let's start a new post in this forum

[Steve2004]

i wouldn't call myself COMPLETELY out of shape..but i tell ya..lunges pretty much kill me every time i do them. i've been trying to do them every other day..my legs feel like jello. But these lunges are a nice balance for the days i eat unhealthy. i need to start a work out plan. I refuse to give in to the freshmen 15. reFUSE

[anachronistic]

I'm a scrawny little naturally thin kid who is stronger than he looks but I'm going to start working out 3 times a week. Starting Thursday with two of my friends. I don't eat the best but I have 3 proper meals and not that many bad snacks but when i do, i pig out.

Naturally wihtout exercise like 100 pounds, hope to gain some weight exercising.

you weigh 100 lbs? how old and tall are you?

[anachronistic]

i wouldn't call myself COMPLETELY out of shape..but i tell ya..lunges pretty much kill me every time i do them. i've been trying to do them every other day..my legs feel like jello. But these lunges are a nice balance for the days i eat unhealthy. i need to start a work out plan. I refuse to give in to the freshmen 15. reFUSE

can i re-fuse you?

*whips out fuse box*

[Steve2004]

can i re-fuse you?

That's impossible. dont be silly.

[IndiReloaded]

can someone tell me some good ab exercises you can do without laying down. i HATE laying down at the gym, it's very uncomfortable for me.

Hey Miso, what about one of those big gymballs? Those work for me. Seems to me you could semi-recline and do crunches w/o going all the way down. Tho my instructors keep saying to 'keep my bellybutton tight', I think its to protect your back.

From a pure physics point of view, I don't see how it matters how you set up to work abs so long as you're having to pull against some kind of resistance. I don't think you always have to lie down, just be pulling your body forward against a weight. I've also seen ppl standing up and pulling on those cable by bending forward at their waist. But I would worry about blowing a disc w/my back on those... personally, I like classes where an instructor can tell me if I'm doing something wrong.

[Illusional]

and as for the situps, i found that something inbetween a crunch and a situp is best. go nice and slow, putting all your strength into each situp. you'll be really tired after a while and will only be able to do so many, but this is the best way to do a situp.

did you know that you're actually only hurting your lower back muscles when you do this. yes, i know that you feel like you're working your lower abs, and that you are, but not nearly as much as you're killing your lower back muscles. shit, i forget the name of the muscle but they are the lowest ones that stabilize your lower back and pull your pelvis back to keep it upright. think back to the first time that you preformed these legs raises, do you remember your lower back feeling stretched too??


as for a workout plan, mines various, but it goes like this. work at fedex lifting boxes with with various items that are not known to my knowledge, lift at the gym during my breaks, works some more lifting stupid boxes and climbing up hills to the isolated houses on some mountain in hawaii, then run when i get home. and after all this is said and done, i open up some heinekens and revert my accomplishments of the days. and still i haven't been able to break 135 pounds.. yes i'm that skinny asian that giga was supposed to piggy back.

raverboy

[anachronistic]

did you know that you're actually only hurting your lower back muscles when you do this. yes, i know that you feel like you're working your lower abs, and that you are, but not nearly as much as you're killing your lower back muscles. shit, i forget the name of the muscle but they are the lowest ones that stabilize your lower back and pull your pelvis back to keep it upright. think back to the first time that you preformed these legs raises, do you remember your lower back feeling stretched too??

what exercise are you referring to? you quoted my situps but you mentioned another exercise.

i feel tension in my back when i do the leg raises, but no stretching or pain. is there a better way to do leg lifts or soemthing?


heh, the most i ever weighed was 190 lbs. i am 6 feet tall on the dot. i've been skinny, i've been chunky and i've been totally ripped. right now i am just about to that midway ripped part.

[Illusional]

what i picture that is you're lying on your back and doing leg raises. well even so, something similiar to that puts a lot of pressure on the lower back muscle.. dammit not knowing the name is bothering me, but i'm too lazy to look though all my muscular anatomy books. but is that the exercise that you're talking about??

raverboy

[Illusional]

alright so yeah i was bothering me, but i was too lazy to go through all my books from college so i used the modern technological advances that we have today via transformers via the www. it's called the multifidus, not that you're really interested.

raverboy

[LostNotFound]

how do you tone your bum?

[anachronistic]

how do you tone your bum?

squats, running, etc.

[Tiay]

oh god. crunches? squats? I don't even know what half of these things *are*.

anyway, Lost, about that flat stomach;
You can't just tone one area of your body. Even if your happy with your overall weight, your body might simply be the type that likes to store some fat on your tummy; You can work out and build the most spectacular abs, but they wont be visible under that layer, in fact it'll just make your tummy look bigger! Many people fall into this trap, and some are just unlucky to have bodies who think the stomach is a good place to store fat.

Others are like my mom, who are super skinny (i'm talking some online BMI calculators consider her underweight) and work out and do yoga every day (she even works with weights I can't get off the ground), but who are cursed with IBS, bad digestion, etc, which makes their stomach blow up like a balloon.

this website [url]http://www.flat-stomach-exercises.com/[/url] contains pretty much everything you need to know to acquire a flat stomach. I am on the same quest.

EDIT:
oh btw, this is my weight loss since I started changing my eating habits:


IGNORE the last dot, it is just my goal for the end of august.

[LostNotFound]

S.O sent me this. it's for tightening up your stomach muscles. it's harder than it looks. try it for 60 seconds.

[url]http://theslalom.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/plank1.jpg[/url]

[misombra]

Hey Miso, what about one of those big gymballs? Those work for me. Seems to me you could semi-recline and do crunches w/o going all the way down. Tho my instructors keep saying to 'keep my bellybutton tight', I think its to protect your back.

From a pure physics point of view, I don't see how it matters how you set up to work abs so long as you're having to pull against some kind of resistance. I don't think you always have to lie down, just be pulling your body forward against a weight. I've also seen ppl standing up and pulling on those cable by bending forward at their waist. But I would worry about blowing a disc w/my back on those... personally, I like classes where an instructor can tell me if I'm doing something wrong.

thanks! (everybody and indigo). yeah i'd like to try one of those balls. i think i'm gonna get a yoga mat and a fitness ball for my house.

as for my health and well being, my back is feeling so much better since i've been doing physical therapy. i also am enjoying my job. yay.

[Tiay]

everyone has great abs...more often than not, obscured by a layer of fat. The way to find them, very simply, is dropping the body fat percentage.

yup. Last time I had access to one of those fancy scales that tells you your body fat percentage, it was 25%, and that was a few years ago so i'm sure I weighed around 119, probably less. That website I linked before said to show defined abs, you need 10%. So yeah, that's pretty hard to do.

there's one thing none of them argue: the law of conservation of mass and energy.

The good news here is that, assuming you're constantly using energy to remain alive (maintaining a constant internal temperature, beating heart, lung function, etc), you can vary your body mass by adjusting the ratio of energy taken in versus the energy spent over a given amount of time. (Obviously this is all chemical mass-energy conservation)

^-I like thinking of it that way 'cause no one can argue it, although it's so abstract that I think most people kind of think, "great, you're telling me to eat less & exercise more...thanks" lol...well it's true.

this is true. But it is too simplistic. Because the body has tricks up its sleeve: It controls your metabolism and your hearbeat and all that, after all! Your body, not your mind, has control of the things that burn the MOST of your daily calorie consumption. THIS is why some people have a much harder time of loosing weight than others. For some reason, their bodies REFUSE to burn fat, and instead they lower metabolism, make them feel insanely hungry, etc.

It would be all to easy for someone like me, who looses weight pretty easily, to say "pfft, that fat person just has no will power! it's SIMPLE man, just exercise more and eat less!"

Most of the people who go to programmes for the obese drop out. Most of those that don't drop out don't loose a significant amount of weight. Most of those that loose weight gain it back. And the very few that don't gain it back still have to work REALLY hard to keep it off, for the rest of their lives!
this is NOT because they have no will power or are not doing it properly. It is because their bodies are different- or rather, stubborn as hell.

I think their bodies react similar to how my body would react if I tried to starve myself to 70 pounds. My body would think "HOLY SHIT! she's gonna starve herself to death!" and it would drastically lower my metabolism, make me really tired, make me really hungry. This response would be appropriate, because I really *would* be starving myself to death.

But a fat persons body might think "HOLY SHIT! she's trying to diet to 130 pounds?? she's gonna starve to death! better do something about that!"

furthermore, I know someone who was on the shot (depo-vera?) and gained weight on it. she tried to loose it. her mom thought she was becoming anorexic, she ate so little. She jogged and worked out, too.
she kept gaining weight. My first response to this was "that's impossible, you can't gain weight; if you spend more energy than you consume, you WILL loose weight". but it's like her body refused to burn fat. instead she got pretty weak and fainted.
she's better now she's off the shot!

Just follow this tenet though, and make sure that you're burning off the proper energy, 'cause your body will also eat it's own muscle in order to stay alive. Think "emaciated." Exercise is the way of telling your body that the 'muscle is necessary to keep, so find energy elsewhere.'

yeah, this is very true. your body will always burn off the least amount necessary. Muscles? oh, you're not using those... let's burn those!