Okay, I figured it was time to post some pictures and give people a bit of info on myself. As you can see from my pictures below, I’m carrying quite a bit of fat, mainly around the stomach, back, hips, etc, but the pics are deceiving as I would be quite larger around the chest if I hadn’t gynecomastia surgery about 3 years ago, which also got rid of the fat in that area.

I’m 37 and sick of being fat, out of shape and ashamed of my body. In the short term, I'm looking at this as an 8 week plan to get my in shape (or lose as much fat as possible) for my beach holiday at the end of June. But longer term, I want a body to be proud of. I’m not really interested in getting ‘big’, at just 5ft 6ins, I just want a lean, toned body (six pack, etc) that the average Joe would be slightly envious of.

Anyway I plan to use this thread to track my progress or the next few weeks (and hopefully months) and plan to post updated pictures each week. To get things started, I’m posting a picture of me at my heaviest (ever) back in January this year when I was around 196 lbs. The 2nd picture is from Monday 1st May 2006, when I was 189 lbs (BTW, the reason for the funny square of light on my body in the later pics is reflection from a mirror).

13617

13616

Now the reason I've dubbed this CliveyG's 'Biggest Loser' plan is because I'm predominately following the advice from the 'The Biggest Loser' book (based on the TV show of the same name) and Jillian Michael's book 'Winning By Losing'. In terms of eating, I'm trying to limit my fat intake and have a daily limit of 1350 cals. This probably seems quite low to most of you, but I'm not doing any serious weight lifting/resistance training at the moment, mainly just cardio and my main goal at this stage is weight loss. I'm currently doing about 20 mins (LISS) a day on my home elliptical machine, but adding a minute or two a day as I find it easier. By week four, I’m hoping to be either doing 60 mins (LISS) a day, or switching to about 30 mins of HIIT.

Once I lose the bulk of the weight, I will switch my focus to building muscle and will probably switch to what most would consider a more suitable diet, but for the moment its all about losing fat.

STATS on 2nd May 2006 (1st day of challenge)
Weight 189 lbs
BMI 29.2
Age 37
Height 5ft 6ins

Well today is day 7 and the day is going well so far. I've been sticking to my diet and I've done 20 mins on my elliptical machine (will hopefully do another 20 mins later). Had a shaky evening last night though, I'd had my dinner and used up my calorie allowance for the day by around 7pm and then I had sudden the urge to cheat and have some chocolate, but I resisted :neener: because I knew even if I'd had just a small bar, it would have led to a major calorie fest. It really doesn't help that I'm off work at the moment and bored. I get bored easily and when I'm bored, I eat. :rolleyes:

Anyway I'm looking forward to tomorrow as its my first week weigh in!

Well today is my first week weigh in and I've just weighed. I started last week at just under 189 (188.6 to be exact) and today i'm 183.2 lbs, so thats a loss this week of 5.4 lbs! :D

Here are this weeks pictures. Not a huge difference, but I think my stomach sticks out a little less. :lol:

13646

I'm hoping to have a similar loss next week and then expect to dip down to about 3lbs a week. I'm also going to tweak my diet this week. At the moment, I'm eating 'okay', I'm sticking within my calories, but I'm by no means eating 'clean'. I definately need to add more protein to my diet, so I'm hoping to get some high protein/low carb/low fat bars to snack/eat mid morning or late afternoon. At the moment, I'm eating store bought cereal bars, which while very low in fat, are loaded with carbs and little protein. I also need to have a much bigger portion of protein in my main evening meal.

In terms of exercise, I managed two 20 mins sessions on my elliptcal machine yesterday, so my new goal is to try and maintain and build on this, perhaps adding a minute to each session, each day. Anyway, I'm off to have breakfast! :eat:

Congrats on thw 5 lbs loss in the week! Thats quite a drop in one week. I noticed you said you were taking in about 1350 calories and not doing any weightlifting. IMO you should really think about doing the cardio AND weightlifing. Lifting is a very important part of the losing weight and getting healthy process. The more muscle you have the more you burn calories doing just normal day to day things. I think you would see a huge difference in a month of added weightlifting along with your cardio.

Just my two cents. Keep up the good work though. And no matter what.... STICK WITH IT!

In the short term, I'm looking at this as an 8 week plan to get my in shape (or lose as much fat as possible) for my beach holiday at the end of June. But longer term, I want a body to be proud of. I’m not really interested in getting ‘big’, at just 5ft 6ins, I just want a lean, toned body (six pack, etc) that the average Joe would be slightly envious of. Congrats on your progress already! If you don't mind, I'm going to make a couple of suggestions. Increase your calories and add in weight training, as another poster mentioned. If you do that, imo, you will lose more fat and less muscle (maybe gain some, and give you that toned look you're after).

Also, I think it's a good idea to ease into a lifestyle change, so I like what you're doing with the 20 minutes of LISS and then adding more time each day. But if you want to see more results in 8 weeks, you should just skip that and start doing 45 minutes of LISS right now.

Good luck!

-Mike

Fender, Michael2938

Thank you both for the encouragement. I have been considering upping my calories, but part of me is scared that more calories, will mean slower weight loss and with such a short space of time before the holiday, I feel a bit reluctant to risk it. I know that you need more calories when your working out, but I am only doing cardio at the moment, so if that were to remain the case, should I still be increasing my cals? If the argument is still yes, then how does 1600 cals a day sound?

As for the weight training, well the problem with that is I don’t have access to weights at the moment. As I mentioned in another thread, I’d been a member of a gym almost solidly for the past 6 years or so, but 99.9% of the time I never went, so a few months back looking to save money, I cancelled my membership and vowed not to sign up to another gym again until I could prove my long term commitment to a fitness program. The other issue is I’m not working at the moment, so I’m reluctant to take on any additional financial commitment. The only other alternative is to buy a cheap set of weights, maybe something like this http://www.argos.co.uk/ProductDisplayTRK019?partNumber=3025350 but I don’t know whether ‘cheap’ weights would be considered a waste of money.

Well its a day 11 and yesterday was going well until I went to see Misson Impossible 3 in the evening. Before the movie, my friend wanted a coffee, so we landed up at Starbucks and I bought a skinny Lemon muffin (390 cals), and later after the movie we went to a bar (I just drank diet pepsi), where I also had a small bag of potato chips (265 cals), so yesterday's calorie's went over by nearly 700 cals. But I'm not going to dwell on it. It was quite spread out over the evening, so it wasn't like I had a huge binge and I'm back on track today.

Also, after the responses above I think I'm going to go ahead and get some weights. I'm probably going to go with the ones in the link above. They are cheap, but they should be fine to start with. As I said above, money is an issue at the moment, but at just £29 ($54), its hardly going to break the bank! Now I just need to find some one to drive me to the store to collect them!

Hey Clivey! Good to see you're still here. I think getting some weights would be a great idea. Do weights for a month and Im sure you will wonder how you ever got along without doing them! Heres a link to a site that will give you some good exercises with your new weight set. Alot of dumbell exercises and straightbar as well. It doesnt look like it comes with a bench but Im sure you can find SOMETHING that will work. A folding chair, ottoman, anything.

Good luck and STICK WITH IT!!

Here's the link!
http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html

Hey Clivey! Good to see you're still here. I think getting some weights would be a great idea. Do weights for a month and Im sure you will wonder how you ever got along without doing them! Heres a link to a site that will give you some good exercises with your new weight set. Alot of dumbell exercises and straightbar as well. It doesnt look like it comes with a bench but Im sure you can find SOMETHING that will work. A folding chair, ottoman, anything.

Good luck and STICK WITH IT!!

Here's the link!
http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html

Thanks for the link Fender, I'm off to the store tomorrow to get the weights. Unfortunately I don't have a bench, but I've seen in some fitness magazines examples of exercises like chest flyes/press, on a swiss ball, so I'm going to get one of those too, plus it will be useful for ab exercises.
To be honest, I've had another slightly dodgy day with the diet, again, not falling off the wagon completely, but made some poor food choices earlier in the day, meaning I exhusted my cals early, so I've gone over by about 650 cals again. But I should have the weights tomorrow and I'm planning to do a session with them tomorrow, which should help motivate and focus me.

BTW, just for comparison sake, this was me this time last year (practically to the day) at 161 lbs. I even got down to 154 by June 2005, before I started putting it all back and eventually shooting up to 196 lbs in Jan 2006. If I look no worst than this by the time I go on holidays this year then I'll be happy enough and have reached my first goal!

13703

well yesterday was a complete disaster in terms of eating. Had 3257 cals, way, way over my limit,:doh: but I did at least manage to get the dumbbell/barbell set I was planning to buy from the store. I didn't get around to using them yesterday as I originally discussed, nor did I do any cardio either. However, Saturday was meant to be my 'day off' from any exercise, so I’m not kicking myself too much over the exercise. However I do feel pretty bad for ruining things with the diet. In the past that sort of binge would have almost certainly signaled the end of my diet, but I'm trying to think differently these days and reinforce the message (into my head) that having a bad day isn't the end of the world and I'm determined not to let my guilt sabotage my plan.

Anyway, that’s was yesterday. Today has been a much better day. I did a 35-40 min weight-training workout this morning and followed it 5 mins later with a 30 min workout on the elliptical machine. According to my HRM, both workouts combined burned approx 600 cals. Diet was not perfect today, but okay, just had my final meal for the day and I've totaled 1780 cals, would like to have been in the 1400 mark, but I was in all day today (so a little bored) and I’m sure some of you guys would argue that I should be eating around that level anyway.

Now that I’m adding in resistance training to my plan, I’m really hoping this will help crank-up the fat burning. My initial thoughts are to do 3 weight training sessions a week and continue with cardio 6 days a week. I calculated yesterday that with 6 weeks left before my holidays, I need to which to lose 3.5 lbs a week to get to my initial target weight. Sounds do-able to me! :gl:

Well its my weekly weigh-in and today I'm, 182.6 lbs. So this week I've lost 0.6lbs. Now thats a pretty rubbish result for just my 2nd week, but given my huge calorie fest on Saturday, as some not so good days before that, I'm happy just to have lost! In fact, on Sunday morning I'd gained 1.6 lbs from the previous day, so my main focus since Sunday has been just to ensure I didn't finish the week with a gain.

Here is this weeks picture. Not really any change, in fact I think I look a little fatter in these compared to last week. But I think it might just be a little bloating.

13724