How often do you train?

[Lilmy87]

I run approximately every other day. Even when training for an event I run no more frequently than that, as rest days are always important, I believe. I just go further.

[Timber]

I Workout 5 days a week and I ride my bike to work 20 miles a day April - November. I do have my own gym in my home tough. I workout at 4:30 am and I also do sprints on my treadmill. Diet is the most important part of working out. I too do not enjoy eating. I can easily go all day without eating if I don't pay attention.

[Seraph]

It is interesting how many people train hard but have only a passing interest in food. I spoke to a few of my gym buddies about this and it seems to be a common phenomena. To generalise, the response from my buddies was generally that food was a fuel to build a body. It was better to make what you were eating taste appetising, but mainly because that meant you could eat more, to grow more, rather than for pleasure in the food itself.
I think I would go along with this. Food is something I have to partake of every 3 hours or so in order to help my body grow, the gym is something I have to partake of 3-4 times a week for the same reason. They are steps on a journey rather than a goal in themselves.

[closet coffee guy]

Yeah you're absolutely right, food to me is not a pleasure rather a need to maintain myself. lol candy and coffee are pleasures though ^_^ but the way it was for me, i didn't eat alot at all until i trained alot more. it's interesting to see that others are the same way

[Timber]

I wish it was easier to eat, Protein drinks are a big part of my diet but in the last year I have been pretty bad about eating regularly.

[matty7]

i do go to the gym around 5 times in a 10 day week for me because of my shift pattern - i have the opposite prob of u guys where i love food and i have to restrain myself or it would be pizzas every day - i try to eat healthy but indulge too but in moderation, if friends are havin pizza then i will too - obviously im not gonna be supper toned doin this but i love gonna the gym and i do enough to be in shape so im happy

[Timber]

Drinking beer is probably the biggest obstacle in maintaining a cut body. Getting you body fat down so your cut & see your abs is 1 thing. Keeping them and maintaining low body fat is another thing all together. Alcohol pretty much has to be eliminated from your diet in order to keep your percentage low. You can actually look cut as high as 11% but to be really cut with paper thin skin you need to get below 7%. That is very difficult & extremely unhealthy to maintain. I tend to keep between 9 & 11% most of the time and run my lowest percentage in the summer during swim suit season. I have been 7% but only for maybe 2 weeks. 9% is much more manageable.

I like to do sprints on my treadmill to pull my body fat down. I do high intensity cycles for 10 minutes after lifting. You will burn more body fat in 10 minutes of high intensity cycles than a 45 minute jog on your treadmill. Walk for 2 minutes, sprint at full speed for 1 minute walk for 2. Do 3 cycles be sure to clip you failsafe doing this routine. I was never concerned about falling on my treadmill until I started doing sprints, you do not want to fall on a treadmill that does not stop running.

[fjp999]

I think someone mentioned earlier on that in order to lose weight you do need to eat enough, often enough. The theory seems to be that not eating enough encourages the body to store its intake as fat.

[COLOR="Purple"]I have always wondered about this as it just didnt make any sense to me... so when marshy posted it I decided to do a google and found this:

The Ultra-Extreme Calorie Restriction Diet Test -- New York Magazine

A really wild article about low calorie living and how extremely healthy these folk are.[/COLOR]

[fredv3b]

I think someone mentioned earlier on that in order to lose weight you do need to eat enough, often enough. The theory seems to be that not eating enough encourages the body to store its intake as fat.

Its certainly true that when your calorie intake is only just about enough your body will stop/slow down non-vital metabolic processes (e.g. the constant breakdown and rebuilding of bone, women become temporarily infertile, etc.) so that the energy saved is available for vital processes or hunting something that will provide a decent meal, this may mean temporarily storing that energy as fat, but it shouldn't be noticeable. My personal hunch is that the eating enough often enough to loose weight works by stopping you snacking and craving calorie rich foods e.g. chocolate bars.

The Ultra-Extreme Calorie Restriction Diet Test -- New York Magazine

A really wild article about low calorie living and how extremely healthy these folk are.

Calorie restriction at the level these people talk about is enough to make a serious restriction on what they can physically do, they simply don't have the energy for large amounts of physical exercise, which begs the question do they really live longer or does it just seem that way.

[fjp999]

Calorie restriction at the level these people talk about is enough to make a serious restriction on what they can physically do, they simply don't have the energy for large amounts of physical exercise, which begs the question do they really live longer or does it just seem that way.

[COLOR="Purple"]When I first read the article I was a little surprised by their definition of extreme caloric count of 1800 (vs 2500 for average adult male) which the (male) author was consuming.

I am certain that while attempting to loose weight from Jr. High thru High school I ate well under 2500 cals. I started to walk long distances and then run the hills of Pennsylvania thru these years. I lost the weight I wanted to and (if anyone who has carried a large amount of weight knows) it became a life style change. I continued living like this thru uni... Lower calorie with jogging, dancing, studies, multiple jobs, leadership positions etc etc etc.

I finally found a book that described what I was looking for in a dietary guideline. Pritikin - the story I remember is that he was a wealthy medical doctor. He got cancer and dedicated the rest of his life to finding a diet based, life longevity recipe. His findings were based on a Japanese diet and African diet (not sure if he says which country in Africa). The key is FRESH FRESH FRESH. It also depends on what kind of lifestyle you had. If you were a farmer you could pretty much eat as much as you wanted but if you sat at a desk then you had to watch the food you consumed.

sorry, back to topic above...

from the article:

Consider those dimensions for a moment. Divide Michael’s weight by the square of his height and you get a body-mass index of 15.6. Compare that with the minimum BMI of 18 recently decreed by the organizers of the Madrid Fashion Week—who cited the World Health Organization’s definition of 18.5 as the lower limit of healthy weight and offered medical assistance to any models who couldn’t meet it—and you might wonder how Michael can stand up in the morning, let alone jog twenty miles a week. But jog he does, and if the results of both his latest physical and the latest CR research are anything to go by, Michael is probably one of the healthiest 35-year-olds on the planet.

It begs the question where some of these numbers come from... and if most even know what they put into their bodies... It seems that they change the blood pressure numbers about every decade - to make more profits for big pharma??? new data??? Sometimes the "practice" of science/medicine is not so clear [/COLOR]