Hey everyone,

Here's the deal, I have ~30 lbs I want to lose in 6 months. I'm getting married in early July and want to look great at my wedding.

I'm 5'8" 225 lbs ~30% bodyfat.

My biggest problems are a) crappy diet b) don't stick with anything and c) information overload -- i know too much about fitness and nutrition

I frequented this site briefly over the summer and ultimately ended up doing more harm than good on a physical and mental level. Since then I steped away from any real diet/exercise program, stopped caring and became much happier. Being locked in a library with nothing to do except surf JSF became far too obsessive and drove me crazy.

I am happy to workout 6 days a week. I don't have a problem with cardio other than time limitations. Weights are fine. Ultra-strict nutrition does not work for me, I'm too all or nothing at this point and a minor setback can easily create a snowball effect. From personal experience 4-5 meals per day is fine but 6 drives me crazy.

What I would like is someone to help get me started in a particular direction with a nutrition and exercise plan. At this point I need someone to tell me what to do because I have overanalyzed the heck out of everything I have seen and am just in over load.

Can anyone help me?

I'm too all or nothing at this point and a minor setback can easily create a snowball effect.

You can say something like that about smoking or drugs in general, but being healthy? I had an epiphany recently, and I think about it all the time. If you mess up, GET BACK ON TRACK! Why do you have to workout 6 days? Why not start with 3 days lifting weights and 2,000+ calories. It's actually quite a bit of food when it's clean. If you cheat, and you will, get back on track.

Get in the mindset that 30-45 min. of weight training 3 times a week and eating clean is so damn easy, it really is. After that first set, it becomes its own drug, you feel awesome doing it and becomes an addiction in itself.

Now go read the stickies.

P.S. You might wanna postpone that wedding if you do lose 30 lbs. ;) Or packon the muscles and make the honeymoon an all out sexual... k i'll stop there.

I know my stickies :D

Good point about the 6 days/wk workout.

30 lbs over 6mo is about 5 lbs/mo or about 1.25 lbs/wk, seems perfectly reasonable, if things go well maybes I can change that number to 45 lbs

How does this look:

3 times a week do 4x15, first set is warmup with 50% of the weight I will be using:
Crunches, Lower back hyperextentions, squats, bent rows, bench press, lat pulldowns, mil press, close grip bench, barbell curls

3 times a week do 30-45 min cardio at ~70-80% effort

diet:
1) protein shake with 22g protein and 6 strawberries or other fruit
2) protein and carb
3) deli sandwich with veggies on the side
4) protein shake
5) meat, carb, veggies

make 4 and 5 interchangable as needed.

Monitor progress every other week by weigh in and waist measurement?

The diet you propose is too vague - "meat, carb, veggies"??? Go to fitday (www.fitday.com (http://www.fitday.com)) and build a diet around caloric intake and macronutrient ratios (I suggest 40% P/40% C/20% F to start).

You are 5'8", 225 lbs. Your BMR is about 3200 calories (if you assume a moderate activity level). Your caloric intake to lose 1.25 pounds per week would be about 2575 calories per day with the cardio/lifting you have proposed.

I personally would target a diet that takes off 2 lbs per week (caloric intake of about 2200 per day). If you use this and the 40/40/20 guidelines, you'll make progress quickly.

I'll checkout fitday.com. How did you get the target calorie count on fitday?

Here's the question then, should I focus on creating a focused diet detailing everything (ie instead of meat, carb, veggie do 6oz grilled chicken with 1/2 cup brown rice and 1 1/2 cup salad with 2 Tbsp italian dressing) or should i be focusing on general guidelines that I can just run with as the situation dictates like I'm already doing?

The answer is yes.

Meaning ... you should track what you eat, and ensure that you are close to your target calories and amounts of carbs, protein, and fat. Adjust as you go though the day.

As you track what you eat, you'll pretty quickly adopt new eating habits (my biggest change by day 2/3 was to switch from half and half in my morning coffee to 2%, once I saw how much fat was in each).

Record what you eat for a week or so as you continue to do some research and adjustment to your guidelines. Once you start eating 5-6 smaller meals that are balanced, you'll find that you are never hungry, and often feel full even though your caloric intake is much less than it was before.

I'll checkout fitday.com. How did you get the target calorie count on fitday?

Here's the question then, should I focus on creating a focused diet detailing everything (ie instead of meat, carb, veggie do 6oz grilled chicken with 1/2 cup brown rice and 1 1/2 cup salad with 2 Tbsp italian dressing) or should i be focusing on general guidelines that I can just run with as the situation dictates like I'm already doing?

Start to use Fitday for a week or so, and eventually you'll realise what you are eating without having to use Fitday. I could put in what I ate today and it would come out at approx 40/40/20. I always use it every now and again though to make sure I'm not getting too greedy with servings :tu:

Hey everyone,

Here's the deal, I have ~30 lbs I want to lose in 6 months. I'm getting married in early July and want to look great at my wedding.

I'm 5'8" 225 lbs ~30% bodyfat.

My biggest problems are a) crappy diet b) don't stick with anything and c) information overload -- i know too much about fitness and nutrition

I frequented this site briefly over the summer and ultimately ended up doing more harm than good on a physical and mental level. Since then I steped away from any real diet/exercise program, stopped caring and became much happier. Being locked in a library with nothing to do except surf JSF became far too obsessive and drove me crazy.

I am happy to workout 6 days a week. I don't have a problem with cardio other than time limitations. Weights are fine. Ultra-strict nutrition does not work for me, I'm too all or nothing at this point and a minor setback can easily create a snowball effect. From personal experience 4-5 meals per day is fine but 6 drives me crazy.

What I would like is someone to help get me started in a particular direction with a nutrition and exercise plan. At this point I need someone to tell me what to do because I have overanalyzed the heck out of everything I have seen and am just in over load.

Can anyone help me?

My friend "knowing too much about fitness" is a pretty lame excuse for doing nothing :DAnyway, time to cut out the procrastination and take action:)

This is just an example of a programme you could do, you can obviously come up with your own programme but it really is time for positive action, and to stop agonising and obsessing over what is the best programme for you. Here's the paste :-




Firstly eat clean - avoid all candy/sweets, cake, biscuits, ice cream, white bread, white pasta, white rice, pizza, burgers, fried food, all fast food in general - curries, chinese, McDonalds, KFC, whatever.

Minimise booze intake as much as you can.

Also minimise even wholewheat/wholemeal bread and pasta - oats and brown rice are a better source for carbs. Generally try and avoid sandwiches whilst cutting.


Try and drink at least 3 litres of water a day or so to raise metabolism.


Eat green vegetables 3-4 times a day - broccoli, cabbage, leeks etc - this will ease digestion and help metabolism.

Take a tablespoon of flaxseed oil, olive oil or fish oil with three of your meals - these are healthy fats and although extra calories they will help you burn fat.


Make sure you eat 5 or 6 small meals a day. Firstly calculate your maintenance calories according to how often you exercise using this link http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm. Then subtract 500 calories to get your daily calorie level.

Go with that amount of calories less 500 per day spaced over 6 meals eating healthy fats and green veg as mentioned above. You'll have to read food labels to work out the calories for each foodstuff.

Also you should be getting a fair amount of protein - one gramme per pound of bodyweight should suffice - have protein at every meal including breakfast - so for your size say 20-24 grammes of protein per meal - good sources are tuna (don't eat any more than 2 cans a week though due to mercury poison problems with tuna), tinned ocean salmon (the farmed salmon is apparently full of toxins so avoid), lean beef/steak, chicken breast, turkey breast. You could also take 20-25 grammes of protein powder once a day - don't take protein powder as a meal substitute any more than twice a day.

Immediately after a weights workout you should have 20-25 grammes of protein powder combined with say 250 -300 ml of fruit juice - this is important to aid your body to recover from the weights workout.


Exercise - well if you want toned, , you should lift weights 3 times a week - you really need to get a trainer at the gym - presumably there's a gym at college - to show you how to lift weights safely and to give you a programme, something like the following should be fine for you but make sure you get a trainer to show you how to lift weights safely :-


Monday, Wednesday and Friday :-

2 sets of squats - 10 reps
2 sets of lunges - 10 reps
2 sets of dumbell bench press - 10 reps
2 sets of lat pull down - 10 reps
3 sets of Swiss ball crunches - 10 reps
2 sets of seated rows - 10 reps
2 sets of seated or standing shoulder press - 10 reps
2 sets of dumbell curls - seated or standing 10 reps
2 sets of tricep pushdowns - 10 reps

You'd have to start off with very light weights and get a trainer to show you the exercises and how to lift the weights safely. The trainer could also give you a programme, the above is a mere indication of a programme you could maybe do. The advantage of doing weights is it will raise your metabolism a lot and burn fat.


CARDIO - I'd say do as much of this as you like. If you play sports this is a great way to do cardio and get trim - as you're at college presumably something is available like basketball, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, squash, cycling or whatever. Alternatively you can do stationary stuff at the gym like treadmills, eliptical machines, exercise bikes but this is comparatively dull and tedious - listening to good bassy tunes on an IPOD or whatever can get you going though and relieve the boredom.

Try and do cardio at least 3 times a week for 30-60 minutes at a time, but more is better - say 5 or 6 times a week and the more often you do it, the quicker you will burn fat.


I would say avoid all shortcuts in my opinion like fat burners and stimulants - these can have bad side effects for a start and they're not worth the risk in my opinion. Rather just eat very clean, minimise booze, lift some weights at the gym and do your cardio and at your age your body will improve rapidly. Be as dedicated as you can be and at your age be you'll be in shape in no time.


Oh yeah it's also important that you make sure you have no medical conditions like a heart condition, anaemia, low or high blood pressure or whatever before you start a programme of rigorous exercise - you should really get a medical before starting any exercise programme - as you're at college presumably there's a doctor or whatever on site who could do this.

And also re diet be sure you have no food allergies like nut allergies or other medical conditions that could restrict the sort of foods you can eat - diabetes or whatever before you start a new diet Also you should have a doctor or medical expert look over your diet ideally before you start it.

As I say, it's easy - lift some weights at the gym, do cardio and eat clean and healthy - it's the dedication/discipline that's the hard part. Make sure you get some guidance from a trainer at the gym though, you can't just rely on posts you get from an internet forum.

DON'T go on a crash diet, this won't work, eat your maintenance level calories less 500 and burn off the fat through weights and cardio.

Good luck with whatever diet and exercise programme you go with:tu:

Honestly, if you are in that type of time crunch and the overload is too much, get on SwoleCat's SGX protocol. You'll work HARD, but it takes the guessing game out of cutting. He WILL get you results if you put in the effort and follow the program religiously.

Honestly, if you are in that type of time crunch and the overload is too much, get on SwoleCat's SGX protocol. You'll work HARD, but it takes the guessing game out of cutting. He WILL get you results if you put in the effort and follow the program religiously.

Having just finished 60 days of SGX and lost over 20 lbs I was going to suggest the exact same thing. Ok, you'll be having 6 meals a day but 3 of them can be shakes, easy!

I completely understand where you are coming from about information overload. You can read so much about this stuff but until you do it you don't know how it's going to work for you. That's why I went with SGX, it's proven. Someone that knows their stuff is going to tell me what to do. Now I've done that I know in the future I'll have a much better chance of doing it for myself. I know I can stick to it, if I know it's going to work.

Check out progress pics in my new journal if you are interested.

Hey all, thanks for the feedback.

Personally, I don't think that SGX is for me, at least not at this point.

Ideally, I would just be able to start turning my food selection to smaller portions and healthier foods. Exercise would ideally fall 6 to 7 days per week with things I enjoy doing; I actually like doing 60 min of cardio at 75-80% effort and weights 3 days per week isn't bad. Just so everyone knows, I don't want to get big, I'd rather settle for compact and fit.

I'm looking for a change that makes 5lbs/mo or preferably 15% in 6mo a doable goal but is going to be consistently sustainable throughout my life and hopefully be around 10% BF by next Feb.

Does anyone have any advice for bringing about this type of change?

Also here's an update of what my diet has been like since Monday:
Monday
Breakfast: Protein shake (20g P 4g C) and 8 strawberries --snack because still starving Yogurt without high fructose corn syrup
Snack: apple
Lunch: 6oz grilled chicken, 1/2c rice, 1/2c broccoli, 1c salad with 1-2Tbsp rasberry vinegarette dressing
Snack: 6oz roast turkey sandwich with 1 slice pepperjack cheese
Dinner: small burrito with chkn, fajitas, small amount cheese

Tuesday (clinical day, up at 530, no break till 1230, home at 4pm, sleep till 7pm, dinner, sleep at 11pm):
Breakfast: 5 oz deli ham
Lunch: Chkn catcitori (probably 1/2c chicken, 1 to 1 1/2 c pasta, 1/2 marinara) Tropical C naked juice (~400 cal, just fruit in a blender), 1 small ~2" diameter chocolate chip cookie
Dinner: 7oz chkn teriyaki, 1/2c rice, 1/2c salad, 6 pieces tuna/salmon sashimi, 1/4c frozen yogurt

Today (so far)
Breakfast: Protein shake (40g P 8g C) and 2/3 small apple
Snack: 16oz light mocha
Lunch: 5oz grilled beef, 1/3c rice, 1/3c beans, 2 6" tortillas, 12oz iced tea
Snack: Protein shake (40g P 8g C)

---
I've also been contemplating the Anabolic/Metabolic diet, any advice here?

Thoughts? Concerns? Advice?

Update:

I've actually been getting back into a workout routine for the past 3 weeks and as of this afternoon I'm at 222lbs. Same scale, zeroed properly. I a suprised as it showed 227 in Monday, but Sunday was crap and I weighed 3 times to confirm today and tried to get it to throw a different number, but it hit 222 3 times in a row.

Sweet! 3 down, 27 more to go!

Wow, 150+ new views and not a single response.

Anyone have a response?

You might want to involve your fiance in this change. Motivation from others around you is a big help. Try your groomsmen as well, the more people you have staying on your ass about it, the better.

With what you are doing, you're going to brick wall in about 3 weeks.

Get rid of the processed foods (cookies, pasta, tortilla). Cut out the fruit juice - at least eat the fruit and get the fiber. Start your day with a solid meal, and use whey as your snack - you will feel more full.

Take your total protein intake and divide it into 5 or 6 portions, thats how much you should have at EACH meal. A snack is just another meal, treat it as such.

Personally, I'd ditch all your current carb sources except for the rice (make sure its brown rice, not white) and add in sweet potatoes.

3-4 days in the gym, no more than an hour. 5-7 days of cardio, at least 8 hours from lifting.

How's this setup:

Breakfast: protein + complex carb

Snack: protein

Lunch: protein + complex carb + fiber

Snack: protein

Dinner: protein + fiber

complex carbs are sweet potatoes, brown rice, whole grain breads, granola/rolled oats

fiber is green and fibrous

1 piece fruit per day with breakfast



Just found out this is what the personal trainer put my fiance on so I figured I'd see if it looked like it would work for me.