VeganDavid

Squats, deadlifts & lunges are all superb exercises as we all know. Pinging your back with DL meant that you were lifting with incorrect form/poor technique/too heavy. Ease back on the weights and work your technique to perfection before lifting heavier. Best wishes.

Squat to as deep as is comfortable and safe for you. If you can go all the way down, great. If not, still great because you are doing what is unarguably one of the best compound exercises there is. Enjoy a challenging squat session with safety. Maybe mix it up. One session deep, the next to parallel. Whatever works best for you.

A little Spaghetti with lots of bolognese sauce using seitan as the base. Absolutely delicious!

Danny, Always look at the total cholesterol figure, not so much the component part. Should aim for 150 or less total cholesterol.

I eat a multi grain sourdough cob (only one brand i choose) and it is terrific toasted with grilled tomato, mushroom & spinach. Certainly no harm has come to me from the bread over the years. What is bad in the sourdough that I might be missing?

take a look at Dr John McDougall's maximum weight loss eating plan. no need to count calories. no offence to those who posted above but it is a mistake counting calories.

This is the problem faced by most and solved by few. It is very hard to achieve both together. You may have to try out reducing the calorie density a little in what you eat and increase the intensity of your lifting workouts. This will take some experimenting on your part over a few weeks, but it's about the calorie in/out scenario. Keep at it as 5 weeks' training with your current routine is not enough time. I can take at least a couple of months for some people's bodies to react to change. Just look at the calorie density of what you are eating and modify. Best wishes and no giving up!!!!

One needs to be 'careful' when labelling certain foods as "superfood" or similar. The term probably stems from the fact that where animal based eating causes so many chronic ills, plant foods as a comparison, really does feel like a superfood. Having eaten only plant foods for the past 15 years, I always feel energised but to me, no one plant food gives me more strength or energy than the other. They are pretty much all at the top level anyway. The way all of us here eat. Best of health & safe training to everyone

Thank you very much FH.

Unlike myself and many others, some people can just look at a weight and BOOM! their muscles grow big. For me, I am happy to slowly build up my strength, keeping my body fat low so at least you can see the striations of my muscles. Where I have built some size is in my legs, thanks to the barbell squat. So how do we go about achieving what you are after? With a blessed DNA, lots and lots of dedication (I didn't say hours upon hours at the gym) and working compound movements with as heavy a weight as you can manage without injury. In addition, you need to marginally increase the weight or rep the following time you revisit the gym doing the same workout. I have a 3 way split. 2 x upper body (UB) and 1 x legs & lower back. In between I treadmill or row. So by the time I get to UB 1, it may be around 10 days but I will increase my rep of say weighted dips until I achieve 4 sets of 12. Next time I do the same exercise, I will up the DB weight but drop the reps. I have been doing this very successfully for 17 years and yes, I have a book that I enter each and every exercise into, so I don't try to remember what I did last time. For you, 18 months training is not long at all, so you have lots of experimenting & learning ahead. Eating. You gotta eat to build up muscle size & strength but you need to decide where you are at in terms of your current body/fat size. I am very much into eating as much fresh, raw and minimally cooked plant foods as I like, with the added extra of legumes, grains, nuts and some grainy sourdough breads from time to time. I LOVE fruit & salads. Highest quality foods have to be your choice day in day out. I personally do not go out of my way too much to find protein, specifically as I get it from the variety of foods I eat, but I do love seitan as a source from time to time. There has been a long standing debate as to the amount of protein for strength trainers/body builders and its true efficacy. No doubt this will rage on for years to come but I believe it varies from person to person and eat as much as you feel you are most comfortable with. I have managed to increase my strength over the years without too much protein and my strength continues to increase with every weight session. Train with compound exercises, train as hard as you can to complete your sets without injury (of course), eat and take rest days away from your workouts as well. There is so much to say and loads of very good posts here from some very experienced trainers, so read and re read the posts here. That's what I did for some time before my recent contributions started. Best wishes.

Hi Lauren, To maximise your fat weight loss, you should try to simplify what you eat in terms of limiting or eliminating calorie dense foods. Keeping your intake limited to as least processed as possible with an emphasis on raw and minimally cooked, should help you in your endeavours. No need to go exclusively raw, but after a week or two on lots of raw (fruits), I felt very, very good with loads of energy to carry out my workouts and then some. I am 50 and stand just 5'6" @ 67kgs. I recently purposefully dropped my weight from 70kgs and feel better and stronger than ever, nourishing my body with lots of fruits and vegies, limiting processed foods to a minimum. Keep at it, eat when you need to and hopefully what has worked for me and many others will work for you. Best wishes.

Although we only need a few micro grams of B12 per day, large doses have proven themselves to be non toxic. However, such large doses of B12 are not utilised by the body efficiently at all and is probably wasted. Taking a B12 will not automatically make anyone feel different. It might have been what you ate. As we are all so well aware, proper handling of the food is important so one would be expected to wash the spinach before eating. Try to find the smallest B12 tablet. Some manufacturers make them big for big profits only. I take a small, dissolvable tablet once a week. Your sudden illness looks to me like a coincidence rather than due to the B12.

Best wishes to everyone on for your Thanksgiving. Enjoy!

Now that you are working out and all being well with some effort, you should start to feel more appetite. Just make sure you ease into your workouts as your muscles and bones need to adapt. No use risking injury trying too hard too quickly. Just build it up progressively as you deem fit. If you eat a plant based diet comprising starchy vegetables, fruits, green & yellow vegetables, legumes, grains etc, they are the healthiest foods, positively stimulate your entire body so that in turn may also assist in stimulating your hunger. Check out Dr John McDougall's website for lots of scientifically proven info. Best wishes

Whenever someone comes out with such statements, ask them where they obtained the info from. Do not let them brush their statements aside. The claims must be verified by peer reviewed scientific studies, published in respected journals and must clearly show cause & effect. Anything less is just hot air and an embarrassment to those who make such idiotic claims. Remember, anyone can say anything but without proper backup, it is meaningless and they lose respect. Case in point, I have been on a plant based eating plan (McDougall) for the past 15 years and I have never knowingly strayed. I do not have any health problems, just benefits, nor have I had any thyroid problem and believe me, only because of how fair skinned and my blonde hair do you not notice how damn hairy I am!!! No thinning hair here at age 50.