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What is you weight loss plan this coming 2014?
- Thread starter romehyper
- Start date
This year i will not follow a strict diet, because when something tasty is in front of me i cannot resist eating it. I have decided that this year i will be participating actively and steadily in sports activities which will help me losing my excess weight and will keep my body toned. Sports and losing weight are closely related, for more information regarding it you can visit :
^ Suss link is suss.
It's been years since I've had a good look at my abs, and right now I'm going full steam ahead to see them again.
I've cut and bulked a few times over the last 4 years. Ultimately it comes down to calories in vs calories out, however every little thing you do (both the conscious things you do like increase exercise/decrease calorie consumption; and the unconscious things you do like increase epinephrine/norepinephrine levels or decrease T3 levels) stacks into that equation in ways that are hard to predict.
There's a lot of discussion in the fitness world about meal timing. Members here like Tony (CrazyOldMan) have a lot of good things to say about grazing (as Tony puts it, he has one meal per day, from which he occasionally takes breaks to exercise or sleep), and that worked well for me as a general way to eat to maintain body composition years ago. You do need to be eating the right types of food, though (grazing on burgers, chips and coke hasn't worked well for anyone), in order for your appetite and energy needs to properly sync up.
On the other side of the coin, well-regarded bodybuilding nutrition experts such as Lyle McDonald and Alan Aragon can throw citations at you which indicate no metabolic advantage to lots of small meals per day over getting all your calories in a single sitting (the two most diametrically opposed styles of eating), provided total calories consumed are the same.
I've found that grazing doesn't work so well for me when I'm actually trying to change body composition. When I want to gain weight, I need to build an appetite in order to eat enough, which is curbed by grazing; when I want to lose fat, I need to consume less than my appetite calls for, and so grazing will not be the comfortable, energising dietary habit that it's promoted as. My first real cut was an unpleasant experience all day, every day, as I attempted to reduce the calorie input from every meal I ate while still eating 6 times a day. Portion control works well for a lot of people. For me, it just meant feeling under-fed every time I ate. I've found intermittent fasting (which is the cool, sexy, totez-healthy-sounding way of saying "skipping meals"), though perhaps not the most efficient or metabolically sensible method, allows me to remove the calories from my diet that I need to remove, while letting me actually feel full when I eat. I'm the kind of person who never feels adequately full after breakfast anyway (there have been countless times when I've eaten enough at breakfast where any more would make me spew, and literally 10min later my stomach is begging for more), so knocking 500kcal/day out of my diet by simply not eating breakfast isn't much of a sacrifice to me.
I'm not saying you should do intermittent fasting. There do appear to be health benefits from occasional fasting (and it seems, from what I've seen, that several days in a row without food has more pronounced health benefits than simply reducing calories on a daily basis), but fasting for health or spiritual reasons does not equate to fasting being the best thing for fat loss. What I am saying is that you should find an eating structure you can adhere to daily, which allows you to eat a hypocaloric diet. The more nutritionally sound and metabolically advantageous, the better, but only insofar as you can actually be consistent with it.
Some basic tips:
- Consume sugar in the form of raw fruit and unflavoured milk (milk naturally contains sugar, although it isn't sweet, because the sugar in it does not contain fructose).
- If unflavoured water or milk isn't appealing, you're not thirsty.
- Processed food typically (but not always) has added sugar, because it's a cheap and tasty filler. If possible, go for fresh and raw ingredients, or buy food that has no added sugar.
- "Low fat" typically means "we took the fat out and replaced it with sugar."
- Packaged food can be labeled "light" so long as it is light in some capacity: colour, flavour, texture, etc. It bears no reflection on the calorie content of the food.
- I'm not saying you can't have too many vegetables, I'm just saying you should try.
- Meat is not the enemy. Dietary fat is not the enemy. Carbohydrates (especially unprocessed, complex carbohydrates) are not the enemy. Ultimately, it all comes down to calories in vs calories out.
With regards to exercise, anything that increases your daily physical activity will be of benefit. You'll always see me recommending strength training over cardio for fat loss, however, because it's not all about how many calories you can get rid of. That's part of the equation, but another big part of the equation is letting your body know what it needs to KEEP. Cardio uses your muscles to a certain extent (you can't move without them), but strength training really cements the need to maintain muscle mass. This means that if you have consistent strength training in your program, as your body goes "Oh crap, I don't have enough energy coming in, I'd better get rid of something!" it will turn more to fat as its alternative source of energy than muscle mass. Your body should primarily turn to fat for energy in the event of a calorie deficit anyway, but this just skews things more in favour of that. So make sure strength training takes a priority in your training, and then do extra cardio if need be for something that burns some extra calories and is fairly easy to recover from.
It's been years since I've had a good look at my abs, and right now I'm going full steam ahead to see them again.
I've cut and bulked a few times over the last 4 years. Ultimately it comes down to calories in vs calories out, however every little thing you do (both the conscious things you do like increase exercise/decrease calorie consumption; and the unconscious things you do like increase epinephrine/norepinephrine levels or decrease T3 levels) stacks into that equation in ways that are hard to predict.
There's a lot of discussion in the fitness world about meal timing. Members here like Tony (CrazyOldMan) have a lot of good things to say about grazing (as Tony puts it, he has one meal per day, from which he occasionally takes breaks to exercise or sleep), and that worked well for me as a general way to eat to maintain body composition years ago. You do need to be eating the right types of food, though (grazing on burgers, chips and coke hasn't worked well for anyone), in order for your appetite and energy needs to properly sync up.
On the other side of the coin, well-regarded bodybuilding nutrition experts such as Lyle McDonald and Alan Aragon can throw citations at you which indicate no metabolic advantage to lots of small meals per day over getting all your calories in a single sitting (the two most diametrically opposed styles of eating), provided total calories consumed are the same.
I've found that grazing doesn't work so well for me when I'm actually trying to change body composition. When I want to gain weight, I need to build an appetite in order to eat enough, which is curbed by grazing; when I want to lose fat, I need to consume less than my appetite calls for, and so grazing will not be the comfortable, energising dietary habit that it's promoted as. My first real cut was an unpleasant experience all day, every day, as I attempted to reduce the calorie input from every meal I ate while still eating 6 times a day. Portion control works well for a lot of people. For me, it just meant feeling under-fed every time I ate. I've found intermittent fasting (which is the cool, sexy, totez-healthy-sounding way of saying "skipping meals"), though perhaps not the most efficient or metabolically sensible method, allows me to remove the calories from my diet that I need to remove, while letting me actually feel full when I eat. I'm the kind of person who never feels adequately full after breakfast anyway (there have been countless times when I've eaten enough at breakfast where any more would make me spew, and literally 10min later my stomach is begging for more), so knocking 500kcal/day out of my diet by simply not eating breakfast isn't much of a sacrifice to me.
I'm not saying you should do intermittent fasting. There do appear to be health benefits from occasional fasting (and it seems, from what I've seen, that several days in a row without food has more pronounced health benefits than simply reducing calories on a daily basis), but fasting for health or spiritual reasons does not equate to fasting being the best thing for fat loss. What I am saying is that you should find an eating structure you can adhere to daily, which allows you to eat a hypocaloric diet. The more nutritionally sound and metabolically advantageous, the better, but only insofar as you can actually be consistent with it.
Some basic tips:
- Consume sugar in the form of raw fruit and unflavoured milk (milk naturally contains sugar, although it isn't sweet, because the sugar in it does not contain fructose).
- If unflavoured water or milk isn't appealing, you're not thirsty.
- Processed food typically (but not always) has added sugar, because it's a cheap and tasty filler. If possible, go for fresh and raw ingredients, or buy food that has no added sugar.
- "Low fat" typically means "we took the fat out and replaced it with sugar."
- Packaged food can be labeled "light" so long as it is light in some capacity: colour, flavour, texture, etc. It bears no reflection on the calorie content of the food.
- I'm not saying you can't have too many vegetables, I'm just saying you should try.
- Meat is not the enemy. Dietary fat is not the enemy. Carbohydrates (especially unprocessed, complex carbohydrates) are not the enemy. Ultimately, it all comes down to calories in vs calories out.
With regards to exercise, anything that increases your daily physical activity will be of benefit. You'll always see me recommending strength training over cardio for fat loss, however, because it's not all about how many calories you can get rid of. That's part of the equation, but another big part of the equation is letting your body know what it needs to KEEP. Cardio uses your muscles to a certain extent (you can't move without them), but strength training really cements the need to maintain muscle mass. This means that if you have consistent strength training in your program, as your body goes "Oh crap, I don't have enough energy coming in, I'd better get rid of something!" it will turn more to fat as its alternative source of energy than muscle mass. Your body should primarily turn to fat for energy in the event of a calorie deficit anyway, but this just skews things more in favour of that. So make sure strength training takes a priority in your training, and then do extra cardio if need be for something that burns some extra calories and is fairly easy to recover from.
I am one of the annoying people who is naturally lean. There is a cost to this, which I am going to really feel this year when I try gaining weight. I want to be 14 stones, this is very heavy for me considering I started out weight training at 9 stones and still want to be able to run distance at a respectable pace. Oh yeah and I can be a bit unrealistic too, but I work hard at the unlikely.
Calories count, they way you take them in, as long as you aren't literally starving yourself, is personal. Grazing works for me every time, gaining, losing, stability it's grazing all the way. I have one meal a day with breaks for training and sleeping.
Being heavier than I am designed to be means I burn more energy with everything I do, which means gaining more weight means feeding the growth I want and that I have achieved, so the solution has to be eat and keep eating. The opposite is obviously true for those losing weight, the lighter they get the less energy everything requires so the less food they need to maintain and less they have to eat to lose weight by achieving deficit.
This means trimming down successfully gives you a lifetime reduction in intake. If you do the opposite to my aim by going from 14 to 9 stone (you will want to do it in under 23 years I expect) you need to remember that your 9 stone self will need 9 stones worth of food, not 14. Forgetting this will see 14 coming back to say hello.
Calories count, they way you take them in, as long as you aren't literally starving yourself, is personal. Grazing works for me every time, gaining, losing, stability it's grazing all the way. I have one meal a day with breaks for training and sleeping.
Being heavier than I am designed to be means I burn more energy with everything I do, which means gaining more weight means feeding the growth I want and that I have achieved, so the solution has to be eat and keep eating. The opposite is obviously true for those losing weight, the lighter they get the less energy everything requires so the less food they need to maintain and less they have to eat to lose weight by achieving deficit.
This means trimming down successfully gives you a lifetime reduction in intake. If you do the opposite to my aim by going from 14 to 9 stone (you will want to do it in under 23 years I expect) you need to remember that your 9 stone self will need 9 stones worth of food, not 14. Forgetting this will see 14 coming back to say hello.
1. Stop eating all simple carbs, such as flour, sugar, starchy vegetables like potatoes, and most grains. These foods cause blood sugar to spike and the pancreas to release insulin to turn all that excess sugar into fat. Cutting out these foods is one of the most important things you can do to lose weight fast.
2. Eat lots of fiber and green salad vegetables. Fiber will keep your stomach fuller longer, keeping the hunger pangs at bay. A diet that keeps you hungry all the time is not one that you will stick with for very long, no matter how fast the pounds come off at first. Eating lots of fiber and vegetables will also help stabilize your blood sugar, which eliminates the highs and lows following eating.
3. Drink lots of water and only water. Unsweetened tea and decaf black coffee are also permissible, but you will not lose weight fast if you are drinking hidden calories such as the sugar in soda pop or the cream in fancy coffee.
4. Eat plenty of fish, free range eggs and grass fed meat. Fat is not necessarily bad for you, but, like anything else, can be trouble when taken in excess. Aim for as many omega 3 fatty acids as possible, which are plentiful in things like wild salmon and grass fed bison, as opposed to the saturated fats and omega 6s, which make up most of the fat in regular ground beef.
5. Use artificial sweeteners very sparingly, and only to curb the cravings for high-sugar alternatives. Stevia is a natural sweetener that does not affect blood sugar levels, and frequently comes packed with fiber. You can't lose weight fast and eat a diet packed with sweets, but just a little now and then can be permissible.
6. Exercise, exercise, exercise. The only way to make your body healthier is to give it a lot of attention, and that means frequent workouts. The importance of exercise absolutely cannot be understated. Not only will it help you naturally lose weight fast, but it will give you strength and stamina you never had before and improve overall health. Cardio will get your heart rate up and burn lots of calories while you are exercising, and weight training will improve overall strength and endurance, as well as burn more calories while you are at rest.
2. Eat lots of fiber and green salad vegetables. Fiber will keep your stomach fuller longer, keeping the hunger pangs at bay. A diet that keeps you hungry all the time is not one that you will stick with for very long, no matter how fast the pounds come off at first. Eating lots of fiber and vegetables will also help stabilize your blood sugar, which eliminates the highs and lows following eating.
3. Drink lots of water and only water. Unsweetened tea and decaf black coffee are also permissible, but you will not lose weight fast if you are drinking hidden calories such as the sugar in soda pop or the cream in fancy coffee.
4. Eat plenty of fish, free range eggs and grass fed meat. Fat is not necessarily bad for you, but, like anything else, can be trouble when taken in excess. Aim for as many omega 3 fatty acids as possible, which are plentiful in things like wild salmon and grass fed bison, as opposed to the saturated fats and omega 6s, which make up most of the fat in regular ground beef.
5. Use artificial sweeteners very sparingly, and only to curb the cravings for high-sugar alternatives. Stevia is a natural sweetener that does not affect blood sugar levels, and frequently comes packed with fiber. You can't lose weight fast and eat a diet packed with sweets, but just a little now and then can be permissible.
6. Exercise, exercise, exercise. The only way to make your body healthier is to give it a lot of attention, and that means frequent workouts. The importance of exercise absolutely cannot be understated. Not only will it help you naturally lose weight fast, but it will give you strength and stamina you never had before and improve overall health. Cardio will get your heart rate up and burn lots of calories while you are exercising, and weight training will improve overall strength and endurance, as well as burn more calories while you are at rest.