Art by Lasker

Why Weightlifting?

“Why do you exercise” doesn’t come up as often with weightlifting since its appeal tends to be pretty straightforward–but there’s more to it than the obvious!
I started weightlifting in college as a physical therapy thing, but only in 2017 did I finally get serious about it. Today it’s an incredibly important hobby and lifestyle thing for me, and I really enjoy connecting with others over it.

Injury Mitigation

When I was a teenager, I began to have issues sleeping on my back–I’d wake up sore and in pain. Various trips to doctors and (unfortunately) a chiropractor revealed that I suffer from degenerative disc disease.
The general advice was just to stay healthy, exercise, and crucially: build muscle around the back to support the failing discs.

Physique/Vanity

Gym-selfie paintover by Amon (2022)

Nowadays the #1 reason I weightlift is for my physique. The health benefits are in the back of my mind, and I love benefiting from the energy boost and resiliancy I get, but very honestly I am mostly working to achieve an idealised self-image.

You can really see it in Argent’s design

I’m a big fan of encouraging folks’ vanity-related motivations. Societal stigma gives vanity a bad name, but I think caring about your physique for your *own* reasons is a fantastic reason to exercise.
And honestly any motivation that gets you to exercise is a health win!

Meditation

Growing up, I played a strange handful of sports: Golf, Tennis, Gymnastics, and Bowling. Not the most ‘team-oriented’ of sports. Makes sense then that as an adult, I really appreciate a sport that focuses entirely on my own skill expression and development. There’s just something very relaxing about an extremely physical activity where you can close yourself off to the rest of the world for a moment, and just engage in physical connection to gravity.

Regal’s Workout Advice

Art by NoMoreBiscuit

This is a non-exhaustive mini-blog post of important fitness and nutrition info.
By no means an expert, I’m a big nerd who’s had his fair share of fitness + nutrition successes and failures.

Diet and Nutrition

In my opinion, diet is so important that I think any serious “how to put on muscle and/or lose fat” guide should start with it.

Labeling specific foods in an overly simplistic manner as “good foods” and “bad foods” is not only inconsistent with the total diet approach, but it can cause many people to abandon efforts to make dietary improvements.

–Jeanne H Freeland-Graves, Susan Nitzke ¹

Nutrition basics

If you want to change your body composition in any way–building muscle or cutting fat, the #1 thing to understand is Energy In/Energy Out. Gaining or losing body mass is just a matter of whether you’re consuming more calories than you expend each day. Whether it’s fat or muscle depends on your activity level.

If you haven’t, check out this or any Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) Calculator to get a rough estimate of how many calories your body burns just to maintain your current lifestyle.

Macros

“Macros” refers to the 3 macronutrients: Carbohydrates, Protein, and Fat.
Each Macro serves a multitude of important biological functions. A healthy diet will include some amount of each of these.
Briefly:

• Carbohydrates = primary source of energy–the body has a very easy time using carbs for energy
• Protein = support for building muscle and repairing systems within the body
• Fat = protective cushion around organs and the body, also needed for hormone production

Macros and Calories

Along with their other functions, macronutrients also provide energy, measured in kilocalories.

When you hear talk of “calories”, people are usually talking about kilo-calories. Going forward, “calories” mentioned here actually refers to kilocalories.

To calculate how many calories are in your diet, you simply add up the macros in your diet, and multiply their amounts in grams by either 4 or 9 to find out how many calories they’re contributing.

• 1g Carbohydrates/Protein = 4 calories
• 1g Fat = 9 calories

Exercise vs. Diet

When it comes to researching “how do I build muscle or cut fat?”, you’ll usually find some statistic like “70-80% diet, 30-20% exercise”, meaning simply that monitoring + changing your diet is much more important than tweaking your exercise routine.
In my experience it’s not usually welcome advice. It feels much more exciting and actionable to hear that if you just lift weights 3x a week you’ll get the physique of your dreams. Changing your diet feels harder and less proactive than running a mile every day.

Fitness YouTubers I like

It’s risky to put trust in an influencer…but these guys haven’t steered me wrong yet.

• Jeff Nippard: The big-name “Science-based Weightlifting” YouTuber. I’ve been using his workout routines for years now. Huge fan.
• Renaissance Periodization (Dr. Mike Israetel): An intense guy with incredible nuanced scientific weightlifting + muscle advice
• Jeremy Ethier: More of a gimmicky YouTuber but good info and high production quality.

Discord Server

Art by Ming

I host a public furry fitness server! While fitness and furry-themed, it’s an 18+ social space first and foremost. A good chill hangout space with the extra benefit of being filled with experienced fitness folk who can help answer questions and suggest workout routines.

Regal Furry Fitness invite link