u/plentyofconfusedfish

Female in her early thirties here. I have pcos. Ive been doing IF where i give myself a 10 hour window to eat but ive noticed that ive started waking up at 3 am almost every night. Sometimes anxious with a high heart rate sometimes feeling tired but cant always fall back asleep quickly. Is this normal with IF? I read somewhere this can be due to a cortisol surge due to blood sugar dropping in the middle of the night if its been hours since you last ate. Does this ever go away or how is this sustainable? I really want to try IF for the many benefits but don’t want to be spiking cortisol in the process which would defeat the purpose of IF. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Female 5’3 131 pounds. I have the typical “skinny fat” body type. Absolutely no muscle before i started strength training about six weeks ago. I have patellar tendonitis so i was really limited on what exercises i could do to grow my quads (no squats, lunges, leg extension, leg press, stairs).

The only thing i could use was the bike with resistance. I was very consistent with doing it ten minutes before the each workout whether it was upper or lower body since it was the only thing i could do and i noticed that my quads are actually noticeably growing!

However it looks like theres only growth on the outer quads area (i believe its called the vastus lateralis). Is this due to the nature of what muscle the bike would use or is it because i had basically zero muscle before and the vastus lateralis is where quad growth typically shows and the rest of the muscle will fill out eventually?

My knee stability has really improved over the past month and a half and ive been able to start using the leg press machine. Any tips on how to engage other parts of my quads if this is a matter of the bike not engaging all of my quads?

Thanks everyone!

New to the gum not sure what this is