Sorry this ended up so long, but since I recently lost weight I’m kind of enthusiastic about it. I think weight training is absolutely essential for fat loss. Aerobic exercise is very important for overall health and contributes to fat loss, but I’ve seen my biggest changes when I was most serious with resistance training. If I have to choose between skipping a weight workout or skipping an aerobic workout, I now choose to hit the weights. Aerobic exercises are shorter and easier to make up later if you’re determined enough. You also need to have regular breaks from resistance training, and a skipped workout could throw your whole week’s schedule off. Aerobics can be worked in whenever you have a half-hour free.
I broke my wrists (yes, both of them) about three years ago and was effectively unable to exercise at all for about 6 months afterward. I still have some mobility problems that I am going to have another surgery to correct. Because of the long period of inactivity I got out of the habit of exercising and gained a lot of weight. I was up to 89.6 kg (197 lbs.) when I weighed myself in February and I’m about 177 cm (5’ 9+") tall. In July of 2001, prior to my injuries, I was about 79 kg (174 lbs.), with around 15% body fat.
In March of this year, I began my first abortive attempt to get back in shape. I started with a workout schedule that was way too optimistic. It was probably the kind of thing I could have done in my sleep three years ago, but a bit beyond where I was when I started working out again. In April, I had to quit working out due to a combination of the inappropriate level of training and a schedule change that ate into my free time. May saw my fat butt back in training, with a new regimen and a better baseline to start out from.
From March to April, I lost about 1.5-2 kg (3-4+ lbs.) from doing a weight training circuit routine I copied from a fitness magazine. The problem was that the training lasted more than an hour. Aerobic training was kind of incorporated, in that you were supposed to do three exercises in succession with a 1.5 minute break in between circuits. My blood sugar would drop so low by the end of the workout that I felt like throwing up. Forget doing any real aerobic training on top of that.
So, I stopped doing that workout for a while, reassessed my routine, did some research and figured out where to go from there. In reading around, I found out that some of the things that are popularly held to be true about weight loss are not really all that accurate. This was the first time in my life I’d been significantly overweight, so I didn’t have a lot of dieting folklore cluttering up my views. Not surprisingly, I guess, I found that my prior eating behavior was almost perfect for losing weight and staying in shape, though I did make some changes to the way I did my training.
The idea of dieting is stupid. You need to be pretty cautious about how much you cut in the way of calories, especially what kind of calories you cut. For some people, those who have dieted often, it is necessary to actually eat more in order to lose weight since their bodies have become accustomed to “famine” conditions. Extreme diets are generally not maintainable. Atkins or other diets that significantly change your eating habits are also not sustainable for most people. For me in particular, Atkins or other carbohydrate restricted diets are not a good idea since I hate most fatty foods. Carb-restricted diets also inhibit muscle gain, which is definitely not something I want to do.
Here are some things I found most trainers and dietician agree on:
[ul]
[li]Eat often; 4-6 times a day.[/li][li]That doesn’t mean you eat more, you just divide your daily calories into smaller portions with shorter periods between meals.[/li][li]Avoid sugary and high-fat foods.[/li][li]Reduce or eliminate your alcohol intake (ethyl alcohol breaks down to about 70 kcal/g, second only to fat at 90 kcal/g).[/li][li]Do resistance training 2 to 4 times a week. Take at least a day to rest in between workouts.[/li][li]Eat enough calories, protein in particular, to sustain muscle growth.[/li][li]Do aerobic/cardio training 20-30 minutes a day, 4+ times a week.[/li][/ul]
I used to eat four or five times a day when I was active. I never used to skip meals if I could help it. I used to actually feel ill if I didn’t eat often enough. That changed when I stopped exercising regularly and I see that as one of the main contributing factors to my weight gain. I didn’t eat very unhealthily or in large amounts during those three years, but I did start to follow a 3 meals a day conventional eating schedule because I thought I didn’t need to eat as much as when I was exercising.
I changed my eating habits back to my old way while I was taking a break from exercise between April and May and I lost another kilogram without reducing my calories or exercising. The only big change I’ve made to my diet is to be a bit more conscious about what kind of foods I eat. I rarely eat anything high in fat, like fried foods or mayonnaise. Sugary stuff always made me feel sick so I’ve never really eaten sweets. I reduced the amount I eat at one time. If I used to get two of something, I now get one. If that won’t make me full enough, I might get two, but not finish one of them, maybe eating it a couple hours later as a snack.
I started weight training again in May, but this time I followed a three day a week split-body workout schedule instead of the previous full-body workout 2 times a week. I set attainable short-term goals for each workout. After two weeks of doing just the weight training, I incorporated 15-25 minutes of aerobic exercise training twice a week. From mid-June to the end of September I started lifting heavier weights with lower repetitions to build muscle mass. In one month I lost 3 kg (6-7 lbs.) with this modest exercise schedule, with my biggest loss coinciding with the introduction of heavier weights. I started doing aerobics 2-4 times a week, depending on my schedule.
I took pictures twice a month starting in mid-June. You could see a change in the two weeks between the first picture and the one I took at the end of the month. I still had a waist that stuck out more than my chest then. In mid-October, when I took my last picture before my recent schedule conflict, there was an enormous difference. I was editing the pictures to a uniform size during lunch the other day and a coworker told me, “Wow! That looks like a different person.” The difference is most noticeable from the side. I had a lot of inter-abdominal fat (the most dangerous kind health-wise). Even though I had visible stomach muscles already in June, my stomach stuck out. Now, my waist is significantly thinner than my chest.
Unfortunately, for 3 weeks or so this month, I wasn’t able to get in a single workout. Thankfully, I’m now in decent enough shape to not rebound quickly. I started working out again this week. I’m now down to 80.3 kg (between 176 and 177 lbs.), over 9 kg (20 lbs.) lost since my Moment of Truth on the scale back in February. Since my shirts are getting tight in the shoulders and my pant legs distinctly less roomy, I’m sure I’ve lost a lot more than 9 kg of fat. I don’t have measurements, but my girlfriend tells me I’m getting “huge.” (Not there, you pervert.) I still have some fat on my stomach, but that won’t be there for much longer. If I’d been able to be more consistent, I would probably be in even better shape now, with no stomach fat. As of my last workout at the beginning of this month, I had maintained the same scale weight, but my waist size has dropped about 4 cm (1.6 in.) from late September because I had to take my belt in a notch this morning.
There are two main sites that gave me the inspiration to start exercising again. One is John Stone’s site. He lost a lot of weight in a fairly short time and documented the whole thing. I looked at the slug he was when he started out and thought, “Hell, if he can do it…” The other is a food-supplement site that has a new take on weight lifting. They do try to sell you stuff, but they also give pretty good advice, one point of which is not to take their word for it but to check things out for yourself. Their workout plan, Max OT, is the one I’ve been following since mid June. With their method of warming up and working out, I’ve increased the weight I can lift by a lot, made bigger muscle gains, and I’ve rarely had significant soreness. They have pictures and notes on all the exercises they include in their workouts. Since I’m not into planning my meals in detail or in taking food supplements, I don’t follow their diet plan, but I can imagine that it probably works as well as their workouts do.