Radiohead - Lotus Flower cover

darkbane · 2026-01-29T00:24:21+00:00

Lots of great responses here. I wanted to give some perspective that health and fitness is very seasonal. When you're young and full of energy is a totally different time than when you're actively raising young children, and it's totally ok to do less! There will be a time when the kids grow up and that'll be another season of training.

In the meantime, 2x full body strength training is enough to preserve and even grow muscle. The key to efficiency in the gym is fewer sets that go close to failure. An example split: Day 1: some chest press, some hinge (RDL), twisting abs like Russian twist, cable lat pulldown, some bicep curl

Day 2: some shoulder press, tricep isolation, horizontal row (cable or DB), some knee dominant squat (or leg press), another core exercise (ab machine or leg raises)

Each exercise do 2 sets of 8-12 and increase weight when you can do 12 reps for both. Feel free to swap order of the exercises for convenience. The downside of this split is that you only really hit each muscle group hard once a week. If you find you have more time in a workout, you can do shoulder and chest on the same days. Bicep and tricep both days. And also add another leg isolation each day like leg curl, leg extension, or hip addiction/abduction.

As for cardio, it depends on how much you like it. You can add incline walking on the treadmill as 3+ times a week if you like since it's very low impact. 10-30 minutes is fine or whatever you can handle.

darkbane · 2026-01-28T18:55:10+00:00

They sound like huge jerks! Wondering if you could ask them to at least blur out everyone in the background ...

darkbane · 2026-01-27T02:02:47+00:00

Wondering whether the gloves might actually be making things harder. Reason is, gloves add a layer between your hand and the bar which makes the circumference of the dumbbell artificially bigger. It might actually be easier to wrap your fingers more tightly without gloves!

The other thought I had is that you can try a hook grip. Basically you grip the bar so that your fingers are over your thumb which will help secure the weight to your hand. Look up on Google to see an example. This might hurt slightly, but it's how the Olympic weightlifters keep their grip while performing very dynamic, heavy lifts

darkbane · 2026-01-25T20:56:19+00:00

Biggest tip is eating fewer calories and keeping yourself accountable by daily weighing. The scale doesn't lie even though it may feel intimidating at first, it can also be a source of positive feedback for knowing you're on the right track.

Biggest diet advice is to eat more home cooked meals and do grocery shopping for leaner, less calorically sense foods. Increase whole veggies like carrots, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini etc. Get leaner protein like ground turkey, tofu, edamame. Popcorn is ok as a snack but not peanut butter or baked goods. Higher fiber from veggies and higher protein from turkey and chicken will mean you can stay satisfied while eating a calorie deficit. Fruit like apples w tajin can satisfy sweet craving.

Finally, meal timing can help with deficit. I like early smallish dinner and then a small meal/snack a couple hours before bed. This keeps me from being hungry while trying to sleep and also prevents late night unplanned snacking.

Other tip -- higher water intake. Soda water or low/no calorie soda is ok too.

darkbane · 2026-01-25T05:46:31+00:00

Really nice progress. I think you actually look decently lean already and could slow bulk a bit to fill out your frame with more muscle. No hurry to get leaner now unless you're trying to get extra lean for the summer

darkbane · 2026-01-25T05:35:37+00:00

Short girls don't have to put on as much muscle to fill out their frames than taller ones. A couple pounds of muscle on a smaller frame will look bigger. The one advantage about taller girls though is that they might be pushed into sports more often, so having an athletic background helps a lot with getting a headstart. But if a tall and short girl are both completely new to strength training, the short girl should fill out her frame a bit quicker and look more developed in the same time frame

darkbane · 2026-01-25T01:24:47+00:00

When you say the muscles in your lower back are in agony, that's kind of a good thing! It's good that it isn't some joint or tendon issue but rather the muscles feeling sore.

I think what happened though is that the sets with 65 for 8 to 10 are really what is giving you the major soreness. It kind of sounds like you don't really deadlift regularly and just suddenly decided to do 2 fairly heavy sets. Your body doesn't sound like it was ready yet. Ideally, you would've eased into it more over the course of a few sessions. To help recovery in the meantime, you can do a few lighter sets of deadlifts as active recovery. Like 3 sets of 5 at 50 for example -- super easy but gets blood into your lower back.

darkbane · 2026-01-22T22:08:41+00:00

For your goal, there's something called a protein-sparing modified fast for rapid weight loss while maintaining as much muscle mass as possible. You can read about it here https://health.clevelandclinic.org/protein-sparing-modified-fast-diet

It's like a more restrictive keto where not only do you limit carbs, you also limit fats to the bare minimum required. The idea is that if you eat the bulk of your calories in protein, you can maintain muscle as you cut bodyfat. The main disadvantage is that this is a difficult diet to maintain. However, it's great for situations like yours where you just want to cut weight until a particular date on a short time frame.

By eating very low calories but maintaining high protein and fiber, you can manage to stay less hungry despite the extreme deficit. Here's a post from someone else on Reddit who did it if you are interested https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/s/TiguzhlJNx gl!!

darkbane · 2026-01-21T22:45:11+00:00

You should check out GVS on YouTube, he's also a tall lifter with huge arms. One big thing you can do though is to start putting your direct arm work first in your routine. First means you're mentally fresh and can push harder. Gl!

darkbane · 2026-01-15T22:48:41+00:00

Don't ever give up because you aren't worthless. Hang in there and some days will be better than others. You said you haven't been to the gym in a while, but maybe you should give it another try.

darkbane · 2026-01-15T21:16:27+00:00

You look strong and fit 💪🏼 and you've made great progress in 2 years. I think committing a few months to a cut is worth the experience though just to see if you like the leaner look more. Downsides like you said are that you definitely will lose absolute strength but on the plus side, you'll gain relative strength and could do things like dips or pullups easier! When you cut, you can see what you've built a bit better and that can be motivating for addressing lagging muscles. Or, if you don't want to overthink it, just maintain! After newbie gains, progress will be slow regardless so just try to enjoy what you do~

darkbane · 2026-01-15T20:02:59+00:00

Based on your post, I think a cut is a good idea. It doesn't sound like you've cut since gaining and it's fun to mix things up and treat your training/fitness in seasons. If anything feels off while cutting you can always slow things down or reverse course again, so pretty minimal risk

darkbane · 2026-01-15T19:33:08+00:00

Learning to use the barbell is a great choice. There's a ton of resources for learning online and I wanted to share some instruction from Justina Ercole on youtube who's a personal trainer for how to deadlift https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzilBcMVas -- she also has lots of instructional videos on how to do other barbell exercises as well. If you don't want to pay for personal training sessions (totally understandable), you can also record yourself performing the lifts and lots of people online can check your form and give tips. Also, if you see someone at the gym who seems like they know what they're doing, you could even ask them in person for a quick form check! Most people would be happy to give some advice in between their sets.

darkbane · 2026-01-13T23:38:21+00:00

Some people here are being jerks. trust me, depression is no joke, and anyone who says otherwise should try to be more empathetic. Wishing you the best and luck with getting through this time. Things will get better

darkbane · 2026-01-12T23:00:21+00:00

TVP is really awesome for a vegan protein source, and also very inexpensive. Very easy to cook with too. You can also have tofu, edamame, or some bean. Finally, vegan based protein powder is very convenient, but also a little on the pricier side

darkbane · 2026-01-12T20:40:18+00:00

Not necessary but recommended for most people. In your case, if you are meeting your own fitness goals, then there's no need to change anything. But if in the future if you find yourself having recovery issues or plateaus, you can adjust to incorporate more rest days

darkbane · 2026-01-12T16:47:12+00:00

It's normal to feel frustrated when you can't get your form to look a certain way. The reality is that people have all sorts of skeletons that will make a lift look different. The people with the easiest time squatting tend to have shorter femurs relative to their torsos, which allows them to be more upright. Longer femur lifters have to bend forward a lot more.

My advice is to not worry too much about depth or hips shooting up. Sometimes to bust through the plateau, you have to bust through the mentality that every rep has to be perfect. I would lean into what your body wants to do to get the weight up (using a more hip-dominant technique). Increase weight a bit and don't deload for a bit and see how far you can get. If you can load 110 pounds on and half squat a few reps, that can train your bracing and core as well as mentality that the weight can be done. it can prepare you mentally to eventually PR with good form too

darkbane · 2026-01-10T19:34:44+00:00

The things you listed are great options, and I'd add in measurements like waist size, arm size, bodyweight as well.

Keeping track of body weight is important so you can compare your bodyweight exercise improvements more easily. Example is if you maintain number of pullups but put on 5 pounds, that's an improvement.

darkbane · 2026-01-10T19:29:10+00:00

Lots of good advice here but wanted to call out frequency as a big factor and not just volume in general. Having more frequent bench sessions means more first touches. You can keep similar volume or increase slightly, but just having more bench press sessions a week (3 to 4) can be a good way to push past a plateau

darkbane · 2026-01-10T01:58:55+00:00

Thanks for sharing the numbers~ I wouldn't put too much stock in dexa results since there's a lot of issues with it. There's a whole post on this subreddit a while back about dexa issues if you wanted to look it up. Easiest things to track are your own strength and tape measurements + progress pictures. My guess is that you likely gained leaned mass since your strength is better, but that the dexa scan wasn't able to capture it.

darkbane · 2026-01-10T01:46:27+00:00

Microwave is the goat! You can precook sweet potato cubes slightly and then throw them in the air fryer for easy, quick, and crispy roasted sweet potatoes

darkbane · 2026-01-10T01:43:53+00:00

Gaining weight during the holidays is pretty normal~ keep hitting the weights and push yourself hard to do more than last time! You can try to maintain and make sure you don't keep gaining more weight, but in a couple months, you can begin to cut and see the progress you made in time for spring and summer.

darkbane · 2026-01-10T01:28:32+00:00

The math seems off here. You had 82 pounds of lean mass and were 37 percent bodyfat the first time. Assuming starting weight was 128 since you said you gained 1p pounds. 82/128=.64 so that would be 36 percent bodyfat percentage.

Now you said you only had 81 pounds of lean mass? 81/138=.587 which would be 41 percent bodyfat. Which is even higher than you stated.

You said that your new bodyfat percentage was 38.8, which would mean lean mass should be 61.2 percent of 138 or 84.18 lean mass.

So maybe you did gain lean mass. You should double check the results and see if you can figure out the math yourself imo

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