revved up, so that excess nutrients in your bloodstream don't end up getting turned into body fat.
11. Shake it up. Your body adapts to whatever exercise you are doing, and eventually your results taper off. Try new exercises. Try the same exercises but with way more weight and less reps. Try Pyramiding. Try Negatives. Lighten up and do way more reps. You have to keep your body guessing, or your progress will plateau.
12. Stay away from alcohol. There are a couple of reasons for this. Your liver is what breaks down body fat into ketones while you are in ketosis or in a calorie deficit. Alcohol (ethanol) is a toxin, and your liver recognizes this, and switches from fat burning to removing the toxins from your bloodstream. Until your liver manages to clean up your bloodstream, you are not burning any fat. Of course it will also knock you out of keto.
Alcohol is a carbohydrate. Your liver will convert it to fat - inside the liver. That's really bad for you. Also you are probably getting a lot of other carbs along with the alcohol. Best to forego it.
Anyway, that's about all can think of right now. Once again, this is not an "expert" lecturing you on how to exercise, but an idiot who just listed a whole bunch of mistakes, and is sharing lessons that were learned the hard way.
Hopefully someone out there will read this, learn from it, and manage to forego a few of the multitude of mistakes I have made over the years.
Once again, Happy New Year, and good luck with those resolutions!
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