Advice
My Crappy Workout Routine
I was not the kind of person you’d think of as a gym rat. In fact, I was entirely against the idea of working out as far back as Middle School (for some dumb reason). In any case, if you read through my life stories, you’d know I kind of dipped really hard after flunking out of Uni. Not just emotionally but physically too. When you are a NEET with nothing better to do, what you do with your extra time can either benefit or destroy you. The later was more or less the case with my NEETdom episode and I gained a significant amount of weight that made me feel ugly, sluggish, and disgusting in every way. To cut a long story short, I finally got my shit together around 2016 and began my long road to normalcy and healthy living by doing some cardio against my own will. My mother did not put me through this nor did I beg or pay someone to coach me into fitness. I did it on my own will. Perhaps out of boredom. In any case, it was probably the best course of action I’d ever take in my life in pushing myself out of that dark abyss. I went from being a typical overweight American NEET who whines on r9k to someone who was just socially awkward but no longer overweight within a few months. Yeah a few months. I couldn’t believe that I lost so much weight in that time. I went from 160lbs to 135lbs just in that year alone. I lost so much weight, I had to throw out all of my old clothes that were fitting me all loose now because I was getting thinner. This was all achieved with daily cardio which I’ll go into detail in just a moment.
At the time of writing this entry, I am currently 116 lbs which is more or less what I used to be back in Freshman year of high school. Not bad at all. However, I’m currently taking the next step to fitness now that I am skinny again. Strength is the next aspect I wanted to work on since I had never really been physically strong in my life before. At best, I’m average and at worst, I am very fragile. I had recently been trying to fix that with a bit of training and exercises that I had some minor experience with at the beginning of my weight loss journey but for whatever reason, I dropped in favor of dedicating my workout routine entirely to cardio. Now things have changed and I am able to settle on a routine that allows me to do both on separate days. Just as a heads up btw. Just because I am putting this in the advice blog doesn’t mean this is the one true way to achieve weight loss or big scary muscles in a short amount of time. The latter of which I haven’t even accomplished yet. This is just my routine and what I feel or know works in my situation and within my limitations. Perhaps this sort of routine might work for you, but I can’t guarantee it because we are all built differently.
There’s this saying you have to workout at least three times a week. I don’t buy into that. I work out every single day of the week IF I can. That means I don’t usually get any breaks unless I’m busy with something that afternoon/night or I feel too sick to work out. I do my cardio or strength routine regardless if I’m fine, angry, or depressed. Because I do not want to end up being in that same condition as I was before. By doing exercises everyday (For at least 30 minutes – 1 hour), I get a little bit of flexibility with how I do my exercises. For cardio, I have this really crappy non-electric treadmill that I bought to start work with my weight loss years ago. You should buy a better treadmill but this one works alright in my situation and the fact that it doesn’t take up too much space is ideal for my bedroom layout (which is where I do all of my workouts in most cases). One of the problems with going to a public gym is that sometimes, they can get kind of packed and some of the equipment isn’t always available when someone is using it. You don’t really need a gym full of equipment to do cardio. I’d argue you don’t even need a treadmill either if you live in a nice neighborhood or park to jog around in good weather. I have neither of that except during the winter time where occasionally I’ll jog in a light jacket and enjoy the nice cool breeze. Riding a bike is also an option though I like being on foot better. My health takes a beating if I try to run in 100F+ weather. Believe me, I tried on multiple occasions and it was never worth trying. Besides, one of the benefits of having a treadmill is that you can mount your smartphone or tablet onto one and use it to track your stats or perhaps you can watch some videos, listen to a podcast, jog to some music, or even watch Anime all in the privacy of your home. It can help make your 30 minute or 1 hour jog sessions go by a lot more quickly in my experience. You can do some quick sprints followed by a couple of breaks of walking to catch your breath or you can walk/jog the entire way through. Either one works fine and you should cover at least a mile or more by doing this under 1 hour. I used to do cardio every single day but recently, I had made it into every other day in order to focus on my other routine involving strength training.
Since strength training is a lot of more involved compared to cardio so I don’t usually take as long to workout but it’s significantly more intense and demanding on my body. I’ll usually do about 20-30 minutes of this workout routine on every other day that I don’t do cardio. That way I have a nice balance between the two. Everything gets worked on during these strength routines, arms, legs, back, and my mid body (I don’t even know what you call it but let’s go with that) so I don’t end up like that ancient 9gag ebaums meme or whatever where the guy skips leg day. Nothing is compromised on these days. I have weights that I use to lift. Usually I’ll do a set until my arms get really tired and I’ll take a breather. For the following days I do them again, I’ll do 10 more than I previously did to keep myself challenged. Same goes for all of the other exercises I do such as squats, push ups, pull ups (which to be perfectly honest, I cannot do for the life of me no matter what but I try), planks, tea bagging crouches, leg lifts, and pulling bungee cords. I can’t say for certain that covers most of the muscles I want to build but it does leave me pretty sore the following morning each time so I must be doing something right. No pain, no gain amirite? Pain is just weakness leaving the body. Etc etc.
Gotta talk about diet too since that’s very important to the whole thing. Basically avoid all the shitty junk food, soylent products, sugars, estrogen shit, sunflower seed oils, and so forth. What will really help you however (especially with weight loss) is to stick to at most 2 meals a day. I don’t know why anyone thinks three meals a day should even be considered normal when you look at how many calories some foods can have, especially fast food! Sometimes I feel like people will consume like 2000 calories a meal which is crazy because I don’t even think my limit is above 2000 calories a day. That’s not to say you can’t have a treat every so often but don’t do it everyday or every meal. Sometimes a simple meal is more than enough to keep you going. Breakfast is pretty important so don’t slack off on that meal at least. Don’t exercise right after you eat either, or you’re going to puke. I learned that the hard way many years ago. Now I know better! If you’re tight on time, wait at least an hour before you start doing any forms of exercise.
Oh and for clothes, I really like wearing those athletic shirts that feel more fresh when you workout compared to wearing cotton shirts like a moron. I got basketball shorts for days and they aren’t just for sleeping either. I also started wearing tank tops for my workouts and I like using them especially for strength training days because they allow more freedom with my arms to do some of these exercises while giving me some circulation in terms of airflow. Otherwise that’s pretty much all I do for exercises in keep my weight in check and “trying” to get myself to alpha chad levels of fitness. We’ll see how that goes for the next few months since I’m barely starting.
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