joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

Lifting is great but...if you want to maximize total WEIGHT lost, honestly you probably should just do cardio.

Body fat % lost cannot be calculated by BMI. They're measuring fraction of weight lost, so don't do weight lifting.

Honestly, if you can hack it, you could win this very easily at your weight. Diet should be 1500 calories a day, HIGH PROTEIN FOODS. Chicken breast, tuna, steak, that kind of stuff. Lean meats. Avoid high density carbohydrate foods (e.g. pasta). If you're going to eat them, check the macronutrient labels. Add up everything.

Do not eat in the evenings and have small containers of vegetables ready to fight hunger pain in the evenings. Eat all of your vegetables raw. Try and eat them relatively frequently if possible.

Drink a lot of water. Constantly hydrate.

Do NOT get calories from liquids other than skim milk. Diet sodas and other 0 calories drinks are ok, remove all other liquid calories.

Allow yourself a cheat meal every once in awhile, but no more than once a week and do NOT do a buffet cheat meal.

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

Right now I am pretty much doing everything Reach described in the above post (for a month and a half so far), so I figure I could toss in a few things from my own experience:


1. Cook all your meals ahead of time. For example, on Sunday. I load up a bunch of tupperware containers with chicken, rice, and kale -- all measured out -- and I eat this every day for lunch. Mrs. Dash is a good way to add some flavor to stuff without adding any extra calories, too. I cook everything on a George Foreman portable grill.

2. As Reach said, snacking on veggies helps a lot. Personally, I've been eating a lot of carrots.

3. Protein powder is a good way to meet your protein requirements without adding too many calories.

4. Also consider Greek yogurt. I can't stand the taste of the normal stuff so I get the flavored variety (Chobani lemon / lime blended, specifically).

5. I've found eggs to be pretty useful in a pinch.

6. If you're still hungry as hell, drink a couple glasses of water.

7. If you're using any oils or sauces or anything, don't forget to count those calories, too.

8. You may notice that your weight drops quite a bit early on. This is probably water weight -- don't be discouraged if you find that weight loss slows down after that huge drop. You're not doing anything wrong.

9. I also try to eat a lot of salmon. Convenient macros, tastes great, essential fatty acids, etc.

10. Eliminate sodas entirely. Diet sodas won't hurt your caloric deficit, but they're still not great for your teeth.

11. If you go out to dinner and don't have nutritional info available to count up the macros, then estimate with comparable substitutes instead. Also consider doing more cardio that day to compensate. I've had a fair number of cheat meals so far and it hasn't significantly affected my weight loss. As long as you're honest and meticulous about counting everything -- and burning some extras calories when you're unsure of the math -- it'll smooth itself out pretty quickly. Sometimes I might just eat a tiny bit less the next day if I'm really unsure (I did this when I had pizza the night before. :X YEAH THAT'S RIGHT I ATE PIZZA ON A CUT. COME AT ME BRO)



I've lost a great deal of weight since I started (I was around 225-230, and as of this morning I am 208, although this number fluctuates quite a bit on a day-to-day. The trend is what matters)

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

rubix thats more for like actual dieting than what i want. im looking to lose 20-30 pounds per month minimum for this competition. is it healthy? haha no but thats ok for now. Afterwards I'll be going to a steady diet similar to what you described. thanks, though!

reach, thats what i was thinking though i was going to go with 1000 calories to start and see how that goes. if i feel like that is too little to survive on i'll go up to 1500. i plan on eating only tuna and fish with veggies when hunger hits. not sure what veggies to go with though. i also plan on doing as much intense cardio as i can in an hour and walking in between. work and school is going to limit when how much i can work out.

like i said i'll be posting my fat ass in here once a week or once every two weeks to show the progress. hopefully i win something and if not thats cool because i'll have lost mad poundage 8)

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

at such a drastic cut you will lose quite a lot of muscle mass but im sure you are aware

also iifym is bomb http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15615615 (this number has since been revised to 22 here)

See also http://forums.lylemcdonald.com//show...22&postcount=3

Research suggests you can lose up to 22 kcals per pound of fat per day without losing muscle.

So for example, when I was at 230 pounds, I was around 30% bodyfat, or .3 * 230 = 69 pounds of fat.

22 kcals/lb/day * 69 lbs = 1518 kcals/day maximum deficit, which I'll round off to 1500.

A pound of fat is 3500 calories or so, which means I could theoretically lose up to (1500 kcals/day * 7 days/week) / (3500 kcals / lb) = 3 lbs/wk (or 12 lbs/month) and not lose muscle.

Of course, you don't want to go with a deficit so large that you damage your organs or deprive yourself of getting enough nutrients.

For example check out this guy's story (430 to 170 lbs in 11 months limiting himself to a few hundred calories per day. Rounding off, this is about 24 lbs / month, or 6 lbs / week): http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment..._to_170_pounds (kidney and heart damage)

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

im ok with losing some muscle. like i said this is just for three months which is the duration of the competition. im aware that this is stupid dangerous and im pretty dumb for doing this but a free trip to maui and lose some weight why not? the reason i set my goal at 20-30 per month is because the last time i went on a diet i lost 17 pounds a month for two months before dropping down to 10 pounds a month and i started off at 300. the diet i was following at the time was a lot healthier lol.

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

Well, I mean if you don't care about hurting your body, at least consider the expected value of potential hospital bills vs. the cost of a trip to Maui. :P


EDIT: Just FYI: I'm not trying to piss in your Cheerios or anything -- just saying that drastic cuts can be harmful and you should definitely do some research to see what the relevant risks are. It may be the case that a super-aggressive cut for a couple months is no big deal. I cant say for sure. But I'd definitely maintain that a trip to Maui is not worth bodily damage.

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

that's what health insurance is for 8)

nah at the first sign of things not feeling right i'm going to stop

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

Hello Wayward Vagabond my name is Travis Flesher and I have been avidly bodybuilding for two years and what I have learned in my experience is that no amount of exercise is too much if you want to do this as seriously as possible I recommend eating very healthy with oranges as your primary food and supplement your energy levels with carbs spaghetti noodles are very good and other than that just do as much cardio as you can do without passing out and waking up in a pile of your own vomit and feces if i had to choose one thing as "the best thing to do" it would be to strenghten your heart using ellipticals at the gym you'll want to simply raise your heart as fast at will go and keep it there! return and repeat when you are up to it! if you want to talk about this more in depth contact me because i am very passionate about this topic thank you

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

i feel like you didnt read the op

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

Well, if you want it that badly, you could drop your calories to 1200, at which point, at your size, should be enough to lose 5 lbs a week on average (you'll lose faster initially). You should be able to lose 20 lbs a month.

Follow what I said before; pretty much only mean leats, fruits and vegetables if you're going to go this route. Consider a multi vitamin. Get a food scale to weigh the meat, or if you don't have one, err on the conservative side.

In 3 months you can probably hit 260. If you know exactly what your weigh-in is, you can dehydrate going into it to drop another 10 lbs for the weigh in day. I'd do it over around 3 days, cut your diet to maybe 500-600 calories those days composed of some dry meat like chicken breast + broccoli or celery or some similar vegetable with basically nothing in it. Measure out the water you're drinking and then just cut it back. The morning of weigh in, drink nothing, sit in a steam room for awhile after munching on some really really dry carbohydrates (rice cakes). Don't stay in it too long as you could pass out, you don't want to dangerously dehydrate yourself.

You'll probably drop another 10-15 lbs doing that to come in somewhere under 250.

When all is said and done, you'll probably lose 10 lbs of muscle of so, but you can easily regain that in a few weeks of lifting.



Only when done incorrectly. Obese people without underlying health conditions can survive without any harms on no food whatsoever until their fat reserves run out (a multi + glucagon injections help though) as long as they drink lots of water.

The biggest question is whether or not OP has underlying health problems. A heart or liver condition, for example? At which point, I would probably call it off.

IF he's not on any serious medications though there's no problems hitting 1000-1500 a day.

Of course, @ 320 lbs he could have an underlying condition he's not aware of, so might wanna see the doctor first.

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

yeah i know the day of the last weight in(june 29th). i'll probably do that without adding in the steam room because i don't want to pass out lol. don't have a food scale but if they arent too expensive i could infest in one for now and future weightloss.

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

went for my physical at the beginning of the year and other than being fat and having a blood pressure reading of 122/80 im fine. i already drink a gallon of water out of habit and have done so for years.

Re: joined a weight loss challenge at my gym

Please at least give yourself 1200 calories a day, 1000 is really unsafe. There's already been a good bit of advice in this thread so I don't really have a lot to add but odds are you burn a good deal of calories a day at your weight just normally.

I use myfitnesspal to track calories they have some good tools over there.


Also be prepared to deal with a lot of loose skin from losing weight rapidly.