IronDave's Forum Posts

Lifting weights will not really get you to lose weight. Cardio definitely will, but you’ll need to do at least 30 minutes of cardio for it to be effective (try 40 to 45 minutes minimum). If you can do intervals, that’ll be even better.

But the comments here are right. If you eat more calories than you burn, you’ll gain weight. Unless you’re seriously bodybuilding (>2 hours of weight lifting a day), don’t expect to gain muscle mass (at least not that much). Gaining muscle mass is tough, you really need to lift heavy and a lot. So if you see you scale go up, unfortunately there a big chance it’s fat your getting…

The other comment about eating healthy and moderaltely being a lifestyle and not a diet is very wise. You really need to figure that out and don’t see it as dieting but as the correct way to eat. You can still treat yourself once a week but not once a day.

Keep on the going to the gym, work out on a regular basis, cut down on fatty and sugary food, and you’ll do more than OK. Good luck and keep us posted!

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / Gaining weight even though working out?

I agree with you guys about lifting weights and losing weight, especially doing intervals and high numbers of reps. Although it’s not cardio, but it’s close to it for me. Cardio to me, is any exercice involving lower intensity for the muscles and higher intensity for the heart. So you might do that on a treadmill or with small weights.

You’re right Sixpack, pure cardio may make you lose muscle, particulary the upper body if you’re running or cycling since it involves little of the upper body muscles. That’s why you should always keep on lifting weights to avoid losing muscles.

I’m no doctor, I’m only telling here what I experienced, what I read and what I came to conclusion from my own experience. Sawolf01 is absolutely right, it all depends on the person, so what might be true to someone is not always true to someone else.

When I say that 30 minutes is the minimum when it comes to cardio and losing fat, once again it came from my experience and the information I could gathered. From what I know, 30 minutes is the amount of time before the calories you burn through exercice are actually calories from your fat. Doing intervals should help burning fat calories faster.

PS: I’m not trying to defend my opinions, I’m just stating what I know (which might not always be true or accurate). So I really appreciate any thoughts and comments. This is defenitely part of the experience and that will help us all understand better how the body works and how to work out the most efficient way.

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / Gaining weight even though working out?

About tracking sleep, I have a watch that does that (got it for my birthday from my wife last year).
It’s called the SleepTaracker (http://www.sleeptracker.com/).

Not only does it records you sleep paterns (that you can download to your PC), but it also monitors the best time to wake you up. You set up a time and a window, and it will beep or vibrate at the best time around the time you selected and in the window you set.

It’s a little bit bulky but besides that it’s pretty acurate. It’s funny how already awake you feel when it rings (you know, that feelling you have that you’re awake without actually being awake).

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / FitBit

Hi Miraj,

I’ve been asking myself the same question on how to be able to gain mass and cut down at the same time. I couldn’t find an answer so far. The only way I found was to have period of time gaining mass (long and hard to do, and comes with BF), and then a period of time cutting BF.

When I’m not actually in a period where I’m cutting down, I keep on doing lots of cardio to burn fat (alway after doing weight lifting, to keep the energy for mass gaining). I’m usually able to keep my BF steady, but muscle gain takes lots of time.
When I’m not cutting, I try to keep on doing some weight lifting, so I don’t lose muscles (lots of cardio can burn muscle).

The information I gathered over the web seems to go that way. Apparently that’s the way the body is: you can’t really burn fat and build muscle at the same time. It’s like the body can do one or the other, but not both.

I’m still open for any ideas and suggestions.

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / How to bulk up the right way

I took a quick look at your workout log. I found out that you do a lot of different exercices. I wish I could say the same. I usually do a lot less (I can’t find the energy or the time do to more). But I usually try to light heavier and try to do more sets or more reps. From what I know, building muscle goes through lifiting heavy and bringing the muscle to failure. So that’s what I try to do by putting more weights and trying to do reps up until my muscle can’t anymore.
When I do that, I feel that I’m gaining more muscles.

Once again the information I have and what I say here is purely based on my own experience (or lack of sometimes) and things that I have read and gathered around the web or elsewhere. It is not based on scientific facts, so don’t take anything I say for granted, so try things on your own and make your own opinion.

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / How to bulk up the right way

I think “Miles traveled” show the total of miles done whatever the activity might be as long as it’s a distance activity (running, biking, swimming, ...). But I would believe whent counting the mileage on a challenge, only the exact activity set ut for that challenge will count. So I’d say that putting miles on a treadmill would not count in the challenge. But I’d say it defenitely counts for the challenge, so you would need to add them as “running”.

Topic: Fitness Challenges / Run 100 Miles by Gyminee

I entered a wrong figure in my swimming. I typed in 1200 to enter 1200m, but I didn’t realize that it was by default in km. So I corrected it, but it seems that the wrong distance got recorded in the challenge… so my 1st place is not right. My distance should be 6.7 miles or so at the moment.

Topic: Fitness Challenges / Swim the English Channel by Gyminee

Hi,

I reported my swim distances today, but I got it wrong since I put 1200 and hit Submit, I didn’t realize that it was recorded in km (of course I did not swim 1200km, but 1200m).
So I updated the info to put ‘m’ instead of ‘km’.
I’m in the Swim the Channel Challenge, so the distance I swan got recorded in that challenge. But it seems that the first distances I entered got recorded instead of the one I corrected. So now I’m at 1st place, where I shouldn’t be and it says that the challenge was completed, which I didn’t.
Any way to correct this?

Thanks!

Topic: Support/Help / Correcting data on an excercise, does not seem to be corrected in linked challenge.

Thanks StephenB. I guess 6.7 should be right (I’m counting in meters, so that was an aproximate conversion, but I’m guess we can all live with a few tenth of miles aproximation).

Topic: Fitness Challenges / Swim the English Channel by Gyminee

Thanks StephenB. Thumbs up on the fast support!

Topic: Support/Help / Correcting data on an excercise, does not seem to be corrected in linked challenge.

@BrieCheeze: no snow so far here, we usually get snow later and not that much, usually the ground is only covered up with snow for a couple of days then it melts away pretty fast or get wiped off by the rain. I could live with not running for a couple of days… I guess, though running in the snow should be fun (at least once or twice, maybe not always).

I don’t think I’ll be running today, but I’ll probably run tomorrow… I’ll try to do the 9 miles I have left to reach the 100 ;)

Topic: Fitness Challenges / Run 100 Miles by Gyminee

In the profile, you input your age. Wouldn’t be simpler to input your birth date instead and have the system figure out your age?
The birth date does not change, as the age changes every year (yep, shocking truth, I know). So by inputing the birth date, you would’nt have to manually change your age every year.
And Gyminee would know your birthday…

Topic: Feature Discussion / Birth date instead of age?

Oups… I meant multi goals for the same activity, sorry (seems I can’t edit the subject of my post)

I noticed you can’t setup more than one challenge per activity. I think it would be nice to be able to do so.

For example, there could be different “term” : short-term goal, mid-term goal, long-term goal…

For instance, when setting up a running goal, I would like to have progressive goals, so I can set up a long term goal which is the final goal I want to reach, but still set up some milesones in between so my goal is not to far out of reach.

Topic: Feature Discussion / Multi challenge for the same activity

Thanks Mario!
Although I didn’t run the time I wanted. My goal was to run 20k under 1:45.
I’m now back to shorter runs but with higher speed, cause I really want to see those times go down.

Topic: Fitness Challenges / Run 100 Miles by Gyminee

I second that. Or even better, show the figure in the preferred units and add the converted unit in parenthesis (so we all know what we’re taking about).

Topic: Feature Discussion / Metrics