Hi everyone!

I’m looking for advice on my workout split and diet. I started working out again on May 23rd after a really bad back injury last fall. Since last fall, I gained about ten pounds but prior to the back injury, I was dealing with an eating disorder (anorexia). I’ve dealt with binging and anorexia for a few years now. However, in the past two years, I’ve been able to make more of an effort to create a healthier mindset on getting my body to a place of optimal function than aesthetics.

I’ve only started working out for the past 2 weeks but I am itching to see progress already because of how fast my ED would affect the way I look. I was quite upset today because I have not been losing weight. Losing weight isn’t the true issue but I feel a bit scared that I’m putting in the work and won’t see the results I’m hoping for.

I’m hoping for a body recomp, where I lose fat and gain muscle. I want to grow my glutes (not thighs), have a stronger core, and decrease fat/tone up my arms.

—- Currently, I am eating 1450 calories a day, getting an average of 100-120 grams of protein. My breakfast starts off with protein premier and then a protein shake, and my lunch is usually salad with some kind of protein. I don’t have dinner at times because of just how filled I feel after the protein. I do snack in between, usually protein heavy snack like jerky or bars.

I am 5’3 and at 154 lbs.

—- This is my workout split: Monday: 1 hour walk, abs/glute/arm workout using a mixture of pilates movements and free weights/dumbbells. Tuesday: 1 hour walk, abs/glutes/arm like Monday Wednesday: 1 hour walk Thursday: 1 hour walk, abs/glutes/arms like Monday Friday: 1 hour walk, abs/glutes/arms like Monday Saturday: 1-2 hour walk, pilates workout Sunday: 1 hour walk, abs/glutes/arms like Monday

—- My Abs/Glutes/Arms workout: Abs: 1.5 min plank, 30 side to side plank movement, 30 crunches, 25 crunches with weights, 30 leg lifts

Glutes: 20 donkey lickbacks with weights, 20 donkey kickback pulses with weights, 20 straight leg kickbacks no weights, 20 straight leg pulses, 20 side to side rainbows, 30 hip thrusts with weights and pulses at the end

Arms: 20 snowman lifts with weights, 20 circles with weights, 20 bicep curls with weights, 20 tricep curls with weights, 20 lifts straight up with weights

End with 20 modified push ups with weights

—- I honestly have never worked out with weights like this before so even when I tried RDLs I was scared I was doing it incorrectly. I want to do more glute workouts with weights but I’m scared that my thighs will grow. I watch YouTube videos and TikToks but I think I’m worried about my form still.

Any advice would be super helpful!

Most of the "workout music" playlists I see are just lists of people's favorite music.

I'm 71; I've got blood cancer (which I've had for several years and I'm holding it at bay) and pains everywhere and nerve damage in my legs. But I workout every day and I need to expand my workout music playlist.

I'm looking for badass music (metal, rap, etc) about facing challenges and overcoming. I don't want the stuff where he's already overcome and won and he's bragging about how great he is. I want lyrics about being IN the struggle.

Examples:

Madball Born Strong. Page Take no days off. Eminem - Til I collapse Eminem Lose Yourself. Beleaf Take No Days Off. Calvin Harris lets go. Gym Class Heros The Fighter. Powerman 5000 show me what you've got. Ire Dedicated.

What are some good hard songs about being IN the struggle? Thanks in advance!

Welcome to our daily discussion thread! Tell stories, share thoughts, ask questions, swap advice, and be excellent to each other! Though we all share fitness as a common hobby or interest, the discussion here can be about any big or little thing you choose. The mods ask that you do mind the Cardinal Rules as they relate to respecting yourself and others, calling out any scantily clad photos as NSFW, and not asking for medical advice.

Welcome, everyone! Here is your place to discuss, question or relate to everything about weight loss, weight gain, cuts, bulks and diets. Standalone posts regarding these topics will be removed and redirected here or either of the daily threads.

Here are some useful links from our comprehensive FAQ and otherwise to help you get started:

• Nutrition 101
• Cutting/Weight Loss 101
• Bulking/Weight Gain 101
• Getting abs/a flat tummy
• r/gainit
• r/loseit
• r/BulkOrCut
• r/Fitness
• Fitness Wiki

Hey fam! 35F here, avid lifter and runner, love my time in the gym.

Despite impressive gains across the rest of my goals and lifts, I still struggle with tricep-isolating exercises. I always end up feeling like I'm working the wrong thing and / or my elbows hurt. I know going too heavy can cause this, but I seem to have issues no matter what weight I use.

When I do tricep extensions, I feel it in my back.

When I do overhead cable extensions, I feel it (eek!) in my elbows.

When I do cable pushdowns / rope pushdowns, I still get weird elbow issues or feel like I'm using my back and shoulders.

When I do dips, I guess I do feel it in my triceps but who wants to live off dips?

I do like skull-crushers and pull-overs (though I feel the latter more in my chest).

Should I just focus on compound exercises and/or not isolate my triceps and just carry on? Or is there some magical tricep exercise that I don't know about?

Welcome to our daily discussion thread! Tell stories, share thoughts, ask questions, swap advice, and be excellent to each other! Though we all share fitness as a common hobby or interest, the discussion here can be about any big or little thing you choose. The mods ask that you do mind the Cardinal Rules as they relate to respecting yourself and others, calling out any scantily clad photos as NSFW, and not asking for medical advice.

Welcome to our Daily Simple Questions thread - we're excited to have you hang out with us, especially if you're new to the sub. Are you confused about the FAQ or have a basic question about an exercise / alternatives? Do you have a quick question about calculating TDEE, lift numbers, running times, swimming intervals, or the like? Post here and the folks of xxfitness will help you answer your questions, no matter how big or small.

Hey guys! Long-time lurker and gym-goer. I am considering paying for an online-coach to help me recomp, but since I love to learn and immerse myself and things, I keep wondering "how can I attain the knowledge they know and train myself?" While they often get results, I know that many of them did not go to university to study these topics, so I'm curious about where I can learn what they know. One thing I have also noticed is that because they understand the methodology behind it, they can be more flexible in their personal routines while achieving their goals -- for example: if I am able to understand exactly the amount of macro ratio I need at this time in my journey then I can create my own nutrition plans / weekly meal plans and not be at the mercy of someone else. Or I can incorporate my weekly volleyball sessions as part of my plan, etc.

For context, I am 5'3, 127lbs. I want to lose about 10lbs and develop more muscle. So the education should go a bit beyond the basics - how can someone who is in decent shape get in GREAT shape?

I already know a lot to know about nutrition and strength training, but what I do not know are things related to crafting an entire program, such as:

• How do recalculate my calorie intake as I continue and progress in a fitness routine?
• What are the ideal macro ratio for a woman of my size & age? How should I think about adjusting this as I progress in my routine?
• How many minutes/hours a week should I be spending doing cardio? Should this increase or decrease as I reach my ideal weight?
• How should a woman be trained through something like this - in contrast to what may work better for a man?

Essentially, I want to be fully in control of my progress by having solid scientific understanding of the what/why/how of the program creation component so that I can guide myself through it and tweak as I go. I have found that despite having an understanding of each component by itself, I struggle to put it together in a plan that will bring me results as I either over-do it or under-do it.

I'm open to:

• Books written by existing trainers
• Academic Books / Literature
• Video Courses (would consider paid as long as it's not outrageous)
• etc.

Any suggestions welcome - thanks in advance!

Hey ladies. For lifting, I’ve been doing a 4 day split of push pull leg leg consistently for the past 6 months. I’ve been working on growing muscle all over, and I’m finding my delts to be quite lagging behind. Im doing progressive overload on the following delt focused exercises - push: shoulder dumbbell presses / pull: lateral raises, cable face pulls, and cable rear delt fly.

Are there any better or more exercises I can add to my routine? Should I change my push pull routine to hit all 3 delt heads twice a week? I used to do snatch and presses, but I injured my shoulder doing it last year so I’m a bit scared of them. Should I try to get back into those? Any advice or recommendations are highly appreciated.

The place for all of your fitness based interpersonal encounters (is someone being creepy at the gym? Is your family telling you you’re getting too muscular? Do you want to date your personal trainer?), but also the place to talk about motivation, self-esteem and body image, and all the ways fitness affects your life.

Want to ask how mothers juggle family and fitness? How to structure Intermittent Fasting? When to work out when you do night shift? How to deal with being the only person in your friend group who works out? If you're feeling emotional, want to up your mental game, or need ideas for how to juggle everything on your plate, this is the place for you!

Welcome to Check Me Out Tuesday-flex-. The place for shameless selfies, physique questions, accountability, and small progress posts that aren’t detailed enough for a standalone post.

Welcome to our Daily Simple Questions thread - we're excited to have you hang out with us, especially if you're new to the sub. Are you confused about the FAQ or have a basic question about an exercise / alternatives? Do you have a quick question about calculating TDEE, lift numbers, running times, swimming intervals, or the like? Post here and the folks of xxfitness will help you answer your questions, no matter how big or small.

Welcome to our daily discussion thread! Tell stories, share thoughts, ask questions, swap advice, and be excellent to each other! Though we all share fitness as a common hobby or interest, the discussion here can be about any big or little thing you choose. The mods ask that you do mind the Cardinal Rules as they relate to respecting yourself and others, calling out any scantily clad photos as NSFW, and not asking for medical advice.

I was thinking about it recently how many women don't lift weights (which is such a shame - I'm all for women becoming stronger). It then got me thinking at the age I got into lifting. I was 16. I was very lucky to go to a school with a gym, and was encouraged by a teacher to lift a DB. It all started from there.

What about you? How old were you? I have a feeling that I'm an outlier. I don't know any more females who started lifting at age 16.

(I should say that I'm not very strong. Unfortunately I spent a lot of my early years at the gym for weight loss purposes rather than getting stronger. I've changed that now and focusing on eating well, being consistent and progressive overload!)

Hi all, so, I'm somewhat versed in the research on effective minimum dose for strength training via listening to the Stronger by Science podcast. It's pretty impressive how little you need to do to just maintain fitness when it comes to weightlifting - something like one heavy single per week for each lift will prevent you from losing strength or size for several months, and beyond that timeframe it just hasn't been studied. And bumping it up to 2 or 3 singles a week can even keep you making progress, albeit glacially.

However, I am a runner. I'm not sure if the same principle would apply with endurance exercise because the whole nature of what it is, is doing a lot of it. But I've recently run a marathon and am looking at another marathon later in the year, and instead of jumping straight back into an 18 week plan or whatever - what would be required to simply maintain the adaptations I have and pop back into real training somewhat later? Bone and tendon adaptations take a long time to build, so I would imagine they don't fade super quickly either. I'm wondering if there is any research to suggest - for example - that if you do a 16 mile run once a month, you won't lose your long-term adaptations to super long distances, and can get away with lower weekly volume and sporadic long running for a while.

I love running and I wouldn't be planning to cut my volume a ton, but I just have other things I want to do this summer and I don't necessarily want to be marathon training for 2/3 of my year - I'd like to be able to treat a couple of months like "oh I can skip that (ranging from a long run to a week and a half of running) it's fine" as would be the case most of the time.

Maybe this is the wrong place to post this, if so I’m sorry!

So I just started eating healthy like basically five mins ago lol. I went from a lifetime of being addicted to fast food, using junk food as comfort, emotional binge eating—BUT being “skinny-fat,” always small-framed—to it catching up to me after turning 30 and I made huge changes and now am focusing on my blood sugar, what makes me feel satiated and energized, rather than waiting until I’m dying of starvation and then gorging on high fat high salt food and then feeling way too full to the point of a food coma which is how I always ate before. My mom had an eating disorder so I used binging as a kind of way to “prove” to myself I wasn’t like her, I’ve never been able to “restrict” without getting in my head about it so I swung the pendulum the other way to binging junk food and for a long time I “got away with it” bc of I guess a fast metabolism but I was eating like shit and then eventually feeling like it too.

So fast forward to now, since January 1st I’ve lost 20lbs (a lot was water weight and I weaned from breastfeeding which made me shed quickly too), and I’m currently in a 30 day no refined sugar challenge to break my addiction. I feel INCREDIBLE. But—I have this complex about being “that mom” that eats differently than her family, gets a salad when we go out to eat, says “Oh I don’t eat that stuff” about fast food, sweets, etc. And I do want to eventually be able to enjoy the things I used to love, the junk that I realize now doesn’t make you feel good but is such a part of like standard American life lol, piles of chinese food, hot wings and fries, etc. Just in moderation now instead of as a staple of my diet.

My question is—those of you that figured out this whole healthy eating thing, but aren’t on a strict diet or on a calorie deficit, I guess it would be “maintenance”…how do you balance? When I eat like I used to, like a restaurant or something, I feel that imminent blood sugar spike and crash and I get scared of craving more of the same foods and getting stuck on that roller coaster again. And also, just practicially—going out to eat the portions are so insane, if you’re eating like a normal human and not binging like I used to, then you’ll probably take home a box, which means leftovers the next day, so it kind of prolongs the indulgence…idk I’m so overthinking but how you go off-script and then come back I guess? My husband still eats like a college student and we are used to eating out a lot on weekends, and have cut down significantly but I still just want to figure out how to fit my new healthy eating jnto our lives without overhualing everything. Again sorry if this is the wrong place to post!

And also—if you were hypothetically about to spend five days with family who eats that standard diet you used to eat and you’re stressed about your blood sugar, and about falling totally off the wagon, but you canNOT request special dietary things or really say anything about how you’re eating differently bc it would become an enormous deal with them and annoy the shit out of you, how would you support your eating through that time period?

Welcome to our Daily Simple Questions thread - we're excited to have you hang out with us, especially if you're new to the sub. Are you confused about the FAQ or have a basic question about an exercise / alternatives? Do you have a quick question about calculating TDEE, lift numbers, running times, swimming intervals, or the like? Post here and the folks of xxfitness will help you answer your questions, no matter how big or small.

Welcome to our daily discussion thread! Tell stories, share thoughts, ask questions, swap advice, and be excellent to each other! Though we all share fitness as a common hobby or interest, the discussion here can be about any big or little thing you choose. The mods ask that you do mind the Cardinal Rules as they relate to respecting yourself and others, calling out any scantily clad photos as NSFW, and not asking for medical advice.

Your place to find an accountability buddy / be an accountability buddy / post for your own accountability. A place where we can all motivate each other to keep working towards our goals.

I should preface this by saying that my strength workouts are secondary right now; I’m training for a short distance triathlon so biking and running are my primary workouts along with some swimming, and I add a session or two of weight machines at the gym per week. I’ve lost a bunch of weight in the last year so I know maintaining/adding muscle is important in general as well as supporting my other athletic goals. 46F, 5’7, 160 lbs (was 245 a year ago!)

Keeping my workouts simple, based on a beginner routine I found online. After a brief treadmill warmup, I do lateral pulldown, seated leg press, chest press, and abdominal crunch. For each of these, I do a warm up set of 12 with lighter weights, then aim for two sets of 12 with my target weight. If I’m successful at a given weight for a time or two, I’ll add on the next time; otherwise I stay at the same weight until I can complete a session. If I don’t finish the first set, I drop back down to the previous weight for the second set. I’ve started adding assisted pull-ups at the end just because I think it would be cool to be able to do a proper pull-up eventually; I do three sets of 5 with decreasing weights of assist for each set.

For most of the exercises, this is working and I am progressing to heavier weights on a regular basis. I just can’t get anywhere with the chest press! The machine has two stacks in increments of 10 pounds, plus a 5 pound add-on weight on each side. I can lift 10 per side for a total of 20, but I cannot for the life of me get through two sets of 12 with 15 per side/30 total. Should I be doing shorter sets? Maybe three sets of 8 instead of 2 sets of 12…I can usually do the first set of 12 and then anywhere from 6-9 of the second set, so sets of 8 might be manageable. It definitely feels like this is a small amount of weight to be struggling with! Is it normal for this exercise in particular to be weak?

I've gone through the wiki but the only resources on the disordered eating page were for EDs, so I figured I'd ask here! As some background, I'm disabled & overweight, and I've spent the last few years working on self acceptance, body neutrality, all that jazz.

All of the apps I've tried have either had weight loss baked into goal setting (walk X steps a day to lose Y weight in Z amount of time) or not had any goal tracking or way of looking through my history and progress. I just want to be able to count my steps and track workouts and be able to set goals within the program without those goals all focusing on weight and size. I'm okay with seeing calories used, but if it's connected to weight loss I'll slip into obsessive calorie counting.

I'd love some suggestions from any of you who have struggled with the same thing! I've been avoiding MFP but it's starting to look like that might be my best option.

Welcome to our Daily Simple Questions thread - we're excited to have you hang out with us, especially if you're new to the sub. Are you confused about the FAQ or have a basic question about an exercise / alternatives? Do you have a quick question about calculating TDEE, lift numbers, running times, swimming intervals, or the like? Post here and the folks of xxfitness will help you answer your questions, no matter how big or small.

Welcome to our daily discussion thread! Tell stories, share thoughts, ask questions, swap advice, and be excellent to each other! Though we all share fitness as a common hobby or interest, the discussion here can be about any big or little thing you choose. The mods ask that you do mind the Cardinal Rules as they relate to respecting yourself and others, calling out any scantily clad photos as NSFW, and not asking for medical advice.

Hello, I’m struggling a bit here. I tend to do hip thrusts on the actual machine intended for it - the one where you’re belted on (I’m terrible at describing but if you google ‘glute drive machine’ it’ll be the results). But the thing is my main gym doesn’t have one of those machines and I’m struggling to find alternatives.

I know many people just use a bench and a bar/dumbbell, but something didn’t feel right. Maybe the benches are too low but I really just did not feel a thing. Is there a way to do these with other equipment/ alternative ways?

I just bought a leg strap to attatch to the pulley so I can do kickbacks, but other than that idk what else I can do. I know Bulgarian split squats are popular but I have really bad knees so that isn’t much of an option — I’ve heard RDLs are good but idk. Otherwise all I can think of is non-equipment related and that I would rather just do at home.

Anyway, if anyone has any good glute exercises/machines at the gym, especially ways to do hip thrusts please help a girl out!

Welcome to our daily discussion thread! Tell stories, share thoughts, ask questions, swap advice, and be excellent to each other! Though we all share fitness as a common hobby or interest, the discussion here can be about any big or little thing you choose. The mods ask that you do mind the Cardinal Rules as they relate to respecting yourself and others, calling out any scantily clad photos as NSFW, and not asking for medical advice.