Any decent tips on losing weight?

Lose weight. Get a girl friend. Get married. Gain all that weight back.

 

well he ll need to stay fit to find a mistress.

 

Wanting to do something about it is the first major step. That you have done by posting here, major kudos to you.

- Don't bother reading health magazines, they are usually owned or affiliated with pill companies who make "eat this pill to lose lbs, build muscle, etc". Wonder why you see their monthly test of some brand supplement pill which apparently really worked. Followed by big adverts for the said supplement.
- Don't go by fad diets. E.g. A diet based on eating meat only is a very bad idea. Don't follow fad diets which starve your body or don’t feed it protein+carbs+good fats.
- Don't go believing "weightlifting has nothing to do with losing weight - professional bodybuilders are obese". Weightlifting burns just as many calories as having a running session. It is all exercise, gets your metabolism going, keeps you healthy and burns calories. On the same note, "natural bodybuilding" shouldn't be confused with bodybuilding using steroids.
- Realise that your diet coke habit is not putting on weight. Diet coke has one calorie per can. It is however not good for you chemically, your body has to process those chemicals. One can a day is ok but 6!!!
- Walking in the park once a week isn't going to do it. Aim to burn 500 calories a day. Do this every day if you want to shift excess lb’s. You can burn 500 calories with 40 minutes moderate exercise and doing everyday things like taking the stair instead of the escalator/lift. See http://www.thefitmap.com/women/features/calorie_counter.htm
- Eat the correct foods. Knowing what each food has in it and only eating the good stuff is 70%+ of losing fat and being healthy.
- If your body size needs 2300 calories, give it 2300 calories (balanced with protein, carbs + good fats). Then burn 500 calories through exercise.
- 500 calories a day = 3500 calories a week = 1lb of fat. Assuming you are overweight, you will probably find you will lose 2lb of fat with a 500 calorie a day deficit through exercise.
- If you aim to exercise every day. Do legs one day (running, cycling, walking, machines, whatever). Next day do upper body. This way the muscles you used the previous day have time to recover, repair and strengthen.
- A major part of burning calories is to keep your metabolism going. If you starve yourself by not eating, your body will slow your metabolism and you will not burn calories.

Bad foods: Pizza, dohnuts, sweets, sugar, things with high fat. Packaged foods. Fried foods. Even a lot of fruit juices have added sugar.

Good foods: turkey, chicken, vegetables, fruit, fish, fish oils, olive oil. Grilled food. Freshly sqeezed fruit juice (no added sugar).

You need good advice from a source you can trust. True and accurate, easy to follow information on food, nutrition, exercise and metabolism is hard to find. Most health magazines and the internet are full of con merchants trying to get your money.
I can recommend Tom Venuto's "Burn the Fat (Feed the Muscle)" program. He is a well known "natural" body builder who tells it how it is. You can just subscribe via email and get something like 15 long emails about food and nutrition, metabolism, goals, the health industry. For the full info you have to buy the e-book but it is well worth it. Don't be fooled by the body builder title, the information is primarily for educating you on what foods are good for you and nutrition. It is easy to follow and more importantly tells you why things work and how your body reacts to protein, carbs, good fats and bad fats.
http://www.burnthefat.com/

 

My two cents :
a) no sweets (coke & co)
b) no pasta & carbs (or just one every few days)
c) more meat
d) gym

The gym is the key point. It was hard at first but now im doing it on a regular basis and it just is great, not only for the wheight but for the stress also.

No need to worry! Just find the right rithm eating/sports for you and you'll succeed!

 

Search around for a book called "The Abs Diet" by David Zinczenko (sp?). A friend of mine recommended it, and I found it in a Michigan bookstore for $1

The title is horrible, but it actually is a very sensible program. In fact, a lot of the stuff suggested in the posts above are in the book, too. Basically it comes down to eating healthy but protein-rich and doing lots of strength training.

 

A british comedian (Jasper Carrott) once said to those people of a fuller figure - "STOP PUTTING FOOD IN YOUR MOUTH" :lol:

Joking aside, it appears that the general consesus here is to eat fairly sensibly, basically cut out all the uncessary crap IE 12 cans of coke a day or two and the processed/frozen meals. Take time to eat vegetables/fruit/healthy meats ie skinless chicken and fish

Also combine this with some good aerobic excercises IE get out of breath

Last year for about 4 months I was just doing a lot of general exercise in my office gym, nice as 2 floors below my office and is free of charge :nod:

Always increasing the level or the time slowly, so start say at 8 mins level 8 on the stepper, then after say week or two, up this to 9 mins at level 8 and so on and so on

10-15 mins on a stepper
40 sit ups
50 arm curls
10 min brisk walk (incline & speed)
40 sit ups
20-40 mins bike ride
40 sit ups

And dependant on time another short walk or time on stepper

And within this time period I lost just over 2 stone, sorry can`t translate to KG, but a good amount

Then work, school holidays, holidays etc, let me slip back again, so had to start again recently

So sensible eating and get out of breath regularly and you won`t go far wrong

Just make it a part of your life, don`t lapse, make your excercise time part of your daily routine. Every Monday do a 5-10 mile run, Every Wednesday to a 30-60 gym work out . Every Friday to a 20-30 mile bike ride, or bike to work/college where-ever or find some hills and go have a regular brisk walk, but always try and keep to a time and try and improve on sightly every time you do it


Will power is the biggest thing........if you haven`t got it.............it will be really hard :nod:

Good luck as I am there with you :thumbsup:

 

Weight lifting is fine exercise, but it is anaerobic excercise. Aerobic is better for strengthening the heart, and raising metabolism (the goal for the OP). Both should be implemented, but if you're trying to ditch fat, aerobic is the key. As someone who's been on both sides of the fence, my most fit was when I was doing something aerobic each workout day (5-6 a week) and weight training every other day.

 

Ok, here's what I've been doing:

- Stop eating fast food, no Hamburgers, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, or Pizza hut.

- Stop Drinking soda, completely. No diet soda either. This also includes supposedly healthy fruit type drinks like snapple, iced teas like Arizona or sobe, etc. It's all just high fructose corn syrup.

- Significantly cut down on white bread, potatoes, and white rice (This is a hard one for me.) You don't need to eliminate them compeltely, but say once or twice a week maximum. Substitute wild rice and wheat bread when possible (real wheat bread, not just Ralphs brand white-dyed-to-look-brown-bread.) This is becasue these three foods do as much to enact a delayed insulin response as sugar does, and a steady diet of them over many years can contribute to diabetes.

- Cut down sugar as much as possible, no candy, sugary breakfast cereals, donuts, etc. When you do use sugar (like say, in your morning coffee, of which you shouldn't drink more than one cup a day) use real sugar, not that imitation chemical aspartamine shit.

If you cover a steak in that toxic crap and put in in the woods, animals won't eat it. The people who work at the plants where it's made wear those self-contained biowarfare suits, that's how bad it is for you.

- Limit your intake of dairy products - Cheese, milk, butter, etc. Don't eliminate them completely as dairy is a good source of protien, but cut it to smaller portions.

- What should you eat then, if you can't have pizza and cokes? Vegetables - as many as you want, as much as you can. Vegetables of all kinds should make up the largest portion of your daily meals. It's tough to develop a taste for things that you may not like (especially our generation, which grew up going through the fast food drive through) but it's all state of mind.

- Try to get as much excercise as possible. They tell you 3 times a week, but we all know how tough that is. Still if you manage to do as much as you can on a semi-regular scehedule and stick to the diet you'll see results.

- You also need lots of protien, especially if you keep a semi-regular excercise scehdule. Eat some Beef or Chicken with your dinner, but not too much. Don't sit down and chow a 27 oz steak every night. However a single chicken breast, a couple of (lean) hamburger patties, turkey patties, or Fish will do. If you don't get enough protien your body will begin to cannibalise the protien in your muscles, so you'll loose "weight" but instead of flub it'll be muscle mass.

You also don't need to be a Nazi about any of this stuff. Don't think of it as a strict regimen that you must follow or you'll drop dead tomorrow. It's more like a general lifestyle change. You can still eat sweet stuff and deserts or get a triple cheeseburger animal style with chilifries, just not every day (once a month max I eat fast food, as a reward to myself.)

 

Body building is not the same thing as weight-lifting, although body builders are weight-lifters too.

As GP says, you need both Anaerobic and Aerobic exercise to be really healthy.

You don't need to cut out carbs as strictly as a lot of people here are claiming. A balanced diet is key, which includes protein from meat and pulses, carbs, fresh fruit and vegetables and dairy products. A balanced diet will feed the body and maintain a consistent metabolism, which in turn will provide you with energy to exercise.

Everything in moderation.

Common sense is all it takes, and self discipline.

 

Indeed. If you're eating only meat & vegetables, you're going to find yourself sluggish if you try to exercise hard. Eat at least a mild amount of carbs a day. If you really want to watch your carbs, stay away from the stuff with stupid graniularity (sp?). Eat softer bread, less potatoes, etc. Easier to digest = out of the system faster.

 

My example was an extreme one , in order to demonstrate that weight-lifting isn't the catalyst to being thin - it's aerobic exercise.

Carbs should be adjusted as one sees fit - just eat what you can burn.

Fruits and veggies are good and necessary for vitamins etc, but you burn Carbs, Fat and build blocks with protein (different types of amino acids , so don't stick to just one type of protein as each has its own attributes)

 

In a matter of fact I never needed weightlifting, I'm a relatively big person. Even when I lose enough weight I won't be a stick, so that doesn't bother me so much.

BTW, it's true that you can't make a huge diet from one day to another, you won't can handle it and you'll leave it in a short time. You should start stopping your worst habit (in my case coke and all related sodas), maybe replacing it for natural juice to make the change easier. In a few weeks you'll notice the change and you'll feel great, that will help you a lot to keep going.

 

There is an old myth about not eating carbs. This is not true. You need carbs but the right ones at the right times. Bread in general is a very very slow burning carb so in a morning is fine but a big no-no after dinner time (I personally cut out bread totally after xmas). The best time to eat carbs is before you train - they will allow you to train longer at a higher pace and also help to breakdown fat.

Try to eat fresh food (Fruit), Plenty of protein (Fish) and plenty of iron (Spinach and brocholli).

Most importantly is the exercise. You don't have to be a member of a gym to stay in grea health. Buy a small set of dumbells (maybe a bar bell too), you can do all the neccesary with a 50kg set. Plenty of cardio is the key to weight loss though. Jogging on the streets or in the park is free, you don't have to spend £40 a month to use some-ones machine!

GOOD LUCK!!

 

IMO:

-Drink only unsweetened beverages
-Don't drink during meals
-Fast from solids a few days every month
-Eat without any distractions
-Buy less food more often (and buy more produce, less packaged shit)
-Loose the "bang for your buck" and Super-size-me mentalities!
-Prepare the majority of your food yourself/get more involved
-Punish yourself for making bad choices

 

Well, I think I should give a update. Right now, I am just trying to get the coke thing out of the way by substituting bottled water for cokes, and it works pretty well (Especially since I can refill the bottles out of the fridge's tap).

The diet is the next thing, and I have been doing OK. I do pretty well if I have substitutes, but tend to go back to older habits if there is not that much to eat. Been eating a lot of bagels and cream cheese (Going to stop that soon, though), soups (I think I am OK as long as I don't eat too many of the fatty ones too often). I tried 100% whole wheat, and it tasted pretty bad. Any other bread besides that and white that taste good with sandwitches (Also, I cut down on thoses, which I think is good progress).

Bicycling is sort of a taboo here, since the roads here are rather aggressive and I am not much of a fan of riding on the side of the road. I might buy one for the park, though. Not sure what rules they have on that, but I remember there were some restrictions.

Haven't been able to go to the park lately, although I might go Friday if the weather is good enough. Its been a combination of snow, sleet, and just plain out cold down here. I would look at joining a Gym, although I want to give it some more time before I decide.

As for weight lifting, I do plan on doing that at some point. Like I said, I would rather give it a little bit of time and focus on other things before I look at that as a option.

 

Being big doesn't necessarily equate to having strength. I'm a weight lifter, and while I'm relatively small (5' 11", 155 lbs), I'm probably a lot stronger than you'd bargain for. For instance, my roommate (here at the university I'm attending) is 6' 2" and about 190 lbs and I can out-lift him in every lift (press, fly, etc.) you can imagine.

Now, I know you're probably not looking to be the next muscle maniac. I'm not either. However, as been stated by several other members already, I would suggest lifting weights to complement your anaerobic exercise program. It's just something to think about. Maybe not right away, but in the long run I think it would do you some good.

 

One step at a time is the best option. It is easier to stagger changes than to hit yourself with all at once.