Soldato
@uncle_rufus you have to take measurements (I should take my own advice really)
i am fat
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Soldato
Measurements of what? (serious question, although... hue hue hue)
Waist, biceps, legs etc. Anything that would give you something to confirm that your gaining muscle and losing fat. Dependent on where you are (still porky and getting stronger like me, or already thinner and stronger) different measurements would mean different things. For me, if I measured my waist or my stomach, and that was getting smaller but my weight was staying the same then I'd know that I was adding muscle. (literally the opposite of what is happening to me right now)
Dick also, of course.
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I suppose that makes sense, though it's not really something I'd thought about doing... I will consider it though, suspect it's important to be consistent about when the measurements are taken as well
(p.s. just spotted you're in Woking - my condolences, I grew up there
)
Soldato
I suppose that makes sense, though it's not really something I'd thought about doing... I will consider it though, suspect it's important to be consistent about when the measurements are taken as well
(p.s. just spotted you're in Woking - my condolences, I grew up there
I've thought about doing it and completely can't be arsed.
Woking is good, thanks though! It's developing probably more than we should be comfortable with.
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Indeed - pretty crazy, drove through the town centre last time I was visiting my folks - that new project by the old bandstand is insane
But anyway we digress... hitting the gym tonight, hopefully make good progress!
Soldato
Soldato
Worth noting fat loss can occur vastly quicker than muscle can be built, so even a rank beginner 'recomping' will generally find their weight is going down as they build new skeletal muscle tissue, assuming they're not dieting at an unnecessarily glacial pace. A safe/manageable range of weight loss for most individuals is an average loss of around 0.5-1% of total bodyweight per week, but for most people training, outside of being a (total beginner or very advanced) the goal for weight gain should be around 0.5-1% of total bodyweight per month... and not all of this weight gain will be muscle as some fat gain in a surplus is an inevitability.
The other thing is people always, always underestimate how much they have to lose, so given your time frame of 3 months I would start tracking your weight daily first thing and calculate the weekly average (or use an app like Happy Scale) to make sure it's going the direction you want it to, and taking bi-weekly measurements, since water retention can sometimes mean the scales remain unchanged even if you're down a bit on one of your measurement sites. The main places worth measuring are bust (around the nipple line), 2" above navel, navel, and 2" below navel. You can also do hips (widest part) as well as mid-arm(s) and thigh(s), but generally these are unlikely to change much - at least downwards - if most of your fat is around your midsection.
Not really - all I'm saying is, that the evidence and studies show that in the vast majority of cases, diets in the sense of restricting calories - almost always fail in the long run and that person regains the weight they lost in 80%-90% of cases, when you look at the longer term measurements.
Exactly why this is isn't clear, however it appears (depending where you read) that we're only starting to understand more about just how complicated the body's system of managing and storing energy really is, because it's frighteningly complex, and at this point not fully understood by anybody.
Diets almost always work when followed, 99% of the time - however diets almost always stop working later on for some reason - that's the key point.
My personal view, based on what I've read and observed - is that calorie restrictive diets don't fix the root cause of the problem, they merely 'put it on hold' because the root cause of the problem is not overeating, it's not the large amount of calories being consumed (which is definitely happening) it's the wrong sorts of food which are being eaten (energy dense junk/processed food/fast food/soda) which is actually driving the root cause, which is actually driving the excess caloric intake, which is driving the weight gain.
To try and illustrate the point, consider two plates of food - both are around 1000 calories;
1 - A big mac meal
2 - Chicken breast and salad.
If you put both plates of food side by side, one is tiny and one is huge (1000 cal of chicken and salad is a big plate) - despite both plates equalling 1000 calories in terms of energy (if we burn the contents of each plate we'll generate the same a mount of heat and so on) but the absolute critical, crucial difference is that one will fill you up and make you feel stuffed, the other won't - not even close.
This is the root cause. People are eating too much food that does not trigger the body's natural satiety mechanisms, they eat more food - because the food they're eating doesn't satisfy them, along with the fast food, they turn to snacks and other things along the way - all of which contribute to the excess caloric intake, but it's what they're eating that's driving that excess, like a vicious cycle.
When you take a person like this (60-70% of the current population) and you get them to 'turn down' the amount, they can do it temporarily and lose weight - but almost all of them go back to how they were before, because the body's appetite mechanisms are some of the strongest hormonal responses we have, holding out against them indefinitely is almost certainly going to result in failure, that's not even taking into consideration the frankly insane food environment we've created..
In my opinion, the only way to lose weight and keep it off for good, is to fix the root cause - which is in almost all cases of obesity, permanently cut out junk and fast food - because there's no other way if you want long term success, there really isn't.
Eat foods which are high in fruit, veg and crucially - fibre, along with healthy cuts of meat (especially fish) basically what everybody was eating pre 1970, and have a treat once a week. Because this is the way we used to live, before the madness that occurred with food in the 1980s.
That's the key, it should be a lifestyle change, not just jumping on the latest celebrity endorsed diet to lose weight as generally they aren't sustainable.
Soldato
All sugars are carbs but not all carbs are sugar. Do not over read into Keto, you can easily lose weight while eating carbs. Dont throw everything, just the bad carbs and certainly dont avoid veg. Fiber is an important part of your diet as well as slow to digest starches. The key is moderation. Unless by vegetables you mean a ton of potatoes or other energy dense foods, i doubt a few extra portions of most veg will do you any harm considering how filling it is compared to most other things.
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Great tips, thanks! I do track my weight on the Fitbit app, but I don't have scales at home so I only weight myself at the gym (Monday and Wednesday currently) so not ideal but better than nothing... I am down very slightly today at 89.4 kgs but that's well within retention/noise I'd have thought (I am usually bang on 90 kgs with virtually no deviation). I'll think about taking some measurements and see how it goes... Am I right in thinking a little supplementary whey isn't going to hurt provided it is within the calorie limits? Or should I ditch that? (I don't take very much, one small shake maybe ~20gs immediately before the gym on both days)
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3 years ago I weighed just shy of 17stone. I lost 3.5 stone in 6 months by cycling for an hour daily and eating sensibly mon-fri. I do the gym 5 days a week now to keep the weight off, best thing i ever did.
Soldato
If you're going to weigh yourself after eating the best you can do is try and be consistent with what you're eating beforehand (salt and carbohydrates have transient effects on water retention, some foods are more voluminous than others etc), your fluid intake and that sort of thing to keep the readings from jumping about a bit.
As for the whey it largely depends on your current protein intake. When dieting, especially for those training hard, higher protein intakes have a protective effect on lean body mass, (assuming you don't slack off on training as muscle is very 'use it or lose it'), because in a deficit not all the protein your consume is going to be used for the growth/repair mechanism. As long as you're sticking to your caloric goals, having some supplementary protein from whey might have a slight benefit, especially if it's a convenient means for you of getting some in before training if you're saving a proper meal for afterwards.
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That's pretty much it... I just found I was making good progress for a while but then it slowed a bit and got to a point where I was getting unbelievably hungry after the gym and for the whole of the following day... intially I had tried to simply eat more, but it wasn't really practical to do that and I was worried that increasing consumption of everything would be harmful (extra fat and carbs that I didn't want), so it seemed like a bit of pure protein would be the way to go. Have been doing it a month or so now and definitely feel less rabidly hungry, also been able to get to higher weights and feel like I recover better - sometimes I'd gym on Monday and by Wednesday trying to go again would find it really tough (considered switching my routine to isolate different areas on the two days to mitigate this but glad I don't really need to anymore!)
As for the weighing - I expect I'm fairly consistent, it would be at the gym so before dinner and maybe 4 hours after lunch with mostly just some water or coffee drunk inbetween. I'm a real creature of habit so most of the time the things I have in my lunch are exactly the same week-to-week!
About 6 years ago around when I was turning 40 I was off to a friends wedding with my Wife and her car wouldnt start and needed a bump to get going. No problem I thought, its only a little Pug 206 and I've done this loads of times over the years. I pushed her around the corner where she got the car going, I ran back in to the house, threw up and then laid down on the floor feeling like I'd run a marathon.
That was the turning point for me
I'd gone from being a pretty fitness obessed person who used to box and do a couple of different martial arts to an unfit slob a good few stone overweight in the space of about 10 years, and thats when i said enough was enough.
I tracked my calories (used the myfitnesspal app which worked well for me) and started running around the lanes by my house. Once I'd dropped a bit of weight I went back and joined the local TaeKwon-Do class where my son trained so had the bonus of doing something with my lad as well. 3 months later I'd dropped 3 stone and that pretty much where I've been since, apart from Christmas where I'm normally half a stone heavier
I know a lot of people dont like counting calories but it certainly worked for me, its a bit of a shock at first when you realise how much you're actually consuming day to day!
Good luck
That was the turning point for me
I'd gone from being a pretty fitness obessed person who used to box and do a couple of different martial arts to an unfit slob a good few stone overweight in the space of about 10 years, and thats when i said enough was enough.I tracked my calories (used the myfitnesspal app which worked well for me) and started running around the lanes by my house. Once I'd dropped a bit of weight I went back and joined the local TaeKwon-Do class where my son trained so had the bonus of doing something with my lad as well. 3 months later I'd dropped 3 stone and that pretty much where I've been since, apart from Christmas where I'm normally half a stone heavier
I know a lot of people dont like counting calories but it certainly worked for me, its a bit of a shock at first when you realise how much you're actually consuming day to day!
Good luck
Soldato
fat