Was gonna get some steak fajitas but the portion was too large and I was hungry enough to finish it, so I got a burrito bowl instead hoping it’d be less calories than a fajita plate. Pretty thick on lettuce maybe 1.5 cups total of rice and beans on bottom.
I’ve always been very active and played sports or at the very least worked out intensely 4-6 days a week. Every time I go out to eat I seem to be the only one finishing my whole plate at a restaurant. How often do y’all finish your plates at restaurants because I’m the only person im around often that does.
Also do any of y’all purposely order smaller portioned meals so that you aren’t over served and end up eating too much? Whenever I go out to eat I always have enough room to finish whatever I’m served so I avoid places or entrees that are larger (Chinese, fajitas, etc.).
Like I’m confused on how people order a plate of fajitas and get 3 pieces of meat and 1 tortilla down and are ready to het a to-go box, since any time I’m ordering a meal I’m fully expecting that meal to be finished in whole by the time the check comes around.
Is this normal?
Melty mozz, salty turkey, fresh tomato and spinach, rich balsamic, and an herby flair from some basil, this was amazing.
Assemble sandwich with bread of your choice (I like Dave’s bread), lay on 2-3oz turkey (optionally warmed in pan beforehand), a well seasoned sliced of tomato, 1-2oz mozzarella, and about 1/2 a tbsp balsamic glaze. Toast in a pan with olive oil starting on the cheese side to get a good melt going.
Remove and let sit to let everything warm together and let balsamic sink into bread, resulting in a similar texture to honeyed bread
Add a couple eggs to same pan with finely diced spinach and tomato. Scramble diner style. Remove and garnish with some more balsamic glaze and a generous amount of basil.
I track macros and everything pretty strictly but have a rule that I only eat “real meals,” no beige chicken and rice slop around here if I can help it.
Tilapia tacos on corn tortillas served with salsa verde, mashed avocado, lime juice, on a bed of black beans and rice I threw together with whatever I had In fridge (and the rest of the avocado).
Any advice on improvement? I cooked tilapia fillet in air fryer very generously seasoned, flaked it up and place in on three toasted corn tortillas layered with some mashed up avocado (would’ve been guac but I ran out of onion and whatnot the day before lol) and finished with lime juice.
Oatmeal protein pancakes (these were actually pretty meh don’t bother trying the recipe)
Lemon garlic white fish pasta (divine post gym meal):
- 1 serving dry spaghetti (I was hungry I used 1.5), 2 tilapia fillets, onion, garlic, capers, diced tomatoes, lemon juice, olive oil.
- boil pasta, cook fish in pan, remove and flake, add veggies to pan after deglazing with lemon juice, sautee for a bit, add pasta and tomatoes, mix in fish, drizzle with lemon.
Low(er) cal tenders and fries:
- 2 chicken breast strips, bread crumbs, egg, sweet potato, olive oil and spices
- weigh out 1 serving of bread crumbs in one plate and crack and mix up 1 egg into another. Mix spices into bread crumbs. Dunk chicken into egg, then crumbs, then egg, then crumbs (use a dry hand and wet hand!) and air fry with a light spritz of olive oil for about 15 mins.
- cut up sweet potato into thick batons and leave skins on to preserve nutrients, coat with light olive oil, salt, smoked paprika, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes, air fry for about same time as chicken. Soaking the sweet potatoes in ice water and patting dry beforehand will result in a better crisp but will leach some nutrients, so pick what’s more important to you.
Dessert is just a slice of Dave’s bread with some peanut butter and jam
For the sake of accurate TDEE accounting and recovery, should you hit step goal including steps from runs or in exclusion to exercise?
I was walking about 10-12k steps a day recently, however schedule changed and now if I didn’t intentionally go for walks I’d be mostly sedentary. I run 3-4x a week and lift 4x a week. Should I, on run days and lift days, go for a few walks adding up to 10-12k, or should I let runs add to that 10-12k number?
I’m trying to work out what my maintenance is on my given schedule and activity level. Idk if I should treat steps as a background thing that happens any day (meaning run days would end higher at 15-20k or more depending on run) or if I should try to hit that number every day and let runs carry most of the steps. And for the sake of TDEE calculation which is better, a 10-12k weekly average with runs counted in that number, or 10-12k daily walking before any workouts?
I’m trying to maintain or maybe add a little weight slowly right now. I don’t want to risk undereating and losing even more weight or underfueling but I also want to avoid double counting my NEAT. What do y’all do?
TLDR: peripheral fatigue in legs led to abysmal interval performance that barely surpassed my easy pace on normal days. Quads not sore necessarily just no force production despite adequate carbs and sleep and protein. What to do?
In a weird transition week between routines trying to find one that fits my recovery abilities and schedule. Sunday I did a tempo run and this week’s schedule was/is as follows:
Monday: upper + HIIT (skipped HIIT)
Tuesday 8x400
Wednesday lower
Thursday push and easy run
Friday pull
Saturday long run
Sunday rest
I absolutely flopped on today’s intervals. Usually running 5:30-5:45 for my 8x400’s, today I could barely muster 8:30 during them. I tried different format of 1 minute walking instead of 2 minutes jogging which I think may have contributed to it, but my legs felt flat on the warmup. I even failed one of the intervals, having to stop to walk on rep 2.
What should I do today to recover and salvage this? Should I cut intake since effort was down? Should I still get my steps in or should I try to take today as easy as possible?
This run was weird. Yesterday I ate a gargantuan amount of carbs, got great sleep, stretched, did mobility, the works. This morning I woke up and did dynamic warmups, went for a quick walk, caffeinated and had a light carby snack 90 mins before run. I did everything perfectly from recovery to fueling to warmup and it still fell flat.
60cal, 4 carb, 2/3 fat, 6pr per 55g pancake.
Recipe for 3 servings:
Large sweet potato (~400g)
Egg whites (~350g)
2 eggs
- 1:1 mashed sweet potato and egg by volume
3 scoops whey protein powder
1 tsp baking powder
1-1.5 tsp vanilla extract
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
Instructions:
Start by poking holes in sweet potato skin and microwave for 5-6 minutes turning over halfway through, remove from microwave and remove skin (or keep it, up to you)
Add all ingredients to blender and blend just until combined
Lightly grease pan with butter and cook
Notes:
Blueberries go great in this.
I used vanilla whey but chocolate would also work very well
Other good mixins could be cacao/cocoa powder or maybe some finely diced apple
If you want a more sweet potato forward flavor just adjust ratio slightly, this recipe is very forgiving.
TLDR: started running to get shredded so I could bulk, I like running but lost a ton of strength, want to keep getting better at running but I want my strength back and to stay lean.
I’m a 19 year old male. I’ve been active for the past 5+ years mainly from lifting. I did 2 wrestling seasons junior and senior year HS. Wanted to be more “in shape” and “generally fit” so I started adding running here and there to my program a few months ago but I’ve got no idea what I’m doing when it comes to adding cardio to a lifting program so my legs are just dead 99% of the week. I’ve resorted to asking ChatGPT what to do but for obvious reasons that’s yielded some bs.
This addition of cardio also came from a desire to drive fat loss, which was in service of prepping for some lean gaining. At the start of this journey I was mid 140’s probably 17% bf. I have no bodybuilding ambitions but I noticed I feel better lean and also wanted to trim some fluff to “make room” for a lean gain to break through my strength plateaus.
My current proposed split is as follows:
Monday: Easy 4 miles, upper strength
Tuesday: lower strength
Wednesday: long(er) run
- for me this entails about 5-6 miles
Thursday: upper volume and explosivity, easy run
Friday: off, steps only
Saturday: lower explosivity and volume
Sunday: speed run, intervals or sprints
I also have built a habit of getting a weekly average of 15k steps a day just from background movement.
I’m running into the issue of every week hitting a wall on one of my runs or leg days where my legs are absolutely fried and the session is a slog to finish or doesn’t get finished at all. This has manifested as my lifts going from what they used to be (300x2 S, 185x2 B, 115 OHP, 200x6 RDL @ 140lbs) to a much less impressive (140x2 B, 225x3 S, 100 OHP, 185x5 RDL @ 125lbs). However my running has improved spectacularly, I was barely able to run a mile when I started and now just this week I was able to go for 5.5 miles in zone 2 at a 10 minute pace, and I’ve run a max distance of 6.3 miles at a 10:31 pace.
I’m not training for a particular event/goal or anything like that. I’m generally just looking to be as strong and fast and overall athletically capable and healthy as I can be. If I had to articulate what my goals are numerically (I’m a 5’4 124-ish pound male) I’d say return my weight to the mid 130’s from lean mass, have a 200+ lbs bench, 315 squat, 135 overhead press, 25 ish minute 5k, and be able to run 15k (don’t care about speed on that one just want to say I could do it).
For context I’m relatively new to what you would define as “hybrid training.” My general routine has consisted of 4 lifts and 3-4 runs a week. I’m 19 started out just lifting weights when I was 14 to fill out a T-shirt. Up until I was 16 I did that, then did 2 wrestling seasons junior and senior year of high school that gave me a taste for something more than just looking big. About 6 months ago, as a college student no longer wrestling, I added running to my routine of fitness as well as about 10-15k steps a day. My goal with this was to be more “in shape” and also burn some extra calories to try to lean out enough for a long-term slow gain phase.
basically running was added to my regimen for the sake of priming me to add some more muscle and strength while being fit enough to run an impressive mile or perform well enough in whatever sport I landed in just off of being well conditioned and strong.
For the past 6 months, partially due to the cut, though I suspect equally as much as a result of my poor programming, I’ve seen some serious strength dips. While the cut started in September of last year the holidays set me back to square one in terms of progress on body fat reduction, and it wasn’t until early January of this year that I locked back in and knuckled through it.
Over the course of the cut I went from 147 to my current weight of 124. Strength held steady enough, lost a few reps here and there but nothing major, that was until I got below the 130’s. My lifts pre-cut were about 185x2 bench, 300x2 squat, 315x1 DL at 143lbs, right now I can barely grind out 3x140 bench, 4x225 squat, 1x275 DL, and strength has dipped slightly on accessories but not as significantly as compounds.
How should I restructure my training to stop the slide and actually add muscle again? Currently I just feel like all I’m doing with the gym, steps, running, and fitness as a whole is just grinding myself into dust for no real payoff other than looking a little leaner, though I’m too skinny for even that to be good.
My current routine looks like this:
Monday: combined session, upper strength lift + 40 mins Z2 run (for me that’s about 3.5-4 miles)
Tuesday: lower strength, no running, squat, RDL, bss, hammy curls, core rotation
Wednesday: longer easy run, 5-6 miles
Thursday: split sessions, AM upper volume workout, PM easy run (thinking about dropping this, usually feels too hard to be productive)
Friday: recovery, steps and stretching
Saturday: power generation lower day, higher volume and explosive, box jumps hack squats and unilateral isolations,
Sunday: speed work, 6x400 intervals or sprints