[Beachsidejarl]

So I'm at 139 kilos last time I've weighed my burly body. I could be over 140 kilos now, most likely I am.

I have never really thought about losing weight, as weirdly as it sounds. I'm a nerd, and I'm a comfortable nerd and although there have been bullies going after me short periods of time, I've always defeated them. Usually right after the first attempt(which takes the form of a 'joke'). I just completely destroy them most usually right away. A few have snuck past by a few moments but it never lasts. There's a weird part of me which enjoys the combat. Which enjoys looking like a soft target and then completely surprising and humiliating them because they thought it'd be an easy picking. It's like a safari for me, only into someone else's head.

So I have never really faced sustained social pressure or outright bullying for my weight. In some weird way, I like being fat. It makes you weaker and stronger at the same time. It means you must be on top of your social game much more. It's like a shorthand.

Still, I've figured that in the end, being very fat isn't good for my health. And the hardening, the trial-by-fire(two guys in the same mental pit, and one must go down) which I so enjoy have mostly been completed by now. I'm in my early 20s and it's the perfect time to start.
I'm still very inexperienced with girls. And I feel like I have the mental basics in order. So approaching girls isn't a problem. But I want to get physical too. And 60 k's of pure fat isn't going to turn me into a sexgod. Nor into someone who has a lot of stamina.

It'll be a fitness diary, a food diary and just a general life diary in-between.
I'm not promising enjoyment or ease. I am promising the nitty gritty. I'm doing this without any operation, special pill or 'miracle cure'.
Hardcore discipline is what will be needed, and for a lazy bum like myself, it'll be quite a challenge. Let's see if I am up for it.

[Sourcecode]

Thats a little over 300 pounds to us Americans...

[Hades]

You weighed something like 400 pounds and lost something like a 100 pounds of it? Am I reading something wrong here?

[MikeCF]

Good work man.

[Beachsidejarl]

Okay so I weighed myself today, it's been a while. I'm at 146(!) kilos.

My goal is to get to 90 kilos.

No, I haven't begun yet(see the title).
Losing my weight is my main focus the next 6 months. But I figured that why should I only think about the external, as important as it is, when the internal stuff is even more important. Hence this site. As I lose more and more weight I will take more of an interest in the game, for fun. In the beginning some of that will be interspersed here, a smattering here and there, but as time goes on I might start a new thread. Those decision are still far ahead, though.


Day #1(as of this thread update):

I began a food diary a few days ago. Basically just noting what I am eating, without making major changes.
It's been about 4 days. What I can say is that I don't eat much, but I eat pretty badly. Usually nothing until midday and then I eat things like camembert, grapes and garlic bread(although not much). I don't tend to splurge into pizzas, soft drinks or the like. From reading my eating list, I'm a bit of a snob, but it's still unhealthy. I got about 3 days left until the week is completed and I'll have to make a few key decisions on my diet from there. And after that, exercise options etc.

[Noir]

Best advice I can give you is eat clean. Try to avoid carbs and get lots of protein in your diet. I personally did a Paleo diet and the results were good. You gotta understand that diet is the single most important thing. Drink only water, green tea or coffee (semi-skimmed milk)

In conjunction with eating clean, hit up the gym. Strength training with compound lifts e.g. Starting Strength would be ideal for you. I do this and integrate it with p90x cardio but you can do any kind of cardio on alternate days.

Best of luck

[Hades]

You're doing really well already. If you want, this is my fat loss routine. I have already lost about six pounds of body fat in two weeks with a slight increase in muscular strength. The key is to keep lifting those big compound exercises while doing this.

-Hades Fat Loss-
M: 30 minute walk (always right away in morning, before breakfast)
T: 30 minute walk
W: 30 minute walk
- in afternoon, run 50 yard dashes with recovery periods
Th: 30 minute walk
F: 30 minute walk
Sa: 30 minute walk
- In afternoon, jump rope or dashes
Su: Optional sunday strolling

You can probably incorporate intermittent fasting with this too (skip one 24 hour feeding period). It's basically caveman fat loss.

[Beachsidejarl]

I actually walk at least 60 minutes a day already, and have done so for the past months. I am a walker. But I don't think my body responds well enough. Fatness is in my genes, it's enough to look at my family. My sister struggled a lot with it, but now she's actually fit and eats very healthily but she says that for her it was exercise, food wasn't enough.

And I've read up a lot of research, how basically there are different bodytypes who respond differently to different kinds of exercise regimens. One of of the newer, and perhaps surprising, new findings was that heavy exercise was in some cases more effective for burning fat than the kind of classic slow-burning exercises we were told as younger was good for fatburn.

And I think there is some truth to this, although 'heavy exercise' can be vague. It includes doing a sport to the limits, for instance. Not necessarily sitting and pumping iron all day long.

One challenge I have is that I hate the gym but enjoy teamsports like football(European version) and the like. And I'm terribly out of shape, so the challenge is to get to a place where I can join a team first. So gym does seem like the only way out. I'll be looking for 3 month membership cards tomorrow.

To make the weight loss last you need something fun. Discipline can only get you so far. If you don't like the gym it won't work over the long term. But it can work for short term as I get into shape for football. So I'll be scouting gyms tomorrow. Possibly even begin. And then of course I gotta read up on nutritional facts on what to eat, when to eat it etc for optimal exercise. But that'll be the next coming days. First things first.

[Hades]

I am sort of curious about this if you say you don't respond to walking. Good work though on walking, that will build up your VO2 max to very high levels.

You need a fairly high amount of lean body mass for simple walking to get you cut, so if you aren't hitting the weights, it would be a good idea to.

When they refer to heavy exercise, it's generally considered high intensity intervals of exercise. Jumping rope properly for 1 minute on and 1 minute off, for like ten intervals, would be a solid workout. It's fairly low impact and you'll condition into a badass. Ross Enamait's website sells a content-rich workout plan organized around the jump rope.

Slow burning exercises generally just fuck up your muscle. Having or building muscle is what keeps people from getting fat.

If you haven't already, calculate your lean body mass. There's online calculators that will give you an indication. That way you know how many pounds to safely lose and your ideal weight.

[Beachsidejarl]

Hades, I'll get back to you on the exercise question later on.

I've just finished my diet diary for the past week.

Instead of printing it all out I'd thought I give a few highlights:

• I eat a lot of fruit, vegetables or sallad.
• I eat tons of bad stuff in total, over the whole week. But it's spread out quite thinly. I don't 'binge' in my daily eating habits.
• I am clearly very bored over my healthy diet choices. I have maybe 2-3 different kinds of combinations of food. Sure, you can add stuff on the side to vary it up, add different spices etc but in the end, the main dishes don't change that much at all. And I think this boredom induces me to eat bad stuff(although 'bad' doesn't mean stuff like chips, pizza or the like. I'm talking about camembert and other snobby stuff
• In total I don't eat much over a day, but the quality is bad.
  So my main problem isn't quantity. It's quality.
• I rarely if ever eat breakfast
  

What to fix:
So a few immediate fixes is breakfast. I am not studying right now as university is off, but otherwise I always eat breakfast without skipping a single meal. I am thinking about introducing the same habits even on my off year/vacations.

Another important part is looking over my choices for main dishes. Right now I am basically eating meat, and that's it. Various kinds of meats, but meats every day. I would like to try a day without meat per week. I'll make it Sunday, starting tomorrow.

Salmon is a choice to move away from my excessive redmeat eating.
And I've read that you should eat 'fat fish'(such as Salmon) at least 3 times a week. But I don't tend to like Salmon that much. Or maybe I am eating too much when I do eat it. Maybe I should limit myself to max 250 grammes of Salmon per meal, instead of 500 grammes I normally eat(when I eat it). But I haven't eaten Salmon in a long time.

My habits of eating fruits, salad and vegetables are good, however. I tend to get at least 500 grammes per day. Usually stuff like blueberries, bananas, salad or strawberries(not necessarily mixed together).
The only problem might be the cost. Strawberries are not exactly cheap. They're not wildly expensive but a several salads are much more cheap over the course of an entire week than eating lots of strawberries or blueberries.

But that's an area where I'd be hesitant to compromise. I have a good variety of options in the fruit/vegetable/salad department and I'd like to keep it. If the price to pay is slightly less cash on hand than the monotonous alternative, then so be it. At least for now.

Going forward:
I'll try to implement the changes in a rolling fashion. I'll have to get more creative with what I eat and how I eat. Also, there might be laziness involved too. Some people just don't like to cook food that much and I might be one of them. I don't know yet, of course, but it's a possibility. But the answer to that shouldn't be to eat industrial food. I think a solution could be to make larger quantities of (healthy) food and then portion it out during several days or weeks.

But again, more on that later. The immediate stuff comes first.
And that means that meatfree Sundays starts tomorrow from henceforth.
I also need to cut back on the bad stuff. I think a lot of it may just be due to general laziness. I can't say that I am craving it all day. It's just that it is fast.

[Beachsidejarl]

On day three after my change:

I did the meatfree Sunday quite easily.
I've also cut back on the bad stuff quite substantially.

I do still stick with my analysis that part of the reason why I eat it is because it's fast, you don't have to cook it etc. But all that eating of bad stuff has become a habit in of itself. And yesterday I really had a hard time resisting the urge, but managed to do so in the last moment.

I am now moving towards a new schedule. I'm saying no red meat more than twice a week for the remainder of the summer.
Yesterday I had vegetarian spring rolls which were surprisingly good.

I'm doing a sushi buffé tomorrow, which should cost me quite little.
And today I'm eating salmon(although smaller portions).

I don't really count salmon as red meat, since it's fish and a fat fish at that, which is more healthy. My ambition is to eat salmon about twice a week. So that means red meat twice a week, salmon(or fish generally) twice a week. Which leaves me 3 days to eat something else. Spring rolls can certainly fill at least one of those days. I could it them more in the beginning but then I would tire of the dish and that wouldn't be good.

So I am now on the hunt for two other main dishes to eat. Sushi works in the summer because the lunch buffé does not interrupt with any schedule. And it's much cheaper as a buffé than a normal meal, since you need quite a bit of sushi to get fed properly.

A few weeks or so and I think the diet side will get sorted out fairly well. Now I gotta get the exercise portion right. And tomorrow I'll be getting a gym card. And then by the end of the week I'll start doing regular weigh-ins. Each Sunday, going forward.

[Beachsidejarl]

It's done.

[rdvirus]

Results? Thoughts? Interested after reading through all that.

[Saweeep]

^^

That was some long term lurking since last post!

And he's gone!