People letting themselves go once in a relationship.

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Just one correction: the average American worker gets *paid* for working 40 hours a week. That's the fun thing about a salary vs. hourly wages. In my job, I'm expected to work 45 hours a week for the 40 they pay me. That's pretty usual for salaried workers here, kind of the "unspoken minimum hours." I go in a bit early every day, work through lunch, often stay late and/or have night meetings. I get paid for 40 hours.

Oddly, it doesn't work the other day. If I have a doctor's appointment or some such, I have to use leave time. If I needed to take several weeks off for a family emergency, and I didn't have adequate leave time, I'd have to arrange for Family Medical Leave, also known as "leave without pay."

There's really no such thing as salaried jobs in the U.S. anymore, except perhaps at the C.E.O. level of Fortune 500 companies.

I'm similar here----except I'm an hourly, "non-exempt" worker with a listed yearly salary, rather than a listed hourly wage.

If I got sick longer than about 3 days, I'd have to take FMLA. If I had to go to the doctor, I'd have to take personal leave.

A good partner is one who motivates you to improve yourself in ways that you can and inspires you to maintain your attractiveness for your OWN personal pride. I like women who take pride in how they look & put *some* effort into their appearance and their living space with or without a partner. Keep in mind that a lot of us menz, like yours truly, really don't dig skinny chicks. My fiancé is always whining that she's too fat as she's voluptuous but I've always preferred that body type. Men should do the same thing! Don't think that having a woman means you can be a total slob and not keep your s**t together.

Right, exactly. That was the point I was trying to make earlier, it's a problem with BOTH sexes.

Because their priorities are not yours. Many people regard having and raising children, making a family, as more important than staying in good health. Which fails for all of us, eventually. Families outlast us.

Having children, if you raise them well, also does things for you developmentally that working out will never do. There's also a matter of love. There's a lot of love in a good family.

People make the lifestyle choices they do, generally, because the social structures they live within force them into few or no choices. Why put your kid on a bus for an hour each way to school? Because it's the only decent public school in the area, you can't afford to move away from your job, you can't afford private school, and you can't afford the houses near the good school. Why work 50, 60 hours a week, traveling whenever your boss tells you to? Because the alternative is 35 hours a week and no benefits for minimum wage, and you can't raise kids on that. Few people are able to find a middle ground, and generally we have special skills and talents.

Most communities in the US have terrible public services: limited libraries, little or no public transit, no public gyms, recreation skimpy and focused on doubling as childcare; falling-apart schools, no neighborhood-group facilitation, poor urban planning. That's because these things are expensive and the largest voting groups don't want to or can't pay for them. Boomers are notorious for refusing to vote for school bonds -- after all, they don't have kids in school anymore, and, as a group, their sense of social obligation leaves something to be desired.

To invest and have a little extra, you have to start with a little extra. You also have to be lucky. I'm a landlord, but I'm a landlord in a town with an unusually responsible and deep-pocketed tenant base: grad and professional students. Bad and broke tenants can ruin you in a hurry. And I wouldn't bother playing the market as an individual investor these days -- it's just dart-throwing. There's no transparency anymore and you don't know what you're investing in, how the companies are actually doing.

One of the most valuable things Elizabeth Warren did, over a decade ago, was to show that most Americans' debt was not lavish-lifestyle debt. It's debt from school loans and medical care, which vastly overshadow any other kind of spending Americans do. It's also largely unavoidable spending. People are compelled to get degrees if they want jobs; and there's only so much medical care you can defer. If your child goes right into the NICU at birth, you'll go home with a baby and an overwhelmingly large bill. Even if you have insurance. That should change under Obamacare, but we'll see how it goes.

We are in the digital age, we have unlimited information at our disposal and investing is easier now with a limitless and vast amount of data on the web. People make a choice to get fit and it sticks with them, I know a police officer in a third world country in Africa and they work out in an outdoor gym they built from sticks and stones. There are people in poor neighborhoods in Russia and the US that work out with just swings using their imagination and mind, people use unconventional ways to get fit and muscular. Although I admit, you do have to be free from obligations to have spare money to invest, you have to be free from student loans, medical care and kids, homosexual men tend to well because they have no obligations towards children.

Body weight training is a staple of my workout and one can get very lean, I do fifty percent body weight in my workouts and you can do it anywhere. When I was staying in a caravan for a couple of weeks, I worked out on the swings in the park and I was very sore for the following days, sometimes swings can actually be more demanding over a fancy gym with a power tower suited for comfort. I'm very fortunate to live in the United Kingdom, the best country in the world, healthcare is free, social care is the best in the world, transport is excellent because it is a small country and there are a lot of gyms competing in several areas so you can find a gym membership very cheap here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDCxH88-9X8[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBg38iXflnk[/youtube]

Yeah, the sort of thing you're showing was a staple of the parcourse movement, which was big in the US in the 70s and early 80s. We had one near my house when I was growing up and it was great. It requires some public money, though -- those things cost money to install and don't actually maintain themselves, plus you need to make sure the parks stay safe enough that people feel comfortable going there to exercise. There's a lot of fear on the part of civil servants of doing something that turns out to be a visible bust, so if you spend money and install a parcourse and people don't use it, you get blamed for wasting public money. And in communities where things like roads and schools are crumbling, people get mad that you're spending money on "frivolities" like fitness instead of fixing something urgent. These things work best in communities that already have a commitment to fitness.

IMO large gains of weight are similar to alcoholism or gambleing and should be treated similarly, ie not enabled and someone certainly should not be guilted about not wanting to be involved in that situation.

(that fact must be somewhat appreciated by wider soc as overeaters anon follow the AA protocol)

I just did 1500 repetitions today and 700 of those reps were push ups, you're telling me someone can't do a push up workout? there's wide grip, close grip, diamond, military, bomber, dragon, loads of variations, in fact...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POdzasJklxw[/youtube]

You can do a workout in front of your computer right now!

No, as far as I know, there's no genetic predisposition for alcoholism and gambling; I was used to think that obesity is mainly caused by overeating, but the more I read about it the more I find it's more complicated than that.

I can admit I do not want my woman just letting herself go like that. If you gain a little weight I could not care. But to just let yourself go shows me you don't even care. When I know you have opportunity. You've got to tone down on the food binge-ing. Like if I just started not to take care of myself physically to the point where I gain an extra 70lbs. I wouldn't expect her to be much attracted. If I were to say anything different I'd be lying.

An average young American on their own combined with school and work does not have the dedicated time to plan extensive, strenuous workouts. I used Insanity. Lost 45lbs in one month. Boy did I feel great.
And this is single mom nation. A kid, school, and work + to add daycare if you aren't lucky enough to have a friend or relative to deal
with your child. You don't have much time for workouts. And most the time what you work off you end up putting back in.
And the fresh foods here are horribly high-priced. Give or take what area you are in. But I know this. So what I do is proportion my
unhealthy food. Not eat it in large quantities. Eat as much raw fruit and veggies as I can.

Now I am a fitness nut. Not going lie. But ain't know way in hell am I going to completely deprive myself of having fun in life
or winding down--all for fitness.
If I want to watch some TV or lounge in my place for a few days, preserve my tranquility, then dammit I'm gonna do it.

I did not have much pity for overweight people until I wised up more. It's not always their fault. Just as I lost that 45lbs, I got stressed and depressed, and family problems, I am nearly back to where I started. Some people eat as a coping mechanism. I know I do.

How much your local gym costs monthly?

I advise you to go to an affordable gym or to do some of those outdoor workouts; it gives you a good routine to get out of the house and meet new people; it's healthy on both accounts, unless you already have friends and you don't care to expand socially.

False analogy. Most people are not potential murderers, but everyone in le Tour de France is on gear.



People said the exact same thing about Lance Armstrong ten years ago. Now intelligent people can finally say "told you!" to the useful idiots who believed that he was clean. He got caught because people invested a lot more resources in nailing him than they did on anyone else.

People need to wake up and realize that there's no Santa. Usain Bolt beat Ben Johnsson's record with a good margin. He has a BMI of 25 at 8% bodyfat, with an ectomorphic frame--and despite being very tall, he can squat three times his own bodyweight. No clean people have delts as pumped as he does without gear and no 20 something guy is as vascular as he is without gear. Compare Usain Bolt to John Grimek and see for yourself. If I were to make a qualified guess, I'd say that bolt is on Dianabol, Deca, Ephedrine, and Winstrol (this gives him the dry, water depleted look). It's also possible that he's on Clenbutrol.

Moreover, people who use steroids (I do not use them) do not need to "justify" it to other people. It's inherently their business.



Notice that despite being muscular and carrying no more than 10-14% bodyfat, he does not have the Photoshop look of Usain Bolt.

(rubs forehead) Alexander, go look in the mirror. See that? That's you. You can do this. You also have time to do this. Notice that when you talk to other people, they don't look like the guy you saw in the mirror. That's because they're not you. And not everyone can do this.

Bullying people into fitness through obliviousness to differences among people's abilities, circumstance, and motivation -- it doesn't work. And it isn't nice.

Social security really doesn't leave you enough for private gym memberships, Boo. Outdoor is good, but again, not every area is set up for this.

One of the big problems with starting to work out when you're poor is that you know so little and there's no one to guide you sensibly. If you go to a gym and pay a private trainer, that person will work with you at your fitness level, level of motivation, respect the time you have available to work out and other obstacles, etc. But that's a lot of money. When you're on your own, you're bumping around in the dark, it's easy to injure yourself just because you don't know what you're doing and nobody's there to help, there's not external motivation, and the people who do jump in to help tend to be muscleheads who forget that they're not talking to themselves. So it's tough.

There are group sites that can help out, especially with motivation and gentleness. My ex-husband used MyFitnessPal, which has a very large userbase, and most of those people seem to be in the same boat -- not fitness maniacs, just people who want to get in shape, not with tons of resources either.

The same guy who snatched 300lbs.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k0UhRv6R6Sk/U ... roning.jpg