So my wife and I are in this contest we started. We're both going to get back to our weight when we started dating in 2005. I was 90.7kg. I need to lose about 7kg. I stopped eating fast food junk last week, don't drink soda anymore (except for Coke Zero), and have ran a few miles a couple of times in the last 10 days (hey, I'm a busy man). Lost .9kg (2 lbs) already. She needs to lose a few pounds, too. It's a pretty fair contest.

The winner gets to choose how we spend our tax refund ($800). I'll probably buy a nice motorcycle jacket, a few video games (Heavy Rain, God of War III, Splinter Cell Conviction) and an AR-308 (DPMS pattern AR10) lower receiver to start a build.

She wants a ****ing tattoo, seat covers for her car (that has ****ing RECARO Ergomed seats!) and all the seasons of Friends on DVD. **** that **** man, I gotta win this. Suggestions?

Geeze, what is wrong with women?

Taco Bell, if anything you'll lose 7kg of stuff out the back door.
Also she is dense.

I believe happydud is our resident fitness expert, but running and swimming, especially swimming are the two best ways to burn calories. Swimming might be too difficult if you aren't used to it, as your muscles will get sore very quickly and you might find it hard to swim enough to burn enough calories. I find it easier to run long distances than swim many laps.

I should probably mention that I don't have access to a large pool or any decent gym equipment. We have a simple setup in the fitness center in our apartment facility, but it's not much. The pool is a small "family" pool, that's always filled with little Beaners and Nigglets.

I've also tried Crossfit, but that **** kicked my ass. I think I need to build up to it.

Who the hell measures their weight in metric?

Haha Nigglets.

My broken bathroom scale. It has a digital readout, but the button is stuck on metric.

IANAMM (I am not a married man) but I figure if you win you can earn major brownie points if you spend some or even half of that on her, as a gesture of <3. Just a protip.

Major sex points.

Eat roughly half what you do now. Run a lot. This is how you cut fat.

Not always true or healthy.

Running wouldn't really do it, an intense amount of energy lost at the same time just forces your body to burn muscle, not fat.
Jogging, and other light exercise are good for fat burning.

Cycle to and from work, as long as it's less than 10 miles this is perfectly achievable.

Dude, seriously, if you don't know what you are talking about, don't post. That post bears almost zero resemblance to reality.

+1 on cycling to work. That's the best way for someone to lose this kind of moderate fat. That being replacing some mode of transportation or convenience with even light exertion like walking.

For further entertaining methods of exercise, see here. Also see Tabata sprints. That article is on a badass website, too.

Consider, diet wise:
The No S Diet (from the same site)
The Zone Diet (almost tied to crossfit, but can be hard to maintain, I guess)

Cut it out of yourself.


LITERALLY.

rig the scale

Thanks, Spook (and others). Unfortunately, biking to work is not an option. I live about 18 miles from work, and part of my job is going around to different sites, so a motor vehicle of some kind is required (it's actually in my job description to have a vehicle).

I do like the Tabata sprints, and will begin those this weekend, after I dig out my timer watch. It can be set to beep various intervals. Perfect for those sprints.

[The timer is called a Gym Boss, and Tabata is actually listed on their website as one of the things for which it's best used - hah]

I had a gym boss in Iraq and it worked great, IIRC. Though I now use an Invisible Clock II.

Best part about Tabata intervals, is you can do them with anything: Biking, Sprinting, Rowing, Squats, Sex (seriously, try it, **** gets crazy) or eating, like I do. Don't actually try the last one, I have heartburn now.

EDIT:Don't you live in Joshua Tree or something too? I've been in 29 Stumps during the summer before and biking is a ****ing death wish. Not to mention the sweat stains.

I live on the other side of the mountains from Joshua Tree. It gets to 105+ regularly during the summer. 80s this week.

[I don't really even care about getting the stuff - mostly I just want to be in better shape, and don't want my wife to get a tattoo. I wouldn't say I'm in bad shape (6'3, 215lbs), but certainly not in good shape. More on the bad side, but not too far.]

This makes no sense whatsoever.

Dear forum full of people who took biology in high school,

Here is some information you learned was wrong a decade ago.

Sincerely,

- Tiberium_Empire

It's also a myth that working a specific area of the body will reduce fat in that area. Your body uses a substance called ATP (adenosine triphosphate) as its source of every for virtually EVERYTHING. Your body creates ATP from fat by breaking down lipids in the liver. It pulls lipids from everywhere in your body, not just from one area. Working a specific area, however, will increase muscle mass that hides the fat.

The only reason a healthy (well-exercised) body should be metabolizing muscle is if you skip breakfast. The brain can't metabolize fat, so don't go for too long without eating or you'll end up like Tibby.

Jon C is right, also I eat six to seven small meals a day and it burns more calories and raises metabolism as well. Also if you develope more muscle tissue it will also help you maintain a higher metabolism, and reach a better testosterone level that will also burn fat.

edit: Keep cardio at moderation. No more than 20 minutes a day from what I was taught from my Personal Fitness Trainer.

One of the things I am finding difficult is that my work schedule is very erratic. For example, it's 8PM and I'm still at work. Been here since 8AM. Doesn't leave much time (or energy!) for exercising when I get home. It was the same story yesterday. It's hard to develop a steady routine.

Further, being here for twelve hours a day makes for a difficult time trying to eat right. I could pack a lunch, but on long days I would have to pack two or three. It's easier to just head for the nearest drive through and come back and eat at my desk. I know I shouldn't, but hey, that's the way it is right now.

Also, I'm getting conflicting information about eating schedules. Graze throughout the day, graze with a big meal, have three meals, have two meals, have a milkshake. **** that. I'm probably going to keep some Lean Cuisine frozen food (or whatever they have nowadays) in the freezer, and just pop one when I get hungry enough, and not worry about timing. I might keep some dried fruit or something in my desk to keep my stomach from grumbling.

If you have to sit down a lot at work, you may want to try sitting on an exercise ball instead of a chair. While it's not a huge change, it does help keep the stomach muscles engaged...even if it does look and feel pretty silly.

Rhabdomyolysis won't occur until every microgram of fat is consumed and you've been starving yourself. If what you say is true, my six years in track and field would not have happened and I would have been dead long ago.

Running is one of the best ways to lose weight. 30 mi a week is more than enough. If Steven incorporates light weights into it, fat will burn faster. I'm not quite sure on this so feel free point me out that I'm totally wrong and I'm an idiot. But isn't the idea that you starve yourself a little? You force your body to consume the fat because you're not getting enough calories.

I can assure you that running a lot and eating less will cause you to drop a significant amount of weight in a short period of time.

If you don't believe me, I can always shoot in, double leg drop you, full nelson you onto your stomach and chicken wing your ass into submission. If that means anything....

Don't do ANY of that. Don't eat any pre-packaged foods. Cook your own food. If you can't, learn. Eat 5-6 small meals a day. Don't starve yourself, it'll only make you more likely to binge. Avoid dried fruit. They almost always have lots of sugar. If they don't, they taste like ****. Avoid any fruits, vegetables or grains with a high glycemic index. No refined carbohydrates. No fatty pieces of meat. Cut down your salt intake.

Start eating oatmeal for breakfast. It fills you up and keeps you from eating bacon and sugary breakfast cereal. Don't eat instant oats.

Do cardio and body-weight exercises. Drink plenty of water.

This post brought to you by Charles Moreland, my roommate, a personal trainer, and someone who has corrected his teachers and brought quite a bit of proof to back himself up:

@Steven - Great job! Making a lifestyle change is always a hard decision. However, as I have seen many times before, contests tend to bring out temporary changes which cease shortly after the thrill of the contest's conclusion subsides. Make the change because you want to first. Any reward in addition to better health and fitness is simply bonus.

The change in diet is key here and I could literally write a book for you. What I have most of my clients do is eat how ever much they need to feel satisfied, but MUST not buy anything outside of Paleo diet guidelines + dairy (if you are not lactose intolerant) and certain grains not containing gluten.

Gluten tends to give a significant portion of the population leaky gut symptoms whether you are a diagnosed Ceoliac or not. It wrecks havoc on your digestive tract and you'll be much better off going off it for a while and slowly re-introducing it later.

You may also, depending on budget, may want to look into at least 1g or 2g of fish oil for the extent of this contest. The Western Diet is HIGHLY inflammatory and you'll need the fish oil to help reduce this and return back to normal.

@Emon - Burning calories is a boring and inefficient way to better your body composition and lower body fat. Burning calories does nothing to change DNA or build muscle and has an extremely poor effect on increasing anabolic hormones directly linked with lower body compositions. Most of my clients get rather frustrated with me in the beginning of training because I very often say that losing weight is easy. The discipline and dedication is definitely rough. But, eat the right foods and do short, intense, intermittent workouts and you will start shedding pounds like crazy.

@Antony - Perhaps you know more about Steven's diet than I do, but recommending someone start eating half of what they do currently can be a dangerous suggestion. In addition, telling people who are over-weight that they should run to lose weight only sets them up for serious pain and injury later on because not only must they re-learn proper running technique, but also deal with the stress that comes from weak leg muscles that simply cannot sustain the volume of perpetual running necessary to loose any significant weight.

Generally people see the best results eating ~500 calories under their daily caloric maintenance level. But again, this is a pain to calculate for most people so learning how to appreciate vegetables is highly important.

@Tibby - This information, as beautifully pointed out by Jon'C, is wrong wrong wrong wrong. You can go a hell of a long time as a novice (average) person without seeing protein breakdown. Also, as said before, running and jogging are similar in that they are boring and inefficient at producing weight loss results. You need to stimulate hormones, not burn calories.

@Spook - +1 for being on the right track! Whether you realize it or not, suggesting people bike to work or other such changes produce THE BEST results for people to lose weight despite it being a perpetual endurance exercise. It is not boring in the least because 1, you're outside (1a. you're also not inside) and it has a direct purpose (I need to get to work). This recommendation is also a direct lifestyle change which can greatly increase the activity you experience throughout a given day.

In addition, biking is also a low impact exercise so you'll save your knees. Watch out for hip and lower back problems though which derive from bad posture.

Also, tabata's are absolutely wonderful! From Dr. Tabata "4 minutes of Tabata style training can do more to boost anaerobic and aerobic capacity than an hour of typical endurance training." Pretty killer.

@Emon - your information is "technically" correct, but doesn't actually rebuttal anything said here...

ATP is an energy substrate used for contractions, yes, but "everything"? Well that's just silly.

Yes, ATP can be derived from fat, but that's only 1/3 of the equation. Your body has 3 different pathways it can draw from to create ATP: the phosphagen system, glycolysis, and the oxidative system. Without going too far in depth here:

Phosphagen -

1. Your body actually stores a small amount of ATP directly in muscle fibers and the surrounding anatomical structures for when it is absolutely imperative for a muscle fiber to fire quickly. ATP is a very heavy molecule, though, and so our body has derived ways to quickly create ATP while minimizing weight. That's where Creatine Phosphate comes in.

2. Creatine Phosphate is simply a single bond between 1 creatine molecule and 1 phosphate. An enzyme breaks this bond and the 1 free phosphate is combined with ADP (adenosine DI (meaning two) phosphate) to create ATP. This is an extremely fast process and fuels short intense exercises that last roughly 5-18seconds. When people take creatine supplements, they are essentially increasing their muscle's capacity to hold creatine phosphate.

Glycolysis -

1. Glycolysis is still relatively anaerobic (meaning it happens without the use of oxygen, however oxygen will be needed later to help shuttle out metabolic waste. Essentially you are converting glycogen (the storage form of glucose) into ATP. This is great and dandy, but this requires several more reactions than the creatine phosphate reaction, which only requires one.

2. While this process is slower, it also creates several ATP molecules while creatine phosphate can only produce one.

3. Glycolysis is the main contributer to lactate and H+ (acid inducing ions) buildup, which are considered metabolic waste.

Oxidative -

This is what you are referring to with respect to converting free fatty acids into ATP. This process is slow as hell, taking dozens of reactions to get the final product, but produces many ATP. This process also requires oxygen.

*It is important to note that all these systems and pathways are constantly working together to shuttle ATP into the muscles and the only thing that changes is which pathway is providing the majority of the ATPs.



Your muscles have two types of muscle fibers: Type I and Type II - Type II being further divided into Type IIa and IIb.

The phosphagen system uses mainly Type IIa and b, glycolysis Type II a and also converts Type IIb into Type II a, and oxidative only Type I. Type I and to a certain extent Type IIa muscle fibers are the only ones that have mitochondria necessary to perform aerobic glycolysis and aerobic oxidation.


@Darth Dan - Sorry, but the bodybuilders are wrong. Eating more meals a day but smaller portions does NOT increase or boost your metabolism. This is a fallacy. It also does not burn more calories...I'm not sure where you got that from...

Testosterone is highly important in burning fat stores you are correct with that. Good Job. However, more muscle tissue does not contribute significantly to daily metabolism. Your 7 "expensive tissues" do most of the work - with the brain being the most energy demanding tissue in your body. What matters is what you DO with the extra muscle you have. Simply having it won't do much.

Also, your trainer sounds good. Cardio is best intermittently and for short bouts. Where this running phase in our society came from I have no idea.



*Hopefully I addressed most if not all of the problems I found in this thread on a cursory glance. If you are interested, you may be interested in listening to a speech I gave on this subject not too long ago found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ritpublicspeaking#p/c/14420268F47A8CBB/1/FYtRatEywR4

Listen to happydud's room mate.

And just for the record, I'm under the impression that Steven lives a fairly healthy lifestyle, which is the reason for me recommending a wrestler style weight drop. It's not the best way to lose weight in terms of health, but it will definitely get the job done.

Thanks for the information, stat and dud. Very detailed and descriptive, dudly.

I think I may have misled some of you, however. I'm not interested in building muscle. Not interested in building endurance or strength. I am by no means "obese" or even very "unhealthy." I lift weights as often as I can to keep up my physique. My biggest problem is that, over the last 5 years, I've gained 15 pounds, the bad way.This is due largely to:
1) Girls like going to dinner and movies more than watching you play basketball with your friends,
2) Desk jobs are more sedentary than loading trucks at Costco,
3) Working long hours makes for poor eating habits,
4) Having a job that requires local travel makes it hard to prepare a meal.Fast food is simply convenient.

My biggest challenge is, as dud mentioned, changing eating habits. I know my body well - it took a long time to gain that 15lbs. It took 5 years, and I noticed (as I gathered pictures for the wedding) the weight gain was fairly evenly distributed over those five years. I simply want to get back down to a more appropriate size. Keeping the weight off will be relatively simple if I keep at it. This contest is just a good excuse to get started. It's also largely for the benefit of my wife (it's hard to tell your wife she's getting fat).

I'm certain if I stopped eating the cookies and donuts office coworkers tend to bring, and drop the fast food, I'm going to shrink with minimal additional effort. I'm going to start the tabata exercises once I find that stupid timer, just for good measure. I've got some baby carrots to eat at work should cravings hit, and some grilled chicken breast for lunch.

I'm also going to keep a daily log of my activities, just for kicks.

Get some low fat ranch or something for the baby carrots. If you can find a good low calorie dressing to dip them in they can quickly become your favorite snack and it's almost impossible to get fat eating those.

I like carrots by themselves anyway, but I'll do that too. Variety.

Same here. I eat a lot of vegetables raw, but it's really good to keep up the variety with some dip. Cauliflower and raw broccoli can have the same addictive principles believe it or not. It's remarkable how quickly these "healthy snacks" start to overpower the unhealthy ones as far as cravings go.

Also, raw asparagus ftw.

Running is not boring! I still say run. You can run without literally killing yourself slowly. People don't learn the proper technique. I see people pounding their feet into the ground, shuffling their feet, and then ***** why they cannot go far, or they're in pain a lot. High knees, heel-toe. You should hear footsteps not stomping. Don't sway. That bugs me. Swaying wastes energy. Arms should move like you see on steam locomotives. Find dirt trails to run on, dirt = soft. If you can't, run in the bike lane. Asphalt is softer than concrete. Don't run on treadmills. I think they're dumb. Want to run? Get out of the house and do it. Don't buy a very large contraption just so that you can exercise while watching your shows. Plus they're hard on your joints. Hills will make you work harder

Eating many small meals won't improve your metabolism, but it will keep hormone and energy levels more constant, and give you better control over what you're eating. Eating big meals after a period of fasting will make you more likely to overeat.

If you get bored of chicken, there's always fish, beef and pork. Pork is surprisingly lean despite its reputation. A center cut pork chop (pork loin) is about as lean as chicken breast. Beans are good, too. High in fiber and when mixed with brown rice become a complete protein.

Fat free ricotta cheese is low in calories and high in protein. I've started eating a bowl of it mixed with blueberries alongside my oatmeal in the morning.

Be careful with nuts. They're healthy, but they have a lot of fat.

Sleep is good too. Poor sleep has been correlated with weight gain.

I'm curious what happydud's roommate has to say for people trying to gain weight (in a responsible way). I've heard just about as many ways to gain weight ("it's easy!") as to lose it. At this point in my life, I'm just glad I don't have a gut (only thing worse than being skinny is being skinny with a beer gut), but I'm curious all the same.

Fun Geb facts: 26 yrs old, 6'6", was 145lbs 10 years ago and now I'm 155lbs, eat as little or as much as I want and seem to have no effect on my body, only thing last time I was deficient in nutrition-wise was Vitamin D, which I try now to get as much sun as I can (which isn't as much as I'd like), have an office job and get minimal exercise (though previous months-long attempts at such with protein diets and more weight/less reps did not appear to have an effect, just as sitting on my butt does). Then again, I am a lazy bum and I take after my father (though he was never in the same extreme as me). Maybe I just need to find that right for-real-life motivation...?

Also, good luck, Steven!