Fatty needs a Health Guru

Now before reading on, prepare yourself for another 'Dieting Advice' thread, which includes whey protein shake suggestions *duck incoming abuse from Freefaller* LOL (apologies saw you having a rant in another thread)

Backstory is I used to be fit up until I was 18, playing 1st team rugby and waterpolo in high school back in South Africa, and for the past 10 years have let myself go completely. I didn't exercise, I drink far too much alcohol on Fridays (strongbow), generally a lazy slob. I now weigh 19stone and am 6ft tall. Lets just say the beer belly is immense.

Since my eldest brother passed away last year at 45 yrs old due to a heart attack (he was a masters waterpolo player, fit as a fiddle) Ive started to think more about my health, to the point that I quit smoking 8 months ago and Im now doing something about exercise by playing tennis once a week with work mates (baby steps, Im aiming to either swim 3 times a week OR play tennis OR a mix of the two)

I have been researching diets and Gordy's sticky in the SA section was also very informative.

Now Im thinking I need a sort of CKD/Atkins type diet combo to initiate Ketosis and Ive come up with a eating plan to shed fat. Could any of the people in the know please read it over and tell me if im on the correct path. It is a diet that I can see myself following and not 2 weeks down the line give up because its too difficult to adhere to.

The goal is to drastically reduce carbs and increase protein, and eating no more than 3 hours between meals: NO ALCOHOL

Breakfast = 1 boiled egg on a peice of seed loaf with the option of either smoked salmon or light ham for variety. (I'm really not a fan of big breakfasts and thats as much as Id like)

Mid Morning and Mid Afternoon Snack = Depends what I feel like but the 3 options are either a protein bar, a whey protein drink (which vanilla flavoured brand would you recommend? theres so many different whey protein shakes on the market), or tuna with light mayo.

Dinner = Varies between a piece of fresh fish, steak, mince, chicken breast etc with a mix of vegetables.

Lunch = Whatever meat I left over from previous nights dinner with some fruit ie apple, grapes.

Drinks = Flavoured spring water (volvic or asda brand, love the stuff) and If I have coffee at work it will be with sweeteners.

Then one day a week (I propose Saturday) I have a free day to eat whatever I like, ie pizza or whatever.

To start off with, am I on the right track? any suggestions or thoughts would be much appreciated.

120lbs @ 6ft??

Surely a typo??

I'm currently 242lbs (17 Stone 4 lbs) at 6ft 1ins....now that is overweight. I was almost 19 stone just after xmas

Is the 120lbs a mistype? 120 pounds is really light.

surely you mean 120kg, i.e nearly 19stone

Also having a day off to eat whatever you like may be alright idea but it still should be in fair moderation, you don't want to be losing progress from only one day of the week.

aaarg soz guys now corrected it....19 stone

The Craig said:

Also having a day off to eat whatever you like may be alright idea but it still should be in fair moderation, you don't want to be losing progress from only one day of the week.

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ye its to eat what I like but not how much I like...that would be defeating the object

Is a bit of fruit for lunch a good idea? missus seems to think they full of sugars but surely they are good sugars?

Simple way of losing weight -

Calories taken in should be less than that burned off.

I have taken my calorie intake down from an average 2500 a day to 1800, eating more fruit and less fatty crap/alcohol.
I was burning approx 2200 a day but now with the exercise I burn off up to a max 3000 a day dependant on how long I exercise. Obviously all approximate but its working

I've tried keto diets and whilst they work initially, you've got to be very disciplined to keep the weight off. I wasn't disciplined and my weight would go up and down.

Now I've jsut made a lifestyle choice to be generally fitter. I exercise and I watch what I eat. I have off days, sometimes off weeks if I'm on holiday, but it's been much more effective than any short term fix.

It's take me two years to get to the point where I am now the fittest I've been since I left school, but having done it the long slow way I'm now much more confident about maintaining my health and making further gains.

richb_83 said:

Simple way of losing weight -

Calories taken in should be less than that burned off.

I have taken my calorie intake down from an average 2500 a day to 1800, eating more fruit and less fatty crap/alcohol.
I was burning approx 2200 a day but now with the exercise I burn off up to a max 3000 a day dependant on how long I exercise. Obviously all approximate but its working

Click to expand...

whats your average daily diet to hit those sort of cals?

Keto is the best way to go, but the best way to do it is be prepared for the side effects, deal with them as they arise rather than let it bog you down and slowly go into it.

SOme people will find dizzyness, nausea and so on, this is mostly your brain lacking energy as on a card diet, especially high carb, it will use simple energy and takes some time to adjust. This is why a couple days at a time of keto can be beneficial then a day with a little basic wholewheat pasta maybe, or some ultra low GI carbs added to a shake or two, activated barley doesn't much affect the taste of a shake at all and is just about the lowest GI product I've seen, expensive circa £20 for 1kg, but you're talking about adding 10-20grams here and there to start with, so will last you ages and really can't be beaten.

ALso don't kick yourself for missing meals, eating close together is far more important for a low fat diet, or a gaining muscle diet, for keto its not so much. To start with getting into keto it is, but once your body is using fat as its preferential source, your body can simply continue to "eat" your body fat while it waits for more food.

On a normal carb diet you eat, burn off the easy calories and the delay as you run out of carbs and tell your body to start to burn fat is when your body can turn to muscle as a quicker food source. If you start in burning fat mode, IE, ketosis, its far less of an issue.

I saw no difference in any way eating 6 or 3 meals a day, however due to your hunger all but drying up 4/5 small meals was far easier to handle. Thats the other bonus of ketosis, protein and fat reduce your hunger, while carbs increase your hunger and a calorie defecit diet when you're eating less between meals than you are burning, you will always have a blood sugar drop before a meal, meaning you'll always be hungry, so its easier to slip and binge.

The key to any diet, is play around with foods till you find something that fits, and that YOU LIKE. I like scrambled egg's, a bit of cheese and soem brocolli and peppers, some fresh chilli's, black pepper, etc, so I can eat that easily and its perfect for ketosis. I have a fairly similar story, very active up to 16 when I got bad knee's, for a long while I did nothing while i was eating as previously and put on a lot of weight, got depressed, lazy and never got back to fitness and over about a decade i got ridiculously unhealthy. I've tried the general advice that was around for years several times, tried to eat salads and this and that, low fat, it never worked largely because I really really don't like salads and simply couldn't bring myself to eat it often enough and always gave up. its worked this time because I went with foods I liked, that are healthy and easy to make so it encourages me to stick with it because they are foods that if I wasn't dieting I would probably eat anyway.

Since June I've lost a little over 5 stone, though the majority of that was very quick, my birthday, minor surgery, xmas, new years and a couple of illness's I think almost completely down to eating badly at those times and I really haven't stuck to a diet since October so I'm kicking myself as had I stuck to it I would have long since been my ideal weight already and working on fitness.


Trying to think what my main meals consist of when in Ketosis, maybe 2 shakes a day and 2-3 egg based meals with every now and then some qourn/soya burgers with cheese on instead(i'm a veggie which limits me a lot more than meateaters as really you can eat any meat whatsoever).

Shakes I use myprotein.co.uk , I seem to get on well with whey isolate, seem to be a tad lactose intolerant, £22-24 per 2.25kg bag which really gets me a lot of meals. For chocolate flavour I use a little sucralose and cocoa powder(which is VERY good for you, but a little bitter which is why the sucralose ). I mix it with Alpro soya light, not a huge fan of water shakes, and milk has a lot of carbs in it. soya milk has very very few carbs, good protein, omega fats in and the specific one doesn't taste of really anything, some soya milks are utterly vile but the alpro soya light is really well, neutral.

Nuts are your friend, pine nuts have a very low carb, and very high content of omega's in their fat. Cashews taste great also and aren't bad at all, though both are fairly expensive. Hard cheese's in general are low carb and most are fine to use.

anything like coke, even diet coke I can tell the difference and I would say avoid it and just drink loads of water, couple litres a day, maybe more, depends on the person.

while half the forum will tell you supplements are evil I love certain ones. As you are metabolising a lot more fat than in a normal diet by both eating more and burning body fat upping intake of the things involved in that process helps for me at least. L-carnitine , CoQ10 enzyme, vit b's and the one thing you should take in abundance is omega 3, take it by the bucket load. Being a vege I go with flax seed oil which can be found pretty cheap most places, assuming you're not get fish based omega's, best quality ones you can get but NOT cod liver oil ones. Cod liver oil has a few vitamins in aswell and taking more than 1-2grams a day can be toxic, plain fish oil for omega's is really the more the better. 5-10grams a day if you can.

Average diet -

Breakfast - 2 slice of Toast (wholemeal) or 2 weetabix

Snack - Fruit (generally Apple or Banana)

Lunch - Ham or Cheese or Chicken Sandwiches (4 slice of bread)

Snack - More Fruit again Apple or banana

Tea - Typically a spag bol or chilli/rice or Chicken salad


I also end up having about 6 cups of tea at work...used to have 2 sugars now have half or a sweetener.

As I said all calorie in take/burn off is approximate. Depends where you get the information from, anyways the weight is nicely falling off

richb_83 said:

I have taken my calorie intake down from an average 2500 a day to 1800, eating more fruit and less fatty crap/alcohol.
I was burning approx 2200 a day but now with the exercise I burn off up to a max 3000 a day dependant on how long I exercise. Obviously all approximate but its working

Click to expand...

1200cal deficiency is WAY too much, your at risk of lowering your metabolism. The human body does not like you losing fat, and if it thinks your not eating enough it will try to store every bit of energy it can. You want to find the amount of calories it takes for you to sustain your current weight (including exercising) and take away 500cal for a safe calorie intake number.

Oxlde, It's good you have decided to change your life for the better and your meal plan is OK (not perfect). Try to take it easy on cheat days and stick to maybe just 1 cheat meal instead of the whole day.

If you want to really boost weight loss then high intensity interval training is what you need. Studies have confirmed this to be more efficient than long slow cardio. High intensity interval training (HIIT) is basically short bursts of a high intensity exercise (Normally running) followed by a short rest period and repeated. A good time to do this is in the morning (before breakfast) while your glycogen levels are low, this will force your body to use fat for energy. You can use google to read more about this.

Whoa thanks for the awesome info guys!

drunkenmaster: Appreciate the time you took for all your info - I will amend my diet plan with your suggestions

BenGibbs: Thanks for your advice. I definately want to do some HIIT at some point soon but at the risk of 'doing everything at once and quitting as it seems daunting' im going to rather ease into things.
quit smoking = check
ease into exercise = check
get diet in order = in progress
start HIIT before breakfast = TBA

Amended diet plan:

Goal is to drastically reduce carbs and increase protein intake with no more than 3 hours between meals: NO ALCOHOL

Breakfast = 1 boiled egg on a peice of seed loaf with either smoked salmon or light ham for variety. Glass of milk with Omega 3 supplement.

Mid Morning and Mid Afternoon Snack = Options being:
protein bar
whey protein drink
tuna with light mayo
Cashew or Pine nuts

Dinner = fresh fish, steak, mince, chicken breast etc with a mix of vegetables or salad.

Lunch = Whatever meat is left over from previous nights dinner with some fruit.

Drinks = at least 2litres flavoured spring water. Coffee with sweetener.

Saturday is cheat day for a pizza or a takeaway.

Can anyone please spec me a good 1 kg vanilla whey protein shake for my needs? (And for variety will add cocoa powder to it as suggested by drunkenmaster)

If you've cut down on the amount of kcals you intake and upped the amount you exert then you will see results.

Stick to the diet plan you've ironed out yourself as in my opinion you will have more motivation to stick to it as you created it yourself, rather than following someone elses that you won't 'enjoy' as much.

Try to log what you eat, when you eat and the calorific value of what you eat. Then attempt to work out the amount of calories you exert, this should give you a rough indication of where you are.

I think there is a website called nutrition.com or nutritiondata.com that has a massive database of high street foods and there nutritional values. It's very useful when counting kcals + fats.

Oxlde said:

Saturday is cheat day for a pizza or a takeaway.

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cheat meal would be better (i assume that's what you mean)

I'm looking at cutting next month, v-diet here i come. My cheat meal is a beans on toast with cheese lol.

keep an eye on protein bars, I'm actually unsure the specifics of polyols, which are the alcohol sugars very common in protein bars, even more so the ones designed for diet/low carbness. Its a little unclear how much they count, how much they effect insulin levels and how much you absorb. I can get away with one now and then but don't be too reliant on them.

AS for the calories, I think again people tend to get their idea's very wrong here. ON ketosis you're in fat burning mode, if you don't eat that many calories as long as your body is still able to keep metabolising the fat(it has enough b vits and various things it uses) essentially your body should be eating all day long, as in. Generally I never saw any evidence AT ALL of any decrease on my metabolism no matter what I ate, a bad day where i was hungry at ate 2000 cals, or a day I could barely get 1000 calories down, multiple days.

This is where it would suggest logically that keeping your body topped up with things it needs to burn fat does wonders. People suggest eating normally is fine, but for me, you're trying to burn a LOT more fat than on a normal maintainance diet, yet you're eating LESS than that, which also equates to less nutrients, which means your body can produce less of the things it requires, while its trying to use more. I can't see how anyone can realise that and not think boosting the things your body needs is beneficial. Think of it like this, you don't ask a power station to put out twice as much power, but say they have to do it with half the amount of coal, it makes no sense, this is what you are trying to do in your body.

Hence the omega's, l-carnitine, coQ10 enzyme, maybe try it with and without like I did and make up your own mind.

I did count calories though not massively accurately, and after a few weeks I didn't bother at all, I certainly at no stage throughout stayed at a specific calorie level yet didn't have a single problem .Again being in fat burning mode throughout I think is the key here.

I'd also point out i've not done a lick of exercise at all, not least because my knee's get terrible in winter weather, though I'm going to kick into gear, doing things that strengthen my knee's at the moment for a week or two and will start using treadmill and doing some weights aswell. But I lost over 5 stone purely through diet.

Theres far more other things you can do aswell to "tweak" the diet but by no means necessary. For instance if you have the dreaded moob's, or love handles, a particularly bad belly, theres things that can make losing them easier. A lot of people will tell you its completely unimportant and to wait till you're almost at your goal to go after specific fat area's, you can't "spot" lose through exercise, but you CAN make certain area's of fat more accessible for your body to burn normally.

Brocolli is very good for you, has an anti aromatase effect which when fat is very useful, as is Zinc. Essentially your body can turn testosterone, or precursors of it into estrogen and its other versions and does so in fat cells prodominately, fatter you are, the higher your estrogen levels, and the harder it is to shift the "female dog" ****. Also means lower levels of test than normal which means harder to put on muscle. Also the more test you have the less muscle you'll tend to lose.

Anyway Brocolli and Zinc are very simple to add into diet(nuts are good for zinc, and no, not "those" nuts ), or a supplement and broccoli is a good veg to get your fiber from aswell, I chuck a bit into stirfrys.

Thanks again for your info drunkenmaster

I think Im going to follow what I had as my last diet plan and see how it goes and experience it for myself, as atm, im getting bogged down with details and just want to get on with it.

So briefly do you reckon thats a good start?

also is this what im looking for http://www.myprotein.co.uk/bulk-powders/protein-powders/impact-whey-protein/ ?

Just had some of this in vanilla flavour from a colleague at work http://www.maximuscle.com/promax its very nice and exactly what I'm looking for but rather expensive isn't it?