The Official Gym & Fitness Thread

I am 6' 1". I'm not sure on the exact amount of "muscle" I actually put on, but it seemed about 20# first year lifting, 15# 2nd year and 10# for my 3rd year roughly. About 10# of fat or less after 3 years... But, I've obviously been bulking since the beginning. I am about 203# right now at 16% BF.

 

That's about where I am. I'm cutting right now and am at 197 and about 13%. My bulk is gonna be delayed this year because I'm getting married in Sept, so I'm gonna cut until I get around 10% and then maintain until after the wedding. I'm hoping I can get up to 215-220 after Sept.

 

Worst case I can price it, never know..but yeah Costco is good stuff I wish I had a mbrship. Not even sure where there's one near me.

 

GNC will beat any Vitamin shoppe price. GNC is easier for me due to location. So I just walk in with the vitamin shoppe website pulled up, and leave a dollar richer then if I shopped at Vitamin shoppe.

 

Brockton.

Costco has pretty good deals on a lot of stuff. But be careful-not everything is as good a deal as you'd like.

 

The wife is a huge proponent of epsom salts after hard workouts. She reccommends all her clients us it too.

Use an entire big bag of it.

 

Ketogenic diets are one of the only things that will shrink the brown fat cells, the hardest to lose.

 

You guys should just lay off the protein powders and just buy healthy food.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/04/protein-drinks/index.htm

 

Haha that article can be summed up in a few sentences:

- Some protein powders contain trace amounts of toxins.

- Too much protein powder leads to an unused surplus

- Supplement companies prey on teens to sell their product

- Read the labels of what you put in your body

- Real food is better for you from a micronutrient aspect, compared to protein

I agree with all of the above, however, for me to grow, I've noticed I need at least 1.2ish grams of protein per pound of body weight per day; I do 2 scoops of ON whey a day to prevent from spending $50 extra dollars a week on chicken. Optimum Nutrition responded to that article; here's an excerpt:

"Two Optimum Nutrition products were evaluated in the article, both of which tested well below the proposed U.S. Pharmacopeia limits for heavy metals in dietary supplements, even at the 3 serving level. These 2 ON supplements were Platinum Hydrowhey (Velocity Vanilla flavor) and Gold Standard 100% Whey (Extreme Milk Chocolate flavor). Since Optimum Nutrition's products tested well below the proposed limits, no specific safety issues were raised about either product in the article. Consumers can be assured our products are safe and manufactured to the highest standards, which the results reflect."

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.optimumnutrition.com/news.php?article=874

The problem is when crackpot "scientists" do their "experiments" and put every product into one category, saying they're all bad for you. There's nothing wrong with good, quality protein powder.

That's like saying, "some water sources have lead in them and can poison you, therefore don't drink water."

 

That article is shit. You can't claim something is worse if you don't test what is suppose to be better for comparison. Didn't see any numbers for the water used to make the shakes. No numbers on the recommended foods either.

Wether the article has any validity or not, once they put together a shit comparison, you loose all credit.

 

You also can't claim protein powder is jesus juice without proof but that hasn't stopped any of the companies doing it.

 

Difference is they aren't comparing it to anything. Simply stating the powder will bring the gainz.

Plus everyone knows protein powder is the juice of the holy one.

 

I buy a several pound bag... was told 3cups a soak....

 

I don't think protein powder is any greater than chicken, tuna, etc; I do think it's more convenient. I have to leave for Atlanta at 7am and I'm not going to wake up to fix a meal when I can simply scoop protein into a cup and sleep in an extra 30 minutes.

I do think it's stupid how companies claim that their product does something it doesn't, but that isn't exclusive to the supplement industry; hell, I'll be impressed if anyone can provide an industry where this doesn't occur. Anyone who is semi-serious about bodybuilding should be competent enough to know that there is nothing out there legal that is going to perform any miracles.

 

I just don't want to see poor college kids on here wasting their money on celltech/super mass protein powders. This protein powder kick got started by Joe Weider with "Weider Formula No. 7" when slapped Arnold Schwarzenegger on the label and said you can gain a pound a day. The dude made a ton of money and companies have been scamming wannabe bodybuilders ever since.

The body can only absorb at max about 30 grams of protein in a sitting so these giant mass gainers of 30+ grams suck...all you are doing is crapping the excess out. I would just rather buy healthy foods at a fraction of the cost and know exactly what I am getting rather than consuming some "whey protein matrix" with Jay Cutler on the tub.

Few supplements work anyway...well the ones that do usually end up getting banned (1-AD, 6-0X0, Epistane, etc). Like I said, I just rather see everyone on here reach their goals without wasting a ton of money on crap (Yes, Ive blown plenty of money on supplements).

So good luck to you all in reaching your goals

 

WORD SALAD INBOUND


I'm a chemistry student, not a biologist- but there are several things wrong with that article.

first off, there are thousands of ways for heavy metals to enter into food- especially at the microgram level. There's no error calculations, just rough averages so whoever did that shit was not an analytical chemist, or they're choosing to not report it. I don't trust random 3rd party results in these kinds of quantities because I've seen what kind of precision is needed to handle micrograms/nanograms....Error propagation is everything


"Arsenic" is a rough term, there are multiple forms of arsenic (but people generally don't know that)
there's both inorganic and organic forms of arsenic. Inorganic arsenic is what people usually think of- a supah bad poison that's found in certain instances of environmental contamination

but there's also organic arsenic, that is usually found in seafoods, and has been found to be less "toxic" because of a bioavailability difference.
Source:
EFSA arsenic analysis-
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/1351.htm

The average shrimp will have ~100micrograms of organic arsenic IIRC (and certain fishes up to 700); the "highest super bad omg dangerous GG guys we're dying" reading in that article is 16 micrograms.

They state that the USP tolerance is for inorganic arsenic, but fail to state whether they found inorganic or organic arsenic in the brotein.

in terms of Cd, the WHO exposure limit/week is 7 micrograms/kg BW; at 70 kg, my Cd exposure limit is around 49micrograms of cd/week; highest levels there are around 5micrograms, so I'm "under" the WHO weekly limit if I were to take 3 servings a day, 7 days a week.

source:
EFSA Cd analysis
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/980.htm


bonus fact: the average candy bar will have 100 ng/g of Cd; the average hershey's candy bar is 43 g. The average candy bar will have 4300ng, or 4.3 micrograms of Cd in it.
Source:
http://phys.org/news/2014-09-cadmium-chocolate-bought-brazil.html


Moving on to Lead-

according to a gigantic WHO study on lead intake, the average U.S. male will ingest ~53 micrograms of lead/daily; though, there is a range on intake depending on environmental/location factors.
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/lead.pdf

lastly, mercury:
according to this study, countries where people eat a lot of fish eat up to 11.8micrograms of Hg a day; the highest Hg reading in their chart is 1.1microgram
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17805232

I mean, yeah. all of these things are bad. All of these things should be avoided. But that article makes it sound like we're all going to die of heavy metal poisoning.

I like how they're like
"shit that's over the limit is in bold"

aint no shit in bold


also, I'm running a fever so fuck me if grammar and little things are slightly off

 

One day I'll run these supps and broteins through some HPLC/NMR and see exactly what the fuck, and how fucking much of what is in these things

 

Yeah, but the notion that protein doesn't work or is a waste is incorrect. My ON is .69 cents per scoop; that's .69 cents per 24 grams of protein. Chicken is NOWHERE near that cheap. The closest thing to that is canned tuna, which is still around .75 cents a can for 22 grams of protein. This is all based on the assumption that one is using ON Gold Standard whey, which is arguably the best and one of the highest-quality proteins out there.

I agree with you about not consuming all your protein at once. I consume around 25-45g per meal, which is every 2-3 hrs or so. I don't think it's feasible to consume 100 grams of protein in one sitting when you can spread that out over a few hours.

I also agree with you on 99% of supplements being total shit. I take protein, creatine, and a pre-workout.

Lastly, I do get your point, though. Companies put a big mother fucker on the tub and claim you'll look like them in 30 days if you use their product. HOWEVER, I do agree that protein powder does have its place in a diet...provided, the user knows it's simply used to supplement protein from other sources.

 

Anybody here eat fish? Cause there are health warnings about eating fish more than once or twice week for certain groups (I'm speaking about ocean caught, not farm raised).

I saw the article as incomplete at best. Designed more to sell magazines with claims of unknown poisons (highlighting dangers of rather than 'traces not considered harmful'), lawsuits over banned substances, and targeting teenagers. Sure there were some comparison but if you're calling them equal, then powder is way more convenient. Plus, for me at least, the egg & milk price is probably more equal. More scary than factual.