After reading the OP and the responses here several times I can't figure out why everyone is making this so complicated...
Alex, you need to fix your diet first and foremost. Based on the diet you posted up it looks like you are still in the dark on the basics that I try to drill into people from the start. Have you read my article?
Eating Right: How to Get StartedFixing your diet alone will probably produce some pretty good results right off the bat.
To increase the speed of weight loss I would suggest a high intensity program. I don't care what you do so long as its high intensity. It can be SS or similar (heavy lifting), HIIT (like sprint repeats), Gymnastics strength programming, CrossFit style MetCons (
www.crossfit.com)...even P90X or the new Insanity workout I just saw on TV this morning. Get your ass moving - make it move fast, make it move regularly and make sure that moving it is hard. Put in rock hard effort and you will get results quickly.
I highly recommend you identify performance based goals so that way whatever program you do makes you lose weight AND pushes you towards goals that you would like to hit.Based on the photos you are SLIGHTLY overweight with most of your extraweight going to the lower belly. This CAN be caused by stress but it can be caused by a few other things...like genetics.
The best way to get this under control is a pretty generic weight loss program as laid out above - high intensity workouts with a clean diet.With that said....we kinda need to go back over 2 pages of posts and fix some stuff that is somewhat incorrect....
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3) don't under eat, i know this sounds weird but try not to skip meals or eat too little at a time, besides making you tired and less focoused all day, you will eat a lot more than you need to, and if your schedule is anything like mine, youll end up eating later at night, when your digestive system is beggining to shut down and everything you eat just turns right into fat.
Fasting can be very beneficial. Its not about skipping meals, necessarily, its about eating enough calories through the day to sustain muscle mass while being in a deficit enough to lose fat. Properly fasting can be one of the most effective ways to get and keep weight under control.
The digestive system does not turn off at night and suddenly turn everything into fat. There are no real drawbacks to eating just before bed...just avoid the higher carb, easy to consume stuff like crackers, chips, breads, sodas, etc. at all times except maybe post workout.
4) try and get a workout in after dinner (not too soon after or the workout will suck, it's no fun trying to keep from vomiting while running a few miles, i eat around 5-6 and workout 9-11). exercise will shut down your digestive system and (if it's hard enough of a workout) make the idea of eating rather unappealing, this is another good way too keep from eating later at night.
The effects of exercise attenuating diet are transient -- in other words, they are short term DURING the bout of exercise. For example, you may not want to eat anything while doing a 1 mile run...but immediately after
most people get pretty hungry.
The Post-Workout environment, that is, eating directly after a bout of exercise (usually within a 1 hour window) is one of the most beneficial times to eat food. A properly planned meal involving "faster" protein and carbs is shown (with pretty rock-solid evidence) to improve fat loss and increase muscle mass gains.
If you are just getting started and this is an easy way for you to stay on schedule that is fine. As you advance you may want to plan your workouts to be just before a meal. For maximal control over the rate of absorption, most advanced trainees will fast before their PWO meal (which means working out on an empty stomach).
6) make sure you workout for long periods, you don't really start to burn fat for like 10 minutes, before that your just burning up your ATP reserves, replenishing them will burn fat, but you really are better off working out for a few hours at a time.
The best results for weight loss, muscle gain and performance gain are well proven to be when workouts are kept under 1 hour. Working out for hours on the regular is damaging and will hinder performance and recovery...unless you are going for advanced endurance work.
You are burning fat constantly - this is why we breathe. Fat is the main substrate of our long term energy store - this is why we hoard it whenever possible...this is why our bodies turn excess carb into fat.
This advice is based on a farce and I disagree with it strongly.
im not a weight loss specialist or anything, and i certainly can't be sure of anything here helping you in a big way, but these are the things that i have found most usefull. i still have a ways to go myself, im about 210lb atm, with a healthy body fat% i would probably weigh around 190, but i weighed 240 just a couple years ago, and i've grown 4 inches and gained muscle mass since then.
Congrats on your gains and improvements! I think you may still have room to learn more, though. Check out the stickies in this thread -- and for best weight loss results you should check out the stickies in the diet forum ASAP.
just work out every day.... run for 4 miles or more when you buid up to it....swim alot....and parkour/freerun as much as possible...the key is to disaplin your mind and body to do a hard work out....dont give up becuase its a mind game witch takes up about 98% of controle....you body take in the outher 2 %....so just keep practiceing!
josh from team Joke
I disagree with this piece of advice. Running for hours will cause weight loss but it is a slow, boring process for most people and can be damaging on the joints for those who are overweight....and even those who are in shape.
There is a lot of mind/body control that can be gained from distance runs but if the goal is weight loss a higher intensity program is more warranted...not a voluminous program like the one you are suggesting.
Exercise when you wake up, before breakfast.
Your body runs on fat whist sleeping, and only begins to use glycerol when sugar levels spike, ie. after a meal.
Also drink water often.
As stated above, the body runs on fat pretty much all the time. The oxidative pathway is dominant at times of rest which is heavily reliant on fat stores.
I do recommend working out before breakfast since the body is fasted and will get much more benefit from the PWO meal (in this case, breakfast).
i didn't get all the way through the thread, but i think i got the general idea of it. while the method adressed in the thread is valid, it's a total re-structuring of the way you eat, not quite the same as trying to controll what you eat while on a traditional meal plan. my suggestion for not under-eating is based more on the psychological effects of going for long periods without food when you body is not used to it. this is something i know fairly well because i have been dealing with the concequences of my ADHD medication killing my appetite for 12 hours a day (im concious 14-17 hours a day and if i don't force myself to eat during those 2 hours i will easily consume 3000 calories in my remaining few hours of conciousness). on days i don't take my medication i find that it is a lot easier to controll my appetite at night and rather difficult to controll it the rest of the day.
You identified an important point...something that I hope you learn immediately before giving more advice here. The point you identified is that eating like this has worked
for you. Everyone is different and while a frequent, small meal eating cycle (a.k.a. grazing) has been working for you does not mean it will work for someone else. In terms of maximal, optimal physiological results grazing is not the best method, imho. However, it does work for some due to the psychological factors involved with eating.
With this in mind, grazing is an
option but not the
best option as you presented it to be. It may work for Alex, though, and if he has trouble with our other suggestions I would highly recommend he try grazing as a plan B.
that would depend on how fast your metabolism is, i can workout just fine after a few hours of digesting time. any good high-intensity workout will shut your digestive system down, THAT is why you won't want to eat, the idea isn't to make food unappealing, but to tell your body it's done eating for the day and burn calories at the same time.
Again, personal preferences and contextual differences. There are benefits to working out while fasted, in the morning, at night, etc. What works for you is not necessary the best...and the main problem Spencer has here is that you present these with an implication that they are the best option when they are not.
Your suggestion is an option and, depending on the context, it may work. This is different from the best starting option, though.
actually i am quite cetain about the first 10 minutes or so of exercise being fueld almost entirely by adenosine triphosphate reserves, i've had that information thrust upon me by four different classes. when i said workout for longer periods i didn't necesarily mean to exercise continuously during those sessions, short burst training is every bit as important as endurance training, especially for something like parkour which could involve both long periods of endurance running and short burst exertion. it's important to train all aspects of your body.
I think that you misunderstood many of the basics involved in how the body uses energy. You may benefit from this...
Physiology of Energy Pathways (posts 1,2,3,14,15)-----------------------------------
EDIT: Turns out I didn't need to write anymore. Good advice from Bryan...and of course, looking back, my advice is pretty much identical to Steve's.
