Do You Guys Stay in Shape? If So, How So?

[bader0]

I am the skiniest person in the world.
Ok probably not, but i don't know anyone that is less meaty than I.
Im not even bragging, its totally true. I can walk up to people and stab them with my shoulder blades like ive got Ezio Auditore hidding in the back of my shirt.
I don't really know how i do it. I don't exercise, I eat less than most people. I fill myself up when eating then leave the table, i walk home from school every few days. Thats about all the physical activity i do. Im not concerned about it because im still as physically capable as most people my age, well in terms of stamina atleast. I just do what I enjoy doing, which, mind you, is very lazy and relaxed.
I can see my heartbeat on my chest actually. Like, that one bit of my chest slowly pumping the blood around mai body. Creepy right!

edit:
Oop, crap. You say guys.
Meh, thats my 2 cents.

err being that skinny is honestly just as bad,
OT; work out daily eat healthy food. Eating crisps for lunch every day is probably not helping. If you haven't already try taking up cooking as there is a very high chance that anything you cook is going to be healthier than take away or frozen meals or some crap, its also going to taste better. Learn about your work out. If you understand what exercises work what areas, and then break your work out up over the week to target different areas every day, you will have much more success in building muscle. Building muscle is not the best way to lose fat fast but it is the best way to keep it off, if you have lots of muscle your body is doing a workout even while you sleep just to sustain all that muscle. You still should do some cardio but you don't need to focus on it as the main portion of your workout. sorry for atrocious grammar and punctuation, i'm not the best at it i'll admit but my intentions are true.

 

[Erich Ouart]

Try P90X its pretty awesome the guy in the video can be annoying but ive lost a lot of wieght on it plus its kinda motivating

 

[BoTTeNBReKeR]

I swim when it isn't freezing outside and I take a 2-3km drive with my wheelchair every once in a while.

So yeah, I don't do as much as I'd like to do, but whatever, that's life.

 

[ImprovizoR]

You don't need money to fast walk. If you want to get rid of that fat fast, fast walking is more efficient than running because you can exercise for a longer period of time. It can be exhausting at first, but don't give up. Also if you take in more calories than you burn exercising you might as well not exercise at all.

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

Thanks, funnily enough I do go airsofting .

Okay, so i'll have some healthy cereal in the morning? Also, is drinking something like skimmed milk okay?

 

[AWC Viper]

I follow a detailed gym schedule whist eating healthy.

Got errbody mirin'

 

[Moromillas]

The gym. About an hour on the treadmill, if my back lets me, then it's outside for a smoke. Afterwards it's back inside for the crunch machine. On off days I just do all the weights.

 

[Blocki]

If you really want to lose wait don't hope for any magic solutions. The only way to do it is to determine what your body needs for sustenance and then eating less than that. You can use exercise to accelerate that process by either building muscles so your body needs more energy or burning fat.

I was able to lose 45kg. I did that by reducing my food intake to 1500 calories a day. On top of that I did a workout with a rowing machine every day for 10 to 30 minutes plus a few pushups and situps. That took me about 6 months. After that I started to eat normal again but kept the workout going and I'm holding my weight for 3 years now.

In my mind that is the only way to do it.

 

[Esotera]

Running, cycling, and the ocassional swim. Also a lot of moving stuff round the house, and garden work.

The best way into it is to set a routine, that you always stick to. Asides from that all you can do is exercise more and eat less, and gradually you'll get there. There are no easy shortcuts, and it will be hard, but I have no doubt the results will be worth it.

 

[Scorpianhead]

I'm very thin but i don't do anything but eat sleep work and play games.

 

[Whateveralot]

I do daily pull-ups on the doorframe of our kitchen, which is hardly anything. But I stay in relatively good shape by eating healthy. This is very important for anyone that wants to lose weight; eat healty, fresh food and don't eat too much.

I follow 3 meals a day with 1 snack, that being as healthy as possible too. A biscuit, light yoghurt, etc. No chocolate, cake or fried / baked stuff. It's not that difficult because the food your body takes in rapidly declines. You won't be hungry a lot. This diet has worked out for me. I'm holding out for about 3 weeks now and I've lost 2 kilograms of useless fat.

What I advice you to do is picking up the treadmill first. If you can jog on a solid pace for about 10-15 minutes, you should start picking up running outside. "Why not just the threadmill?", I hear you ask? Treadmills are nowhere near the physical and balanced exercise running is. But the treadmill is a fine alternative whenever the weather is crap (which obviously happens occasionally).

Good luck to you. Don't give up! A healthy and fit body is worth it. It gets you further in life.

 

[ironduke88]

On the topic of exercise outside work, remember for fat burning you need to favour longer, slower paced workouts verses short and fast. http://artofmanliness.com/2010/01/27/the-burpee-the-one-exercise-to-rule-them-all/

quote]I wouldn't worry about BMI. When I was exercising and getting regular meals in my teens it said I was underweight and now I have developed moobs and run at best once a fortnight, I'm average. But still here's what I know.

1) Lifting weights will only make you bigger, it doesn't particularly add definition. If you're trimming yourself down I'd try and do very little of this.
2) Breakfast is the best meal to cut out of your day. I am a lucky person who is never hungry in the morning so I never eat it anyway but I'm pretty sure that's the sole reason I'm not a big tub of lard.
3) Lots of slow exercise will burn fat, though annoyingly it's quite time consuming. The key is burn more calories than you take in. This means either exercise more by running, swimming or general whole body exercises (so there's more movement and more calories burnt) or just eat less calories and the simplest way to do this is by reducing your portion size. Also, you need to be willing to keep doing it for the rest of your life to keep the weight off so try to pick types of exercise you actually enjoy.


/2cents

Ok these people don't know much about the actual current trends and science of weight loss and exercise.

I understand that you may feel too inexperienced and what-not to go onto an exercise forum, but the Escapist is not the best place for this advise. Luckily for you I am an ex-athelete, with a lot of experience as a personal trainer and gym work.

First off, slow and steady does not burn more fat. While yes cardio is the key to weight loss, HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is a much better way to go about it.
This guy www.projectswole.com knows what he is talking about, and has a great range of workout plans from beginner to expert for a variety of aims.



Your best bet for weight loss, although it may seem counter-intuitive, is weight-lifting and sprint training. For beginners, 30 sec sprint 1 min walk/jog (repeat 5), and when I say sprint I mean full on sprint. You can apply this to anything areobic: swimming, rowing, cycling, the cross-trainer or skipping (one of the best fat loss exercises out there). Before you get out there ALWAYS remember to warm-up (min 5 mins at a jogging pace) and warm-down (5mins at walk or slow jogging pace)

Press-ups and pull-ups are your friends, if you can't get to a weights gym. Perform two sets every week, preferably after a brisk warm-up jog, of as many as you can and write it down, get better every week.

Weight-lifting is very good way of losing weight and 'buffing-up' if you do it right. You can increase your metabolism, providing a buffer against junk food. Again, projectswole has a great weight loss program built around weight-lifting.

In terms of food, don't skip meals, it sends your body into fasting mode, and you will struggle to lose that fat. Eat four/five smaller meals a day, and try to not eat carbs (pasta, rice or bread) on days that you haven't exercised. Change your crisps to a low-fat variety, or for a protein bar.

Read about it, the web is amazing. Go slow and do it right, don't rush to lose that weight, it will result in injury or burning out. Projectswole and T-nation are also your friends. Good luck

p.s. if you want to get super-fit join and boxing gym (or kick boxing) and go to their conditioning sessions. Martial sports are about 66% conditioning, they will get you fit, trim and toned.

 

[Rhymenoceros]

Fortunately my BMI is ridiculously low 15 (you're meant to be between 18-25) However in an attempt to build muscle, as I have virtually none, I've recently taken up Parkour and Free-Running.

I can feel that I'm fitter and my muscles are now almost normal, despite not actually being very good at it...

I'm pretty sure that it would help people to lose weight as well. One thing I'd recommend is not to try starting on your own. Find a friend to do it with or, ideally, find someone experienced to train you. I started by going to a one hour session indoors in a gym where I learnt most of the basics, before moving it outside.

Now the guy who trains me (although it's not very formal interaction) has opened up a free running gym (technically, it doesn't look very safe, but it is!) and I spend a lot of free time there.

 

[LiftYourSkinnyFists]

So I'm not happy with my fitness level and general look of myself. I'm about 5'11" and weigh just under 13st with a BMI of 26 (which is above the healthy range for my size). I work a sedentary job and don't work out a great deal. I wish to change that. I don't really have the money to join a proper gym, however I do have a pair of dumbbells and a treadmill (my parents have money). Most of my fat is in my abdomen area (which is typical to a male I think) and I wish to get rid of it.

Are there any particular types of exercise that are particularly expedient in this process? I am considering swimming as that is known to exercise more or less everything. Just for the record, I wouldn't say I eat nothing but crap, but at the same time I'm no culinary Adonis. I've taken to simply having an apple and a glass of water for breakfast, I've cut out chocolate at lunch time (so I just have a sandwich, crisps and a piece of fruit) and I'm trying to cut down on the amount I have in the evening for dinner and later snacks. So I'm genuinely making an effort with food.

So are any Escapists well versed in exercise? What would best aid my cause here?

(Like most other guys, I'm doing it because girls are a tad more shallow than they claim to be and are very much affected by how a guys physique is; I mainly know this because I've been rejected multiple times for a guy who's a lot more fit than me.)

For you abs I reccomend sit ups/crunches and I try to cycle atleast 12 miles twice a week for my legs with your dumbells I'd reccomend just a fly weight to really give you more lifts rather than a strenuous 10 or 20.

 

[Kaim89]

I skip cadio way too often, but this is how I usually do it:
Monday: Breast and triceps workout
Wednesday: Legs and shoulders
Friday: Back and biceps

Put 15-20 min of cardio infront of it all and your good =)

 

[jumb]

I don't really have the money to join a proper gym

Yes you do. You just don't have the discipline to make the most of it... yet.

You're talking about trying to lose weight on specific areas of your body, but just remember that you can't target fat loss. Where your body stores its energy has to do with genetics, you can only target muscle growth.

I've started doing the gym thing over the last ~4 months and am enjoying it. After a couple of sessions with weight/resistance training, you get hooked. I think it has a similar effect to how people cut themselves.

 

[SckizoBoy]

DDR keeps my cardio up ^.^

My best friend does a lot of DDR for exercise (even though he doesn't need it per se), though he's taller and skinnier than me and I'm 178cm and 65kgs.

OT: I do a lot of walking, eat healthily and do hard martial arts softly... if that makes any sense.

Anyway, if you end up going to the gym and replace your fat with muscle, your BMI will just make you weep. All pro-athletes are seriously overweight, because muscle is much denser. So, I'd ignore your BMI were I you.

 

[SaunaKalja]

I get in better shape during the summer (cycling, running, swimming) and lose all that during the winter.