My Workout Thread

........fortunately for you Dr.Ben is in the house!.........after careful consideration......Benny suggests that you start wanking with the other arm.....and oh yes......get some rest!


.......please note.......this was a free consultation.......this time.......Benny in no way takes responsibility for any damages incurred by you the patient following said advice......righto.

I had picked up a fair bit of weight since turning 40 but until I saw some pics my girlfriend took I didn't realise quite how much I'd ballooned. I am now, instead of buying takeaways all the time and eating junkfood treats every other day, cooking myself proper lunches every day and the weight has fallen off like crazy. My girlfriend has commented that she didn't think I was fat before but she's shocked at how much more in shape I'm looking.

I've never really cooked regularly and don't enjoy it much, but my daily meal is 1/4 green pepper, 1/4 yellow pepper, 1 tomato, 1/2 a red onion and a pair of "sandwich steaks" fried in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, 2 carrots and 2 small or 1 large potato brushed in oil and baked in the microwave and then doused in the meat and vegetable pan juices. Everything covered in salt and pepper. It's delicious and the sheer variety of things on the plate means I haven't even slightly tired of it in the 4 or 5 months I've been eating it. Dirt cheap, too.

I am also gently easing myself back into callisthenics. Up to 7 chin-ups in one go now, but not every day, usually a few batches of three, some pushups and some dips. I don't keep too much track of things because then I always end up overdoing it and hurting myself and losing interest for ages, but I have an exercise rack in my room that I use as a distraction from work or just a means to quickly void my brain of distracting internal chatter.

When I was 25 or so, I weighed 65kg, had a size 30 waist and could do 25 chin-ups in one go, at my worst I got to an increasingly tight size 34 (I never weighed myself) and I've just gotten back down to a 32. 30 was too thin, so planning on keeping things at 32 and just firming myself up. Not interested in being muscly but definition's nice, and I'm kind of getting there with very little effort.

3 mins of living room YOGA in the morning seems to make a huge diff for the rest of the day. Less stiffness, more energy, better posture.

Obvs I have no idea what I'm doing and only know about 2 "poses" but ffs that's enough.



ps none of you hostile cuntz are allowed to tease me over this.

No, I don't wear lycra.

No, I don't do a spacker TV voiceover as I do the yoga.

Yes, I still have my records on this label: www.discogs.com/label/102852-Fuck-Yoga-Records

Watching a yoga vid is an exercise in futility for me. Within femtoseconds my primal urge to bash the bishop is awakened and I've clicked over to pornhub to extradite the ol' plaintiff.

So...I moved to Vietnam at the end of 2011 after about 10 years of cohabitation with the wifey and working in translation sat at desks in offices. No regular workout but I tried to walk and bike a bit - nonetheless I was pushing about 95 kilos (I'm 1.78 m or so) when I landed in Nam. But working freelance I was able to schedule my day to work out in the morning, like 10 am, two hours after eating. I mostly did stationary bike or elliptic machine, with some dumbbell and ab stuff. The city hotel gym near our apartment had a tiny pool, like 25 m long, so I would only use my arms and do some laps sometimes. I can and like to eat healthy, like a big salad for dinner, oatmeal with prunes etc. for breakfast. Brown rice...
Anyhow, having my perfect workout time and eating healthy at home as much as possible (but not being draconian about it - eat whatever if I'm eating out) allowed me to slowly drop weight and waist size over eight or nine years. Here's a tale of the tape: from 34 or 5 in. to 33 => 32=> 31



I think I was skirting around 75 kilos so I was generally happy. Gout was quite rare and other health indicators also good. However, I slowly started to develop back pain, starting from before Corona but it became more noticeable during the Corona era. Since HCMC reopened everything including gyms in fall 2021, I had another six months at the gym but my back pains were not going away. Finally during our long lockdown in Summer 2022, I started to look for hints online about my back. It wasn't like a disc problem, more centered on my lower back, sometimes going into my glutes and other parts of my leg. I soon figured out it was basically due to atrophying of my hamstrings, lower ab, inner thigh etc. muscles from too much sitting, so I decided to try to do yoga regularly, do some exercises for my core, and find some beginner aerobics or cardio workout on YT to do as lockdown showed no signs of abating.

For yoga, I found the above Kassandra right away. Searching YT for beginner aerobics, the first hits were like this!


How do they move their hips like that?!

A few hits down was something from this exercise paysite:



Normal looking folk, looks easy enough, the instructor isn't ripped and in a tank top, so I stretched and tried it out. I had no problem prancing about like a fool in my room, and just after a few workouts, I felt a good soreness in core muscles that I knew meant those muscles were getting worked but needed much more strengthening. The workouts are also deceptively hard and tiring - however, they really energize the entire body so after the initial burn after exercise, cool down stretch and shower, I don't feel lethargic after. It's generically called HIIT and the name sounds more HC than it is: the gist is that you do a certain move, like say jumping jacks, for 20 or 30 or 45 seconds, then rest 10 seconds, then do another move such as a modified squat, continue on with maybe some 30 seconds rests at points (you can always pause it anyhow) for 20 to 60 minutes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training
(there's a Tabata Method invented by a Japanese prof that is all 20-seconds on exercise with 10 seconds rest)

I felt all kinds of benefits immediately and also quickly joined the paysite (25 AUSD/month). It's run by a British couple who immigrated to Brisbane - the man in the vid above and his petite wife, who is an exercise cyborg, not buff but can just endlessly do all the crazy hard ab/pilates moves. The dude used to box a little amateur, so he leads a lot of sessions with boxing moves. I started going heavier on protein powder and some common supplements, like amino acids, superfoods, micronutrients. Dropping alcohol at home and reducing when out to justify the spendings. (wifey plays golf for ichiman a round plus gear and clothing!) I only use 1, 2, 3, and, only recently, 4 kg dumbbells. And a yoga mat. Lots of water. Ammonia sweat is free.

So after about a year and a half of going pretty regular on the exercise and diet and all that, my body has really transformed. Back and hamstring/glute pain is almost completely gone, and while I haven't really bulked up, I have put on muscle mass to some degree, so my weight is around 78 kg now. However, I still have a few kilos of my oldest fat around my lower belly that is taking time to get rid of. I kinda hoped to get to a 30 inch waist by last New Years (I actually have another pair of jeans I used to wear in 2000!). Yes, a bit of vanity but I don't really care that I didn't make that target, as all the other improvements physically (including balance and flexibility which are important for longevity) and mentally have been monumental to me.

One health thing regarding losing the last bit of fat, I found I have a slightly high indicator for what's called Hashimoto Disease in Japan but it's just hypothyroidism, which mostly affects women. My blood test values for it didn't change over a year and it's not high enough for medication. I haven't looked too much into supplements to help with it but probably should. Anyhow, hyperthyroidism makes it hard to lose fat. As I mentioned at the start, I have been able to trim fat, it's just the persistence of fat cells built 20 years ago, I suppose.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothyroidism
(The clinic I went to for the specialized blood test was all female staff and 90% female patients, maybe some husbands also.)