ChimpBrain

3000 calories is not an unusual amount of food for a 16yr old, especially if you're male and especially if you exercise. But yeah you seem to have a relatively unhealthy relationship with food and/or body image issues judging by the other stuff you said.

I see no paradox or flip flopping at all. Different videos are created for different people who are in varying stages of their self development. My only problem with this video is that I feel like my life is already trimmed down to the bare minimum of work, family, self actualization work, and household chores, yet I'm still overwhelmed with activity most days. A lot of that is just part of having a 4yr old and running your own business though I guess. I definitely don't want to complain about my situation, I'm just not sure what else I could trim down on. Material minimalism is a different story, that's somewhere I could definitely make progress.

Yeah you're right, 5 reps per set is definitely more in the strength range not the hypertrophy rep range. Also low reps per set and longer rest periods is not conducive to keeping your heart rate up enough to burn a lot of calories. You would be better off in the 8-12 rep range for hypertrophy for most muscle groups. Keep in mind though that certain muscle groups are dominant in 1 fiber type and do respond better to higher or lower rep ranges, for instance, traps, calves, quads respond best to higher reps, tri's and hamstrings respond best to lower reps, and the rest is about a 50/50 split in fiber type and respond best to moderate rep ranges (8-12). Also it's important to constantly vary your rep ranges, so you might train for one month in the 8-10 rep range, the next month in the 10-12 rep range, and the next month in the 12-14 rep range. This is called periodization and there are many forms of it, this is one of the reasons I advise starting an actual structured routine and not get stuck in a rut of doing the same exercises with the same weights for the same reps week after week. You're also right in that strength increase is largely due to neural adaptation. If you want to increase hypertrophy and increase your metabolism a program with higher reps & shorter rest periods is the way to go. What I do is superset opposing muscle groups to maximize the volume I can pump out in a given amount of time. For instance the chest/back workout I posted above, the way I'd do that is one set of chest, rest 30 seconds, 1 set of back rest 30 seconds, and repeat until I'm done with all 4 sets of both exercises, then catch my breath while setting up for the next round of exercises. This allows my chest to rest while I'm doing the back exercise, but lets me keep my heart rate up throughout the entire hour long workout. So a split might look something like chest/back, bi's/tris, quads/hams, delts/calves, repeat. Although there are a ton of different ways you could structure it. You have enough equipment to do anything you want man. Squats are not the only leg exercise out there and are not even the best IMO. Some other options to consider are front squats, BB lunges, DB lunges, Bulgarian split squats, peterson step ups, Romanian deadlifts, sissy squats, DB squats, putting a ramp/board under your heels on any squatting motion to emphasize quad recruitment. Definitely go check out Tnation and Ben pakulksi's youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/BenPakIFBB

There's a Vice documentary on him as well, he was also on the Joe Rogan experience, the Tim ferriss podcast, and found my fitness with Dr Rhonda Patrick. I'll post links tomorrow once I'm on a computer. Super cool stuff IMO. I use his breathing techniques prior to and during exercise but I can't get on board with the ice bath & cold shower stuff. I'm sure the benefits are great but God it sucks.

I can understand not wanting to deadlift without someone around to teach you proper technique. Tell me what equipment you have and I'll try to help you with some ideas for back and leg exercises. If you think Arnold was an advocate of low volume you've misinterpreted whatever you read. All of those golden era guys with the exception of Mentzer were volume whores. Go watch Pumping Iron on youtube, look up some of Arnold's old programs, and look at the program he just released to promote his new supplement brand here http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/arnold-schwarzenegger-blueprint-trainer-main.html Also it seems like you may be misinterpreting what I mean by "volume". Volume is the amount of weight lifted in a given day/week. For instance, If it's chest & back day and you do Incline bench 4x10@205=8200 Tbar rows 4x12@110=5280 Decline DB bench 4x8@70's=4480 chin ups 4x8@bodyweight=6400 DB fly 4x10@30's=2400 DB shrug 4x20@70's = 11200 Your volume for the day is 37,960lbs. Above is what a typical workout for me might look like, and I do this 7 days a week. I also do a lot of intinsifiers at the end of my last set of each exercise but you don't need to worry about that for now. You say you have 17" arms but you also said you're 20-25%BF. So if we go with the median of 22.5%, you have 44lbs of bodyfat, so to get to a fairly shredded 5% you'd need to lose around 34lbs of fat, and that doesn't even include glycogen loss from dieting which would easily be another 10lbs. This would leave you at around 152lb. Your arms won't be 17" anymore when you're 152lb. I say all of this not to burst your bubble but to try to make you better understand your present condition. My recommendations are this - increase training stimulus because it builds muscle, increase protein because amino acids are literally the building blocks of muscle tissue, and start doing some form of HIIT cardio. Preferably get on a specific program and follow it as closely as possible. You lost me on whatever you were trying to get at with the fast/slow twitch fibers and not training legs. People in this space worth following on social media, youtube, their websites, etc., are Layne Norton, Ben Pakulski, Jacob Wilson, John Meadows. Tnation and bodybuilding.com are great sources of info, but keep in mind, you ARE going to find contradictory information out there, a lot of it actually. Even within the same website you'll find contradictions because they've had hundreds of different writers over the course of their 15year history who hold different opinions. Or maybe one article you read is from 1998 and there have been new studies since then that disprove it's premise. Maybe one article was written with powerlifters in mind and the other was written for bodybuilders, or women, or crossfitters, or etc, etc.

I guess that's where the difference in our opinions lies. You seem to be talking about how someone who's overweight or 'out of shape' can become average, I'm talking about what's necessary for someone who's average to achieve their dream body. My idea of what's normal or neurotic is also probably a lot different than yours because I've been embedded in the "fitness scene" for the last decade. I agree that if your goals are just general health and to not be overweight there's no need to count calories/macros, just exercise and eat healthy foods. With all of that said my suggestion that flexible dieting is a possible solution to keep the OP from binging or flip flopping from strict dieting to complete freedom still stands.

I've been doing it for years and I seem to be fine. If you want to manipulate your body successfully, whether that's fat loss, muscle gain, or both, there's really no way around tracking what you eat.

Man, I mean this in the nicest way possible- there's so much wrong with your diet and exercise routine I don't even know where to start. I will try to reply in detail tomorrow when I'm at a computer. I can't respond to all of that via mobile. A lot of people here have spent decades researching consciousness, career, enlightenment, psychology, etc., and have invaluable insights on those subjects. I've spent that time learning everything I possibly could about fitness and nutrition in an attempt to get as jacked as possible thinking that if I could attain the perfect physique I'd finally achieve true happiness. It didn't work out that way lol. But I'm still well versed in the subject and will help all I can. I'll hit you back tomorrow. In the mean time go to Tnation and start researching a new routine. End of three fitness is also a good resource for people with garage gyms. Start researching HIIT methods like Wingate sprints, hill sprints, sled drags, prowler pushing, tire flipping, barbell complexes, etc. Lifting at home is definitely no excuse to not lift legs or back, I lift at home too. Also the amount of volume you're doing is extremely low. I do as much volume in one day as you do in a week, and I mean that literally. Also I lift 7 days a week so that's 7x as much volume as you're doing plus cardio. Also, I eat more than 250g of protein a day and you're eating 27. You can't build or even maintain muscle on such an insanely insufficient amount of protein, and muscle is what expends energy to burn fat. In short, your entire workout routine and diet need a complete overhaul if building muscle and losing fat is a priority for you. Again, I say all of this is the nicest way possible and I mean that sincerely.

Have you ever considered "flexible dieting"? The premise is basically that 85-90% of your daily calories are to come from healthy whole food sources, and the remainder can come from not so healthy sources. It's a way to help you stay on track with your fitness goals without becoming too obsessive/neurotic about food. So lets say you're eating 2k cals a day, 1800 would come from healthy whole foods and 200 could come from whatever treat you choose. I usually save this treat for late at night because that's when I crave sweet stuff the most.

I have no idea what's happening but I've used this exact same "channel" analogy before when discussing psychedelics. It quite literally feels like there is this other stream of information floating around us all the time and taking certain drugs makes your mind capable of receiving this new frequency. It feels every bit as real as the frequency you've been tapped into your entire life, and in a lot of ways makes more sense. This is from a recent study on LSD though -- "Researchers at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam had participants undergo functional magnetic imaging scans while on LSD and found that the psychedelic produces feelings of loss of self by over-connecting brain regions involved in higher cognition. There is 'objective reality' and then there is 'our reality.' Psychedelic drugs can distort our reality and result in perceptual illusions. But the reality we experience during ordinary wakefulness is also, to a large extent, an illusion," Tagliazucchi said. We know that the brain fills in visual information when suddenly missing, that veins in front of the retina are filtered out and not perceived, and that the brain stabilizes our visual perception in spite of constant eye movements. So when we take psychedelics we are, it could be said, replacing one illusion by another illusion. This might be difficult to grasp, but our study shows that the sense of self or 'ego' could also be part of this illusion," he explained. Brain scans revealed that LSD use led to an increased global connectivity in numerous higher-level regions of the brain. The study also revealed that the psychedelic significantly increased brain connectivity by magnifying the level of communication between normally distinct brain networks. What's more, the participants' level of "ego dissolution" grew stronger with increasing global connectivity. "This could mean that LSD results in a stronger sharing of information between regions, enforcing a stronger link between our sense of self and the sense of the environment and potentially diluting the boundaries of our individuality," Tagliazucchi said." http://www.hngn.com/articles/196665/20160413/brain-scan-study-reveals-lsd-makes-lose-yourself.htm I know the thread and your post wasn't about psychedelics, it just reminded me of this study.

How much and what type of cardio are you doing? Start doing some HIIT of some sort 4-5 days a week and it'll help a ton. I would increase your activity level before I'd reduce calories any more, 1800 is about as low as I'd go personally and that's when I'm down around 5% BF. It sounds like you reduced calories too quickly to be honest, but it's hard to say with such limited info. What are your macros like? If you're eating 1800 cals a day but only getting 0.5g of protein per pound of bodyweight then that's likely a big part of the problem. Give more info and I'll try to help.

They're a useful tool just like meditation & self inquiry, as you've already discovered. I say don't overanalyze the future. Use meditation daily and use plant medicines whenever the situation is perfect and you feel like you have something to learn from them. I don't think you'll reach your goal through psychedelic use alone, but they can enhance the other methods tremendously IMO. I've had some amazing realizations on psychedelics but the knowledge I gained always seems to fade after a few days or weeks. I still know that the experience seemed 100% real while under the influence, but it no longer seems 100% real a week later. I think the best route is to use every tool at your disposal.

Turn your screen to monochrome setting (black and white), move all the apps you waste time on to the last page of apps so you don't see them every time you open your phone, turn off all notifications on all apps. I've don't these 3 and it's helped a lot.

Same here. I'm also interested in advice on this.

"Crabs in a bucket" as Leo would say.

From a moral perspective I think veganism is an admirable ideal. From an environmental perspective I think the benefits are overrated. And from a health perspective I think it's a disaster. With that said I doubt myself or the author of the text above will get a lot of support here. You might want to inquire about this somewhere with a little less of a bias toward veganism as well if you're looking for neutral opinions.

I just replied in the other thread where you asked but I thought you were asking about protein powders, not whole food sources. Good whole food sources would be lentils, quinoa, beans, tofu. You can find all sorts of vegan protein source articles on bodybuilding.com

Onnit makes one called hempforce and body nutrition makes one called gardenia.

Also @visual I think the correct way to do an affirmation/visualization is in the first person and in the present tense. So your phrase would become something more like "I am not a judgmental person". I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong about that.

I think the OP is suggesting reprogramming of the subconscious through affirmations/visualizations, which Leo talks about in other videos. The more self improvement material I absorb the more I realize there's not always one right answer. What helps correct a bad behavior pattern in a 58yr old white guy from Kansas may not help a 17yr old Philippino girl with the same problem. If visual finds the technique to be useful at this stage of his development in overcoming social anxiety why shoot him down?

Thanks for sharing this man. I like this guy.

Thanks man, I was subscribed to the first 2 but had never heard of the last one! I signed up for his mailing list recently and like what I've seen so far. I may go ahead and sign up, after all, $10 is nothing. I'm glad to hear that. I did subscribe to her channel for a while but eventually unsubscribed after I found several videos in a row to be a little too new-agey for me. Maybe I'm still just a little too "orange" to buy into it whether it's true or not. I don't deny that a lot of her videos are worthwhile though. I guess I should subscribe, be open minded, take what's useful to me and disregard what isn't.

Negative. Just stop coming here?

I read another of his books, something like "increase your financial IQ" and enjoyed it also.

It is overpriced but I notice way more effect from it than just plain alpha GPC or choline. Onnit has a 25% off sale twice a year that helps with the price, just sign up to their mailing list.