My general daily diet goes like this.
[ul][li]Banana and glass of milk for breakfast (and vitamins)[]get to work and have a Mt Dew[]Have a big apple and a Mt Dew for Lunch[]have a bottle of water at about 3pm[]Eat whatever it is my mom/dorm makes for dinner (burgers/steak/chicken/pasta/whatever) with Milk, and some canned pairs/peaches/pinapples for desert.[/ul][/li]I plan on switching to diet Dew soon, since it just came out. I go to college, and I co-op. Right now I am doing co-op and living at home, but in a month I will be going back to school (living there), and eating dorm food again.
I’d say I am about 40 LBS overweight (6’1", 220), and I have started running 2 days a week, and lifting weights 3 days a week. What do ya think? I have been doing this(the diet and working out) for about 2 weeks, and haven’t noticed any real change in my weight yet. Is this a diet that I am likly to lose weight on?
Losing weight is the easiest thing in the world. You just have to make sure you take in fewer calories than you expend.
The running will help, as will any regular and appropriate cardio-vascular exercise, because it burns a lot of calories. If you’re getting into all this for the first time, then I suggest you get appropriate advice from your physician and a fitness instructor, so that you don’t do anyhting that’s inappropriate for you. The fitness instructor will also help you learn how to warm up and warm down safely, how to work out the right cardio-vascular exercise regime for you and your goals, and how to avoid over-doing it.
The weights work won’t help you lose weight, but can help you develop a better physique. There are many other benefits too.
Your diet. Absolutely make sure you get ALL of the vitamins and minerals you need for good health. Preferably get them from fresh fruit and vegatables, but ‘artificial’ substitutes such as multi-vitamin pills are better than nothing.
Try to cut down on liquid intake. In many cases of people trying to lose weight, the ‘weight’ is fluid retained in the body. Don’t try to go excessively ‘dry’ - you can’t do it, and you will strain your kidneys and do other damage. But a careful and ongoing reduction in fluid intake will help you to lose weight. Fresh, clean water is your friend and essential, and I drink at least 4 glasses a day. Better than Mountain Dew or anything else. Try to cut back on the other fluids you take in, but DO keep yourself hydrated when you work out.
Not exactly true. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you expend when you run or do other cardiovascular exercise. Additionally, you do need to burn some fuel to put on muscle.
Like ianzin also said, you need to be careful to get all the vitamins, minerals, and whatnot that are necessary for health. It sounds like your diet is low-protein, which is gonna make it tough to put on much muscle.
At any rate, my understanding is that diet soda hasn’t really helped anyone lose weight. (sorrry I don’t have a cite.) Anyone with knowledge, feel free to correct me!
Best bet would be to minimalize your caloric intake during dinner and eat a substitute a couple times during the day.
For the best Weight loss program, you should eat no less than 1600 calories, and spread those out over 5-7 mini-meals. Pop is empty calories, which is bad for you, best to cut it toatally out of your diet, or switch to diet, like you suggested. However, if you feel like you can, I would cut it out totally, as caffine is a Diuretic, and carbonated beverages are not the best thing for the body anyhow.
The best excersise program would include wieghts, as Ultrafilter said, having more muscle fiber burns more calories while workout, and even sitting down doing nothing. However, if your goal is to lose fat and gain lean muscle, it is advised to cut your weight-lifting goals to low to mid weights with high reps (10-15), preferably 3 sets.
The most important thing to remember when trying to lose wieght is not to drop your caloric intake too low. If your starve yourself your body goes into shock and will store more fat. Eating the right amount of calories is also important when you are working out, food is energy, and if you dont get that energy, you may hurt yourself, or at the very least, not have the energy to continue to work out.
You really should drink water. IT does work. As of today, I have lost 19.5 pounds in 4 weeks, 3 days. I drink lots of water, exercise an additional 4 hours a week, eat lots of vegetables, and dropped high fat content food.
You should cut out the weight training and do more running until you’ve shed 20-30 lbs of fat. The reason is that aerobic exercise burns a lot more calories than weight training. You’ll also tone you’r muscles while running, and the weight loss will make you more lean and muscular. Once you get close to your goal you can mix in some weights, cause it’s true that larger muscles will raise your base metabolism.
As far as diet, nix the Mountain Dew. Drink more water. Eat a good breakfast, a good lunch, and a lite supper. Do not eat within 3 hours of going to bed. Try to go to bed on an empty stomach, or just slightly hungry. Not enough to give you insomnia though. That way, when you wake up, you’ll be hungry for a good breakfast, instead of just a banana and milk.
A minor nitpick, but muscle is denser than fat (I could be a smart ass and use the old joke “which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?”). Therefore, you could have 2 people of the same height, race, sex, age, bone density, etc., and have the slimmer person weigh more than the one with a higher % body fat.
I’m not quite sure I understand the reasoning here. Wouldn’t you want to raise your base metabolism as soon as possible, so you expend more calories running?
Personal experience: Weight lifting always takes precedence over aerobic workouts in my regimen, and I lost 150+ pounds, so take it for what you will.
Weights will get your metabolism up and going for several hours after you work out, while it returns to normal shortly after aerobic workout. You’ll also build muscle and endurance quickly so you can do extended aerobic.
I mix them, of course, but I always give priority to weight training. Actually, once I get into it, I do an hour+ routine where I’ll be constantly excercising. 1 set of bench presses, one set of quad presses, 5 minutes on the stairmaster, another set of bench presses, etc, never stopping. But that was after I was starting to get in decent shape… that sort of workout will kill most people
I’d disagree, but I don’t think that this is clearly stated. What is your basis in comparing aerobic exercise and weight training? Actual minutes spent?
Weight training increases muscle mass, while aerobics has a much smaller effect. If you increase your muscle mass by ten pounds while decreasing your fat mass by ten pounds, it would seem like you have a net loss of zero, but a pound of muscle burns 35 calories per day just to maintain itself, while a pound of fat burns 1 or 2. Since it takes about 3500 calories to burn a pound of fat, that extra ten pounds of muscle is going to burn an extra pound of fat every ten days–without a change in your diet, and no other work, aerobic or otherwise.
Weight train first. Get protein appropriately to build that muscle. You’ll be in better shape to do those aerobics.
There also used to be a site called www.nutrapoison.com, but I can’t find it anymore.
Of course there are some people that claim that floridated water is bad, and they have websites, so unless you get all data from the studies, it’s hard to “KNOW” what is good for you and what is bad for you.
I switched from diet coke to diet rite, which is basically switching from nutrasweet to splenda.
but I NEVER ate olestra, except just once for an experiment…
To the OP: How do you even know you are overweight? A lot of people think they are overweight when their body doesn’t match the images they see on TV and in magazines, when in real life, you may be fine.
