Tag: fat loss

Top Five Favorite Gym Exercises

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Gooooob morning, Hoomans! (Anyone else follow Thoughts of Dog on twitter? No? Just me?)

I have no backstory, I’m jumping right in…

My (current) Top 5 Favorite Gym Exercises:

#1 Single Leg Dumbbell Deadlift
  • Stand on one leg and with the same side hand lightly hold a chair or a wall to help balance (if you need to, which I absolutely do).
  • Hold a dumbbell in your other hand and on that same side leg you are going to perform a normal deadlift, however…
  • …when you tip forward let your other leg swing back and stay aligned with your spine.

single leg deadlift

#2 Vertical Inclined Dumbbell Row and Fly Superset
  • Stand-Straddle an inclined bench or seat and lean your chest against the backrest.
  • With a dumbbell in each hand, perform a vertical row with your palms facing in towards your sides.
    • (It’s kind of like a pulling-up-your-pants motion.)
  • Do that for your set and them immediately (after adjusting weights) perform a… Side fly? Arm raise? I don’t know what it’s called, but pretend you’re a bird flapping its wings for the set.
  • Then take your rest and repeat the superset starting with the row again.
inclined row fly superset
#3 Dumbbell Around the World’s
  • Stand with a dumbbell in each hand.
  • With your palms facing outward and your arms straight for the entire movement, start with the dumbbells touching each other in front of your hips and movement them outward and upward until they touch each other above your head.
  • Then bring them back down the same way.
  • That’s very confusing.
  • Google it. It’s the standing one.

around the worlds

#4 Hip Abductor Machine
  • The one where you push the pads out to the side, not the one where you squeeze.
  • This one is pretty self explanatory because it’s a fixed machine, but make sure you pick a weight that is heavy enough; your hips are stronger than you may think they are because it’s a weird movement and feels weird at first.
  • Also, make sure you’re adjusting the pads so that your legs are starting as close together as possible for a full range of motion.
hip abductor
#5 Reverse Crunches with Kettlebell for Stabilization
  • Lay Lie on your back with a heavy kettlebell on the floor right above your head.
  • Reach your arms back and grab each side of the kettlebell handle with your elbows bent 90 degrees.
  • Perform a reverse crunch with straight legs (relatively, I usually have a little bend in my knees) and make sure at the top you use your added stabilization to lift your butt and hips fully off the ground, pulling your abdominal muscles tight.
    • I have found that using the kettlebell keeps me from straining my neck to get that last little bit of extension on reverse crunches. And something about lifting your butt off the ground in this movement is kinda fun.

reverse crunch

Apparently I’m obsessed with kettlebells. I didn’t know this about myself

These are all great exercises to start off with if you’re a noob like me. They are all relatively easy while still being somewhat challenging compound movements. I would highly recommend googling videos of these though, it’s harder to describe exercises than I thought.

Bonus!

I love anything I’ve ever tried on the cable machine but Cable Tricep Pressdowns are my favorite. Let me tell you though, this move is fricken tough. If you’ve never worked out your triceps you’re gonna feel all sorts of muscles burn where you didn’t even know there were muscles.

*** Cable Tricep Pressdowns
  • Position the cable machine above your head and use the double rope attachment.
  • Grab one rope with each hand and pull the ropes down trying not to move your bicep.
  • You’ll start with your arms in an L shape with your biceps at your side and you forearms out in front of you, and you’ll pull until your forearms are straight to your side as well (without locking your elbow up), and end in your starting position.

cable tricep pressdowns

That’s it! Hope you enjoyed stick boi. Okay, bye!

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This is the majority of how I use my studio art degree. Oof.

Go to the gym in the morning…

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Pro-Tip: Go to the gym in the morning before the rest of the world is awake.

Hi, interwebs. I know this is a late night blog but I’ve been going through it. Lots of adult things, lots of anxiety, lots of sleeping in. I didn’t get up and go to the gym this morning, but working out keeps my brain from freaking tf out so I went after work today. What I’m trying to say is…

Go to the gym in the morning.

Listen, I know it’s not fun to get up at 6am and to go out in the cold and kick your own butt. But you know what’s even less fun?

  1. Waiting for equipment.
  2. Trying not to make eye-contact with a group of 14 year old boys playing on the machines who are staring you down relentlessly
  3. Asking “Are you using that kettlebell?” even though you know that woman is not using that kettlebell because she’s been taking selfies and sitting on her phone for the past 15 minutes while standing in front of the kettlebell rack.

Maybe this doesn’t sound that abnormal to you after-work gym rats, but now let me describe my gym at 7am when all the rational people are still asleep:

  1. Only 4 other beings in the entire building
  2. Pool still locked so no rampant children
  3. Everyone still super sleepy or hyper zoned-in because of pre-workout, so no one wants to hold a full conversation

Going to bed an hour earlier is a small price to pay for an empty gym, in my humble opinion. Try it out, y’all.

Okay, that’s it. Just needed to vent about my first world problems.

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Look at this. You know if I choose the gym over cuddling with these babies at 7am that it must be worth it. 

I won’t take it back!

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Hello, internet.

So, I’ve been conflicted. A couple days ago when I posted that guide to building a workout I thought I was so smart. Well, about 3 hours after posting I already wanted to make an amendment.

I read an article shortly after posting that blog about the difference between weight loss and fat loss and realized that I hadn’t specified that my guide was geared towards losing fat and gaining small amounts of muscle. Losing fat is the only thing I personally have focused on so far so it slipped my mind to mention that my current workouts aren’t geared towards body building or long distance running or sport training.

But alas, no amendment was written. I decided that I had stated that my goal was to lose fat enough times in that post and my blog in general that readers should understand the point I was trying to make.

Then I found a new YouTube channel…

It was all about fitness and they were short informative videos, so like any rational millennial would do: I binged watched them for three hours.

And they started saying things like:

“Static stretching isn’t necessary and may even be harmful”

“You don’t need to do any cardio on your lifting days”

“Warm-ups are stupid”

“Picking a handful of random exercises isn’t the right way to plan a workout”

“Sets of 3×10 aren’t the best”

This YouTube channel single-handedly debunked my entire post.

Again I reiterate, I don’t blindly trust strangers on the internet. However, this person gave a plethora of accredited sources with each video and has uploaded informational fitness videos weekly since 2015. I’d say at least some of their videos are accurate.

All day yesterday and all morning at the gym I was thinking about taking the post down altogether.

But then I realized that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard blatant contradictions to fitness matters. The reason that I knew all of the stuff I put in that long blog was because I’d learned it from a reputable source. And the reason that YouTube channel knew all of their information is because they learned it from reputable sources.

So no, I won’t take it back.

This exact plan has worked for me and maybe it’ll work for you too, but decide that for yourself and your own body. That’s what I did. Listen to your own self, don’t trust the internet to know how you feel. (*cough cough* Web MD people I’m talking to you.)

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Went Christmas Tree picking with the in-laws yesterday! This has nothing to do with anything, but how cool is this picture?

Track Your Data!

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Good morning, internet!

It’s been 2 weeks!

I’m not going to do an update of all my measurements until a month in, but I will say this for today: Get you a Body Fat Scale.

I know a lot of people are opposed to weighing themselves every day, but for me, it keeps me accountable and knowledgeable about my own body. I started weighing myself (almost) every morning back when I initially started this in February, partially to track weight loss but also to track bloating.

Like I said yesterday, I used to drink virtually no water at all and I started to notice that when I would eat certain foods and drink less water I’d weigh more the next morning. So I started weighing myself to figure out what foods made me bloat, how much water I should be drinking for my particular body, and ultimately how to make my weight loss steady and consistent.

But now my scale sends to my phone the specific percentage of water weight on my body on any given morning!

What?!

My husband was skeptical of this purchase of mine for a lot of different reasons…

To quote the princess Ariana herself: “think retail therapy my new addiction”

… but mainly because how on Earth can a $20 scale, running on AA batteries, with some metal plates “scan” a person’s body?

Listen, I have no idea how this thing works; I have a studio art degree. But you best believe I googled it and told him all the big words.

Babe, it uses Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) technology. Duh.

In all reality, I read the reviews on Amazon and found several that said the data from this scale was corroborated by the numbers given to them at the doctor’s office. I trusted strangers on the internet. Don’t tell Babe, please.

Now obviously I take the stats this scale give me with a grain of salt. I may be an impulse purchase, but I’m as much of an idiot as this scale is a licensed medical professional. Even so, if it’s giving me the wrong Body Fat number, but that number is decreasing over time, then what’s the problem? I personally don’t need to know to the tenth decimal place what my measurements are, I only need to know that whatever I’m doing is making those measurements shrink.

It’s also fun to look at the charts of my Body Fat percentage going down while my Muscle Mass goes up. Even little gains are gaaaiiinnnsss, baby!

My point is

If you can strip away the emotional attachment to the numbers you’ll realize that it’s only data. The more data you collect, the more you’ll be able to learn. Weighing myself every day keeps me informed about what’s going on in my body. And I’m a sucker for a good line graph.

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Even if the numbers are not 100% accurate, I like the look of that line.