What is your diet and fitness regime?

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^^^

I'm thin but am trying to get toned/more muscles.

Lately I've been doing a lot of yoga and circuit training. I hike and joke once in a while too but its not my favorite. I also take dance classes when I have time. It really depends on how much energy/free time I have that day and if I'm in the mood to move around. Generally I exercise around 45 min a day in some way but usually I take 1-2 days off per week.

I try to eat healthy but end up just overindulging in my specific favorite foods/cravings of the month (which change often!) Currently it's peanut butter, coconuts, and protein shakes! Super random!

I try not to restrict myself too much with my diet and I follow a few general rules when deciding what to eat. I try to only eat foods that are low in fat, low in sugar, and have a low glycemic index. Typically I consume between 1800-2600 calories a day and eat 5-6 light meals. Foods I tend to eat almost daily include oatmeal, grapefruit, nonfat greek yogurt /w blueberries, toasted lean turkey sandwiches, carrots, salads /w lemon juice, and whey protein shakes! Though if you throw a cookie or ten in front of me I will almost certainly eat it

My fitness regime is not nearly as consistent as my diet. I am very hyperactive at work (pacing, walking fast, etc.) and I average close to 17,000 steps on my pedometer every shift so that's probably my saving grace haha. I try to get in at least one day of running (3-6 miles) and I hit the gym around 3 times a week during off hours and focus on balancing exercises and strength training. I usually only use the free weights and cable machines. I've also started taking yoga classes for meditation purposes and I'm loving it!

I do a low-carb/ketogenic diet since the very end of June, entered ketosis the weekend that June turned into July, and lost ~20 pounds through July. I mostly hover between 1800-20000 calories a day. I also do weight training twice a week.

The BIGGEST thing I did was get into the habit of only eating until I'm no longer hungry. Doing this alone caused me to drop 25lbs in 5 months with a predominantly sedentary lifestyle. Once this had firmly set in, I started to finagle in either walking for an hour or riding a bike for half an hour every weekday. I also started doing a light upper body daily workout doing things like situps, pushups, and movements with a sledgehammer, either swinging it like you were really using it (albeit more controlled to refrain from creating holes in your dwelling's floors/walls/ceilings), or making motions like I'm shoveling snow. All of the light upper body stuff can be easily be done while watching TV. Since I started the walking/cycling/light upper body, I've dropped another 20lbs in the past two months.

A couple years ago I started keeping a food journal (actually it is in Excel), keeping track of every bite I eat, then I add up the total calories for the day. You can calculate your caloric needs by using a formula such as this one (for men): 66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years), then multiply the result by 1.2 (sedentary) to 1.9 (extremely active) This will give you the number of calories you need to consume to maintain your current weight, so you will have to eat less than that, on average, to lose weight. (Note that with each pound you lose, you need to consume fewer calories to maintain that weight, so it's a constant adjustment.)

The food journal is a good idea in any case, because it spotlights how much junk you eat. You will probably be surprised.

Other things I have done over the past couple of years are cut out all fast foods, fried foods, red meat and pork, and all cheese except occasionally lowfat. I eat either chicken or fish an average of once per day and for dinner each day I eat a large bowl of nonfat yogurt and fruit. I snack on nuts and other things throughout the day like chocolate. I lost 35 pounds in 2 years, now I have been at my goal weight (170) for about 8 months and just trying to work out more. (I try to do cardio and weights 4 times per week but I know from my Excel worksheet that I actually work out only 42.5% of days, so that's another good reason to write things down, you will probably realize you do not work out as much as you think you do.)

I eat mostly vegetables, fruit, soup, fish and fruit juices (although I fear for my teeth).

I do sit ups, crunches and stretches each morning (only for 10 minutes as I don't have enough time to do everything).

I consume supplementary Vitamins E, Zinc, C and Omega 3 every morning as well for my skin, bones and nails.

I also try to put on Bio-Oil (like E45 cream) and coconut oil twice a day.

I do running on a treadmill every other day and weightlifting alternatively, but Bike ride occasionally.

I have Candida,so I subsist on eggs,fish,vegetables,avocados,olive oil,occasionally soba or pumpkin seeds.I run two miles daily and lift weights three times a week.Most importantly,I start every day with my personal yoga practice.Nothing is better than yoga!

Vegan, as low carb as possible, and I exercise at least two hours a day, namely walking, at a 15% incline (4 mph).
I've also decided to take up running.
I'd eat around 500 calories a day (normally),
but I've been eating too many carbs this month (fruit and even some rice) and packed on quite a bit,
so now I'm being a lot more restrictive.

Right now I have an infection and lots of stressful things going on, so it's been more like "none" the past few weeks. Normally, I ice skate (figure skating) 5x a week for an hour, and I go to the gym on average 4 times a week. At the gym, assuming I have a decent amount of time (closes at 8 on Fridays, 9 the rest of the week, and 4PM on weekends due to summer hours) for lifting, I basically squat, deadlift, and do some overhead presses (strict and push presses) and Olympic lifts (snatch and clean and jerk.) I think for me personally, though, once things clear up a bit, I'm going to do "slow" lifts less (ie, deadlift and squat) as I'm imbalanced in my "fast" lifts and slow lifts. I've been reading about Russian training methodology, and it says, let's say you can clean and jerk 100kg, but backsquat 200kg, then you need to spend more time on the "fast" lifts. I have the exact same kinda gap, I can clean and jerk 155lbs, but then I can seemingly back squat whatever. Also, the Russians say working more in the 75%ish rep range improves speed, so I've tried out a Russian program that's 33 reps (not counting warmups) and has about 17 reps in the 75% range, and I feel the program is quite balanced for me. As far as lifting, I've gotten some advice, more along the lines of psychological advice, from a guy at my church who used to be a competitive powerlifter (ie, broke records) who told me "Lifting is all about balance, balance in your exercise, balance in your life."

For ice skating, I figure skate, it's a fun fun athletic hobby. It's a rich man's sport, though. My rink is quite cheap, but it's the learning that's the issue. Coaching's expensive. And it's hard to learn on your own, though I've done reasonably OK all things considered on my own. I can do waltz jumps and 3 turns. A cool perk of it, though sometimes causing anxiety on my part is I get to play music over the PA speakers at the rink, which is cool. The other problem is, I've not been able to make friends with the other skaters my age at the rink, partially due to my NVLD/Aspergers, but partially due to economic class, again, it's a rich man's sport, and I'm not rich. A lot of the people that skate are about as "rich kid" as it comes, and that's not necessarily bad or mean they're bad people, it's just hard to relate when they're like "OH YEAH, So I got accepted at Brown and Cornell...." or something like that.

For diet, a big issue for me. It can be pretty crappy most of the time, as my mom buys mostly processed food and she's gotten into allotting me money for food, but, sometimes it's a miniscule amount of money, or she'll get mad at me for using the gas it takes to go to the Asian market to buy some of the food I like there. A good diet for me, some meat, lotta vegetables, some carbs, my favorite carbs being legumes and brown rice, and least favorite being pasta. I've tried low carb/keto diets, and while they work to lose weight, I've kinda determined most of the positive health effects just come from increasing veggie intake while on those diets, not exactly from just carb restriction itself. For some reason now I really love eggplant, I used to hate it, but I tried it again, cooked in a lot of olive oil, and like it now. Heh. So diet's took a lot of experimentation to find what works, but I think I've figured it out.

As far as what my diet/fitness regime has done for me, well, my highest weight was 230lbs at 5'9, and now I'm 195 at 5'10 (I think 5'10, mark's gone up on the door.) From just skating and cardio, I got down from 215 to 180lbs, and then weightlifting got me to 195 with the same bodyfat level. Now I'd like to be 10% or so bodyfat, and hopefully be at 180 or less lbs so if I ever get anywhere weightlifting I could fit in that weight class well. If you can skate, like make the time to do so, it's VERY beneficial, it burns the same amount of calories as if you were to go running/jogging for an hour. Hiking burns a decent amount of calories, too, and it's much more fun than being on an eliptical or treadmill. I do slideboard work for skating, that's quite fun and has lots of carryover to skating.

But yes, finding the elusive "balance" is key for me, anyway. I need to do things like...establish a proper bedtime and wake up early in the morning, that sorta thing, and it's for reasons like that my fitness thing sorta sucks currently.

Feel better, 1000.

I totally forgot to mention things like sleep habits, etc-
I'd think those are helpful in achieving what you want, for fitness and beyond.

Ah, thank you.

Yeah, balance is quite important, I'm finding out.

I only started heavy lifting a couple months ago as any earlier would've stunted my growth.

I eat lots of protein heavy stuff, peanut butter, greek yogurt, and protein powder

I eat a good of amount of tomatoes, pineapples, and oranges/juice for adrenaline-pumping Vitamin C.



For exercise I play football. Our practices are hardcore.

On my own, I will
1. Warm-up
2.Jog 5 min
3. Incline Press 3 x 10
4. Squat 3x15
5.Clean n Jerk 3x10
6.Bench press 3x12

That's about it, though I plan to add more agility and legwork stuff

The stunting growth thing is more or less a myth. If you've seen the Chinese Olympic lifters, at least the guys, they don't look growth stunted at all. They start lifting at single digit ages, many of them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A-m9W-3_9M Check that out, double bodyweight clean and jerk at 8 years old, obviously looks quite big and tall for an 8 year old, too. Lu Yong is 5'7, average height of most Chinese men in urban areas. That's just a Chinese lifter off the top of my head. The Russians and Eastern Euros did the same thing, and the only like abnormally short weightlifter I can think of off the top of my head is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naim_S%C3% ... no%C4%9Flu That guy. Keep in mind under Communism, not much food and stuff compared to America, I've heard the Bulgarian lifting diet was like 2 eggs in the morning for protein, and coach Abidijev didn't find it that important.

Lifting can almost do the opposite actually, when you lift heavy, it releases growth hormone, thus causing you to actually get taller the earlier you do it. The only caveat is, you have to eat enough and get enough nutrients, or else yeah, you'd potentially cause issues. The other thing too not talked about is, use of steroids while young. Steroids are still QUITE prevalent, I go to a not very "hardcore" kinda gym and have seen people inject, so if you use steroids while young, yeah, you're screwed, as you're stunting your body's hormonal responses. So, part of the whole "weightlifting stunts your growth" thing comes from steroid use. It's like the people who go to the hospital for jaundice or something and say it's because of whey protein and creatine. Sure...

The other argument to is, other activities besides weightlifting are arguably more stressful on the body. Like gymnastics. Nobody discourages kids from doing gymnastics, but gymnastics has a higher injury rate than lifting, and arguably taxes the body more, thus leading to "stunted growth" but nobody is like "OH NO GYMNASTICS WILL STUNT YOUR GROWTH" same with working on a farm, etc. Nobody ever is like "aha, kids who work on a farm have such stunted growth." Hell no, as long as you eat enough, and don't do drugs, you'll grow, and arguably you'd grow more by doing such activities.

Part of the reason I'm saying this is I'm 21 years old and I've grown like an inch the past year, I think in no small part to weightlifting. So...yeah.

http://www.quora.com/Gymnastics/Why-do- ... ted-growth
Article explaining it a bit.


Then from Vasily Alexeev, a super heavyweight I personally don't wanna look like, but...