An Introduction to a New Series – What it’s called I don’t know…

Dave

Dave is a part-time blogger that writes about whatever suits him at the time.

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14 Responses

  1. Damon says:

    One of the things I’ve noticed is that peer input helps. By that I mean that, when I was married and I was trying to work out alone, it was much harder. Since joining a jujitsu class, my peers in class are very supportive. I don’t think it’d get this much postie reinforcement in a gym, and even if I did, it’s not “fun” to me. We’re all trying to learn the moves or refine the technique, and we point out other’s errors and compliment each other on successes. As my instructor says, “in a roll, you win or you learn, you never lose” since you learn from each experience. This keeps me coming back even though every major muscle in my body aches and I’ve got bruises all over my legs and arms. I however, am in the best shape and weight in 20 years.Report

    • Mike Dwyer in reply to Damon says:

      @damon

      One thing I have found with BJJ is that it is much like my days as a wrestler in high school. That idea of helping one another and looking for everyone to succeed is really ingrained into the culture. It’s pretty awesome. Also, the nice thing is that you can roll pretty hard and, barring accidents or the inexperience of a partner, no one is in real danger. Back when I used to kickbox a bit, it seemed like everyone was trying to hurt each other. I quickly learned to dislike sparring. Never had that problem in BJJ or wrestling.Report

      • Damon in reply to Mike Dwyer says:

        Yeah, it’s pretty awesome from that perspective. There’s a purple belt in the class now and he’s been coaching me while we do free rolling. Naturally pay it forward is the rule, so I’m helping the newbies.Report

  2. veronica d says:

    Yeah I also lost a lot of weight and kept it off, and indeed, it required some pretty massive lifestyle changes. In my case, those were pretty extreme lifestyle changes (to say the least). But yeah, now I walk tons, hit the gym 2-3 times a week, go dancing, eat decent food, all sorts of things. Plus I grew boobs.

    On this:

    About a year ago, I was approached and complimented by a younger guy. He was a semi-regular and I’d see him from time to time but I didn’t know him all that well. He said that looking at me and seeing me train the way I do makes him want to train harder and more regularly. It was a kind thing to say and I thanked him for the compliment with some words of encouragement. In my mind, I downplayed it. This lifestyle has been about me and something I do for myself. I’ve never seen myself as an influence, an inspiration or anything that anyone should look up to.

    One of our regular contributors who shall remain nameless corrected me on that point, and he was probably right. I made the mistake of seeing myself as being alone in this journey because I train alone, started alone and don’t spend a lot of time discussing this with other people.

    I get this a lot — not so much for fitness. In fact, I wish I got it for fitness. So many of my friends really need to work on their health, strength, and posture. But I get it for being transgender.

    The idea that I am a mentor to people just seems preposterous to me. But I am, just as other women were mentors to me. This matters a lot. Honestly, and this will sound cliche, it’s really humbling. But it matters so much, life or death.Report

  3. gregiank says:

    This should be fun. I also dropped a lot of weight a few years ago. Getting back into an active lifestyle was the biggest motivator for me. Just losing weight, while good, wasn’t the biggest draw. My wife was the biggest support and she has done really well with her weight loss also. It helped us both that her dad was a doc and very into nutrition and weight loss. He also is very focused on just basic good nutrition, no fad diets, no “one special ingredient”, no easy fixes.

    It’s not something most people will want to get into but endurance sports are a great motivator for me. Not that exercise is the biggest part of weight loss, it isn’t, but to weight management and motivation it is. And man is every damn topic, from nutrition to proper training, not only complicated but made overly complicated by people. One thing about marathons is they very quickly separate those that want a quick easy training plan from those that want to put in the miles.Report

  4. Morat20 says:

    I just joined a gym a few weeks back. Not for weight loss, although that’d be nice, but I was tired of random pains that boiled down to “out of shape”.

    Mild cardio, weight machines, that’s it. I tried “before work” for the first time today — it wasn’t bad, though I notice I’m starving for lunch a good two hours ahead of schedule.

    I have some minor goals — get up to 20 minutes on an elliptical (I can do 10) is about it. The machines is just to…well, I sit for a living, so it’s nice just to have all the bits and pieces move around. I might pick a goal there sometime, but for now it’s enough just to make the darn things work some.Report

  5. Mike Dwyer says:

    My wife has lost 90 pounds since June 2016. I decided I needed to also do the same before she left me for some hunky guy. So I’m down 50 pounds since last November. Echoing what @gregiank said, we’ve just done it the old-fashioned way. Eating less, trying to get some exercise, and being patient. Lately I have had some good success basically following this plan. Not the same exact meals, but it’s a combo of smoothies and clean eating. I’ve also dramatically cut back on eating meat, which has done wonders for my health. I still believe Mother Nature intends on us to eat meat, but not in the quantities I was.Report

    • gregiank in reply to Mike Dwyer says:

      Congrats. Less meat is a good thing. I do enjoy it very much but its hard eat a lot of it and have a healthy diet. Unless you are burning an extra few thousands of calories a day with very hard work but even then the red meat will catch up to you.Report

      • Mike Dwyer in reply to gregiank says:

        I agree. I was having a lot of stomach issues. When I started keeping a bottle of Tums on the nightstand, I knew it was time for a change. I never have eaten a lot of red meat, but I ate a lot of pork. Way too many sausage biscuits on the way to work. Now it’s almost nothing but fish and chicken and usually only once per day.Report

        • Morat20 in reply to Mike Dwyer says:

          I’m prone to GERD (runs in the family) and once I hit 40 it started hitting me. I’m already shifting to more salads and less meat, but it’s…everything. Caffiene. Carbonated water. Too many tomatoes.

          Blah.

          On the bright side, I’ve always eaten more chicken then red meat.Report

          • Mike Dwyer in reply to Morat20 says:

            I had the GERD stuff too. It would especially get me at night, once I would lie down. Since I started eating clean it has almost completely gone away. I think for me it’s anything fried or with too much oil. Caffeine has never presented a problem.Report

  6. LTL FTC says:

    I’ll be reading this with interest.

    Right now, I’m trying to improve my health and lifestyle for a lot of reasons, and it’s hard to do so without family participation or anyone else to talk to. For most people, talking about diet and exercise is like talking about your dreams – it’s interesting only to you.

    Back when I was 26, I dropped a lot of weight in anticipation of seeing a girl. Nothing came of the relationship, but it got me into the gym for the first time ever and I learned a bit. I had slipped, but got back into the habit at 28. I got fired at 30 and had nothing but time for fitness, so I got in the best shape of my life, helped no doubt by a small food budget making lazy takeout impossible. Now I’m 37, far away from my last healthy weight and dipping my toes in the water.

    It has so far been easy to do more in the mild summer weather, but the real challenge comes with winter. Right now, I’m doing cycling and doing youtube exercise videos for home workouts. Some of the videos are quite good.

    I can’t wait for your next installment.Report