The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
I need to loose weight
Jean
Heartbroken papa bearGatineau, QuébecRegistered User regular
Heartbroken papa bearGatineau, QuébecRegistered User regular
Im in serious need of loosing weight and I could use some advice. Here is my situation :
Im 5 feets 8 inches, 28 yrs old, male and I weight 186lbs. Thats the heaviest I ever been.
I work as a security guard on an oil site. I stay 14 days on camp then I go back to town for 14 days.This job is not physically demanding at all but after working for 12 hours straight, you just dont feel like working out :S.
I already made some changes to my diet. I only drink water now and I stopped eating bacon and dessert. Im not a picky eater thankfully so Im up to eating anything if it helps me loosing weight.
I walk several hours every day while in town. Is that good enough to make me loose weight?
They sell so many products in pharmacies for weight loss. Kinda makes my head spin. Is any of them worth the money?
Im 5 feets 8 inches, 28 yrs old, male and I weight 186lbs. Thats the heaviest I ever been.
I work as a security guard on an oil site. I stay 14 days on camp then I go back to town for 14 days.This job is not physically demanding at all but after working for 12 hours straight, you just dont feel like working out :S.
I already made some changes to my diet. I only drink water now and I stopped eating bacon and dessert. Im not a picky eater thankfully so Im up to eating anything if it helps me loosing weight.
I walk several hours every day while in town. Is that good enough to make me loose weight?
They sell so many products in pharmacies for weight loss. Kinda makes my head spin. Is any of them worth the money?
"You won't destroy us, You won't destroy our democracy. We are a small but proud nation. No one can bomb us to silence. No one can scare us from being Norway. This evening and tonight, we'll take care of each other. That's what we do best when attacked'' - Jens Stoltenberg
Jean on
0
Posts
Be careful with those products they sell, they are not very good for your overall health in the long run.
I havent bought any product because I am sceptical of them.
It's a little big. I'm 5'11 and 165 and that's about perfect. I'd say he's about 15-20lbs over his ideal.
What Esh said. 150 should be a good goal weight for OP. OP's current BMI is well over the OK range. It will be hard to do lots of cardio given your schedule, but I'd try to do some weight lifting at camp and work in more cardio on your two weeks off. Diet is far and away more important.
Don't take pills to lose weight, they either don't work or will damage your liver or heart. The ECA stack worked, but it's hard to get ephedrine now, and I'm betting it never did anything good for your blood pressure.
counting calories is less important than what those calories are comprised of. Maybe try waking up a bit earlier and getting some pushups and situps, or cardio in on your working days? is there any kind of fitness equipment in camp? How long has it been since you changed to water only and no dessert? I think i lost about 10 lbs in a month when i severely cut back my beer intake back in the day, but i had no idea i was losing weight until i randomly weighed myself.
Unless you're muscular, you weren't "svelte" at that weight/height.
Yeah, I'm 6'3 and 192 lbs and I'm trying to get down to 180 or so. As Esh said, unless you are very muscular I just can't imagine the shape that would be svelte at 235.
ANYWAY! For the OP, I highly suggest signing up to myfitnesspal.com and start tracking exactly what you are eating in a day. It will calculate about how many calories you need to eat in a day to lose weight safely (for the record, unless you are significantly overweight, 2 lbs per week is apparently the usual safe limit, although the first week you'll usually lose more just in water weight). Eat healthier too. Green veggies are really low in calorie and will be what fills you up.
Then, cardio. Running/swimming/rowing/bicycling/etc. Myfitnesspal will be able to track that as well as estimating the amount of calories burned.
Unless you have Lats like woah and legs that people regularly lean against because they mistook them for tree trunks it's hard to describe anyone under 220 as "svelte".
OP I think you need more specific goals. While you aren't skinny. You'd still be well in a healthy weight range. Do you want to just lose the belly? Put on some muscle? Be healthy?
Satans..... hints.....
What i'm trying to say is, BMI is not gospel when it comes to what constitutes a healthy weight.
As for Jean, I'd recommend:
A) Do Couch to 5k
Now, I don't completely disagree with what Djeet and Frenchenstein said about counting calories not being the end all be all. But I do think it's useful to track them at least for 2-3 weeks (or more) just to develop a better concept of how much you're really eating, and where your calories are coming from.
Don't count out how many peas your allowed to eat each meal, but just make a habit of entering in your meals. Think of it as a food diary rather than a "what can I eat" rulebook, and just compare your daily totals with the recommended calorie amounts for your weight loss goal. This will let you go "ah ha! I had no idea the salad at the restaurant had more calories than the sandwich I was eyeing."
Eating with more knowledge + regular exercise via Couch to 5k = sustainable weight loss and better fitness
Best advice so far. Counting your calories is necessary if you are serious about losing weight. At 185 pounds with a non demanding lifestyle your total caloric needs are easily met even with sensible food choices at 3-4 meals per day. Get one of those aps for your phone and start logging what you eat. You don't have to change your diet much at all in the beginning, just get an idea for how many calories per day you take in so that we can figure out how many you can reduce by. Unless you notice yourself eating over 3k calories per day, then you might want to lower that a bit.
Weigh yourself, then track your intake for two weeks and weigh yourself again. If you lost close to 2 pounds then you are doing good, if more than that keep at it for another 2 weeks to see if it was water weight. If you didn't lose any weight, then reduce calories by 500 per day and weigh yourself again in two weeks.
The most important thing is that you realize this needs to be a lifestyle change, not a temporary diet to get you down to where you want to be because you won't stay there if you revert back to the way you used to eat. That's why I advocate tracking calories for at least a little while, that way you find out how many calories are in different types of food, and more importantly how much you need to actually eat to maintain a healthy weight. Most people tend to eat the same type of food week to week, so after two weeks you should have an idea of what the calorie count is in your favorite dishes. Calorie counting doesn't have to be down to the pea, but you do need to know about how much you are eating in order to figure out where to cut back.
That's what I used when I lost ~30 lbs. Set a weight/time goal and figure out your lbs/week and calories/day accordingly. Personally, I found it helpful to be really strict with diet and exercise during the work week (being on a regular schedule helps) and slacking during the weekend.
This isn't terrible advice. An easy way to at least get yourself started is following the whole30 challenge http://whole9life.com/2012/01/whole-30-v2012/. I'm not suggesting you stick with it beyond that initial 30 days, but it is a great program for starting to eat better and getting over the hump of cravings for foods that are not good for you. If you follow their outline (which is free) I can assure you that you will lose weight and feel better on a day-to-day basis. After the challenge is over it's sort of up to you to either stick with it or to start adding things back into your diet. For example, I don't shun bread and pasta, but I also don't eat it regularly any more. Outside of that you're going to have to force yourself to exercise. There is just no way around it. Once you get on a schedule of exercise -> work or work -> exercise and cut out the nasty stuff you'll drop weight pretty rapidly.
In this picture, I'm 180 pounds, and I'm only about 5'11.
BMI says I am overweight, but I am pretty rail thin there. Since then, I have put on a ton of weight, but I'm slowly working it off.
What has worked for me so far was The Four Hour Body. It has a lot of options, from just losing weight to working out, and I've managed to shed 30 pounds so far. I have thirty left for my ideal weight, but I'm still working on it.
This site has been such a huge help for me. I'm 5'11 (and 3/4!!!!!) and was about 205 lbs before I got on a stricter diet than my eat-whatever-the-fuck-I-want diet. The myplate feature on that site really helps you put things into perspective because it breaks down your calories per meal and shows you information such as a protein/carbs/fat pie chart. I went down to about 170 lbs before I stopped counting every day. I'm now 182 but I started counting again a few weeks ago after letting myself go for a year or so.
Anyway, everyone will tell you that the key to success is a healthier diet and exercising but if you're just going to count calories that site will help.
I'd like to also add that "counting calories" sounds like such a chore but it gets really easy and after a while you can kind of tell how much you're consuming. If you're like me, you'll also find that you can eat quite a bit of food and still be under your calorie goal, you just have to shake off the bad habits of eating a handful of whatever you find as you walk by the kitchen
Good luck!
Some of the "ah ha!" moments I gained by using Daily Plate
some of the options that looked like indulgences
For me, it was all about portion control, as I am 6 foot 4 and weighed 240lbs and I love food & beer way too much. After about 3~4 months, I have now lost 38 lbs, which feels about right. No crazy diets... just understanding what goes into my body a bit more.
Long Live the C64!
I always rolled my eyes when people say "eat more healthy foods," but I wasn't really thinking about the reason behind it. If you can get yourself to a full state with good stuff, that's really going to crowd out any junk. So for you, what I would try is to eat as much fruits and veggies and lean meats as possible. Once you are full, you won't want those potato chips or ice cream so bad. You can also up your activity, but if you try this first you might not even have to. You only have like, 20-40 lbs to lose. Males in my group meeting have been consistently 10lbs a week and historically in my experience, men lose weight much faster than women do.
This is one I was shown recently, and the burn from just doing 10-15 during a waiting at desk delay is very very noticable.
It's good to get some movement and such when stuck during your downtime, or else it's more of a shock to the body when you bust out the exercise's after a long shift of downtime.
three sets of fifteen push-ups (start with angle-push-ups if you can't pull this off, which shouldn't embarrass you since like 80% of people can't do a single push-up anyhow.)
three sets of fifteen squats
three sets of fifteen sit-ups
It's super, super easy, takes very little time at all and everyone I've convinced to try it is amazed at how much of a difference it makes. It also does quite a good job of building up basic core strength for people who've never really worked out, and gives you a jumping point for further exercise.
Frankly I wouldn't recommend pharmaceuticals for weight loss but if you're going to go that route, go with what we know works: an ECA stack (look it up on wikipedia, but basically several daily doses of ephedrine (or pseudoephedrine in the states --twice the side effects, half the results,) caffeine, and aspirin per day.) Which you will need to buy separately, because when put together the product is now banned from sale in North America on account of the strokes and heart attacks people using it sometimes had.
The 'herbal' weight loss shit you buy will, at best, be an ECA stack made out of 'natural' components that have ephedrine/caffeine/aspirin. Except dosing is really inexact in herbal shit. So if that's the route you're taking just buy the proper pharmaceutical components and put them together yourself.