We have similar goals @Bellyman, but I don’t have any activities except a workout to a video, and then walking at a good pace. I’m 71 one so I’m pretty careful. I also started with the lowering my carbs, increasing meats, chic, fish, healthy fats, and I think I stayed just under 40 or 50 carbs in beginning. Now I am way low, for me at 20 g of carbs a day, around that anyway.
Sounds like you are doing just great, and I love my workouts at home way better than 3 years at the gym. I have your setup but only resistance bands right now, but planning to get a set of dumbells. I’ve gained more muscle than I did at the gym following a gal on you tube. There’s some great videos free, by guys, I’ll put one below. But what’s nice about these, for me anyway, is I don’t have to count just follow, keep up etc. And when it’s totally easy, I can move up to the next level. Just something to consider, maybe Denise
PS plus they encourage me more with the timers in the videos, I workout much harder at home and I can choose from different lengths of videos:
Thanks for the reminder about Chaffee @PaulL!! That is something I think I see on muscle builders is that accumulation of intramuscular fat/water retention I do not want. Makes total sense to leave the carb out and maybe slower but sure looks better imo anyway, Denise
I had kinda forgotten about this thread Denise. Life has a way of getting busy. Interesting revisiting, though, including the suggestions above.
Winter didn’t do nice things to me, muscle wise or weight wise, nothing dramatic, but noticeable to me, but spring has sprung and the farm work with it. Just in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed muscle tone improving, stamina improving, and the scale backing off just a bit. Life is good.
I’m glad this thread was resurrected. I need this kind of information to help reverse my osteoporosis. I really appreciate all the links you provided in your two replies. Thank you so much.
Can you share what your levels were? I’m looking so forward to see if I’ve improved in a year’s time, if not, I won’t give up, especially seeing yours and Mark’s results!!
I’m sorry if this is being discussed everywhere, but what was it that you think caused this? Diet, exercise, supplements, collagen, medication? All of the above?
@Goldengirl52@Just_Juju
Well, I need to apologize. I read osteoporosis but my brain heard arthritis. Sheesh.
I’ve never had osteoporosis! But my arthritis certainly went away.
So, never mind. And carry on.
no problem Robin, sounds like me, honestly Btw, I don’t have any pain, unless you call a few sore muscles from workouts on occasion. I mean, not since getting on Keto. All that good, anti-inflammatory food
You do not need lots of equipment to gain muscle, but you do have to work muscles basically to the point of their failure. So your farm work is probably good aerobic exercise, but is not really working the muscles to the point of stimulating growth. I gained a few pounds of muscle(about 6) this winter using only two dumbells and a nautilus stand. On the Nautilus I do chinups, pullups, leg raises, dips(triceps and shoulders), and hanging rows. This year instead of using the arm rests to do leg raises, I switched to hanging leg raises and whoa! You can build your core with those. I also used a simple ab roller with a foam pad for my knees. The dumbells I used to do squats, arm curls and hammer curls. I also did diamond pushups. If you lower yourself to touch the floor/ground, these are challenging enough for me. I do have a bench press, but didn’t get it out to use it, so with that there are a few more exercises you can add.
I like to suppress my mTor with intermittent fasting the day of, and then work out in the evening. Immediately after or even during workout I make a protein smoothie. I typically use about 30 g of whey protein, and then some additional plant protein powder(I use Orgain with superfoods which gives me about 20 g of carbs). I spike the plant protein powder with a little BCAAs to make it more anabolic. It all goes in the blender with an avocado. I was using coconut milk as the base of my smoothie, but seemed to gain about 8 pounds of fat along with my 6 pounds of muscle, so switched to mostly almond milk(hemp would be preferable) or some kind of raw dairy, and then stopped gaining the fat.
I also drop 3-5 gr of creatine in the mix. The carbs do increase your insulin which pushes more creatine, protein and nutrients into the muscle cells including the new ones. All this also jumps mTor up. Together the high insulin and mTor are muscle growth promoting.
New muscle growth comes from satellite cells, which are a type of stem cells. These need nutrients to grow. Unlike gaining fat, building muscle is a slow process, and I believe comes from mostly stimulating those satellite cells to multiply and then grow. If these satellite cells don’t multiply, you won’t grow any new muscle… Muscle cells don’t divide. It’s kind of a constant process of stimulating more satellite cells to divide than present muscle cells dying off.
Anyway, I have always been a skinny guy, and this routine is the best I have found to add any muscle. This year I did add quite a bit of fat, but I already had those fat cells laying there from a few years back, just waiting to be filled. I think the insulin was pushing the fat from the coconut milk there. I have already lost about 4 pounds of that fat, but probably a pound or two of the muscle as well. So Chaffee may be right, but I am just happy to gain the muscle almost however I can.
Denise
imo anyway, Denise