Anyone here work 9-5 (or in reality 10-11 hours when you factor in drive time), if so, and you keep fit. HOW DO YOU DO IT.
Seriously... holy shit, spending 12 hours sitting down a day leaves so little time to dedicate to working out, its kind of soul crushing.
In the spring/summer/fall I bike to work and that keeps me in decent shape. I've still put on weight since getting full time hours and money, but that's mostly because I do really adore carbs and carb related foods. In the winter, whenever I'm watching TV, I'm on my water rower or swinging a kettlebell around. Doing 200 swings per hour of TV seems like a decent trade off for my lazy ass. The issue is when I finish a show, my exersize routine goes out the window.
@Ganymede said:
@Arkandel said:
However what it comes down to is that cutting calories is by very far more efficient than increasing exercise if one's goal is fat loss.
This is very, very debatable, and, frankly, I disagree for the reasons presented by @Derp.
I don't see that it's debatable at all. Let's break down the numbers (I like numbers).
A quick snack, let's say a Twix bar, has 250 calories: https://www.twix.com/product/nutrition.
For a 205 lb person, according to the table earlier in this thread, it takes cycling at 10-11.9 mph to burn 558 calories.
Therefore, if you don't mind a little rounding, it takes half an hour at a pretty decent speed to burn that. It's possible (at this point I'm making assumptions) most people who actually need to lose weight the most won't find it easy to maintain that on a daily basis. On the other hand, not eating that Twix takes no effort at all, other than an expenditure of will - without which chances are any working out is terminally sabotaged anyway.
Now on top of that, what do you get from a Twix bar? Carbs - processed sugar, that's about it. It contains 2.2 grams of protein so it's not like it's going to feed anyone's muscles worth a damn, and it's probably not even going to replace a meal since most people will eat it between meals.
I don't see how this is debatable. But I am not saying getting exercise isn't really important, just that regulating one's diet is far more so.
So few people are going to make it to that level of calorie deficit. It's laughable to even think about really. Starvation mode is real, IF YOURE ACTUALLY STARVING. Even though I run 800 cals a day for long stretches, I'm not dying. I'm not losing a ton of muscle. When I stay on my shit, I lose weight at a pretty good clip. I can swap out my macros for more fat and protein and even gain muscle at low calories.
If we risked gaining weight from not eating enough, what's going on with anorexics? No. People who are like 'I need to eat more to lose weight' and who 'can't lose weight even though I totally only eat 500 calories a day' are lying liars who lie. Liiiiiie. So full of shit I can't even.
To top it off, working out to lose weight just is too fucking hard. I have a friend who can take a leisurely walk for 15 minutes and burn WAY more calories than I can running for 15 minutes. This is because she's nearly twice my size. Both our calorie burns could be negated by three bites of food.
Abs are made in the kitchen because if you overeat you're going to be fat and never see your abs. Ever. No matter how good you are with protein or at the gym.
@FiranSurvivor said:
Anyone here work 9-5 (or in reality 10-11 hours when you factor in drive time), if so, and you keep fit. HOW DO YOU DO IT.
I have 2-year-old twins.
It depends on what you mean by "keeping fit." I'm not in the same shape I was in my twenties. I could try to push myself there, but that would require a time investment I'm not prepared to give, along with eschewing things which, in my old age, I have earned.
I like to do interval body-weight training, kind of like P90X or Insanity, but without the videos. I had a minor pectoral strain about 2 months ago that restricted my workouts, but I've been getting back into it. If you're interested, read up on the topic, and then try this workout.
Get the Interval Timer for your iPad or other tablet/phone thingy. Create a program of 8 cycles of 8 sets of 0:20 high and 0:10 low intensity periods, with 1:00 of rest time in between. That should set you up for 8 sets of 8 exercises, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds rest.
Here are the eight exercises:
Quad Squat Press
Bodyweight Sit-Through
Glute bridge
Lunges (alternate legs)
Push-ups
Bodyweight Tripod (alternate arms)
Plank (on elbows)
Squats
That should take 40 minutes to get through, not including warm-ups. I'd recommend 5 minutes of dynamic warm-ups prior, and 5 minutes of yoga stretching afterwards.
Give it a shot. You can do it at home, in the privacy of your own bedroom. If you're starting out, wear sneakers; otherwise, try it barefoot.
Sadly biking is out the window for me. My drive is 45 minutes across state lines. Im mainly focusing on dieting. Low carbs. Minimum sugar. Totally no Soda. I did the Atkins diet a year ago and lost a decent amount of weight (which I promptly put back on after I passed the Bar and realized I was fucked for a job)
I know we like to joke that you can't kick the soda habit. I had a hard time too. But seriously switch to Coke Zero if you like Coke. Coke Zero Wild Cherry helps mask the diet taste. You will lose some 30 lbs in 3 months if you drop the normal soda.
I drink Coke Classic. But I ONLY drink it on weekends. It has helped. Not much, but I was a real fiend before, so.
Exercising actual constraint is a skill, and practice will make you better at it.
ETA: I mean this as encouragement, in case anyone wondered.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
Diet coke (aka any soda to non Texans) is legit with heavy whipping cream. Especially cherry vanilla dr pepper and rootbeer. And diet sunkist. Tastes like a melted float. Just a tablespoon will do.
@Misadventure said:
Exercising actual constraint is a skill, and practice will make you better at it.
You know what they say? Willpower is a muscle. Just any muscle it gets stronger as you exercise it. Just like any muscle, it also gets fatigued if you have to exercise it all the time.
That's why, for instance, you don't buy and leave a bunch of cookies on your kitchen table. Why do that to yourself?
@Arkandel This is legit and sometimes you have to go off the rails for your sanity.
My best friend and I were doing Keto together. For our respective birthdays, one month apart, we each had a carb fiesta together of our mutual favorite foods and a Korean cake from tour les jours. A small slice was perfection and didn't break us totally though we were over carbs. Even now that I'm off Keto, I eat within her plan when we're together because she's behind me in loss and that's just what sister wives do.
Support systems are legit and the best. I will gladly pay into that debt because I've gotten so much out of the bank of support. I want everyone to succeed. And everyone can but you have to want to. Support just makes up for when you're weak, not when you flat out don't want to or are not ready to.
@Arkandel said:
I don't see how this is debatable.
That's because you're not addressing the issues up for debate. You're hooked onto your idea, and you won't let go.
If you reduce your calories too low, you're going to put your body into starvation mode. Everyone enjoys and is subject to homeostasis. If you cut calories, your body is going to want calories. If you deprive it, it thinks you're starving. If you're starving, you are going to store energy into fat because fat is easier to burn later for energy to keep your tissues alive. Protein is harder to burn, so your body will naturally try to eat it and convert it to fat.
If you decide to go this route, you're going to start to store fat and lose muscle unless you exercise. If you exercise with the drop in calories, you're going to preserve muscle and force your body to burn fat instead, despite being in starvation mode.
Ultimately, you will lose more weight -- better weight -- by actually eating more and burning more energy via exercise. And by eating more, I mean eating more healthy food, like vegetables. Because nothing trick fucks your body into burning fat than eating 5 pounds of broccoli and carrots a day, and working out for an hour or so.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
@Ganymede Thanks for the advice. Any chance you got any good videos for those various workouts or infographics?
@Ganymede For the record: http://authoritynutrition.com/starvation-mode/ (and other, assorted links)
I thought inducing ketosis was burning fat instead of muscle?
I have a waggish sense of humor.
One of the biggest issues with fitness bar NONE is that you can't always rely on expert advice. So many articles out there by perfectly valid authors are completely contradicting one another, or claim different things, etc. There's a ton of empirical evidence being portrayed as universal fact, which doesn't help either.
Basically it's really hard to separate fitness half-myths from really useful things. For instance the effect where you increase your metabolism by adding muscle is quite true (more muscle = higher passive energy requirements for the body) but the gains are negligible.
To me at this point it looks like this: The best exercise/diet regime is the one you'll actually do. If it's perfect but you won't do it because it won't fit your lifestyle/situation it's useless to you. On top of it the human body is a great machine, it responds to different approaches, so no one way of working out or eating is the 'right' one.
Pick one. Hell, pick many and try them on for size. Follow whatever you can as well as you can. That's about it.
@Coin
I work 16 miles ish from home, and my only route is down a highway or off-road.
Might if only our bike trail went toward work! Bright side, there's a bike trail a mile or so from my house! Just have to get off my lazy ass and get out there after work some nights.
Also, @All Of You Assholes 
Love how you guys can bitch and argue about literally anything. Legitimately impressed at this point.
Thanks for all the suggestions and links and stuff 
@FiranSurvivor said:
Thanks for the advice. Any chance you got any good videos for those various workouts or infographics?
Actually, if you google-search or Youtube the names of the exercises, they should come up for you. Some of the moves are complex, like the sit-throughs, so you may need to work up to those.
I also like to do a bodyweight regimen, and then shadow-box for 20 minutes to "cool-down," which is actually a burning session whilst my heart rate is up. For the shadow-boxing, I do 40 sets of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, for a total of 20 minutes. I start with a 10 jab exercises, then 10 hook exercises, then 10 uppercut exercises, and then finish with 10 jab-jab-hook-uppercut combos. Each of the blocks consists of alternating left-foot then right-foot stances, 5 each side.
As @Arkandel said, the best routine is what you can stick to. This is the most effective routine I've used to maintain my weight, and if I stopped drinking so much, I'd probably be a lot lighter.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
Just one more thing from me on this.
If you do any kind of exercise, particularly one which involves weights, do yourself a big favor and be careful with form.
There are a ton of videos on youtube about just about any exercise so it shouldn't be hard to find something for free. Obviously hiring a trainer works best but that costs more money than nothing at all.
Either way I've seen some really iffy things at various gyms over time. Some are relatively harmless - a classic example is barbell presses with a very limited range of motion where the person barely bends the elbows at all so they can boast 'lifting' more pounds, so essentially the pectoral muscles are getting a fraction of the benefit of what they'd have gotten with a lot less weight. Some are actually dangerous (now and then I see people rounding their lower backs significantly while doing deadlifts and I... man. In one of these reps they won't get back up).
Form > > all.
@Misadventure Keto does burn fat instead of muscle. It's a way to do an extreme cut and not lose much muscle mass. A cut or calorie deficit for weight loss will always involve some loss of muscle mass.
Even body builders know this to be true which is why they go through bulk and cut cycles for competition. You need to be at a low body fat to show the muscles, you need to eat more to gain the muscles.
However, this is elite body building. Atheltes. Average obese joe doesn't really need to hold onto this. Just being not obese will get your further ahead health wise than you will be being obese with a little bit more muscle.
And again, starvation mode isn't real. No one in America on a diet who needs to be one is going to starve!!! Fasting won't kill you. Intermittent fasting won't kill you. Eating under 1,000 calories for a few days or even a couple weeks won't cause you to starve! If you're obese (which is a lower weight than most think - 174 pounds for a woman at 5'4" is obese) you're not going to hit starvation mode anytime soon.
