You should totally win the contest and then spend the money on what she would have gotten. And not for some kind of 'leverage' in the relationship. Just out of the goodness of your heart.

Geb, for gaining weight I've found that a full body workout is pretty effective as long as it's spread out amongst multiple days. I generally work out 3 days a week with the major exercises on each day being bench press, squats, and dead lift. Do one of those each day and split the rest of your exercises at your discretion. If you eat enough calories and protein you shouldn't have a hard time building muscle at a pretty decent rate.

To address new posts that I missed:

@Jon'C - Skipping breakfast is totally fine. I'm convinced the whole "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day" bullcrap came from the cereal industry.

I routinely skip breakfast and regularly do 16 hour fasts daily or every other day. Skipping breakfast and being in a fasted state stimulates your sympathetic nervous system which actually makes you MORE alert. If it didn't, I don't our ancient ancestor's would have survived too long. Who wants to chase something when they're tired and hungry?

After about 16 hours, research suggests protein does start to breakdown, but the amount and volume is insignificant for normal people. If you are a bodybuilder, obviously this would be very important. I don't think there are too many bodybuilders here though.

@Steven - Stop eating pre-packaged foods. The closer a food is to being straight from the ground, tree, or whatever, the better. Chemicals and preservatives kill the nutrients and undiscovered necessary chemicals found in WHOLE foods.

DO NOT eat dried fruit. This is a horrible way to ruin all your hard work just as any liquid calorie will be, like juice or soda. Dried fruit is essentially candy and will spike your insulin as such. Go out and buy lots of apples, lots of easy snack foods like carrots, start cooking large meals and saving most of it in tupper ware that you can bring to work. I'm on my college campus sometimes for over 10 hours and I never have an issue carrying my food in my backpack. I've gone well over a year without buying any sort of food on campus.

The most important advice I can give you regarding eating routines is:

DO WHAT WORKS BEST -FOR YOU-

Some people work well grazing, or on 3 square meals, or on one meal a day. The important thing is to do something that is healthy but works for you. I often suggest to my college clients to try intermittent fasting simply because it's damn easy to deal through hunger pangs and focus all your energy on one, hearty, and damn healthy meal a day. Many see amazing results from this. Others like to munch on carrots, celery, apples, and other vegetables which keep them feeling full but don't really contribute much to caloric intake.

@Roxima - This works in theory but not necessarily practice. Most research I have read points to the opposite effect you describe. The important thing is that you stop sitting as much as possible and engage your glutes and hamstrings in something like a squat or two every 20 minutes or so.

@Dalf - Running is a horrible way to lose weight. Please see my above post.

@Antony - You are wrong. Please read this quick quote from Lyle MacDonald, "This has long been one of those ironies surrounding exercise; typically the only people able to burn lots of calories with exercise are trained athletes. And they usually don’t need to lose fat."

@Stat - wonderful suggestions. Up until the whole breakfast bit and bacon. I love bacon...especially the form I get from highly active pigs who are fed a natural pig diet. Fat is much better at keeping someone satiated longer than carbs or fiber and also increases production of leptin much better than carbs by way of oatmeal ever can. Also, the only good oatmeal takes for ever to cook

-To respond to your last reply

What hormones are you talking about? Please be specific so i can understand because I have yet to hear that claim come from the "grazers."

In regards to eating large meals, please don't talk about something you don't know. I don't know you, so feel free to call me out if I am wrong, but I would assume you've never tried an intermittent fasting Life-style. Eating raw foods + protein, you will HARD pressed to get passed 2000 kcals in a meal. Try it. I dare you. Do you know how much broccoli it takes to get 200 kcals? Somewhere along the lines of 8 cups. I can't do it. Maybe Kobayashi could. In order to get ANYWHERE close to the ~3400 kcals I need to sustain my bodyweight, I have to add in crazy amounts of fat to my diet. 2000kcals in one meal is challenge enough. 3400 for me is difficult which is why I have a 4 hour eating period before I fast again.

@Steven - it looks like you are on the right track then. Exercise really is of mild importance and generally only amplifies the rate at which you lose weight. Diet is the key. If you have the time or energy, I highly recommend you pick up either In the Defense of Food, Deep Economy, or the Omnivore's Dilemma. Any one of these will be short reads (took me about 4-7 days for each book) and will be highly informative.

I would also recommend you start listening to Robb Wolf's weekly Paleo podcast found on his blog http://robbwolf.com. They're about an hour long and will help get you on the right track.

Geb - I'd love to respond to you asap but I need to get to sleep for class tomorrow. I'll get back to you sometime soon!

to win a weight loss competition, you are best off just trying to sweat off a few pounds before the deadline. Look up what ufc and boxers do to cut weight before a weigh in.

If you want to keep the weight off for good, clean up your diet (incl. coke zero) and pick up a game or leisure activity that burns a lot of calories e.g. biking, squash, hockey, tennis and do that multiple times a week. Try to do some kind of sport 5x a week.

I still say run. It's enjoyable, it gets you out of the house, and it's exercise. I'll concede that it's not for everyone. If you're a complete and total fat-ass, no, you will bust your knees because your joints cannot take 350 lbs of lard bouncing up and down. However, just a few pounds overweight, I don't see the harm, really.

Let's stay subjective here. Steven isn't a fatass and he doesn't seem to be dramatically out of shape.

You're right. Bacon isn't that bad for you. I was just trying to think of something that represents a poor breakfast choice. Sausage would probably be a better example. I cook big portions of steel cut oatmeal and eat it throughout the week.

Insulin and cortisol are the big two that cover blood sugar regulation. It's a bit fuzzy for me since it's been a while since I learned all that, not to mention endocrinology was never something I've been very good with. I can't really argue beyond that.

It's pretty personal. I'm probably quick to espouse multiple meals since that's what I prefer. If I go too long without eating I don't do very well. You don't seem to have that issue. I guess it's a YMMV situation.

I've never heard of an intermittent fasting lifestyle, much less tried one. In college I used to eat a single meal a day if that counts. I wouldn't argue with you that overeating on a protein and raw vegetable diet is damn near impossible. But most people aren't capable of diets like that. People tend to reward themselves for going periods of time without food. "It's okay to eat that chocolate chip muffin at 4pm because I haven't eaten since 9am."

It requires a pretty large amount of willpower to eat a protein and raw vegetable diet and stick to it. It's much better to learn better eating habits than go on a diet that will change once you lose the weight.

I'm sure you're right, I'm no weight loss expert. But extended cardio has plenty of other health benefits besides losing weight.


Wait, what? When did I mention any of that? The notion that burning calories changes DNA or builds muscle is just silly.


Er, no, EVERY cell on your body runs on ATP and/or ADP. It's considered the "molecular unit of currency" for a reason. It's used for energy exchange in literally every cell in your body. Most notably it is critical for cellular respiration. It's also used for transport of large molecules between cell membranes for exo and endocytosis.

I'd also be interested in seeing sources for "preservatives destroy nutrients." I've been looking and can't find much evidence outside of hogwash from the organic crowd complaining that they "aren't natural." From what I've gleaned, there are many types of preservatives with varying effects, and I don't think it's as simple as "preservatives are bad for you," even if avoiding them is an effective way to avoid the problem. Preservatives in meat are supposed to prevent the development of botulism. That certainly seems worthwhile to me.

I mean, ascorbic acid is a very common preservative. Ascorbic acid is vitamin C.

ascorbic acid, a common nutrient, reacts with sodium benzoate, a common preservative, to create benzene, a common lethal carcinogen.

The overwhelming majority of the world?

This seems like a pretty fun contest. Definitely a good way to keep motivated to lost weight.

If you want to cheat, I can get the insane diet plan they put you on at the hospital if you're too fat for them to do a surgery on you, and need to get you thinner fast.

A friend tried it a few months back and lost 15 pounds in a week. He was sickly and shaky as **** for 2 though.

I think I read somewhere it's unhealthy to lose more than 1 pound a day and it could lead to health problems.

Yea, I've read that too.

Yeah but at what levels? There's sodium benzoate in cranberries, and ingesting it results in benzene in your body. But it's such a low level that it does not matter.

If you have no weights or access to a gym or equipment, try the Spartacus workout, or P90x. Both are high intensity cardio work outs and they do garner results if you use them right alongside a good diet.

Personally, I think Interval training is one of the best and quickest forms of fat loss you can possibly use in a work out routine. You can use intervals with practically any form of cardio exercise, should your fitness level permit. Also, it's better to do circuit training rather than concentrate on one or two muscle groups per work out session.

Amen to that!

Here's a good example of an Interval Cardio Workout

I like doing such a work out on a Spinner bike or on an elliptical

dance!

I'm not really sure what everyone else said, because there was some long posts. But for me, eating meals I prepare myself and drinking only water for a week can drop me 3-5lbs. If I throw in daily 2 mile rides on my bicycle I could probably do close to 10lbs.

I do find the "eat meals you prepare yourself" thing a little odd. Do other people really rely that much on terrible readymeals and takeaways?

I want to make something clear...

Diet science is voodoo science.

While there is a large body of knowledge regarding how the body works fundamentally, the vast majority of the interactions inside our body are unknown. Lots of people respond differently, and you can't throw out one recommendation for everyone. Though there are obviously healthy basics that apply for everyone, as far as food selection.

Obviously, extreme diets which cut out a macro nutrient group permanently are not a good idea. However, many modern ideas on what is healthy stem from wives tales, bad 70s science, and the grain industry.

dud, or his room mate (perhaps the same individual trapped in one conflicted body?) mentioned intermittent fasting. This is effectively what I do every day. A 4 hour main feeding period, with usually only a small protein meal or shake after a workout, if I don't exercise right before my evening meal. I sometimes will eat fruit or some nuts during the day if I feel that my head is cloudy, but I enjoy the feeling of being hungry, and don't eat to be full.

And also, dud/room mate. I have been interested in getting into personal training/nutrition for some time. Do you have a degree? Or did you do some other program type thing?

Just eat healthy and right. You don't even have to exercise excessively to stay in shape if you do all those difficult things.

There is also apparently strong evidence that calorie-restricted diets not only work as a healthy diet option, but people that use them have been shown via studies to have longer lifespans.

Spook - You should be having protein shakes about a half hour to an hour before you work out, and one immediately afterwards. If you're looking to put on muscle mass that is.

Spend the 800 dollars on cake.

I'm going to spend the money on a renting a billboard that says "HAHA I WON."

Winning is worth more than the stupid money.

Captain Planet answer: And being healthy is more important than winning.

Donate the money to some fatty support group.

For new winches and pulleys?

It's difficult but it can be done. When I was working 12 hours per day I would take enough food to last me all day & it fit in 1 normal sized lunchbox. I would eat a boiled egg for 1st breakfast, 1 cup of yogurt (nonfat plain w/ active cultures) w/ 1 cup of berries for 2nd breakfast, a cup of soup (something different everyday, but healthy like tomato soup) for 1st lunch, a piece of fruit (usually an apple or a pear) & some nuts for 2nd lunch, a fist-sized portion of lean meat (fish or chicken) for 1st dinner w/ some greens (e.g. asparagus, salad, spinach) & some fruit for 2nd dinner (usually grapes). 1st breakfast was usually eaten at home as well as 1st & 2nd dinner but everything could easily be heated in a microwave. It's all about planning. For example, my wife & I usually cut up our berries & divide them up in to plastic containers w/ yogurt for an entire week as soon as we get back from the grocery store. Fruit is incredible simple to plan & organize w/.

I agree with this more than anything you've ever posted, Steven. I too, am obsessed with winning.