Cardio, New Year's Resolutions

Lately I've noticed a lot of new people showing up at the gym. I usually go around 5-6 AM. Prior to late December, I pretty much just saw the same few guys that are always there.

I saw this article on the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.co...0388728374.html The 27 Rules of Conquering the Gym

I'm a noob, 4 months? I've basically just started, and I don't mean to be so negative, but I imagine quite a few of the people showing up at my Anytime Fitness location are going to be gone within the next 2. No surprise, but none of them decided to take on the power rack, or at least try dumbbells.

It's unfortunate, I imagine most really do want to, usually, lose weight as their goal, and may have the willpower necessary, but after reading what some people talk about, even just in the comments on that article, nobody seems to have any idea WTF they're doing. They don't keep an exercise journal, they don't bother to learn some basic things about the human body, they have no idea about nutrition and just act on cliches and people trying to sell them things, and nobody bothers to do strength training that I've seen.

The absolute biggest mistake ever that people make is doing cardio, and more cardio, then starving themselves with these unhealthy diet fads and wondering why they feel like shit and begin doubting whether all this effort is worth it. It works initially, they may even lose 10 lbs in a month, but then the second month, they start gaining again and wondering what happened despite nothing changing, they try a little more, but they just feel progressively worse and stall on their weight loss and eventually give up, while still paying off their 1 year gym contract.

Doing cardio and starving yourself lowers your basal metabolic rate in the long run, and your body starts eating itself, you get weaker. If you're eating 1k calories a day, you aren't even getting a healthy amount of vitamins and minerals in your body, so people try to use supplements to correct this, but it's the not the same as eating actual food because the bioavailability of a vitamin pill is quite low, you piss most of that out anyway. Supplements lack other things such as phytochemicals that you can only get from eating an actual plant.

And diets are all BS and a scam anyway. What matters to weight loss and weight gain is simply Net Calories = Calories In - Calories Out, it doesn't matter where you get it, middle school thermodynamics. Calories Out, again, being affected by your basal metabolic rate. You can increase this massively by doing strength training, muscle requires a lot of energy to use and maintain. You will burn more calories in the end by doing strength training, not cardio.

Women are an unfortunate target for all this bullshit as well. I'd say it's even more important for them to do strength training, but just because of our culture, almost none of them will, so they'll subject themselves to abusing their body with starvation and weakness and unbalanced meals.

Everyone that has a new year's resolution to start exercising or something should stop, and think about why they didn't do it earlier. Maybe wait 1 or 2 months and let the idea float around in the back of their head, and see if they still want to go after thinking about it thoroughly. I started going as soon as I was in a position where I could actually get to the gym and continue going for at least the next several months (just for financial reasons and my personal life), I didn't wait for a fad date, I just went.

You have to have good reasons, because people are going to think you're crazy when you actually stick with it and give it your all, and start eating healthy, then your body starts changing, and people look at you weird. Just recently the assholes started appearing. I take it seriously, now into month 5, I've run into these people so far:

1. "It's great that you're doing this, but you're fine just the way you are. You don't need to do this."

• I don't need to, but I want to. Haven't you ever wanted something in life and went for it?

2. "Lolol, you only squat like 1 plate, you've been going to the gym for months, shouldn't you be built like Arnold now?"

• Because every bodybuilder and powerlifter popped out of their mommas ripped and strong.

3. "Who do you think you are? Do you actually think you can get strong? Why do you still workout? I bench more than you squat and I don't even lift."

• Keep riding on daddy's genetics, I don't care, I'm actually working for it, and if you don't think I can become stronger than you, you have no idea what you're talking about and know nothing. I don't need to compare myself or show off to anyone, I'm doing this for me. Keep your insecurities to yourself.

4. "Why do you eat that? Just get a hamburger or something, it's not going to kill you."

• Stop asking me for dessert, Jesus Christ, I've had plenty of bad food already. I cheat when it's convenient and when I go out with friends, not every night.

You have to have solid goals and actually do research and read and acquire knowledge from good sources otherwise the haters are going to beat you and talk you down, and that New Year's Resolution is just going to turn into another failure that will be even harder to recover from in the future.


p.s. It sucks living in a state where men are proud of their beer guts.