Any bodybuilders here? Any advice for getting in shape?

[TheCoon]

I too was able to gain a lot of muscle back when I was smaller(around 150lbs at the time) than I am now. I'm a shade under 190lbs atm and it's a lot harder to eat clean(no calorie-rich junk food) and get the calories I need to bulk effectively. It's just easier to have protein shakes available wherein a protein shake made with some milk can have the same protein content as a chicken breast and can be consumed easily in a couple seconds with hardly any preparation time. It's just a matter of ease.

[Kahane-Was-Right BT]

The current "obsession" with bodybuilding, eating only what is low-fat and low-cholesterol, avoiding sugar and tobacco, and working out using modern exercise machines, has given us the healthiest and heartiest generation since the Garden of Eden.

NOT!

Cancer rates, STD's, diabetes, mental illness, autism, child abuse, and violence have skyrocketed higher than ever before in recorded history - far surpassing epidemic level to the point of being "plagues".  

It seems the timeline is off, here.

Avoiding sugar and tobacco, or even obsession with it that some people may have these days, is a very NEW phenomenon, and it is a reaction to these staggering rates of health problems.   Over-consumption of processed sugars and the common frequent use of tobacco products has led to many of these record rates of health problems.

That smoking cigarettes leads to drastically increased risk of heart disease and cancer is well-supported by scientific evidence and documented fact, and to deny this is to live in delusion.  A delusion very dangerous to one's health.

[TheCoon]

Processed sugars cause increased insulin release and over time your insulin receptors on fat/muscle cells being dulled. This can lead to type 2 diabetes that you see in many fat people.

[✡ Hindu Zionist ॐ]

I love to work out, And it is good to know that JTF'rs are into getting strong.

here my pic: http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/1986/p2009101607.jpg

You have a gud diet, and yes you do need some protein there.

If you're serious about gaining muscle, the only thing you will really want to invest in is good protein supplementation unless you can get all you will need from whole foods.

correct me if i'm wrong? I think jews cannot consume protein supplements like Whey, since it contains milk derivatives as well as egg based substances, and both shud not be mixed?

[Kahane-Was-Right BT]

Processed sugars cause increased insulin release and over time your insulin receptors on fat/muscle cells being dulled. This can lead to type 2 diabetes that you see in many fat people.

Great point, that is also definitely true, and I didn't mean to exclude other health problems when I only mentioned heart disease and cancer.

It's just that these things have cumulative effects and can deteriorate people's health over their lifetimes, so 5 years or so of people decrying sugar and high fructose corn syrup is not going to "erase" the heart problems, obesity, diabetes etc in older people who have imbibed them at high levels for a lifetime and are already having problems.

[Kahane-Was-Right BT]

I love to work out, And it is good to know that JTF'rs are into getting strong.

here my pic: http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/1986/p2009101607.jpg

You have a gud diet, and yes you do need some protein there.

If you're serious about gaining muscle, the only thing you will really want to invest in is good protein supplementation unless you can get all you will need from whole foods.

correct me if i'm wrong? I think jews cannot consume protein supplements like Whey, since it contains milk derivatives as well as egg based substances, and both shud not be mixed?

Eggs are considered a "parve" food (neither a meat nor a dairy product).  Thus, they can be consumed with dairy.

Some protein supplements nowadays have kosher certification. 

If one does not have kosher certification, I would recommend for a Jew to post a halachic question to kashrut.org, include the circumstances (why you are taking the supplement for what health reasons, is it with food, as a shake, tastes good, or like a medicine, etc) and list out ingredients as well.  There they can tell you if it's kosher.   I tend to think those without certification may likely be approved as kosher because I would be surprised if they are putting actual meat products in protein supplements, but hey I could be wrong.

[Kahane-Was-Right BT]

btw hindu zionist, they usually discourage members from putting up their personal pictures here, although I commend you for keeping in shape and for the healthy habits of working out of course.

[americankahanist]

White
At age 24, your muscles recover quickly.   I would do push muscles (chest, shoulders and triceps) then the next day pull muscles (back and biceps) and on the last day, leg muscles.   Then start all over again.    You can do your abs every day or every other if you like  Cardio is up to you but not too much.  Also, get protein in you no longer than 90 minutes after any muscle building workout.

When you lift you work groups of muscles first such as shoulder press and then isolate the lifts targeting specific single muscles.  If you do cardio, always do it after you do your weights.  Running can be rough on your knees.  Squats can be rough on your lower back, so stick with leg presses.  Shoulder shrugs can pop a disk in your neck so do upright rows instead.   Never do shoulder presses or lat pulldowns behind your neck.

Remember that after 24 your body begins to die.   Mistakes you can get away with now, may cause pain in just a few years as parts of your body begin to calcify.
David Ben Moshe

[JTFenthusiast2]

I have been chronically fatigued for the past 15 years.  Whenever I go very healthy and increase my protein intake, I feel much better.  But I have a hard time with protein.  I dont eat breakfast and I just become increasingly lethargic during the day.  I tried protein bars, but they all taste like sand.  I can barely get up on time even though I get enough sleep and I always awake exhausted.  Lastly, I have been checked out 12 ways to Sunday and there is nothing 'medically' wrong with me.

[✡ Hindu Zionist ॐ]

btw hindu zionist, they usually discourage members from putting up their personal pictures here, although I commend you for keeping in shape and for the healthy habits of working out of course.

its alright.. , but if its a forum policy then i will remove.

thanks for the compliment, but i actually dont have healthy eating habits, i consume fried stuff and sugars, maybe because i have a casually low non-veg diet, it keeps me fit. And i dont even undergo cardiovascular exercises. Only thing i do is lift weights, yoga and eat vegetables, and some white meat on weekends. There is lot of information on the internet, But over the years i understood that only thing that helps in BB is dedication, well as in any field of work.

[IsraeliGovtAreKapos]

Bodybuilders cant fight. You're slow enough if you're taller than 1.75m (in which case you're already big enough for fights), big muscles just make you an egg. There's a reason boxers dont lift

[IsraeliGovtAreKapos]

(I'm not a body builder but I work out.)

Your workout routine looks pretty good except I don't see any abdominal exercises.  Situps are good for this, and sometimes gyms have special benches for situps where you can change the incline and make the situps harder.  If you still want to lose weight you could add another day of running or increase the time on your run.

Your diet looks pretty impressive except I don't see any vegetables.  Maybe put lettuce and tomato on one of your sandwiches and eat a small can of vegetables with your dinner.

Situps? Loooool. A muay thai gym makes lose 30 kilos very fast (muay thai boxers are all lean)

[IsraeliGovtAreKapos]

Yes, egg yolks are bad because of cholesterol.  Dan is right, you need more vegetables including salads.  Good job on the water [just don't drink too much of it with food because it can dilute digestive juices; sometimes your body needs to focus on nutrient assimilation and digestion and other times hydration but its hard to do both at the same time.  I have been told just a few cups of water during meals is ideal and more in between.].

To me it looks like you need to eat more protein.  This diet would be great for someone who is not trying to put on mass and muscle, but I don't think you are getting enough grams of protein for the size you are if you are going to be working out, nor for the size you are trying to achieve [if you are trying to put on mass you should consume 1 gram of protein for every pound you currently weigh.  You may find yourself needing even more protein, up to 2 grams per pound.].  It is hard to consume enough protein on a regular diet alone, you could always start taking some protein supplements, I take a soy based one myself.  My brother usually takes whey based protein.  Protein should eaten by spacing it out around the day, not just all in one lump.

I have never been a bodybuilder, but for most of my life I have been active in the gym, and I have been trained a few times by bodybuilders who I have been friends with.  I am sure if you Googled bodybuilding you would come across a forum or two with people very focused on the subject who could give superior advice.

I really should get back into the gym myself.

Albomin is the best protein you can get. In some manner better than whey because it has less estrogen. Eating only the protein (the white part)

[IsraeliGovtAreKapos]

Dextrose is the best thing there is for protein synthesis (though must not be taken too much because it kills HGH)

[Tag-MehirTzedek]

  Eggs are very good source of protein. And eat the whole thing especially the yoke because that is where most of the nutrition is at. Also take multivitamin daily.  Besides that can also drink coffee and/or take ginseng for energy before a workout and for better recovery.
 

 Mix cardio + weight training to get stronger + leaner. Also sometimes when possible engage in fun sports like playing basketball or soccer (or something else you enjoy) because it becomes something fun instead of a burden.
 Also depending on what you want to accomplish. Either getting leaner, or getting bigger or getting stronger. If to get leaner higher reps (12-15) getting bigger ~10 reps (with more weight) getting stronger less reps more weight and more recovery days for resting. Probably won't and shouldn't be doing much cardio during this time period (for strength gains) as would be required for rest and recovery.

[Israel Chai]

I used to weigh 270 pounds and right now I weigh 190 pounds. I've lost 80 pounds in the past year and I've been maintaining my weight pretty well. I joined a Gym about a month or so ago and I've been primarily focusing on cardio running 4 times a week for 30 minutes and then lifting weights ever 3 days

This is my workout pattern.

Sunday Running 30 minutes

Monday Run 30 minutes and lift weights http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/machine-bench-press
Warm-up: 15 reps. Heavy weight: 4 Sets of 12-10-10-8

Wednesday Running 30 minutes

Thursday Run 30 minutes and lift weights
http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/ez-bar-curl
Warm-up: 15 reps. Heavy weight: 4 sets - 12-10-10-8

And I mix it up sometimes, this is another one I do


http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/wide-grip-lat-pulldown
Warm-up: 15 reps. Heavy weight: 4 sets - 12-10-10-8

http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/triceps-pushdown-v-bar-attachment
Heavy weight: 4 sets - 12-10-10-8

Diet

Eat oatmeal in the morning
eat a apple or boiled eggs on way to work, someone told me I shouldn't eat the yolk because of cholesterol

tuna sandwich for lunch on wheat bread with another apple or peach

eat some sort of fruit in between about 6 times a day and primarily eating chicken for lunch or dinner or salmon

I been also drinking water bottles 6 times a day.

Anything else I should be doing?

If you're looking for the building part in body building, here's how you do it:

Whatever you do, start somewhere and keep it up for a week; you have to build consistency, or else you can grow big muscles with no endurance and you'll look fat.

I think pull-ups are the best for lots of things, try to do them anywhere. If you can't do them, keep trying to do them, you can jump first or whatever, but once as you can do them, that's fast and the best (right under standing on your hands with your body leaning against the wall, and lifting yourself up and down like that). So start at like [ex.] 30 push-ups, 30 situps, 15 leg up things (where you lie down with your hands behind your head or under your butt if its too hard and just lift your legs and either hold them at 15 inches or lift them from like 15 degrees to 45 degrees with your knees straight), 11 bicep curls at 50 pounds, and then a number of chest and hamstring, shoulder presses (and a good exercise if you have a machine is to remove the handle where the string attached to the weights is, and just start it at like 15-20 pounds, and lean and on something with your other hand so your back is at under 45 degrees, and then grab and pull the string up with your elbow straight so your and reaches just above your back, and keep doing that.) and whatever other exercise you want to do, and do a bit less then the maximum of repetitions you can do 3 times a day (ex 30 x 3 situps for 5-7 days a week). When the new week begins, you will have already found it easy to do that number of reps, so either increase it by five to increase endurance, or with weights, increase the weight to the next level you can do. Even if you're the biggest fatty, just keeping to that routine of always moving up is going to keep you strong, and in time, if doing more then 100 push-ups takes long, so can substitute them for more pull-ups, so you still get stronger.

Eat a lot of meat. I like hemp milk and hemp seeds or hemp bread, because it's the most complete source of protein in terms of the levels of amino acids that I can find, but anything with meat in it is good too, and you need rice and wheat for energy, fruit and vegetables before or nowhere near meals for nutrients and to clean your system.

Also, always do at least five minutes of cardio before working out, and it would be hard to convey quicker ways of stretching, but just stretch first so you don't screw up in one of a million ways for several reasons. For cardio I like to go up by like 2-5 minutes each week before exercising too, and for the last minute no matter how long the total, I put the machine on the max it can go to build discipline endurance. A good way to do abs too is to wrap a towel around a slightly out-hanging pole, wrap your legs around it, and bring your body from the lying down to the sitting up position. Anyways, there's a million things you can do, but the point is consistency; I use a chart and check it off, but you can do whatever you do, but if you don't do it consistently, all this is worthless.

[Lisa]

I started trying a modified version of the Eat To Live diet for about 2 weeks.  I lost about 3 or 4 pounds. 

[Israel Chai]

I started trying a modified version of the Eat To Live diet for about 2 weeks.  I lost about 3 or 4 pounds.

Diets are for people that want to have a scale to rate how poorly they eat, in order to replace what they know is good and bad for them in the first place. Who says those guys know it all? Just eat rice and meat and lots of vegetables, and don't eat sugar and fat ever except for fruits. You can replace meat with cheese and nuts if all you have is fatty garbage meat. If you make sure, even for just 20 minutes, to exercise every day, you'll be ok.

[JTFenthusiast2]

Diets are for people that want to have a scale to rate how poorly they eat, in order to replace what they know is good and bad for them in the first place. Who says those guys know it all? Just eat rice and meat and lots of vegetables, and don't eat sugar and fat ever except for fruits. You can replace meat with cheese and nuts if all you have is fatty garbage meat. If you make sure, even for just 20 minutes, to exercise every day, you'll be ok.

I'm sure you're in great shape, but that diet you described is making me nauseous.  I agree with the pull ups.  Could never do em.  Until someone stood there and said like I drill sargent, "do it, pull yourself up, keep pulling, etc."  It does so much for making your arms look really good

[Draughts]

Diets are not permanent solution, change your eating habits end exercise.


Why diets are stupid.

By Michelle  |  Published: August 23, 2002
 

If you don’t already know, I’m going to be the one to break it to you…and you can trust me on this. Diets are stupid.

The word ‘diet’ has become terribly perverted from its original, life-affirming definition. In the original sense, diet meant: “food and drink regularly provided or consumed; habitual nourishment.” (www.webster.com.) In the last century or so, it has taken on a second, uglier definition: a particular way of eating, especially to achieve weight loss (or, euphemistically, to achieve health, which 95% of the time includes losing weight.) THAT is the kind of diet I’m talking about.

Let me fill you in on a couple things. First of all, a diet in the secondary sense is always temporary. Even if you call it “a whole new way of eating” or a “lifestyle change.” If you’re really and truly making a lifestyle change, it’s probably going to be so gradual that you can’t refer to it collectively. It’s going to fit in seamlessly with your life so that it doesn’t NEED a name all its own. This is the point.

Anyone who says they are embarking on a “lifestyle change” is going on a diet, plain and simple. Sometimes they will insist that the “maintenance” period (which comes after the weight loss) PROVES that what they are doing is for life. Actually, it proves the opposite. If you go from ‘actively losing’ to ‘maintaining’ you have been on a diet. Maintaining itself is a type of diet, though typically not as restrictive as the original weight loss diet. And the funniest part about maintenance? Ask anyone who’s done it: maintenance is hard…even harder than weight loss.

Why is that? Well, one, because the thrill of seeing your body change is gone. The excitement and novelty have worn off by the time you’ve reached maintenance. Now you’re down to the dirty work of trying to convince your body to behave at a certain weight…for the rest of your life. To eat a certain amount, to do a certain exercise. Maintenance is rigid control and every bit as dysfunctional as weight loss…though you may get to eat a whole extra 200 calories per day (yippee.) It’s not surprising that many people succeed at losing massive amounts of weight, only to trip up during the maintenance period.

For this reason, even supposed “lifestyle changes” and “maintenance plans” can be considered dieting. Why? To recap: because they’re restrictive, unrealistic in the long-term, and represent a rift in your life where you’ve abruptly gone from one mode of living to another…one different enough to be affixed with a label. No matter how you spell it, the label always reads “DIET.”

What about those people who have credible success stories? Those people who have lost lots of weight and kept it off (by doing the “diet” thing) for quite a long time? These stories are easy to access on the Internet. But you have to know that you cannot rely on anecdotal reports as evidence that something is true (this is a basic tenet of critical thinking.) The thing is, everyone is different. Why this worked for someone is a great mystery…but chances are, the same thing isn’t going to work for you. I have also noticed that, while on the surface it appears there are a great deal of success stories to be read (especially on the Internet) if you read enough of them, you start noticing that there are probably less than a fifty, just very well recycled.

For statistical evidence, check The National Weight Control Registry, an organization which boasts 3,000 registered members who have successfully kept of about 30 pounds for five years or longer. This sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? It gives a weight-watcher reason to hope. But wait a second. According to the Calorie Control Council, there are currently 51 million dieters in the U.S. alone. Of these 51 million, only 3,000 are KNOWN to be successful. What kind of success rate is that? About 0.00006%. You’d be better off spending your Healthy Choice frozen dinner money on lottery tickets.

Not only is dieting a dismal failure for 99.99994% of those who attempt it, studies have shown that dieting is harmful to your health. Restricting food intake can lead not only to nutritional deficiencies, but psychological stress and eating disorders. Excessive exercise can cause physical injury and can be addicting. And yo-yo dieting, the phenomenon whereby most people who lose weight gain it back (and then some) precipitating a cycle of repeated dieting and regain, has been scrutinized in research which suggests it leads to higher mortality rates and can actually make a person FATTER in the long run.

Now, if you’ve ever been duped into dieting, I’m not saying that YOU’RE stupid: not at all. In fact, based on popular information from both media and government sources, you made a pretty reasonable choice. And of course not everyone has the time to be a nutrition scholar. That’s why we have Registered Dietitians and other professionals to help guide people whose lives revolve around things OTHER than nutrition.

To help you make better choices about what to believe in the future, I offer the following advice: do not listen to the popular media when it comes to your health. In most cases, the media is there to provide hard news information and entertainment. They are not health gurus. Journalists do an admirable job to dig up interesting stories, but when it comes to health, this can only make things more confusing.
 

[Draughts]

I'm sure you're in great shape, but that diet you described is making me nauseous.  I agree with the pull ups.  Could never do em.  Until someone stood there and said like I drill sargent, "do it, pull yourself up, keep pulling, etc."  It does so much for making your arms look really good

I think you said somewhere you do 50 pull ups or it was someone else

[Israel Chai]

I'm sure you're in great shape, but that diet you described is making me nauseous.  I agree with the pull ups.  Could never do em.  Until someone stood there and said like I drill sargent, "do it, pull yourself up, keep pulling, etc."  It does so much for making your arms look really good

You must not know how to eat then. A good meal for me is 2-3 pounds of steak or ribs or chicken or deer or wtv, a bunch of rice with lots of real salt, some old-style dijon mustard for my steak and maybe sort of garlicy sause for my rice and meat, and like three pounds of asparagus, or any vegetable, and that you eat before the meal, along with an apple or squeezed lemonade or wtv. Awesome meal, no need for sugar cake or fat cream after.

[HiWarp]

You must not know how to eat then. A good meal for me is 2-3 pounds of steak or ribs or chicken or deer or wtv, a bunch of rice with lots of real salt, some old-style dijon mustard for my steak and maybe sort of garlicy sause for my rice and meat, and like three pounds of asparagus, or any vegetable, and that you eat before the meal, along with an apple or squeezed lemonade or wtv. Awesome meal, no need for sugar cake or fat cream after.

Wait, you consume 2-3 pounds of meat at EACH meal?

[Israel Chai]

Wait, you consume 2-3 pounds of meat at EACH meal?

I only eat twice a day. And yeah, just about. I love meat.

[HiWarp]

I only eat twice a day. And yeah, just about. I love meat.

But only twice a day is 4-6 pounds of meat a day. How can you possibly have any room for rice?