Quote Originally Posted by High_Plains_Drifter View Post
I hear that, progress is SLOW. Course I'm dealing with a 63 year old body. It's on the DECLINE, and I'm trying to do the opposite. I'm fighting a losing battle. Age will win sooner or later, but I can still slow it down, even considerably, and be a helluva lot stronger and healthier in the meantime. I've noticed that the triceps HAVE picked up a little strength. Not much, but enough to notice, so something is happening there. I use the cables to do the bench presses most of the time, because then that right triceps has to press what the left side is, and sometimes my arm wants to just collapse, but I catch it and work it through. Yeah other muscles do compensate, but I know that little that's left of the right triceps is working. I WILL keep working it. I've only been at it a little over two months now so I shouldn't get discouraged if I don't see enough change. I need to give it a year, or two, or whatever. The gym ain't going anywhere, and I'll keep pumping iron.

I'm starting a total diet change over too. Trying to eliminate ALL sugar and as much unsaturated fat as I can, so I've started reading labels on stuff and it's just mind numbing how much sugar there is in EVERYTHING it seems. The grape juice I like is HORRIBLE, and the Arizona Tea I buy by the gallon is full of sugar too, and those gallons of chocolate milk I like to pound down say they're 1% fat, but that's probably bad for me too, and that Carnation powder creamer I put in my coffee every morning, two or three cups, is loaded with FAT. No wonder I step on the scale, even when I haven't eaten much for a couple days, and wonder why I can't lose weight. I've been doing a lot of stuff wrong with what I eat, what I drink, when I eat and how much I eat. But today is day 6 of a completely overhauled diet, and I just stepped on the scale, lost 4 pounds already... unbelievable. I haven't gone DOWN in weight for so long, I literally had almost given up. I just needed to do some serious reading about proper diet, and then DO IT.
@Gunny
I'm only 4-5 years younger than you, btw.

It might behoove you to do a little research because I am going to go off memory and I probably have forgotten more than I remember. Don't get wrapped around the axle on reading food labels. They have been allowed to re-name and re-package what "is" is more than Bill Clinton over the years. A LOT of it is half-truths and/or just pure BS, based on fads.

Sugar used to be bad. Now, only processed sugar is bad, so it's okay to have natural sugar. True enough. However, factor in that carbs are currently "bad". Bullshit. HOWEVER, carbs break down into sugars -- simple or complex. So marketing says well, since carbs break down into sugars, we really don't have carbs in our products anymore. Just sugars.

When you get through all of that mumbo-jumbo double talk the bottom-line fact is sugar, protein and fat that is not metabolized and used will be stored as fat.

When I was on active duty, and a commercial electrician, I couldn't eat enough carbs and I was not fat. I carried more visible bodyfat (not much really) but I was burning the Hell out of it. Not to mention I was drinking and alcohol metabolizes into sugar. I was strong as an ox and could go all day.

Potatoes used to be bad for you (fattening). Bread too. Now they're great. Yippee. You pay people enough money for a study to come up with a result and they will spend as much as they can and find the result you desire.

My simple rule of thumb is I don't eat a lot of processed ANYTHING. Drives my daughter nuts . It REALLY drover her nuts when I was her only parent when she was a kid She didn't learn much from me, I can tell you THAT. I get my own food around here.

One thing I rarely eat is fast food. Maybe once a month or so. That and alcohol has a LOT of fat regardless how they're labeled. Anyway, if you don't eat processed food, you don't have a label to read It my be worth a read to look it up. I learned all this crap from books. You can probably google it nowadays