I feel you on the calves! It's genetics!
I wouldn't consider myself to have a sensitive stomach but if I drink milk or have certain foods before I workout I will throw up.
I'm also a hard gainer and had stomach surgery so I can't ever get bulky. Have tried every supplement on earth and none worked - as a friend who is a competitive bodybuilder says, you have to eat like it's a job, do it even when you don't want to. But if you can't eat like a normal person you're gonna have a hard time gaining muscle.
Yeah that's where sometimes I need to take a break from working out. At first its great because I literally stuff my face in and eat myself to sleep every night. After several months of consistently eating and meal prepping it does wear on you, but that is the truth you really have to stuff food (the right foods) down your mouth. And you have to do it consistently or you'll loose weight. I also don't have a huge appetite for food so I just eat slowly and wash everything down with water.
I wouldn't consider myself to have a sensitive stomach but if I drink milk or have certain foods before I workout I will throw up.
I used creatine alot when I was in high school. I don't really know the history of creatine but back then I would get the powder, which was water based. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was in that 'bro science' phase so I probably wasn't using it right, just doing what idiots told me to do. I'd take it before and after my workout and I'd always throw up in the beginning of my workout. I thought it was why my biceps were so big so I kept doing it.
After high-school I stopped with body building mostly because I didn't care to workout and to take a bunch of supplements on top of PT. When I was allowed to workout on my own, I got back into supplements.
Theres like 3 different types of creatine, I don't remember all the different ones. The ones I took were pre-alkalnine and they came in pills. You are supposed to take it before (and after?) And it didn't upset my stomach at all. I only stopped taking them because I kept forgetting to take them before my workouts.
One thing you might want to look into is dextrose. Its the powder form of glucose after your workout. In theory its supposed to stop the muscle burning effect of exercise because your body releases insulin under stress. I can't say for certain that it helped me, just made me pee alot but when I was using it I was the heaviest I was at 190lbs. When I really learned all of this and how to workout properly I put on weight like crazy.
There isn't, alot of information out there for us hard gainers so you have to do whatever you can
Thanks guys. Yeah I can eat normally, but over eating is hit and miss. Haha this might just be my lot in life now, which you know what I'll take it because I know people who are hard losers and I feel for them. At least I can have pizza and literally not worry about it or drink anything I want. Would be nice to get back to 170 again, but for now, I might just go with being healthy as my purpose to workout.
What really helped me gain weight was eating potatoes, and brown rice (with quinoa) 3 times a day, and then for my protein I'd put in oats, peanut butter, frozen berries with 2% milk (2% has the most carbohydrates). I'd have oatmeal as snacks. The protein might hurt you because it definitely gets me bloated.
Interesting, I hated running with a passion before I joined, the Army only reinforced my hatred for it lol. I can don't mind pushups but I have to do it in between sets of chest workout. I can't pull myself to just bang out sets until I can't do it anymore.
Thats good, a few years ago I did BJJ. I did it over the summer, but I eventually stopped because it was really hard to focus on doing BJJ and taking my classes in college. I would just show up to class and just get my ass kicked because I couldn't remember the moves. Once I'm done with school I do want to get back into it, and get to that point where I don't have to think about what to do. It was very good training.
Highly recommend cardio interval training, especially the older you get... have done a lot of research on being an older athlete. The book Fast after Fifty by Joe Friel was particularly helpful, I actually emailed the author directly a couple times and got a response. It takes a while to kind of dial in an interval program to your own specific capabilities / limitations but the results have been good, I do it once a week and the total workout including warmup is only around 30 minutes. Five 90 second jogs to warm up with a 30 second rest between jogs; Twelve 30 second sprints with a 30 second rest between sprints; and a 2 minute cooldown jog. Again that is personalized, everyone will be different.
I couldn't count the number of times I've heard people say that. I got schooled every class for a long time. You really can't judge your improvement in the beginning stages until a new group of people come in and stick around.
