Lifting/Fitness/Dieting Q & A

I'm bored and figured I'd set this thread up for anyone that has any questions related to fitness/lifting/dieting.


About me: This is a somewhat recent picture of me

Spoiler: me

Extensive knowledge on bodybuilding and general fitness for both male and females. Personally have hit 495 squat with severe patella tendonitis and osgood slaughters, 370 bench with a torn labrum, and a 615 deadlift all prior to turning 20. I deal with people on a daily basis that compete at the national level in both natural and untested federations in both physique and bodybuilding. I have spent hundreds of hours researching as well as obtaining anecdotal evidence for effective dieting, powerlifting training and bodybuilding training. I have extensive knowledge of both legal and illegal supplements (ranging from general supps @ GNC to legal cutting agents to illegal cutting agents and steroids/PH's).

Anyways I feel like that's enough I'm bored typing out about me. Feel free to ask me ANY questions relating to fitness, lifting, or dieting. I will answer to the best of my ability and if you wish to ask me more questions or want personal help/guidance feel free to shoot me a PM, I help most people for free unless it requires lots of time.


Feel free to ask whatever.

 

probably not

 

Is there a way to eat and not gain weight

 

In general gaining weight is simply a caused by a net surplus of calories. That is the only thing 99.99999999999999% of the population needs to worry about. If you are gaining weight and wish not to, count your calories and take a weekly average. Decrease calories by 250 every few days and track weight in the AM. When the weight stabilizes and you generally do not gain or lose weight (important to weight ONLY in the morning after a shit/piss) then you have found an estimate for your current daily caloric intake to maintain bodyweight.

Things to help assist NOT gaining weight or to help lose weight
- Cardio
- Lifting
- T3 (not suggested unless you are on some type of steroid or PH)
- Ephedrine+Caffeine+Asprin
- Clen
- Counting calories

 

I've been thinking of taking Ephedrine and Caffeine, to just cut for the summer, of course eating right, lifting and cardio is involved.

Will I lose any muscle mass by taking these supplements? and is it effective

 

First off make sure you are taking baby asprin with it. The protocal is usually 25mg ephedrine, 200mg caffeine, and 1 baby asprin every 4 hours from when you wake up. I usually dont take ephedrine more than 2x a day because I can't sleep for shit if I take it past like 5-6pm. You will actually preserve muscle mass more than if you did not take it - ephedrine is anti-catabolic just like clen. It provides more anti-catabolic effects if you take half the dose every 2 hours instead of the full 25mg every 4 hours, but will provide some regardless. If you dont mind cutting the pill in half and taking it more frequently then I would do that. It is very effective in my opinion, atleast for me. Not exactly for its fat loss properties, as all supplements aside from DNP really will give you added fat/weight loss - but its not going to be CRAZY if you know what I mean. Definitely helps, especially with appetite, which is it's biggest upside in my opinion. I don't feel hungry almost every on ECA stack.

 

Tell me how to gain weight/bulk healthily.

 

I guess this depends on what you mean by "heathily". Depending on what 'level' you are in in terms of muscle mass/lifting experience, I would often suggest you just try to gain weight eating whatever the hell you want and take advantage of enormous beginning strength and muscle mass gains.

The only real health concerns you need to worry about would pretty much be cholesterol and blood pressure and possibly general heart health. I would NOT suggest trying to just eat "clean" (fyi eating clean scientifically has no change in bodyfat loss/gain), you likely will be unable to eat enough to gain weight with this. I would say you should be totally fine as long as you are not going full retard and eating pizza/mcdonalds every day. Just attempt to gain weight at the most 1lb/week if you are natty and starting out, if you have already been lifting for a bit go for .5lb/week (these are all assuming you are natural and not on steroids/PH's). Generally as long as you aren't putting weight on extremely quickly health concerns aren't very big at all.

Supps you can take to help with bp, cholesterol, and heart health that I suggest
- Baby asprin (every day)
- COQ10 (every day)
- Fish oil (every day)

For added health benefits you could do small amounts of cardio every day. Doesn't have to be running, can just be walking or walking on an incline on a treadmill. Keep in mind though cardio will make it harder to gain weight especially if you are doing intense workouts to begin with.

Other things I would suggest is IMPROVE YOUR FLEXIBILITY AND SHOULDER HEALTH. Do rotator cuff exercises every day/every other day as a warm up and try to do stretching (not before OR after your workout, some other time).

 

bump nobody wants to ask questions im bored

 

Low-dose aspirin may go by the cute and cuddly adjective “baby,” but it’s a powerful drug. Even “baby” aspirin daily can cause life-threatening bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract and hemorrhagic stroke (bleeding in the brain).
In May this year, the FDA rejected an application to label aspirin as suitable for prevention of heart attack in adults across the board.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com.../08/17/is-a-baby-aspirin-a-day-the-new-apple/
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-...e/in-depth/daily-aspirin-therapy/art-20046797

My question: you still feel this is healthy, I can't say much since I found this info 2 min ago. From the little I have read I wouldn't follow your tip.

 

Aspirin is absolutely dangerous in certain people with certain histories. It absolutely should not be taken regularly without a discussion with your doctor first. There are certain expected negatives to taking it regularly, and you need to weight the advantages (the preventative heart effects) vs the disadvantages. That cant be done effectively without full knowledge of your family history and current state of health. If you're worried about heart problems, it's absolutely not a bad idea to talk to your doctor about aspirin. But it should NOT be something that you start just because you read it on an internet message board.

That said, 90% of what I'm reading in this topic is generic internet message board bullshit. Most of it is just fine advice to follow, but most of it also doesn't matter for most people's goals.

Spoiler: Barbell's guide to looking good naked in five easy steps:

1. Eat less crap (you know what crap is), drink more water.
2. Lift some heavy ass weights a couple times a week.
3. Do something that makes your breathe hard (cardio.) This can be biking, running, swimming, jumping rope, rock climbing, swinging from vines like tarzan, doing cartwheels, or having lots of sex - I don't care. Get your heart rate up a couple times a week.
4. Get a tan
5. Make it progressively more intense and repeat every day for the rest of your life or until you stop caring.

Boom. That's everything you're going to learn from fitness message boards and magazines and coaches. The rest is just details to one degree or another, and you can learn those for yourself.

 

I do completely feel that 1 baby asprin every day should be perfectly healthy for the large majority of people. As with ALL supplements if you are worried about how it will effect you specifically you should always find the opinions of multiple (I say multiple because in the grand scheme of things, many doctors are not well versed in any sort of supplementation, even asprin) doctors/physicians. From the research I have done (yes I have done it) combined with the opinions of many other people that take asprin regularly and have done so everyday for quite some time I can confidently say that it shouldn't be an issue for the majority.

I should have noted that baby asprin every day shouldn't probably be taken unless you are a reason to. If you are completely healthy, don't take it, there is no reason to.

@jmmainvi sure I guess you could go ahead and tell someone that. But guess what? That is what 90% of people that go to the gym or workout already know or have been told, and I'd say the VAST majority of those people look like shit and are weak af for how much time/effort they have put into it. Also magazines are 100% useless. You shouldn't be paying or even looking for a "coach" unless you are competing in some sort of event (bodybuilding, powerlifting, physique, what have you) and the majority of message boards are riddled with shit information that the large majority of people that are new/starting out will not be able to sift through until they have spent a large amount of time reading and looking at information from a variety of sources.

Also I'd like to point out that "eat less crap" has absolutely nothing to do with how you will gain weight, lose weight, or gain muscle/strength given that you aren't eating mcdonalds twice a day everyday. 40g protein 50g fat and 80g carbs from mcdonalds is exactly the same as 40g protein 50g fat and 80g carbs from any other "clean" source of food. This does not mean that 4000g protein, 5000g fat, and 8000g carbs is the same as 4000g protein, 5000g fat, and 8000g carbs from any other "clean" source of food, though. In other words "crap" or "dirty" foods do not make a measurable difference when compared to clean foods on a realistic and small scale within the human body.

 

The fact that someone taking aspirin is a clinically significant finding (it's enough to change a doctor's mind about what's probably going wrong when you show up to the ER with vomiting) when it comes to a variety of diseases and that it alters the course of treatment for another variety of diseases should tell you that it's not something to play around with and try "because you think it's probably good for you." If you are worried about heart health, aspirin can be a fantastic preventative tool. WITH THAT SAID, IT IS SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE CAREFULLY DISCUSSED WITH A HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL, NOT A MESSAGE BOARD BECAUSE THE DRAWBACKS ARE VERY REAL AND CAN BE VERY SEVERE.

Agreed. Talk to your/a variety/all of the doctors to get an opinion on whether you are in the group that has a reason to take it.

90% of people that go to the gym half ass it and never progress. Bring intensity to your lifting and your cardio, and bring consistency to both of those as well as eating less crap. Continue that over time, and get better at it over time, and that's 80% of the battle to looking as good as you're going to look.

No source of information is 100% useless. You just have to know what you're looking at and treat it appropriately. "Coach" in the case I used it is a broad term - It included actual coaches, as well as personal trainers, or even "that one bro who I go to the gym with that's been lifting like forever man"

While I agree with that statement, I still have to reiterate that most of what I've seen you posting is exactly what you're going to see by some of the better posters just browsing the forums of bodybuilding.com - it's good enough information, but a little bit of information without a whole lot of background is indeed a VERY dangerous thing.

While I know the point you're trying to make, and I agree with the sentiment when it comes to someone like you or like me, it's not accurate to the population at large. The absolute energy content of a food is not the whole story. You have the physiological, neurological, and psychological effects to consider as well.

Psychologically, someone who says "I'm making a real change in my life" and actually succeeds at "cutting out the crap" for a week or so is going to feel a lot of pride and a lot of progress in what they've done so far. Those psychological effects are going to go a long way towards propelling them into their weight loss or gain or recomposition or whatever the hell journey than just doing less of exactly the same thing they were doing before. It also gives people small, measurable steps to take if they're the kind of person this motivates. "I cut candy out of my diet this week. Next week I will cut out chips and keep out candy. The week after that I will keep both of those gone, and cut out soda" is concrete and achievable for everyone.

Neurologically, we could get into the effects of serotonin and dopamine on the brain after eating certain foods, or into ghrelin and the stretch receptors of the stomach. Physiologically we could get into the effects of different macros on satiety and continued satiety, but that's a conversation that is going to lead to both of us pulling a bunch of too-specific research papers, arguing things that are true but for different population sets, or using way too many qualifiers, etc. It's not a message board discussion to have (or in fact a discussion to have anywhere unless your whole purpose in discussing it is to piss off everyone involved). While we're on the topic of macros we could talk about the fact that the average guy who wants to look good naked not only doesn't know how to count his macros, he doesn't care, and isn't going to learn. Traditionally "clean" foods have macros that naturally fall into ranges more conducive to good body compositions when paired with decent exercise, so it's easier to get away with not counting your calories/macros/however you want to go about it.

energetically, I agree with you. And I agree with the whole IIFYM thought type that you're coming from (as long as you're not using IIFYM to justify pints of ice cream and mcdonalds every day, which you've qualified that you're not.) I have no argument with this statement.


Anyway, TL; DR I'm sorry to but-in. Carry on with your thread, because educating people about health and fitness (or even better, causing them to educate themselves about health and fitness) is one of my absolute favorite things to do in the entire world. Hope you get plenty of responses here, and that you do change someone's life - but the fitness world is way too personal experience based, with too much confirmation bias and a general feeling of closed-mindedness. Just make sure to keep your eyes open, and actually process what and who it is you're looking at ^_^.

 

You're good, I encourage people to comment on my posts if you have something to question or information to add.

I generally don't deal with coaching or giving advice to people that just want to get in shape, it is almost exclusively for people that want to make progress from a bodybuilding/powerlifting/physique stand point (mainly because those are the ones that approach me for help/coaching), many of which take anabolics/androgenics so the depth at which we usually care about food is A) its macros and B) whether or not it satisfies cravings/satiates whilst meeting macro intake. Any other effects (like effect on carrying water, etc.) are usually ignored until it needs to be tampered with.

wow i got too lazy mid post to continue to anything else.

anyways

 

What's a good way to lose weight? Like eating less and exercising more? How long should people be doing this, everyday for 1 hour? :s

 

I am going to assume you are a girl from your name. In that case I would HIGHLY suggest you start lifting weights. No you will not get "bulky" or "too muscle-y" or "manly". It takes a long time for a girl to get to the stage where she is unattractive due to her level of muscularity. So I would first suggest you start lifting weights and don't be afraid to go past the 5-10lb dumbells. Depending on your bodyfat percentage you can incorporate cardio if you wish. The main thing will be restricting how many calories you eat everyday and trying to get as much protein as you can. Most girls do not consume enough protein (as do most people in general).

Try to eat a bit less. I could give you specific amounts but I would need more information about you if you wanted that. Try to eat a good amount of protein everyday. .5-8g per lb of bodyweight should be more than enough for you (so 50-80g of protein if you weigh 100lbs, etc). Length of workout is not important really. What is more important is that you are trying to progress each time you work out. Anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour is fine.

A girl will look find that she will look exponentially better if she lifts weights and controls her diet than if she just did cardio and controlled her diet. The gain in muscle will do wonders for a woman's body.

 

My responses will be in the order in which I see them in your quote.

First off do not recomp. If you are a natural lifter you should either be bulking or cutting (unless you just want to chill/take a break). Recomping simply does. not. happen. EVEN when you are on gear in most circumstances unless you are a beginner (or near a beginner).

1st Question Answer: I can't really tell you without you telling me what the macros are to the diet and how fast you want to be gaining weight. For a natural lifter that is not a beginner, you shouldn't be going over .5lb net weight gain per week - that's 26lbs in a year which is actually a crazy amount for a natural lifter to gain in a year if you are talking about muscle gains (but obviously weight=/=LBM). It also depends how hard it is for you to gain weight. As a natural you should be having atleast 65-75g fat a day. Upwards of 90-120g is fine given that is what you need, though it would be preferable to keep it around 75g and dump the rest into carbohydrates. Protein should be around 180g if you weigh around 200lbs (I'm sure you can extrapolate what you need). Honestly your diet seems like it is fairly low caloricly, but if that is what you need to gain weight that is fine. Again, I don't care about the majority of peoples food/diet choices as long as it is within reason IF they are hitting their protein/fat/carb intake for the day. FYI you mentioned times for your protein shakes, I wanted to point out timing of any meal is extremely irrelevant unless it makes you feel shitty preworkout or something.
If you want more opinions on your diet give me more specifics in terms of numbers

2nd Question Answer: Again this depends on how easy it is for you to eat/gain weight. For some it is difficult for some it is easy. Weigh yourself consistently and keep your average net weight gain per week at whatever it is you desire (more weigh/week = more fat put on, obviously). If you see yourself slowing down I would try to add maybe some protein, but mainly carbs and minimal fat. If it is easy for you to gain weight, tuna is definitely a very good choice or simply some sort of rice/pasta. Special K Protein cereal is nice because it has GOAT macros for cereal (no fat, 11g protein, 19g carbs/serving) which is what I incorporate a lot right now. If it is hard for you to gain weight/eat, go for whatever you want. PB and J, burger, whatever will allow you to reach the needed calories. I'd rather reach my caloric intake and have "shittier" macros than be under my caloric intake with "good" macros. A day that you are not meeting your caloric needs is a wasted day in my opinion (although it isn't really, but it certainly isn't optimal).

Also you do not always have to increase caloric intake when you gain, say, 5lbs. There are a variety of factors that could allow your body to gain weight on more calories, the same calories, or even less calories. This is why it is important to gauge diet by weekly net weight gain (weigh yourself every morning and average the weights each week).

3rd Question Answer: Natural lifters honestly should not be cutting very much unless you are doing so simply because you don't like being fat. In terms of what is optimal, the longer the natural lifter is in a caloric surplus the better. Cutting every 6 months is far less productive than cutting every 1.5 years, for example. Alberto Nunez (I dont know if you know him, if you do not I would youtube/google him. Him and the rest of 3DMJ has some AMAZING information for natural lifters) talks about this in a few of his videos. Too many people cut more often than they should. For long bulks as a natural I would try to incorporate some high intensity cardio now and then and keep your weight gain to 1-3lbs per month (minimum/maximum). I would also pick a diet that I could follow consistently for a long time without cheating/giving up on that will not wear me out that preferably has me staying within the range of 65-90g fats, .8-1g protein per lb of bodyweight with the rest dumped into carbs.


I'm not sure if I answered everything you want..I tend to get very lost in what I am saying when I answer shit like this if I dont just give short answers. Feel free to follow up on anything or whatever or call me out if I ignored something.

 

Could I ask you what your height/weight and lifts are? Not to be rude or judging, but it will help me know what you've accomplished exactly (which does change some answers)

If you are saying that you have successfully recomped, as in you have LOST bodyfot WHILST GAINING muscle, I am sorry but that is quite literally...impossible for a natural athlete. I do not think you understand just how large you would be if you were able to lose bodyfat and gain muscle outside of the beginner stage. It has been talked about by many well known and knowledgeable people. I don't want to come off as a douche or someone who thinks they know a lot but does not, but I assure you the amount of research both anecdotal (by me and others) and scientific I and many others.

145g fat is pretty damn high and 250 carbs is pretty damn low for a bulk. I don't really know how you think "so much rice" with 250g carbs...or how you think more than that is high whatsoever.

You mentioned losing up to 20lbs in three weeks. Id also like to point out that, especially for a natural, you wont be doing any sort of a successful cut outside of dropping lots of water, depleting glycogen, and losing some starting body fat within a 3 week period unless you carry a decent amount of fat to begin with.

Easy calorie suggestions I give people that have issues gaining weight: whole milk, PB&J's, most fast food places (attempt to find highest protein to calorie ratio wherever it is), gatorade, cereals, pancakes, blend food/shakes and drink it down.
Easy Carb suggestions specifically? Gatorage, pancakes, blend oats in shakes, cereals, rice/bean burritos,
------------------------------------

Also, I want to make this clear. When I say food choice and timing does not matter, "neurological and physiological" do not matter. You do not tell someone specifically what to eat unless they want you to. What you eat during the day does not matter as long as it meets macronutrient intake on a reasonable level. This is why we do not care about food choices. You can eat whatever you wish whenever you want as long as it fits the standards. You will never be at a disadvantage in terms of making progress if you do not eat x food before you go the gym or before bed. Anything related to neurological and physiological effects are going to come from whatever you feel like you want to eat to meet your needs. That's why it is unimportant.

", we could get into the effects of serotonin and dopamine on the brain after eating certain foods, or into ghrelin and the stretch receptors of the stomach. Physiologically we could get into the effects of different macros on satiety and continued satiety"

All of which do not matter in the world of bodybuilding, powerlifting, or any other related sport. Please tell me I am wrong.

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/biolayne/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTigerFitness/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/JuggernautFitnessTV/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/Team3DMJ/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/Omauf/videos

I'd urge you to watch the videos on the above channels (quick short list of a variety of different viewpoints from a variety of different people). If you have time and are interested in learning more, starting with watching all relevant videos by people that have some very good information is a good start (or continuance).