The Official Gym & Fitness Thread

I fucked myself and got myself in a situation where I can barely eat working 40 hours and currently digging myself out

 

That sucks. The main thing I like about this job is that I can pretty much eat whenever, unless I'm on the road for the day but even then I can still make do.

 

I meant like financially eat lol

 

Oh damn!

 

I'll give you a little sleep education real quick. The emphasis is on continuous sleep, not total sleep. You know how people always talk about sleep cycles, which is your body cycling through deep sleep and REM (dreams), and how how its every 1.5hrs or so? This isn't true, the time part at least. Your body will sit in whichever stage of sleep it needs for as long as it needs. If you haven't slept in a while, and you have been working out, this is going to be stage four (the deepest of deep sleep). Many folks, myself included, will drop into stage four under these circumstances and sit there for hours, like four-five. As the night goes on, you will need to spend less and less time in stage four, and you start to spend more time in REM (dreaming), cycling between the two. In dramatic circumstances folks will sleep for eight+ hours, but only get one cycle. Whats important to note is memory consolidation and restoring your cognitive abilities happens in all stages of sleep, but different components of these processes happen in each stage of sleep. What I'm getting at, is if you don't routinely sleep 8+ hours, you will likely crash into deep sleep and miss other cycles, and thus other beneficial aspects of sleep, or vise versa. Naps don't compensate for this either because you never complete a cycle, how could you if every cycle is different. Oh yeah, and there is a direct, and near causally strong, correlation between lack of sleep and dementia in later life. A lack of sleep predisposes you to high cortisol levels and other hormones that will promote broad catabolic metabolism, so you break down muscle and store fat. This becomes amplified if you lifted heavy and didn't recover over night because your body will have a "damage/stress" response that on top of low sleep.

My recommendation is to pair your heavy lifting with the same days you do your evening starve and plan to clear 7 hours of sleep. I recommend doing this two-three times a week minimum. If you get 4-5 most nights a week, plan a day where you don't set your alarm. Like a lot of you. I work seven days a week. I handle it by working two afternoons, and taking two mornings off, which guarantees me two mornings a week I can sleep as long as my body and mind require. During the weeks where I dont have this luxury, I focus on cardio and don't lift. The endorphins that and lack of additional stress response help balance the little bit of sleep I do get and reduces my urge to drink chocolate milk and eat oreos. I also dont have to fight my alarm because I'm waking up in the middle of a deep sleep cycle.

I often get asked if its better to get 6-7 hours every night instead of 4-5 with a couple nights of 8+. This is dependent on the individual. I happen to do better with three hours of sleep for several nights (last week) followed a consecutive nights of 9 hours (last night, yeah baby!!!!). Do what you can, when you can, and take advantage of a the couple nights when you can clear 8+. Hardcore sleep aids like ambien result in fake sleep, so dont take it. Deal with your underlying anxiety and stress appropriately.

 

If sex isn't included in your hours spent working out, you aren't doing it right. I'd like to summon all of my academic credentials to back my recommendation that you improve your sexual technique. heeheeehee

 

If I didn’t have a second job that would be my life.

But I like being busy. Because like WTF else am I going to do?

As I get older and have kids I’m gonna be thrilled to have the time flexibility. So as long as I got the time I’m gonna hustle and grind.

I genuinely enjoy both my jobs though. Its not a burden.

What does the epic strongman do 37 hours a week? Assuming cush govt job?

 

This is true
I need to step up my game.

 

Haha how did you know?

I work for the D.O.D and do quality/engineering on weapons systems that contractors like Raytheon, BAE, and Lockheed build. Basically I make sure they are building product how the gov't wants, then I sign off on the buyoffs when they submit for completion/payment.

 

That’s all solid info. I will probably skip the gym and sleep in tomorrow and then sleep in on Sunday too.

wont try the starves until I get some protein or something to drink to replace dinner.

 

Yep!

I just joined the govt life. Low commitment, low stress, and low pay

 

Looks like you stole that sleeping report from my house!

The key to the starve is you only want amino acids in your blood stream. A basic whey is ideal. You can check the purity of the protein with a simple calculation - 1g of protein is supposed to have about 4 calories. So, if you multiple the total gs of protein per serving by 4 you get the total number of calories in that serving from protein. If you are supposed to have, say 120 calories from the protein per serving, and the label conspicuously says 180 calories per serving and doesn't list the carbs you know they are lying. This is how I shop. Unfortunately, supplements are not regulated like drugs, so the actual contents are somewhat unknown. Shop smartly. Don't forget to include the grams of BCAAs or other amino acids in this calculation too (these are considered proteins, metabolically speaking).

You don't want anything fancy that is "complete nutrition". Avoid the stuff with vitamins and all other ingredients that aren't whey, amino acids (BCAAs, arginine etc), and enough flavoring to choke it down.

 

What agency?

 

Im with state but I’m Family and Social Services (Medicaid)

My dad is with DOD Disaster Preparedness and my mom just retired from DHS Customs and Border Protection. Great benefits

 

Nice!

 

Its been fun. I get to investigate providers who try to commit fraud and take my tax money!

 

Ive wondered about this a lot. When I look at medical bills, I can see my fees, the cost of equipment, and then there is the other 80% of the bill that baffles me. Can patients sue hospitals for these billing practices? I feel like if patients were able to sue hospitals and pharmaceutical companies over unfair pricing, the system would correct its self to some degree. Hell, maybe people could afford healthcare, maybe we wouldn't need the affordable health care act because private insurers could actually offer affordable rates.

 

I always buy from Kaged Muscle and trust him with my supps after learning about what he stands for and how he makes his supplements and all that. I’ll go shopping this weekend for some.

gonna chug a shake when I get home around 7pm and sleep by 8:30 and see how it goes!

Your sleep schedule pretty jacked up too? Looks like only a couple in here actually get the sleep we are supposed to

 

Right now, no. This is our current health care system in the US. Billing practices that are considered fraudulent, illegal, and discriminatory are completely allowed by hospitals and healthcare providers. Laws are actually written to explicitly allow work arounds for these billing practices.

The surgical center bill for my rotator cuff repair was $20,000. My insurance company reimbursed $1,850 for the services. $18,150 is “written off” by the surgical center.
It is illegal to charge different people different costs for services. So instead of only charging $1,850 to BCBS and $20,000 to the poor guy without insurance we charge $20,000 and “write off” some (which is a tax deduction by the way).
Now the poor guy without insurance could manage paying $1,850 for his surgery but instead of offering the affordable rate we offered BCBS fuck him will force him to take out a home equity loan for his surgery. You know so he can do his manual labor job and feed his kids.

I really wish these practices were forbidden and prosecutable. When people say we have “free market healthcare” in the US it upsets me. We do not have any form of a fair and ethical healthcare economic system.

I’m sure you know Trump signed an executive order on transparent billing practices. Its the first step in shutting this shit down. It will allow me to call up a surgical practice and say “hey I’m having rotator cuff surgery and I don’t have insurance. I see you offer BCBS the price $1,850 for this service. I will pay that for my surgery, not $20,000”.

If we had genuine free market healthcare and had a 100% transparent price structure we would be much closer to healthcare being reasonably affordable to all Americans.

Doing the above would also hopefully help more physicians gaining back their own practices as well. Healthcare is better when physicians are managing their own practices and dictating quality care.
Fun Fact: Most of the medical negligence cases I’ve worked on are due to hospital corporations taking over every outlet of medical care and profit is being put over quality.

 

And these prices could be attainable without effecting healthcare worker's salaries too. Some times I have delusional ideas like become the CEO of a private hospital system just so I could fire 90% of the administration and cut the bills to patients by 75%. The CEO of our hospital system took home over 20million in bonus last year, but wont pay his junior cardiologists more than 90k a year...btw, a new cardiologist has to make an average of 50k in student load debt payments a year. Fucking absurd.

Lets do that math real quick. 20,000,000/20,000 = 1000 rotator cuff surgeries....