The Official Gym & Fitness Thread

Oh man, Im about to go for a run, and like a fking drug, I cant resist answering this question!

I'm gonna show some discipline and answer this after my run. spot RESERVED. Spoiler alert its all linked, full on circle of life stuff.

OK, here we go...

In short, obese parents give birth to obese babies, which are raised in a social environment where obesity is encouraged, and thus being obese is ingrained both physiologically and psychologically at developmental stages for both, making it exponentially harder for these individuals to overcome. The cycle continues as these people have families and so on and so forth.

Your mother's fat, and dietary lack of control, prompts your fetal body to develop in a manor that is accustomed to obesity. (Pregnant women, and women wanting to become pregnant, need to see a nutritionist.) These changes effect how your body is formed, and how your body will respond to diet and exercise throughout your life. Because diet and exercise are intertwined with mental health, it inevitably effects who you are as person - from your personality, to psychological diseases like depression, your ability to focus and thus your perceived intelligence. We have mechanisms in our body that will allow us to have different responses to the same stimuli, some people keep getting fat while others get skinny doing the same things. For the sake of simplicity, I will leave it at that. The mechanisms that dictate which response our body will have are determined during our fetal and infant years in a very pronounced manor, hence the issue of fat people having fat babies. Quite literally, your DNA is covalently modified to biased your body to one response or another (the sequence of your dna is not altered though). This can be undone, but it takes a super-human effort, and very high tolerance to a kind of suffering that many people dont quite grasp - your body thinks it is dying, so imagine that kind of discomfort. If your mother is fat, you will forever be predisposed to being fat and all the psycho-social issues that come with obesity.

Your mom and dad's microbiome is also rapidly transferred to you. If they are unhealthy, have dietary restrictions, indigestion, etc etc, you will 100% have these too, and it likely has nothing to do with genetics. In fact, aside from a handful of exceptionally rare cases, we don't know of any "fat" genes. All the talk about "its" likely genetic, has yet to be supported. I personally think that growing up with dogs can help, but there is no evidence for this, and I'm giggling as I write it, so don't take it too seriously. The issue with the microbiome is that its very hard to change. The most successful techniques revolve around taking the equivalent of a bacterial nuclear bomb, and then swallowing pills filled with the shit of healthy people to repopulate (or re-poop-ulate) your GI track. Its surprisingly effective. People who have BMIs in the 40s will drop into the 20s in a couple months having changed nothing about their diet or exercise.

Amplify all this by your body's fat screaming bloody murder every time you are have the slightest sense of hunger, and the obesity problem becomes clear.

At somepoint, someone has to break the cycle. For all you chunky folks that are determined to make the change, I understand what is happening. I may not be able to relate because I haven't gone through it, but I do not doubt that your pain and struggle is as real as anything else in life. Feel validated.

I have a lot of techniques that I tell patients to use, most of which find a successful concoction to get them through. It starts with making sustainable changes. Not necessarily changing everything at once, but little steps like if you tend to slam a family-sized bag of chips at night, buy the smaller sized bag of chips. Get a dog and walk it for an hour every day - if you cant do it for yourself, you will do it for the only creature that loves you in spite of all your flaws. And then, once a pattern of making changes has been established, work on things like the types of exercise, very specific nutritional things like timing and content, etc. No matter what, always be positive, even when you have a cheat day.

Guys, I'm sorry for the lack of detail, but hopefully the salient points have been made. It will take writing a book series to get all this information put together. I'm happy to address more in further detail.

 

To all the fat homies who are reading this... don’t be afraid to comment and speak up just cause you ain’t jacked like the others. I been at this shit for about a year and still learning every single day. From 220 to 180. 5’9.

 

And lunch

 

Artificial sweetener is the least of my worries.

Well, you saw where I started. I didn't do anything back then, only after 3 years of lifting...

DUde KILLING IT!! Nice job. Proud of you and I agree with that, don't be afraid. Most of us here don't bite - a few do, but they are harmless

 

I appreciate your journey.

 

Yes sir and you motivate the fuck out of me along with the others. I could be stricter like y’all but that’s a mental battle I struggle with. I know I can. I know I need to. But the want to is where it gets hard.

this shit has changed my life. Powerlifting was the only thing I enjoyed in school and I had to quit it to get a job and all that. Now that I picked back up into it, it’s made me stronger and healthier mentally and physically. Fucking love this shit.


And yes I still look at pizza and cookies and donuts and drool. Idc if they’re fuel. My brain still sees em and gets a hard on lmao I wish I didn’t. But I do.

 

It’s just a dumb Tacoma forum and I don’t always listen to the advice as sometimes I try to experiment my own way. But I honestly couldn’t have done it without the guys in here.

 

I nibble

 

My metabolism has always been on the slower side. My heaviest was last year in the 180s.

I was chunkier as a kid. Hit high school and started cleaning up my act a little bit. College is really when my diet and fitness took off.

Again its a matter of deciding whats important to you. When you sit down to eat a huge plate of cake you are making a choice of whats important.

Its funny how similar fitness and money is, because budgeting is the same as food. Its easy to swipe the card and say I’ll pay for it later. Its easy to indulge on the cake but have to always remind yourself what is most important.
I always keep my goals at the forefront of my mind so when temptation hits I know what I’m deciding between. It helps me.
And I say that because both decisions are hard but you can’t cry addiction on poor spending habits. I feel food is the majority of the time the same.

Life is full of temptation. You will always struggle if you try to always evade responsibility for your choices.

The more you practice that responsibility the easier it is.

I get better everyday (no one is perfect). This year has been my best year so far with eating and my weight.
The #1 thing I changed, was setting my own goals and not trying to strive for what I think others will find impressive or cool. I do what makes me feel great. Another reason why I seriously resist putting myself in the place to be commented on. It hurts my progress. I do this for me and no one else.

I totally get that, but thats not anyone here.
I appreciate the immense struggle for those obese/morbidly obese and I wouldn’t give the same speech to them.

Thats on another level and I totally appreciate that.

 

Also you should see my wife’s journey. She lost over 100lbs naturally so she could be fit enough to join the navy.

 

@weldertaco Edits have been made to my previous post #60490, as promised. Check it out.

 

Tell us more about her crazy ass journey

 

That was a very awesome read. It really makes sense as my family was the same way. I am the only one who actually lost weight and maintained it while everyone else is obese. I can eat something bad and gain 10lbs like nothing compared to someone who can eat a cake and lose weight somehow. It’s extremely hard to stay on track but that mirror and scale keeps me in check.

I was overweight all my life tbh and this has definitely been one of the hardest things I’ve had to conquer.

I’m not gonna google and fact check stuff with sources or blah blah blah as what you described is what I went/am going through and it really makes sense.

 

I’ll let her explain it when she gets back one day but these pictures should summarize it

 

For sure. I'll can a separate post with some references. Do you prefer to read the primary studies, or the reviews of these studies?

To aid in your own searches, start with pubmed. Use keywords like "obesity and epigenctics", "fetal development obese mothers", "fetal development diabetic mother", "microbiome transfer to offspring", "inheritable microbiome", "obesity and depression", you get the picture.

One of the easiest ways to stave off the cravings and control the weight gain is to target your microbiome. Go huge on this. All things fermented, lots of yogurt, ramp up the salads and ground flax seed to feed the microbes. In general, to get your microbiome back in check, the rule is to only buy things that you have to clean blood or dirt off of before eating. Add some proper probiotics to the mix and you your body will make the switch.

 

Just a word of verification. THIS is what worked for me. Unfortunately, it took me decades and kind of falling into it, but this was it. Pick your worst weakness, make a change, in-grain it in your life for a few weeks, pick the next. Over time works wonders, and your attitude has to be “this is a permanent change”, not a temporary diet until I get closer to where I want, otherwise you enable yourself to yo-yo.

And btw, grew up in a fat family and stayed that way for most of my life. A few loss rounds for various reasons, but yo-yo.

 

I’m not sure whats more impressive the 100lb weight loss part of the Navy part LOL.
You could NOT put me on a ship or a sub. My family is Air Force so I’d do that or Army. I have respect for Navy folks big time.

As I said I love bad ass women who kick ass

 

There's your problem.

 

That pretty much sums it up LOL

 

All right y'all, lets talk about tendon/ligament recovery.

This is near and dear to me. My story is I have a couple chronic knee injuries due to misalignment issues. Consequently, its quite easy for me to tweak to the ligaments and tendons on in my knee joints. I wear braces when I lift heavy, do PT everyday, etc. I have access to the best possible heath care and modern research, and yet personally I have not come to a consensus on what the best methods are for tendon/ligament injury prevention and recovery.

What are your thoughts on this?

Thus far my best line of logic is to increase blood flow to maximize recovery, hence why I bike so much. I also use a TENs unit daily, capsaicin cream, and one of these:

$82 VYBE Percussion Massage Gun - V2-6 Speed Percussion Massager Guns w/ 3 Attachments for Deep Tissue Muscle Therapy - Electric, Handheld, Cordless, Adjustable Arm

https://www.amazon.com/Exerscribe-P...vibe+massager&qid=1569096866&s=gateway&sr=8-1

The reason I ask is because I had a shit run today, and I'm hoping to maximize my recovery.