Any fitness buffs here?

mykulmorris

mykulmorris

Joined
Jul 8, 2007
Messages
1,690
I thought this was a good place to start... I'm 48yrs, 5'11", 180#, and want to get back in shape. Some would say I'm already in shape, but I see these 'love handles' starting, and I would also like to look good for this summer when I go out west to visit family. Every infomercial on TV, and every 'Health' store in the mall says they have the 'best' plan/program for you... How do you know which one to go for? Is there anyone here like me? Want to shape-up? What supplements do you recommend? I know diet/nutrition is just as important as excercise. Also, I'm busy so I don't have time for the gym (the closest one is 20 miles away), but can do the basics at home. Thanks in advance, and sorry if this has been posted before.
-M

PS.. What I would REALLY like is to be able to take 12weeks off work and go thru Marine Corp bootcamp, Ooh Rah!!
 
Tends to be one of those questions that's more complicated than you thought it would be.

A lot of physicians would say something to the effect of "walk briskly for an hour three times a week" and let it go at that.
While certainly good for you, such a regimen would probably not serve for many.

Things to consider include your body type and natural abilities and likes. Some folks do very well at things like say, running. Others are poorly suited for that practice.
Someone interested in increasing fitness for sports-related activities might well practice sports-specific types of training.
The martial artist would want a very high standard of fitness in several different areas.
And so forth.

For general health and weight maintenance, I think it's safe to say that most all authorities give the nod to aerobic training. (what folks commonly call "cardio" these days) This improves most all body functions (including your brain!) and is perhaps the most efficient at calorie-burning.
Doesn't do much for strength-building though. Again, most all authorities are pointing to incorporating some sort of resistance training especially for older folks. (like me...)
Muscle loss, and attendant joint deterioration, is a serious problem among the elderly.
Incorporating even minimal resistance training (weights, machines, rubber bands, whatever) will help maintain muscle mass and joint stabilization.
At 65, I find my bike to be my friend. Not impactive so my wonky knees and feet don't hurt, and I can work at any level of aerobic training I like.
Add in some resistance training and I'm good.
 
The best plan is this: Eat less and/or exercise more... the and option works best.

There are no other products or plans or schemes which have been shown to make much of a difference for someone just interested in general fitness.

The benefits of aerobic exercise -- "cardio," exercise which raises the heart rate and keeps it elevated for at least twenty minutes -- are huge. The whole body benefits. So, as they say, go out and get your blood pumping.

The benefits of resistance exercise -- weightlifting or similar training -- are also very systemic, especially for the "older" crowd. This is one place where, if you are just beginning, you should take a class or something to learn proper techniques because even at moderate levels, correct form is necessary for safety and for effectiveness.

The one product I think you ought to buy is not sold at a sporting goods or "nutrition" store; it's a book. It's a old book now, but the human body hasn't changes much and so Covert Bailey's book Fit or Fat is still valid today. It's well-written and easy-to-read.
 
Last edited:
I am of the belief that proper nutrition is more like 75% or even 80% of the equation. There is a great book called "Nutrient Timing" that I would highly recommend if you are serious. I just lent my copy to a personal trainer friend and he can't put it down.
 
First, do an honest review of your diet and be prepared to make changes, permanent changes. Sugars and fats need to be kept to low levels. Get a good scale for your kitchen. Determine your optimum dialy calorie requirement and stick to it. Write down everything you eat each day for a week and prepare to be shocked and amazed.

Make cardio exercise a part of your routine. Start by walking, transition to jogging or better yet biking as you build strength and endurance.

Strength training is next. Google "body weight exercises". Push ups, crunches, Hindu squats, Hindu push ups for starters. You don't need equipment, though a little can go a long way. A chin up bar and set of dumbbells are very versatile and will do wonders.

If you establish a good routine and stick with it you'll get great results. It's all about you and how you apply yourself.
 
eat less and eat well

do aerobic/cardio

if you're just starting strength training AND if you have access to a gym, do compound exercises (Squats, Deadlifts, benchpress, shoulder press, etc.)

find a couple friends to work out with. This helps keep you motivated. At least, it keeps me motivated.

just my two cents, I think the others here have said way more than I have.

Good luck
 
I'd agree with nutrition being about 75% of weight loss as well as giving P90X a go, its about an hour a day. Although if you know exercises at home you can do you could probably come up with your own routine fairly easily that would be just as good, for example the upper body work out is basically just doing 1 minute of pushups as many as you can, then doing 1 minute of pullups as many as you can, changing between wide grip pullups, narrow grip, reverse grip etc and triangle pushups, regular pushups, wide, (what I know as judo pushups) I think they call yoga pushups or something.
 
Allow me to second Gollnick's recommendation for Covert Bailey's Fit or Fat. This book more than any other made clear to me how the body actually works in regards to the functioning of the whole musculo-skeletal system.
A fun read as well.
 
Blue Sky said:
Get a good scale for your kitchen.
Click to expand...

An excellent suggestion. With the help of a scale, you can eat anything. Consider, for example, potato chips which are often seen as a must-exclude from a "fitness" diet. The problem is not so much the chips themselves, but with our tendency to eat too much.... in my case, sometimes the whole bag. Our eyes have a nasty tendency to underestimate when it comes to food and it's hard to resist "just ONE more" when the bag is sitting there in front of you. But, with a scale, you can measure out the amount of chips -- or any other food -- that fits into your diet , put the bag away, and then eat and enjoy your portion.


Write down everything you eat each day for a week and prepare to be shocked and amazed.
Click to expand...

This is another good suggest. You'll probably only need to do it for a couple of weeks to find some significant surprises.

While you're at the book store picking up Fit or Fat, pick up a calorie counter book. This book just tells you how many calories and fat grams and such are in an ounce of all sorts of different foods. You can get some great iPhone apps for this too and there are websites too.
 
Get Pavel's book "Enter the Kettlebell"

Order a Kettlebell. (Got mine from Christainsfitnessfactory.com)

Start working with it. Yoou'll drop weight like crazy.

Body Strong's Kettlebell Blitz is good too.

Istarted with a 35lb. kettlebell and dropped 30lbs. in six weeks or less. I'm up to an hour workout now and in better shape than I've been in for 25 years.
 
I agree with the suggestion for P90X. It will get you in shape fast. You can do your 90 days then try it at half pace to maintain. However it can be grueling for some. I also do not like their diet, too many carbs.
Check out the Primal lifestyle. www.marksdailyapple.com is a great place to get ideas about healthily living that is realistic for almost everybody. Dont forget, eating is 80% of fitness, proper rest is 10%, stress management is 6%, and exercise is only about 4%. If you do the rest properly the exercise becomes a joy that your body will crave.
 
I used to use a product called Dietpower. I like it very much. Its a daily food counter not for everyone but free for a month so if you like it great do it not no worries.
 
My undergraduate was in exercise science. I just took my NSCA CSCS certification exam (National Strength and Conditioning Association, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist).

Yes, I would say I'm a fitness buff.

If you want to lose love handles, that is just another way of saying you need to lose fat. There is no spot treatment. That's entirely a myth. Fat is lost proportionately from the body based on a number of things such as amount of fat in a particular area and genetics. To put it very, very briefly, you will lose more fat from areas on the body that have more fat.

There is no best program. There is no best program. There is NO best program. People need to realize what works for one person will probably not be the best thing for another person even if that other person is the same height, weight, and build. There's a whole lot of interplay in the body that affects many things that people don't take into consideration when they go out looking for what works best. I can go on and talk about different muscle fibers among other things, what they do, how they get recruited, which gets recruited first, which fatigue first, how to develop them, how they convert, etc., but that's beyond the scope of this thread.

Since you are limited on you can do at the house, I'd put more emphasis on diet especially because you sound decently fit from your description. In terms of weight loss/fat loss, the body does not discriminate against what type of calorie you're ingesting. A calorie is a calorie regardless if it's from protein, carbohydrate, or lipid (fat; particularly in the form of triglycerides). What is important is that you remember 3500 calories is equal to a pound. If you want to lose a pound a week, you'll have to cut 3500 calories from your weekly caloric intake. Easiest way to do this is to keep a log for a few days and notate what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat, and how many calories are in what you eat. From there you can figure out your daily caloric intake. This amount is your maintenance, as in what you would be eating to maintain weight. But since you want to lose fat, which means losing weight, you'll want to cut 500 calories from your average in take, per day.

You don't want to go overboard and attempt to lose more than 1% body weight per week, which for most people is from 1 to 2.2 pounds on average. Losing more than that per week means you will end up losing more muscle mass than fat mass. 1% of 180 pounds is 1.8 pounds a week. 1 pound is good to start on because cutting calories will probably leave you hungry. Cutting something like 1000 cals a day in order to lose 2 pounds a week is a lot.

I'd say start at 500 cals from diet alone.

As far as working out is concerned, I dunno if you have a simple set of weights at the house, but you can do lots of bodyweight stuff. Pull ups, push ups, dips (grab two chairs and place them about shoulder width apart. Proceed with the dips), plyometrics. Don't forget the cardio. Don't forget to periodize your workout lest you want to risk plateauing and/or overtraining.


About p90x. I knew of the program before it became famous in recent time. I first heard about the program almost around 2002 - 2003. It's great if you can commit 90 days to it and do the workouts to the tooth. This is where people fail. It's not as easy as people are led to believe. Most end up dropping out after 2 weeks. Some make it for a month. I've known so many people that gave p90x a shot and lost commitment. People want the easy way out when it comes to exercise. There is no easy way to accomplish fitness goals.

Regarding supplements, the only thing I suggest is a protein shake and maybe creatine monohydrate. Nothing else has been scientifically proven to make much of a difference if any. Not even all anabolic steroids have been shown to provide benefits. HGH (what McGwire used) has little benefit to the body.
 
Last edited:
I am in shape. Round is a shape.

But, to be serious, eating well (as opposed to a bunch of supplements) and a reasonable exercise program that includes walking, bicycling, or some other mild cardio work is probably the best way to get on the road to fitness. Whatever you do has to be sustainable over the long term.
 
Find a personal trainer who you get on with, who motivates you, who works you hard but no so hard that you get dispirited and quit.

Find a training buddy. You are less likely to go "I don't want to go to the gym today" if your buddy will be waiting there for you to turn up.

Once you get these two people, the rest will follow.

As some of the posters have already said, remember that fitness is not just about exercise. It is about your exercise, your food, and your metabolism. A fitness plan must consider all three and must involve changing the first two.

Cheers
Craig (in better shape now at 41 than I have ever been in my life)
 
Wow. I'm impressed with all of the good advice.
Maybe it has been stated already, but resistance training (weights, body weight exercises), getting those muscles working is one of the most efficient ways to burn fat. It has been shown that a good resistance training session keeps your metabolism up longer than just for the work out duration. This does not mean ignore the importance of cardiovascular training though.
High intensity training is also a great way to pack a good workout into a relatively short period of time. This has also been shown to keep the metabolism up for quite some time after the work out. An example would be: warm up (very important) then sprint, pedal, swim, jump rope all out for 30 seconds then recover (move more slowly to get your heart rate down) for about 90 seconds. Do this eight times in a row. Timing can vary a bit to suit your conditioning (longer sprints, short recovery periods).
Another high intensity exercise method I like is called Tabata (after its originator). Twenty seconds on, ten seconds off eight times for a total of four minutes. Repeat as desired with varied exercises. Four exercises I like to string together this way are: 1) Wall ball; through a medicine ball about eight to ten feet up against a backboard, squat as you're catching it, repeat. 2) Slam ball; throw a non-bouncing heavy ball down to the pavement, follow it down (you'd be in a squat position), stand up lifting the ball overhead and repeat. 3) Box jump; jump onto and off of a box of suitable height (20 seconds jumping, 10 seconds rest). 4) Kettlebell swings (again 20 seconds on ten seconds off for four minutes). I borrowed some of these exercises from friends that to Cross Fit type work outs.
Another toy I like is called the Bulgarian Training Bag. Look it up, it can be used for a lot of exercises and is great for building real core strength.
As stated a number of times by other posters, be safe (don't be causing injury), find things you enjoy doing and will stick with and set goal for, if possible commit to a training partner or personal trainer, and remember - calories out/calories in. If you take in more than you burn, you won't loose weight. You can loose weight eating crap as long as your caloric intake is limited, but it won't be the healthy way to go. It's probably also been stated that if you are putting on some muscle, you may not see your weight drop initially (muscle is more dense than fat) but you will be getting more lean.
I'm 56 and am probably as addicted to exercise (keeps me sane and lets me eat some pizza etc.) as I am knives. I've got a number of joint issues from playing hard all of my life (not so smart days, and/or listening to someone I shouldn't have) so it's a matter of finding variety and what works well for each individual. Really try to come up with a regular time to exercise that is not easily preempted. Knowing that you have a set, uninterpretable time set aside on a regular basis is a big help. Make it a moving meditation if you can. Focus on correct breathing techniques, focus on the muscle groups you're using, focus on correct mechanics. Your workout will be even more rejuvenating and give you a greater since of calm. Of course, if you were a eighteen-year-old with massive amounts of testosterone in your system, you may need to do some head banging first. Though I like music a lot, I can workout fine without it or at least not so loud as to be mind numbing. For the same reason, if I have a work out partner, we don't do a lot of off-the-wall jabbering. One last thing. If you are dealing with injuries/pain/arthritis, it can be helpful to have a trainer that has delt with these things or even see a good physical therapist to get you moving in the right direction. Make sure whomever you see is well qualified, knowledgeable, won't put you through a cookie cutter workout, and has your best interest in mind - it can take some time to find a person you can trust like this. Anyway, hope this helps and I apologize for so much verbiage. Mike
 
Last edited:
Mike157 said:
Maybe it has been stated already, but resistance training (weights, body weight exercises), getting those muscles working is one of the most efficient ways to burn fat.
Click to expand...

Adding to that so that people don't get confused about the efficacy of resistance training: The most efficient way of burning fat is doing cardio workout that targets the aerobic energy system. Again, going into detail on the three energy systems is beyond the scope of this thread, and not relevant to the OP. The other systems are creatine phosphate and anaerobic glycolysis. Even doing an intense circuit weight training routine will not yield anywhere close to the amount of calories burned from an LSD workout (long, slow distance).

Muscle mass does increase resting metabolic rate. So if you build up even a small amount, it will help the body burn calories more efficiently at rest.

But comparing a resistance training routine that has your heart rate elevated to a cardio routine in terms of calories burned, the cardio will burn more fat.
 
I had never heard of a bulgarian training bag.....Seems some are a bit pricey.
However, I looked on YouTube and not only did the workouts seem useable and also non-impactive, but I found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il8rU0H-9ps
on making your own for next to nothing...

Being a make-it-yourself sort of guy, I imagine I'll give it a go.

It also strikes me that most of the kettlebell exercises I've seen demonstrated are very similar to the stuff my old fitness guru Leonard Schwartz was showing in his "heavyhands" routines 30 years ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top