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Cardio Vascular Excersise and Diet
Ponge
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
A little backstory here, I'm male, 21 and just finished 4 years of university. During that time I put on a lot of infamous university weight (mostly from a bad diet, drinking too much and very little excersise).
Now that I'm finished university and I'm working full time and can afford a gym and some more spare time (I studied architecture at university which meant working huge hours almost every day, so I had little time/energy to change my lifestyle during university) I'm really looking to loose this weight and improve my overall energy levels and fitness.
Now I'm currently around 5 foot 9/10inches, and 13 stone (180 pounds) and would consider myself quite flabby around the midriff and man boobies. I have quite a stocky build so ideally I think i'd like to loose around about a stone. So with this, my main objective is really to lose weight, with muscle gain/toning important, but not as important.
In the last week i've tried to radically alter my diet. Before I wouldn't have breakfast and my first meal of the day would be around about 1pm, now I'm trying to wake up 15-20 minutes earlier and have a whole grapefruit, a small bowl of yoghurt and a cup of black coffee. I've found it really does kickstart my appetite and my day, and I now feel much less groggy as I start work. For lunch I'm trying to eat healthier and trying to incorporate some vegetables and fruit. I'll either have leftovers from my meal the night before, or some sort of salad with chicken or fish, or if i'm feeling a bit lazy i'll just make a some pasta and pesto (which I know isn't very nutritous but it does fill me up). For my evening meal i'm trying to really cut back on my portions; before I would heap on loads of pasta, tuna, cheese and garlic. Far too big a portion and far too late at night (generally around 8/9pm). So now I'm actually trying to measure out my pasta, seriously cut back my portions and amount of red meat that I use, and throw in plenty of vegetables like carrots, broccoli, baby sweetcorn, mangetout, cauliflower, peppers etc. To finish it off I've also been trying to swap any chocolate or sweet things I would have after dinner or during the day with fruit.
Overall, this seems to be working for me so far. I feel much better after only a week, and just really hope I have the stamina to keep it up.
Excersise wise I've just joined the gym. So far I'm planning on going 3 times a week (mon, wed, fri/sat) and have been focusing mostly on my cardio-vascular). I've been mostly using the cycling machine so far, as every time I try to job I end up really hurting my shins (which i'm pretty sure is down to my crappy running shoes and bad posture) but I've pleasantly surprised myself with how much I can cycle. At a medium resistance setting (not too easy for me, but not too hard, its around 11 out of 25) I can cycle for around 45/60 minutes and clock up around 24-30km quite easily. This leaves me quite pleasingly tired afterwards, I don't feel like I've done too little or too much so I'm quite happy with that. I also normally start off with 15 minutes of 'random' resistance setting, which randomly increases and decreases the amount of resistance, which is much more tiring but a good start to the excersise.
Other than that I go round most of the weights section and try to do about 30 reps on each piece of equipment with weights around 20-25kg depending on the machine. I don't do enough of this I suppose, but as my main priority is weight loss I don't want to exhaust myself or overdo my muscles on those machines if it's going to make me too tired to do the CV stuff.
Anyways, after this long and rambling post, I really just want to know if I'm doing ok with my diet, or if you have any other suggestions. And with my excersise; are long, sustained periods of CV work, which isn't really pushing myself, yet not exactly over-easy, the best way to go about really loosing some weight?
TLDR- I'm sick of my beer belly and man boobs. I've changed my diet and I'm excersising more, but am I doing either of these correctly for what I want to achieve?
Thanks guys and gals,
Now that I'm finished university and I'm working full time and can afford a gym and some more spare time (I studied architecture at university which meant working huge hours almost every day, so I had little time/energy to change my lifestyle during university) I'm really looking to loose this weight and improve my overall energy levels and fitness.
Now I'm currently around 5 foot 9/10inches, and 13 stone (180 pounds) and would consider myself quite flabby around the midriff and man boobies. I have quite a stocky build so ideally I think i'd like to loose around about a stone. So with this, my main objective is really to lose weight, with muscle gain/toning important, but not as important.
In the last week i've tried to radically alter my diet. Before I wouldn't have breakfast and my first meal of the day would be around about 1pm, now I'm trying to wake up 15-20 minutes earlier and have a whole grapefruit, a small bowl of yoghurt and a cup of black coffee. I've found it really does kickstart my appetite and my day, and I now feel much less groggy as I start work. For lunch I'm trying to eat healthier and trying to incorporate some vegetables and fruit. I'll either have leftovers from my meal the night before, or some sort of salad with chicken or fish, or if i'm feeling a bit lazy i'll just make a some pasta and pesto (which I know isn't very nutritous but it does fill me up). For my evening meal i'm trying to really cut back on my portions; before I would heap on loads of pasta, tuna, cheese and garlic. Far too big a portion and far too late at night (generally around 8/9pm). So now I'm actually trying to measure out my pasta, seriously cut back my portions and amount of red meat that I use, and throw in plenty of vegetables like carrots, broccoli, baby sweetcorn, mangetout, cauliflower, peppers etc. To finish it off I've also been trying to swap any chocolate or sweet things I would have after dinner or during the day with fruit.
Overall, this seems to be working for me so far. I feel much better after only a week, and just really hope I have the stamina to keep it up.
Excersise wise I've just joined the gym. So far I'm planning on going 3 times a week (mon, wed, fri/sat) and have been focusing mostly on my cardio-vascular). I've been mostly using the cycling machine so far, as every time I try to job I end up really hurting my shins (which i'm pretty sure is down to my crappy running shoes and bad posture) but I've pleasantly surprised myself with how much I can cycle. At a medium resistance setting (not too easy for me, but not too hard, its around 11 out of 25) I can cycle for around 45/60 minutes and clock up around 24-30km quite easily. This leaves me quite pleasingly tired afterwards, I don't feel like I've done too little or too much so I'm quite happy with that. I also normally start off with 15 minutes of 'random' resistance setting, which randomly increases and decreases the amount of resistance, which is much more tiring but a good start to the excersise.
Other than that I go round most of the weights section and try to do about 30 reps on each piece of equipment with weights around 20-25kg depending on the machine. I don't do enough of this I suppose, but as my main priority is weight loss I don't want to exhaust myself or overdo my muscles on those machines if it's going to make me too tired to do the CV stuff.
Anyways, after this long and rambling post, I really just want to know if I'm doing ok with my diet, or if you have any other suggestions. And with my excersise; are long, sustained periods of CV work, which isn't really pushing myself, yet not exactly over-easy, the best way to go about really loosing some weight?
TLDR- I'm sick of my beer belly and man boobs. I've changed my diet and I'm excersising more, but am I doing either of these correctly for what I want to achieve?
Thanks guys and gals,
Ponge on
0
Posts
Your diet overall sounds pretty good. You're right to cut back on the pasta but you don't need to cut it out of your diet. Similarly, I would suggest against completely dropping things like chocolate or other sweets that you like because unless you have an incredible amount of willpower, some day you're going to snap and binge on the stuff. It's far, far better to have, say, a snickers bar or whatever you happen to like maybe once every 2 weeks, as an actual treat, then to cut it out entirely, simply because it's difficult to stick to a diet if you end up hating what you eat.
The real trick to a healthy diet is something you can see yourself maintaining for a very long time, not just until the weight comes off.
As for your exercise, that also looks good. It looks like you're mixing some cardio-based stuff with some weight-training stuff, which should help you lose overall fat and also build some muscle.
You also should remember that losing weight like this (the "eat better and exercise" method) is not fast. You should expect to lose maybe 2-3 lbs a month. But those lbs will be lbs that are actually lost. Also, don't weigh yourself every day, as weight varies from day to day and you don't want to set up a threshold and then get depressed when you fluctuate around that number.