GAH I'm fat

[Arntonach]

One of my co-workers use to be in the Navy and he had weight issues. He showed me a website that works wonders no matter what you are trying to do. Was able to lose 20 lbs. in a month and keep it off with this site.

There's my gushing for you.

[Tyson ultima]

Do P90x or insanity that shits BA NANAS yo

[Senip]

P90x is great for shredding up people who are already relatively healthy.

The key though is the diet, the exercises are mostly crap.

[Tyson ultima]

It was mainly a joke post V.V see youtube vid

[Reach]

as soon as your body realizes you're starving yourself it's going to devour everything but the fat.

This isn't technically true. Fat will always be the go to resource for your body when your carbohydrate stores are depleted. However, fasting will cause significant loss of muscle mass in addition to fat.

Metabolism > any other way of losing weight.

Expecting your metabolism to solve problems with caloric excess is simply asking for failure. Variance in metabolism generally accounts for a small (~10%) portion of your variance in caloric usage.

Creating a small, healthy caloric deficit is by far the most effective method of weight loss. This is tried and true.

[Senip]

Originally Posted by Reach

This isn't technically true. Fat will always be the go to resource for your body when your carbohydrate stores are depleted. However, fasting will cause significant loss of muscle mass in addition to fat.



Expecting your metabolism to solve problems with caloric excess is simply asking for failure. Variance in metabolism generally accounts for a small (~10%) portion of your variance in caloric usage.

Creating a small, healthy caloric deficit is by far the most effective method of weight loss. This is tried and true.

Well, yeah. no shit, caloric deficits. But I assumed she knew that, although I probably shouldn't since she's, you know, fasting. What I was saying was, she basically is poopooing the idea of her metabolism with the idea that "oh, it doesnt work so it wont matter if I screw it up more", whereas with larger people it tends to actually be going faster.

[prongsie]

Personally, eating extremely clean helped me shave off ~20 lbs in about a months time. I ate three times a day and worked out by running at a local track five days a week with some pilates exercises every now and then.

My advice to you is to remain motivated and constantly fill up on water or any type of tea you enjoy (black, nothing added) and chew sugarless gum when you're first starting off whatever diet you choose to do. A change in diet will obviously result in some hunger pangs that will feel uncomfortable and might cause you to indulge in bad foods or maybe overeat.

Also, it seems like you are very reluctant about exercising so it's probably best to work out when you're feeling your best and remember to associate positive feelings into your workout. Think about how good your wedding photos will look or how pleased your family will be to see you nice and healthy on your special day -- whatever sticks. Fixing up a good playlist helps get your energy going too and keeps you a little distracted from your workout which helps when you're getting tired.

A common thing I hear about weight loss is that it's 70% diet, and 30% exercise so try to avoid splurging on your episodes of white bread and such. After all, you don't want to ruin any efforts going in. Seven months is a long time and I've heard/seen great progress and success stories so all should be well if you really do commit. I believe you can most definitely get down to 150 lbs if you tried.

(Side note: http://www.myfitnesspal.com and http://www.loseit.com are both reputable sites for keeping track of cal in/cal out and generally have a nice, supporting community. The food journals come with custom plans that can be adjusted to your liking and are so, very helpful. Check the sites oout)

Lastly, please please please pleeeeeease do not fast. I've done so for only about 4 days and it sucked. Your jaw begins to ache, smell is enhanced, requires a lot of focus and you're extremely weak all the time. I did lose like 10 pounds quickly but of course, it all came back plus more; it is absolutely not worth it and it is depressing. Being able to achieve something by planning and attaining goals in a reliable way is much more rewarding in the end and you'll probably learn so much about your body that you did not know before. Additionally, your willpower and mental state of mind will also strengthen significantly.

Good luck to your future!

[Cavernio]

I'm not reluctant about excersising, I'm reluctant about boring excersise. Playing a sport is like playing ANY game, it's fun as long as I'm good enough to do it alright. (key here is that I was never a sporty person, so I have no skills.) Dancing is fun. Hiking is fun. Biking can be fun simply for the feeling of movement. I suspect I'll enjoy a martial arts a lot. Working out at a gym is not fun. Running has always been torturous to me. Walking's pretty meh. Doing videos at home isn't fun.
I suppose I've been a very unenergetic person for a long time though, and when I don't even have the energy to play a video game, I definitely don't have the energy to excersise.

I wish I could find a gym for 20$/month. Cheapest I've found is 30$, but it is a 10 min walk away. I may join it, although if I do take up a martial arts, I'm probably going to be too sore most of the time to go.

I'm sticking to fasting for now. I expect it to be a painful, uncomfortable process for the most part. Day 1 and 2 I was ravenous, day 3 I was even hungrier when I didn't feel like throwing up. Today, day 4, I'm feeling surprisingly good. Bit of a headache, fairly energetic though, and importantly, not really hungry. I would never fast if I had to work or look after young kids, but I can relax as much as I want right now, when I need to. My previous fast I didn't find depressing. Felt kinda useless, but I didn't break it well at all. And of course I went right back to eating gluten, since I didn't know.
Right now I'm drinking at least twice the amount of water I usually do simply out of thirst. I know that once I'm done fasting I'll totally have to remain on a calorie deficit, and do the safer, more regular thing of eating right and excersising. But I honestly suck at not giving into hunger. It's easier for me to not eat at all than to not eat dessert, (yeah I'm sure it's psychological, but whatever I find easier to do, I'm game) especially now that I'm not actually hungry. I get cravings for chocolate and sweets and fat and salty foods all the time. Fasting should help those cravings afterwards, provided I break my fast nice and slow, which should help me with the calorie deficit thing. I'm aware that at LEAST 5 pounds of my weight lost is just going to go right back on the moment I start to eat.

"Being able to achieve something by planning and attaining goals in a reliable way is much more rewarding in the end "
Fasting's a pretty damned reliable way of losing weight. Less reliable for healing my intestines that much faster, but what have I got to lose? If I achieve at least 10 days of fasting, I'll be happy with myself. The max I'll go is 28 days. I'll stop if I start to get really hungry again, or stop if I start to feel really shitty. I really feel this plan is doable for me.

[Syhto]

worst thread ever

[Choofers]

I'm fat too let's fight the good fight and fast the good fast

[Bahamut-X]

Why are you asking for advice on healthy, effective ways to lose weight and then going against all the advice people are giving you? Fasting may be reliable but it is neither healthy nor, in the long term, effective, since losing weight and keeping it off involves a lifestyle change, rather than just a temporary fix which is all fasting really is when you think about it.

I found the best way to make exercising fun and engaging is to listen to music. A very simple suggestion, but hugely effective. My absolute favorite way to do cardio is to strap on my camelbak (for hydration, a water bottle is just fine), stick my earbuds in, crank up some heavy metal / hard rock and go for a bike ride. It's never boring. ESPECIALLY if you can sync certain songs to more difficult terrain to give you that extra edge. Even just biking by itself without music is more interesting than stationary exercise, such as the elliptical or running on a treadmill.

Another thing about cardio, and someone feel free to correct me on this since I'm no expert, but I've heard that doing too much cardio at once can actually be harmful to you. That is, after a certain point the benefit of continued time spent doing cardio decreases exponentially to the point where you are actually not doing yourself any good at all. I used to do 40 to 50 minutes on a treadmill, but it's just overkill. 25 to 30 minutes at most of good cardio, that is, cardio that maintains an elevated heart rate (don't know what your optimal zone is based on your gender or age, probable somewhere around 120 or so bpm?), should do the trick. Once again, someone feel free to critique this since I'm no expert, just something I read in a fitness book.

[who_cares973]

how about making this a competition. im a huge fatass and need to lose weight too. im 6'5 and 280 atm. i want to be at 220-240.

first one to their goal weight wins

[tofurox]

Since around August, I have lost 42 pounds. I am 5'7.5'', and was the same height back in August. I dropped from 182 pounds to 140 pounds. All due to diet and regular exercise. Nothing too crazy either. I am so surprised how skinny I look now. I get compliments all the time.

[Cavernio]

"Why are you asking for advice on healthy, effective ways to lose weight and then going against all the advice people are giving you?"
Because fasting is only temporary, and as you pointed out I need long-term changes in order to maintain a healthy weight.

"Fasting may be reliable but it is neither healthy"
You can find many, many people who say otherwise, including doctors.

You have less weight to lose than me who_cares, both in total pounds and percent of body weight. Plus, to everyone's delight I'm sure, I'm off my fast because I am *sigh* eating gluten again. It's not a very fair bet but...I'll do it anyways :-p. Let's make my goal 150 lbs though. What does the winner get besides a better looking bod?

I got mail yesterday with my scheduled endoscopy/biopsy in a month's time, and I know I said I wasn't going to go back on gluten, but I really want to have the endoscopy (gluten-eating or not), but I really don't want to have it come back negative for celiac so that my health files say 'negative biopsy' and every doctor I see from then on will think I'm not actually a celiac.

I'm always, always, always over any target heart rate I've ever seen while excersising. For me to be at 120 bpm, is like, slowly walking up a hill. I can do more than that.

[Syhto]

Steady state cardio isn't nearly as effective as high intensity interval cardio training, the latter being much healthier for your heart and increasing fat burning by idk how much. I know you just get way quicker and better results with high intensity over steady state. Like obv doing 40 minutes of walking on the treadmill won't be as good as 20 minutes of running/walking mixed. and if you run the whole time, at different paces, ie) switching between 5/8mph, or switching up the incline. basically if you're comfortable doing what you're doing, kick it up a knotch for a minute or two until you're dead tired then switch back and recover. i h8 treadmills tho, ellipticals are much more fun. anyways, it trains yo heart rate

p.s. this isn't even an advice thread anymore, it's a, im going to ignore everything everyone says and just say what I'm doing thread. more like a blog rly

[Reach]

The reason that fasting is nonsensical is because food doesn't make you fat. I eat tons of food all the time. It's the abuse of the wrong types of food that will make you fat, and you'll become fat time and time again without adopting a healthy diet.

Getting to 150 pounds in the time frame you're looking for isn't physiologically possible in terms of fat loss.

A pound of fat is approximately 3500 calories, meaning that in order to burn a pound of fat, your weekly deficit would need to be about that overall. So even if you never ate anything at all for 2 months, you probably wouldn't lose anymore than 25 pounds of fat. In the meantime, all of your muscle would waste away as well and you'd look no better than you do currently. The rest of the weight loss would be in water, which will be regained instantly once you start drinking properly again.


If you want to actually burn fat, there's no way it's coming off (at least at your weight) at a rate of much more than 2 pounds per week.