Exercising without a gym

[Soonmunn]

Hello all,

 

My previous company has a gym for staff. In my present company, no such facility is available. Other than driving to SAFRA after work, I wonder if anyone here can recommend me a website or exercise routines that doesn't require a gym. My objective is to cut down flab around my abs. And I also keep my arms and legs muscles built up.

 

Thnks.

 

High intensity running on a daily basis is the tried and proven method. If you dont have a gym, get a decent threadmill that will measure the KM, pace, time and calories. A cheaper alternative is to buy a Nike Plus runners watch and chip that will measure all of the above.

 

But its not that simple, running on a daily basis can be lonely and requires lots of discipline. especially when u just start out. Most programmes will aim to achieve a target within say 3 months. That seldom yields permanent and healthy results since the moment you stop, your body reverts to its old form.

 

You need to find your own sustainable pace of running that you can keep up at regularly at least 3-4 times a week. And if you do more than 20km a week please please stay off the roads, get on a decent 400m track or run on an inclined threadmill. This will reduce damage to your knees and ankles even though it may be more boring. To relieve the monotony find a running partner and keep at it.

[Porker]

... only reason is because it is effortless...

 

Nothing is ever achieved without effort.

 

A diet by definition means that it is not enjoyable (or rather not as enjoyable as normal food as some people can take very clean diet all year round).

 

Its a matter of preference so you can disagree with me. No problem at all.

[Porker]

Anyway, have a look at the science first before jumping.

 

BTW your high fat diet is nothing new. It was well documented by Dan Duchaine in his Body Opus diet handbook.

 

And the clean diet advocated by me is based on science as well so I'm not jumping to any conclusion.

 

Bodybuilders follow it religiously. I'm talking about professional level athletes with contest bodyfat percentage of 3-4% max using the clean diet. They would have jumped on the relatively easier high fat diet if it really works that well (who wouldn't wanna eat roast pork and KFC for meals during their contest dieting phase?).

 

In any case this is a serious proper discussion with no ill intent.

[Chickenbackside]

Nothing is ever achieved without effort.

 

A diet by definition means that it is not enjoyable (or rather not as enjoyable as normal food as some people can take very clean diet all year round).

 

Its a matter of preference so you can disagree with me. No problem at all.

Which is exactly why I never used the word "diet" when describing the way I eat.

 

On the contrary, low fat, high carb, moderate protein way of eating was vey difficult for me. I have lost plenty of weight with this method in the past too. But the difference was, I couldn't do it long term, and while I was doing it, it was pretty torturous as I was hungry all the time. Having carbs just made me crave for more carbs. So it fits my personal lifestyle.

 

I don't see any problem with anyone disagreeing with me. However, I do find it somewhat disconcerting when someone says I "have no discipline", especially since you already know it is a legitimate way of eating. It is actually much more convenient to eat the way you advocate on a daily basis. I have to shop at specific places, pay more for food and spend a lot more time preparing it. Luckily the health benefits, taste and feeling of satiety of my time and efforts are well worth it.

 

Anyway, there are many paths to the goal. Let's just say the Paleolithic way of eating is just one of them.

 

P.S. KFC is a big no no in a paleo lifestyle. Hydrogenated vegetable oils which are used to fry the chicken should be banned from human consumption.

 

 

[Porker]

Diet aside (you have your preference and I will not stop you from it)... exercise is just as important. It is a lifestyle change to change the way you look. I feel you do not engage in sufficient exercise from your previous post so you may consider upping that.

[Chickenbackside]

Yes, bro, I second that, it is totally unhealthy to maintain this sort of diet, but bro, different strokes for different folks, if they like it, let it be. Advice given, up to them to take it or leave it.

 

Chickenbackside, don't take offense, just giving pure clean advice, but any diet for a obese person

if followed properly, will get the person to drop a high % in body fat, until they hit their pleatue.

 

I do not take offense at all! In fact I was like you when I was introduced to it! It was ridiculous to me.

 

However, my blood tests after 1 year of eating like this have only proved what I have been physically feeling: great!

 

My doctor was confounded by the test results. He hasn't seen such reversal of ill health, even with the help of drugs, let alone with diet and exercise alone. My parents, both of which were suffering from obesity and hypertension, are now no longer obese and ordered by their doctor to go off their hypertension meds by trying out my style of eating for half a year.

 

Maybe it runs in my family?

 

Some of my friends have lost a lot of weight eating this way too. However, I don't know their lipid profiles or any of their health markers, so I can't comment if their are indeed more healthy. But at least for my own family, our health has been greatly affected, for the better, by way of health screens and blood tests and doctors' consultations.

 

I'm just sharing my own experiences, which are extremely profound to me, so please excuse my enthusiasm.

[Aristotle]

I still prefer my method of carb refeed once a week. Kept me motivated for the weekend carb-up, and also my energy high for the 2-3 times weekly gym workout. To go completely without carbs forever, is a torture to me

[Chickenbackside]

Diet aside (you have your preference and I will not stop you from it)... exercise is just as important. It is a lifestyle change to change the way you look. I feel you do not engage in sufficient exercise from your previous post so you may consider upping that.

Not at all actually. I exercise 6 times a week. Just that none of my exercise sessions involve stepping into a gym and they are very short but very intense. Most people refuse to believe I achieved my physique without going to the gym and lifting weights.

 

Mondays and Fridays are my "heavy pulling/pushing" days, while Tuesday and Saturdays are my legs/jogging days for recovery from the "heavy pulling/pushing" on the previous days. Wednesdays are my HIIT days. Thursdays are my easy days where I just jog.

 

Monday and Friday routine:

1) 60 pull ups split into 4 sets

2) 250 incline push ups split into 5 sets

3) 60 body weight dips split into 4 sets

4) Six 2-minute planks

5) 40 handstand push ups split into 4 sets

 

 

Tuesday and Saturday routine:

1) 6 super sets of 30 prisoner squats > 50 jumping jacks > 20 body weight Bulgarian split squats > 20 burpees > 20 walking lunges

2) Slow jog for 1/2 hour

 

Wednesday routine:

1) 3 circuits of this:

with 2 minute rests in between

2) 1.5 hour slow walk in the afternoon sun

 

Thursday routine:

1) Jog for 45 mins at the fastest pace I can manage to sustain.

 

Sundays are my rest day where I might go for a leisurely swim or ride my bicycle to and from my dinner place. But most times, I just don't exercise at all on Sundays.

 

 

 

[Chickenbackside]

Thanks very much sharing. Please remember to post some links of medical studies or research of this diet (btw is there a name for it?).

Well, some people call it the "paleolithic diet", but I agree with Dr Kurt Harris the most. It is not so much a diet as much as a way of living derived from the evidence seen from medical sciences as related to the history of human kind.

 

The term PaNu was coined by Dr Harris. In his own words:

 

"What is PāNu?

 

PāNu is an approach to living centered on the thesis that the diseases of civilization are largely related to abandonment of the metabolic conditions we evolved under - what I have termed the "evolutionary metabolic milieu" - EM2.

 

Returning to EM2 is not based on paleolithic food re-enactment. You don't have to eat bugs or wooly mammoths. Unlike many popular "diets", it doesn't require a calculator, or even a recipe book once you learn some basic science about food.

 

We can make sense of many of the diseases that are prevalent now and relate them to some simple but profound changes that have occurred with the introduction of agriculture. These changes are related to how the food environment, including it's cultural and biological availability, interacts with the metabolic environment in our bodies.

 

My conception of the EM2 is not derived from a single science or field of inquiry, but draws first on medical sciences like biochemistry and endocrinology, and only then looks back with history, paleoanthropology and archaeology. It is becoming clear now that many of the diseases afflicting humanity are not a natural part of the aging process, but a side effect of technological and other powerful cultural changes in the way we eat and live that have only occurred over the past 10,000 years."

 

Here are some resources that I find particularly useful when I need to see the science:

 

http://www.paleonu.com/

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.fitnessspotlight.com/

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/

http://nephropal.blogspot.com/

http://freetheanimal.com/

http://robbwolf.com/

http://zentofitness.com/

http://drbenkim.com/

http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/

http://www.leangains.com/

http://comfort-eaters-diet.blogspot.com/

http://undoctoredhealth.blogspot.com/

http://www.drbriffa.com/

http://www.westonaprice.org/ABC-s-of-Nutrition/

 

 

Here are some videos that I think make pretty convincing cases:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details....webcastid=21216

 

 

Gary Taubes is especially thought-provoking:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine...ml?pagewanted=1

http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dhm4f3rg...956dm&pli=1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/dietandf...ig-fat-lie.html

Edited January 1, 2010 by Chickenbackside

[Ysc3]

Are there any gym around the East Coast / Changi Road area?

 

i know of 2 public gyms .... Tampines Sports Stadium and Simei Community club.

 

[Topgun]

...

 

Wow! Thanks for all the links. I'll definitely check them out.

 

I think if I go off carbs, my wife will think I'm bonkers! And did you say char siew? And cooking with animal oils ie. lard? I've got to re-read your posts

 

Well over the years I've actually tried a number of times to get to my 'ideal' physique but it's always the last 5kg, or the love handles...maybe it's got to do with genes and body structure too. My dream body is a cut high definition look like Bruce Lee

 

Of course as I get on in years, health objectives and well being are more important than body definition per se. Bonus if can achieve that.

 

For exercise I've been running on and off, most on since secondary school Sometimes do light weights and I picked up cyclying 2 years ago.

 

Thanks again, Chickenbackside!

 

BTW I think we managed to OT this thread. Apologies to the TS?

 

 

[Chickenbackside]

Wow! Thanks for all the links. I'll definitely check them out.

 

I think if I go off carbs, my wife will think I'm bonkers! And did you say char siew? And cooking with animal oils ie. lard? I've got to re-read your posts

 

Well over the years I've actually tried a number of times to get to my 'ideal' physique but it's always the last 5kg, or the love handles...maybe it's got to do with genes and body structure too. My dream body is a cut high definition look like Bruce Lee

 

Of course as I get on in years, health objectives and well being are more important than body definition per se. Bonus if can achieve that.

 

For exercise I've been running on and off, most on since secondary school Sometimes do light weights and I picked up cyclying 2 years ago.

 

Thanks again, Chickenbackside!

 

BTW I think we managed to OT this thread. Apologies to the TS?

Don't listen to me or any of these people. Look at the FACTS on science and biochemistry that have been presented. Then base your choices from there.

 

About your questions, I would personally eat more roasted pork than char siew cos char siew is coated with lots of sugar. Sugar = bad news.

 

Regarding oils, I would use oils that are chemically stable and do not turn rancid easily when subjected to cooking temperatures. This pretty much narrows it down to saturated fats like animal fats, butter, palm or coconut oils.

 

I am pretty confident that you can cut the last 5kg by drastically reducing your carbs. Throw in some high intensity exercises a few times a week and one or two 24-hour fasts and you should be well on your way. Try it for a week. What's the worse thing that can happen?

 

Modern western medicine is great at treating traumatic injuries, but it is woefully deficient at preventing and maintaining good health. It's interesting to see how science is often neglected when it comes to nutrition.

 

For example:

 

Sugar spikes insulin production. Insulin causes your body to stop burning fat and store it, develop diabetes, hypertension, thyroid dysfunction and a host of diseases associated with excessive inulin production or insulin insensitivity.

 

Carbohydrates are sugar molecules that are bonded together. Once it enters your body, carbs are broken down into simple sugar.

 

Therefore carbohydrates and sugar are the similar things at the end of your digestive process.

 

That is a non-negotiable. A fact. No doctor or scientist can or will argue with that. It's been proven and known for many years that it works that way. It is a chapter in biochemistry textbooks that doctors forget cos there are more important things to study, but nontheless, it's there.

 

Yet, carbohydrates (essentially sugar in the end) are at the base of our recommended diet and are supposed to make up the majority of what we eat. Hmm.

 

Does that make logical sense? Doesn't that set us up for ill health? Does that seem to coincide with the obesity trends around the world? Does that seem to explain why the poorer a community, the more obese the people are because the cheapest and most abundant food available are processed carbs and artificial fats?

 

Does it make sense to eat a majority of carbs when physiologically, we can only store around 1600 kcal of glucose at one time (guess where the rest of the carbs go to) and that our bodies are fully capable of making its own glucose from protein and fat?

 

When I was writing my Masters thesis during my university days, we had to attend a course in factual writing, and one of the first things we were taught were:

 

1) What something doesn't cause has nothing to do with what it does cause.

2) How something isn't bad has nothing to do with how good it is.

 

For example, why is smoking bad?

 

A quick google reveals pretty similar finds. 10-15% of smokers MAY eventually develop lung cancer.

 

So smoking MAY cause death.

 

But if you have to state a fact, you would have to say: smoking does not cause death, it increases the risk of death.

 

It's very different from what is stated on cigarette packets (smoking kills you....blah blah blah), which is actually untrue the vast majority of the time.

 

So why all the campaigning against cigarettes for that 10-15% POSSIBILITY (not certainty)? It's because human lives are precious and even 1% risk is unacceptable. By the way, I don't smoke. Just using this for argument's sake.

 

So there is abundant scientific evidence available to us that proves that sugar is bad for the human body and it causes a whole myriad of diseases.

 

So why is it that we are told by our governments to eat more of it? Why do we feed our kids can after can of sugar laden drinks? Why do we eat bowls after bowls of rice?

 

Beliefs and facts are 2 different things.

 

Maybe I'm stupid, maybe I'm crazy, but I can't seem to see any overwhelming evidence that good health can be derived from eating a diet consisting of a majority of sugar (carbs are sugar in the end). I followed my logic, executed the concepts and achieved results that confounded my doctor. So for me, and also those people around me who tried it, it works.

 

Or maybe, we're just physically weird people who do better eating minimal amounts of sugar.

 

Again, don't believe me. Don't believe anyone. Dig a little deeper and study the science. Believe that.

Edited January 2, 2010 by Chickenbackside

[Zealot]

Are there any gym around the East Coast / Changi Road area?

 

why not try the Safra EnergyOne Gym? there's one at tampines.

it's well equipped and not expensive monthly only $30 membership fees.

 

I've joined as a gym member since 31st july, within these 5 months i have reduced my weight from 88kg to 73kg. and i'm 1.71m tall.

no *reading* done on the internet, no special this or special that.... just sensible eating (used to eat until drop dead full lol) and regular treadmill runs and weight training...

 

b4 the gym i tried running around my house on a regular basis, didn't help much , it seems that being in a gym helps me to "focus".

since i'm there just for exercising....

Edited January 2, 2010 by Zealot

[Skunk]

I guess im exactly what anyone shouldn't do LOL

 

I love to exercise, i jog 2.4km, swim 30 mins, brisk walk 30 mins daily and kayak 3 hours once a week....plenty of exercise.

 

But i also drink 4-6 cans of beer daily, eat tons of food.....as a result, I'm gaining roughly 800g every year....and have a layer of lard around my muscles LOL

[Entichers]

bro chickenbackside,

 

then what about say, fruits? apples, oranges etc etc. They do have sugar & carbs in them too right?

Edited January 2, 2010 by Entichers

[Chickenbackside]

bro chickenbackside,

 

then what about say, fruits? apples, oranges etc etc. They do have sugar & carbs in them too right?

Well, yes, that's right. But as long as you don't eat enough of it to spike your insulin levels, that's fine.

 

For me, I eat 12 blueberries a day together with Bulla pure cream or Ayam brand pure coconut cream (YUM!!). Yup, I count them. I count or measure foods that contains sugar or carbs. I would have no hesitation eating an apple or an orange. But I wouldn't eat 4 at a time.

 

That's why cutting out processed foods is so important. You need to eat a big load of whole, natural foods to get the negatives.

 

But no counting or even limiting when it comes to other macronutrients. I just eat til I'm full.

Edited January 2, 2010 by Chickenbackside

[Entichers]

Well, yes, that's right. But as long as you don't eat enough of it to spike your insulin levels, that's fine.

 

For me, I eat 12 blueberries a day together with Bulla pure cream or Ayam brand pure coconut cream (YUM!!). Yup, I count them. I count or measure foods that contains sugar or carbs. I would have no hesitation eating an apple or an orange. But I wouldn't eat 4 at a time.

 

That's why cutting out processed foods is so important. You need to eat a big load of whole, natural foods to get the negatives.

 

But no counting or even limiting when it comes to other macronutrients. I just eat til I'm full.

 

 

ooh alright, thanks for the info!

 

i usually eat berries with greek style yogurt in the mornings

[Chickenbackside]

ooh alright, thanks for the info!

 

i usually eat berries with greek style yogurt in the mornings

Love greek style yoghurt! Farmer's Union brand.

 

I love having mine with freshly ground flaxseed, pumpkin seeds, almonds and brazil nuts.