Loosing fat and looking good.

I posted this in another thread as a response to to another poster but ended up getting carried away and I thought many people might get some use out of what I've found through the last three months reading and studying about diet and exercise and then following through with it with fantastic results.

A little bit about me. I was raised on junk food and fried food. Mommy didn't know any other way to cook except frying everything. Sometimes dad grilled a steak but mostly it was fried. I was never really fat and most of my childhood I was a really skinny kid but I was never really fit for the most part. Fast forward 16 years after high school and quite a few since college I'd developed quite the mid life belly with a pudgy face, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I would play with my son and after 2 minutes I was breathing like Tony Saprano. Ugh.

I'd been on cholesterol meds for over a year or so when my doctor takes me off because it's screwing up my liver. He wants to try a different brand and hey, my blood pressure is high so why don't we give you some pills for that too. What about diet and exercise I asked? He laughed. I got pissed. Well, you can try it for a few months if you want.

I did want. I wanted to look good and feel good. I wanted to be healthy, not stuff of half a dozen different drugs with side effects that needed more drugs. I wanted to be around for my family and have the energy to play with my son.

So, the following is what I've discovered and what I've done.

Short term "diets" fail. I call my diet what and how I eat. It's also long term.

I do low volume strength training and HIIT (high intensity interval training) along with some fasting and you've got a recipe for drastic and rapid weight loss. I've lost 38 lbs. since the end of December and I'm still loosing. I can see the faint outline of my abs and I'm looking forward to the pool season for the first time in years.

Here, I'll give you my diet and exercise for yesterday.

Get up at 6 for work. I'll usually have a big glass of water with a tiny tiny bit of OJ in it for a little flavor. (one of my secrets for when you get tired of just drinking water)

By around 9 or so my stomach will growl some and I'll be a little hungry but being hungry isn't a bad thing. I take it to mean I'm just burning fat.

Between 11:00 and 12:30 or so I'll eat a small to medium sized lunch I brought from home. Yesterday it was half a pound of shrimp, a big bag of microwave steamed vegetables, an orange, and straight water.

At 4:30 work is done and it was off to the gym. I did 30-45 minutes of weight lifting. I do a split routine. Chest/Back twice a week and arms (biceps, triceps, shoulders) twice a week. Yesterday was Chest/back. I do 3 exercises for each body part.

Chest is incline bench, cable crossovers, and pullovers.
Back is wide grip pull ups (which are hard as crap. I still have to use the machine to help me most days), Lat pull down, and bent overs rows.

I do 3 sets of each exercise and 5 reps. A big deal is I NEVER, NEVER work my muscle to failure and I never do more that 5 reps. The reason is above 5 reps you're going to work the muscle to failure. If you do that it's going to break down the muscle and it'll get bigger. I don't want bigger muscles. I want tight, strong, toned muscles. I want to look more like Hugh Jackman or Brad Pitt, not Hulk Hogan. My whole thing is loosing fat and defining muscle. This workout is getting me there.

After my weights I jump on my cardio machine of choice, the treadmill but you can use anything. On fridays I play basketball and run sprints in the basketball gym. On the treadmill I do HIIT. The basics are I walk/warmup on the treadmill with the setting around a 3. After a few minutes I crank it up to 6.5 or 7 and run for 60 seconds. Then I crank it back to 3 for 60 seconds. I cycle though that over and over for 10 minutes but the catch is that every cycle I increase the speed on the high side. So my second time around I'm at 7.5. Then back to 3.0. Then up to 8.0. Then back to 3.0. (always back down to your base.)

What this does is basically cause your body to think it's getting ready to really use some energy so it dumps and uses your carb energy or energy you've got handy. Within just a few minutes your body has nothing for fuel except.....wait for it.....FAT! Studies have also shown that if you do this long enough and hard enough your body will start to release HGH and that is the best stuff for burning fat. The best part is that it lasts for hours and hours. So instead of doing some steady 45 minutes walking on the treadmill I do HIIT that gets to the fat faster and burns it longer. Do some google searches and other will be able to explain it far better than I.

After the gym I head home and have dinner, usually around 7. I eat healthy until I'm full. Last night it was chicken wraps. Chicken breast cut up and cooked on the stove in olive oil with taco seasoning added. I use low carb wraps with a tiny big of cheese and tiny bit of ranch dressing and a LOT of green leaf lettuce. And an orange. I love oranges and usually eat 2 or 3 a day. I had 3 of the wraps. Then I had a sugar free chocolate pudding cup. There was quite a bit leftover chicken so I ate a few more pieces of that. Six or seven end of your thumb size chunks. I drank water.

Later that night my wife fixed some hot chocolate which I probably shouldn't have had but I did. It was the kind that had marshmellows in it too.

I would have done better and many days I do if I had not had the pudding cup or the hot chocolate but you gotta live and it not like I'm never going to have chocolate or sweets again. Just in moderation.

The day before for dinner I had half a pound of shrimp and two big pieces of oven baked salmon, a salad and water.


I found a blog http://fitnessblackbook.com/ and it's fantastic. From there I found http://www.marksdailyapple.com/.

The best way to loose weight is to completely educate yourself on your body uses food. Armed with that knowledge it was much easier for me to craft a "diet" that worked for me, was somewhat easy, and could be something for the rest of my life.

I also do some fasting. There are all kinds of different ways to fast. Some do 24 hours once or twice a week (not in a row though). Some do partial fasting which is what I do but there are even variations of that. When you fast you eat less, and when you work out after fasting your body is in a state where it has nothing to use for energy except fat.

Trust me when I say I know it's not easy but it is easier than you think. I started off by replacing my bad food with not so bad food. Sugar free jello and pudding and Lays baked chips for snacks. Flavored water and juice instead of soft drinks. Then I started cutting out processed foods (most food in a box) and started buying a lot of vegatables, fruits and lean meats. I buy tons of those microwave vegetables, they easy and taste great. There are tons of cool salads you can make that taste great and are very filling. I eats a pretty good bit of bananas, oranges, strawberries, grapes, apples and many others. My meats are tons of chicken and turkey with some lean beef. I still have some baked lays once in a while but in the past a bag of chips at my house would not make it two days. Now they last me about a week. A pudding cup once in a while is good too or some dark chocolate.

I also don't sweat it too much it I eat some bad food. I just have to make sure I don't do it often. Last friday night a friend and I ended up at Burger King and I got a chicken fries combo with a fries and a coke and a plain cheese burger but that's the only the second time I'd had fast food all month and the other time was a grilled chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A. Also, at special events and times like birthday parties, christmas, etc. I don't worry about my diet at all. Life is too short and those times are few and far between. Just don't find something every week as an excuse to eat junk.

Read from those website I suggested and work out your own plan that best works for you. Sorry, this got so long but I've been really excited about the transformation my body has gone through. I didn't plan to take it this far. It kind of snowballed on me. I was just trying to loose some weight because my doctor was putting me on all kinds of meds for blood pressure and cholesterol and I got pissed at getting all these meds when I'm only 33.

Good luck!

(please excuse any spelling errors and such)

 

From my total lack of a science background I think your nose is mostly made of cartilage so no, it's won't shrink if you loose weight.

Your face will though. The very first place I put on weight is my face, cheeks, and jawline.

I also think that your nose is one part of the body that NEVER stops growing.

 

I have a question about your plan. It is an honest question so do not take it as criticism.

If you eat better and exercise consistently you are probably going to lose weight and feel better. The problem I and most people have is the consistently part. Anyway how do you know the unusual things you did were more helpful in weight loss than the traditional eat less move more type stuff?

 

I noticed that if I stick my face way out when I have a picture taken, my face doesn't look so fat.

 

i actually had one ear that was fatter than the other....much, much, much fatter. it looked like a head of lettuce, compared to my other ear! i lost 29.5 lbs and they are now both equal in size!!!!!!!!!!!!! i think this should be encouraging news for you. lose the fat in your fat face and your gigantic booger tunnel should shrink proportionally to the rest of your mug. send us some before and after pics as well. some of us are in the medical field and would appreciate your testimonial. there may be great reward!

 

You're right. Any diet that causes you to burn more calories then you eat will result in weight loss. I'm not saying my way is the only way. If eating an all cabbage diet works for you, then by all means, do it. I just wanted to share what worked for me.

I would still argue for many of the things I've done because of how consistently I lost the weight and how I felt after doing HIIT as compared to just jogging for 30 minutes as well as other things. If you've got specifics I'd love to discuss them but I admit you could possibly get the same results with a more traditional diet and workout but if you haven't in the past (and I hadn't) some of these more "unusual" ideas might work for you.

 

I have lost weight a variety of ways. I lost 60 pounds on weight watchers but later gained most of it back. I lost 30 on slimfast, 30 on Atkins, 30 or so just going to the gym three times per week. I recently dropped about 30 pounds using phenteremine diet pills. The frustration for me is that I always seem to gain it all back.

I wish I could find something that would be permanent.

 

I bet you gained the weight back each time when you quit the diet. A diet can not be a short term thing or something you do to lose the weight.

It really does have to be a lifestyle change. You absolutely can NOT go back to eating the way you used to. That's what made you fat in the first place so why would you think going back to eating or living that way would keep the weight off?

I have no doubt that as long as I continue to eat healthy, stay away from junk food, processed foot and fast food and continue to get exercise that I will not gain the weight back.

 

I hope you are able to maintain what you have accomplished but it has been my experience that the more dramatic the changes you make to lose the weight the harder it is to keep it off.

The most interesting part to me about your plan is the part that says it is OK to skip meals and to fast. I think I could integrate that into my lifestyle easier than I could going to the gym all the time or eating only healthy foods. I wonder what would happen if I just skipped eating supper each day? Theoretically that would cut out at least a third of my calorie intake and result in a lot of weight loss. Once I got in the habit of doing that it would not be that difficult either.