Hi,
so I have been a member of 2p2 for some time, a long time lurker in h&f and thought about setting up my own log for a while, but decided to create this under a separate account for the sake of privacy/anonymity. I also feel more comfortable posting pictures that way and I think they might be a good way to track progress.

Some info about me
I am in my thirties & have an office job, so I spend the days mainly sitting. Although I wouldn't call myself athletic I have tried a lot of different sports so far in my life, but am not very active at the moment, I do yoga once a week and some jogging from time to time (not at all regularly during winter).
I am 1,78m and weigh 78,5 kg.



Goals

• lose bodyfat (mainly arms, butt and belly/hips)
• gain upper body strength
• get toned overall
• (lose some weight, but I have no specfic goal for that, I guess 70kg would be a decent weight for my height)

Excercise Plan

• 3-5 workouts per week from the 12 weeks bodyweight exercise plan by Runtastic Results (not meaning to advertise, just chose it over Freeletics because of the price and because I use the Runtastic tracker anyway and get upgraded to Premium for that by buying the plan)
• Yoga once a week
• cardio (jogging outside or treadmill/elliptical at gym) twice a week

Eating
be more conscious about what I eat; avoid sugar, keep an eye on macros, generally avoid processed foods. I track what I eat with pen and paper, to at least be able estimate macros and calories, so I won't go into much detail about this here, unless slowing progress makes me question anything in my diet.

Day 0
Today I did the evaluation on the app, which is the base for the plan.
Basically you have to answer some general questions about your fitness level and then do as many burpees, situps, squats and knee push-ups (I guess fit people have to do regular push-ups) as you can in two minutes.
I did 27 burpees, 35 sit-ups, 67 squats and 32 knee push-ups.

After that I got my personal plan for next week. You can choose whether you want to 3,4 or 5 workouts before every week, I chose 4 for now.

My first workout consists of five rounds of squats, push-ups, jumping jacks and leg raises (reps vary per round) I might start after todays cardio.

17/01/2016
cardio slow intervalls on the treadmill, 30 min

week 1, workout 1
warmup 4:40min
round 1: 30 jumping jacks/30 knee push-ups/30 squats/30 leg raises
round 2: as above but 20/20/20/20
round 3: 20/20/20/20
round 4: 20/10/10/10
round 5: 20/10/10/10

the whole thing took me 17:21 min, there were no breaks scheduled in the workout, but I had to take some, mainly while doing the push-ups and leg raises.

tomorrow is yoga day, probably will do the other "results" workouts tuesday, thursday and saturday.

You might want to check out this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ZuzkaLight/videos It's mostly bodyweight stuff.

Good luck

That runtastic results app seems to have that really gimmicky advertising where its just a bunch of false promises. (They all do this but it just raises red flags for me)

I don't know anything about programming workouts and you may know what I'm about to say already but its worth keeping in mind that losing weight/body fat will mostly be a function of diet. Exercise plays a pretty small role comparatively.

That said, there will be strength/heart health benefits to your program so it could be great for you. I just feel a lot of the claims made to sell these sorts of products do more harm than good.

GL.

thanks a lot! I subscribed and will keep them in mind for days where I don't have scheduled workout.

thank you for the detailed comment. Sure it is gimmicky advertising. To be fair though they don't advertise any instant fat loss and in the app they stress that diet is a big factor (you also unlock additional info on health&diet each week). So I guess it is mainly my naivety that I thought the programm plus a bit of cardio and conscious eating will make me achieve all my goals

I guess I will just continue logging what I eat for the week and review it on the weekend.

What do you mean when you say that a lot of claims actually harm?

thank you!

I just mean harm in the sense that it adds confusion. If a person follows the program diligently and then doesn't see the results that were promised it just leads to feelings of frustration/hopelessness.

The idea behind these '12 week' or '90 day' programs also on some level seem to implicetly seduce people with the idea that temporary 'struggle' will lead to long term results when that's just not true either.

I really don't mean to say that the program itself is bad at all though. Assuming you are looking to stick with body weight stuff it all looks fine to my eyes. (I'm sure most other people here can give you better advice in that area though)

A lot of this is just my reflexive hate/distrust of most of the fitness industry coming out. You will reach you body fat goal with a better diet and you will add strength with this program.

Good luck!

thank you, Madcap! I don't expect to be shred after 12 weeks, but still hope and think something good will come out of it, even if it just being a bit stronger!
also after your earlier comment I now decided to start logging my food with myfitnesspal, because pen&paper became a bit inconvenient, but more about diet on the weekend.

exercise-wise:

18/01/2016
yoga 75 min
was quite sore after that first workout the day before, but it felt like the stretching helped a bit.

19/01/2016
week 1, workout 2
4.40 min warm-up then
4 rounds of
50 jumping jacks, 15 knee push-ups, 25 mountain climbers, 45 sec wall sits, 10 knee up-downs
with 30 sec breaks inbetween rounds (total 18:09 min)

i really hate mountain climbers, apart from those it was alright.

GOAT name

mountain climbers... more like toe crushers imo

ty
definitely more appropriate!


20/01/2016
cardio slow intervalls on treadmill: 30 min


21/01/2016
week 1, workout 3
warm-up 4:40
three rounds of
40 high knees, 40 rockstars*, 20 burpees

*similar to jumping jacks, but you move your legs back and forth and the arms up and down in a half circle in front of your body

although this only took 10:00 min in total and looked easy-peasy before I started, it was quite exhausting. Close race between mountain climbers and burpees for least favourite exercise, but I am not doing it for the fun, am I.

22/01/2016
cardio intervalls on treadmill 40 min


It's early days, but so far I enjoy this little project and am motivated. One thing that concerns me is the length of the workouts (or lack thereof). My scheduled workouts so far this week (one to come tomorrow) took me roughly 45 min (plus 5 min warm-up each) and that is not because I am so quick. If the workouts next week are equally short I will do some additional stuff. But maybe it's just the first week where they don't want to scare people of.

I have also reduced my calorie intake to 1400 calories (MFP suggestion) since Tuesday (added calories for the above workouts/cardio though), so far it doesn't feel too restricting, but I have only been eating out twice since then and not really looked too closely into macros.

23/01/2016
week 1, workout 4
3 rounds of
15 high plank knee to elbow, 30 walking lunges, 10 burpees, 50 punches, 20 sit-ups, 10 knee push-ups

16:53 min plus warm-up
I liked this one as the exercises were very varied and targeted different muscle groups.


Food wise

As said I started logging food on Tuesday (myfitnesspal suggests a daily allowance of 1.400 cal for a constant weight loss of 0,5kg/week), but so far didn't really consider macros as I am not sure what to look for. Looking at the numbers I will need to up my protein intake quite some.

Tuesday: allowance 1588 cal (1400 cal plus 188 cal workout)
I ate 1574 cal; 186g carbs, 54g fat, 65g protein

Wednesday: allowance 1714 cal (1400 cal plus 314 cal workout)
I ate 1599 cal; 204g carbs, 55g fat, 59g protein

Thursday: allowance 1504 cal (1400 plus 104 workout)
I ate 1494 cal; 188g carbs, 48g fat, 44g protein

Friday: allowance 1818 (1400 plus 418 workout)
I ate 1753 cal; 124g carbs; 93g fat; 59g protein

Yesterday I went out for brunch and failed at logging it. I ate very small portions of various foods and not a lot as it was a whole food&veggie brunch and i feel those fill you up quite fast. I didn't bother to log the rest of the day as I couldn't estimate the numbers for brunch, but I only had some nuts, fruit and a chickpea/feta/greens salad for the rest of the day.
btw when I tried to find out if other people struggle to log calories for brunch too I came across this http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2485270,00.asp


Weight
Sunday weigh-in: 76,9kg
+/- for the week: -1,6kg
+/- since start: -1,6kg

24/01/2016
cardio 40 min on the treadmill (roughly 400 cal)
Felt very tired, although I slept enough. Very much looking forward to Yoga today.

Food daily allowance 1800 cal (1400 plus 400)
i ate 1495; 202g carbs, 56g fat, 43g protein

I got myself some protein powder on the weekend as it seems the easiest way to get more protein in (I am a vegetarian and don't like milk, rarely eat eggs), will start that tonight.

We generally don't recommend adding on extra calories for exercise allowance, instead treating it as a bonus. Partly because the methods of estimating calorie burn from cardio generally over-estimates (ie that 400 burn in 40 minutes is almost certainly too high).

thank you for your input, I basically just went with what MyFitnessPal suggested and I find it quite logical! Out of interest: when you say "we" is that this forums general opinion?

if the main concern is that cardio numbers are not accurate, then I'd personally rather subtract a certain percentage of that value/make it right than not adding it at all (fwiw I already subtracted approximately 10% of the number my running app gave me for the run ), but maybe there are other reasons that convince me.

25/01/2016
yoga 75min

food
1.435 cal; 147g carbs, 59g fat; 73g protein

protein shake (with rice milk) was alright, will try it with some frozen berries next time.

I'm not sure i'll be able to explain it properly, but it's an accuracy issue. GPS technology combined with a heart rate monitor can probably get you reasonably close, but it's still not going to be 100% accurate. There are a large amount of variables that come in to pay when calculating caloric burn. Some calculators attempt to address a few of them. Others just say the heck with it.

There is also the question of how does the calculation take in to account how many calories you'd burn just sitting in a chair watching Netflix? Or the diminished returns on cardio (over time, as you get better at it, you either have to do more of it, or do it faster/harder in order to get the same return).

If your calculator doesn't consider weight/age/heart rate/previous conditioning/etc then I wouldn't even remotely consider using it for additional calories.

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/11/h...on-garmin.html

Is an interesting article on how Garmin products calculate calories, and the expected accuracy. A Gen2 First Beat calculation using GPS/Heart Rate/ETC is only accurate to within 7-10%.

I prefer to use the cardio I do as a bonus, unless I'm training in a manner that I feel reasonably comfortable with accuracy, or need a refuel for performance purposes, I don't worry about the calories or eat anything extra as a result. A 2 hour XC ski session only racks up 700 calories on Garmin depending on intensity. Going the same length/track, but say 20 minutes faster gets me an additional 80 calories burned for 780.

A common weight loss error occurs when people read the treadmill and it tells them 400 calories burned. They know nothing of the methodology used for the calculations and assume that it is correct. Often times they are not even remotely accurate. The machine says 400, they go out and eat 300. in reality they burned 200 calories, and now they are gaining instead of losing.

God that's an awful wall of text.

Cliffs:
Don't use your calories burned as an excuse to eat more. The caloric burn tends to be greatly over estimated.

hey, thank you very much for the detailed explanation (not an awful wall of text at all, will have to check that link tomorrow though, it's late over here), I am a bit more convinced now

No, but seriously, as said before, I am well aware those trackers are not totally accurate, I probably just adopted that common - and convenient - misconception from diet advice in magazines etc that you just look at a table/app/list and add some calories to your allowance, when there is actually way more thought&science to it. Will stick with 1.4K from now on, just to be safe.

thanks again and good night

Sounds to me like an appeal to authority!

Well, the smart people in it, at least.

Other than what w said, I'd just let the scale at the end of the week be the guide (and even then week to week fluctuations can be normal, especially for women). If you are losing weight too quickly, bump up your allowance a touch, if you're not losing it adjust downwards. It's not like you can be 100% accurate measuring calories in or calories out, so being consistent is the most important aspect.

yeah, I will see what happens when I stick to 1.4K max, thank you!

26/01/2016
week 2, workout 1 (I will only do 3 this week as I am quite busy the next few days)
5x 10 pike push-ups, 45sec low plank, 40 high knees, 45 sec wall sit, 15 tricep dips

the pike push-ups were too much for me although only 10 reps per round.

1.342 cal; 118g carbs, 64g fat; 66g protein

GL OP on your plans.

ty!

27/01/2016
cardio 40 min on treadmill
added some sit-ups & tricep dips after that just to tackle two of my weakest muscle groups

1.361 cal; 164g carbs, 44g fat, 69g protein

thinking about trying intermittent fasting soon (leaving out breakfast).

28/01/2016
week 2, workout 2
round 1: 30 jumping jacks, 30 knee push-ups, 30 squats, 30 leg raises
round 2: 20/20/20/20
round 3: 20/20/20/20
round 4: 20/10/10/10
round 5: 20/10/10/10

First time I really needed to kick myself in the butt to work out, but it felt good once I started. Also registered for a 10K run in May with a friend, having those fix dates keeps me motivated to work out.

1.229 calories; 117g carbs, 52g fat, 63g protein

Skipped breakfast because I had some appointments in the morning, worked well, didn't feel like I needed to compensate with a big lunch etc

You should eat more protein if possible.

yes, thank you for the reminder!
With skipping breakfast I should have enough room in my allowance to add the protein shake for a bit of extra protein as I struggle to get enough in with my diet.

dear h&f, I have been a sinner, although the day started off well:

29/01/2016
week 2, workout 3
four rounds of 15 knee push-ups, 20 jump squats, 15 knee up-downs

did the workout in the morning as I knew I wouldn't be able to do it in the evening and it was a quick one. had a protein shake after that and late lunch (chickpea salad) at work, snacked on some veggies and had a bun before leaving to a workshop. i was on track calorie wise and had some room for drinks after the workshop.

went out for drinks with friends, had some vodka tonic which was within my allowance, but somehow when we left the bar, decided with one friend to have a last drink at another bar. needless to say we had several last drinks there and I didn't bother logging it. had a great night though, so yolo, I guess?! on the other hand I feel bad about it and am anxious about weighing tomorrow.

Eh, one blowout day or meal isn't going to kill you. There are "experts" that will even tell you one day or meal gone completely off the rails is just fine. Try not to make a habit of it. And if you do go off the rails, don't let the cheat meal turn in to an excuse to blow off the rest of the day or week.