Thing is I ate most of the things that I thought I liked because it was "the norm". I love fish so that bit comes really easy. I never ate a great deal of meat anyway and since changing my eating habits (I'm loathe to call it a 'diet'), I really can't say that I've missed anything. I've had one 'proper' burger, a ribeye steak and about 4 pieces of chicken breast since January and they've been "treats" and have been sufficient. A matew told me that I would put on weight when I gave up smoking but that only usually happens when people substitute chocolate and sweets for nicotine. The fact that I snack on carrots, celery and cucumber should mitigate those effects.

I went to the pub yesterday to chase up some money that the landlord owes me and a mate offered to buy me a drink. I asked for a Beck's Blue and as I got near the end of the bottle started feeling palpitations in my chest. It was only then I turned the bottle around and noticed the dopey bint behind the bar had given me normal Beck's. I was literally staggering as I left the pub and went to bed once I got home. When I was boozing I sometimes suffered from post-alcohol anxiety and I've been feeling like that since I had the bottle of Beck's. I appear to have become super-sensitive to alcohol now and there is simply no way I want to go back to the bottle again.

Another piece of advice (again from personal experience) look into HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) as your cardio, probably on a bike.

It will kill you at first, but will yeild great results.

What, even if you are dead?

You'll be the fittest corpse in your local mortuary.

A necrophile's delight.

That sounds a sensible way to do it. None of the lads at work have put any weight on so it must be the substitution problem as you say.


It was probably on purpose to regain your custom!

LOL I suppose 8 pints+ a day is a bit of a drag on the takings. He claimed he didn't know the difference between Beack's & Beck's Blue, despite the fact that the non-alcoholic version wholesales at less than 10 bob a bottle

I'll try to add a bit of the stuff I've learned over the years.

Diet is far more effective than exercise in changing body fat levels. Despite all the complex stuff you will be bombarded with, it's really a matter of understanding your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) which is a function of BMR x activity rate. There will be a calorie count that keeps your weight constant at your TDEE. To lose weight, eat 500kcals less, to gain weight eat 500kcals more. Varying by more than this can screw your metabolic rate around. You can increase your TDEE by exercising more of course.

Beware of falling into the cardio trap: Lots of aerobic exercise (or dropping your cals too far) which conditions your body to store fat. Storing muscle is "expensive" for the body in terms of calorie expenditure. So starve your body and it will drop muscle to survive, which therefore reduces your BMR & TDEE more, causing a reaction of reducing cals/exercising more: the cardio trap.

Lift weights: More Lean Body Mass increases your TDEE. Don't worry about getting "too big" there are a ton of people in the gym trying to get big so you won't do it by accident. If you do want to get big, you really need to eat higher than your TDEE so be prepared to gain a bit of fat in the process.

I haven't yet cracked how to maintain all strength whilst dropping body fat. I got below 10% but lost a bit of strength. I'm decent power-lifter strong now, but at 15%

Anyone try any crossfit workouts?

I did a workout called 'the murph' the other day named after Lt Michael Murphy who was killed in 2005.

With a 20lb pound weighted vest you run a mile, do 100 pullups, 200 pushups and 300 squats, then run another mile, do this as fast as you can.

If your time is 45 mins or below, you have an elite level of fitness.

Do you do actual pullups or the kind of nonsensical efforts they teach in Crossfit?

There is a great deal of gym fixation that has me shaking my head and wondering "Why? Why would you want to do that?"

Running for a mile with a weighted vest and then doing all sorts of strange things at the end of it is not really training you for any sort of real life situation - and the worse thing is that having reached this plateau of "elite level of fitness" you then have to keep doing it every day in order to maintain your Badge of Squatting.

It sort of diverts from the main message of eating correctly and doing a little exercise every day in the midst of your normal life, like using the stairs instead of a lift etc, etc...

Does anyone use any protein shakes or diet supplements in order to aid with their weight/body goals?

I just ask as there seems to be numerous different companies offering what basically looks like the same stuff - so just wondering is there any difference and anyone prefer/recommend one over another?

I got that badge on a particularly bad Friday night. I blame the dodgy kebab.
Or it might have been those damned penguins again...

Yes. But they are not magic beans. They are precisely what they suggest they are, supplements. Sort your diet (or nutritional programme as I call it to save confusion) out and use them to aid. There's plenty of advice. Check out LDNMuscle, I'm sure they have a good run down of advice on what to look for.

For me;
USN myofusion as a post exercise/early morning breakfast shake(mixed with oats, fruit, peanut butter, an egg and coconut oil. Perfect at 530 am before a 630 weights session).
ON Casein at night.

Everything else is supported through strict control of my food intake.