before/after help!!!

[122republic]

Hey I've been checking out this forum for a few months. I have seen a lot of success stories. On May 10, 2010, I weight 273 pounds, now I'm down to 217 pounds (I am 6 foot tall), so I lost 56 pounds in about 4 months. I did this by working out about 6 days a week. I go to a trainer 3 days a week, then I jog 5 miles the other 3 days. At first, I could only jog about half a mile or so stop etc, now I can pretty much do the whole 5 miles no break.

Most people tell me I look great now, but most of those people are out of shape themselves.

The trainer at first had me doing some weights then running on the treadmill like half the time doing intervals. I finally told him after about 3 weeks to a month for $50.00 an hour I will do this at home, it is a waste.

Now we do circuit weight training, but I am unsure if I am really getting any results. My ultimate goal is to go down to 190 pounds with a decent amount of muscle. I know I will get to 190 pounds in another 3 months, however, I am unsure if I will like the results haha.

The training I am doing with the trainer, however, I am never in any pain after. LIke I never experience soreness. My brother and sister in law both workout regularly and my sister in law went to a trainer for a while and explained to me I should be sore the day after workouts if I he is working me hard. She said you should not just feel fine. She thinks I am just burning fat and building no muscle.

I follow this diet basically egg whites - breakfeast, salad/tuna lunch, chicken/salad dinner, some fruit in between for snacks and a protein shake here and there. I've had some days where I did not follow it, I weigh myself daily to keep myself on track. I did eat pretty unhealthy before but most of my weight gain was from a sedentary job and drinking about 10 cans of soda a day.

I am debating on what to do, I would like to train with a trainer until the end of the year. I really don't lack motivation to workout, I just have no idea what I'm doing and hate to look like an asshole LOL. The trainer I am with now is at a private gym where there is maybe 1-2 other people there working out while I am. At the gym my brother wants me to join there are tons of people there so that produces a level of anxiety since I am still pretty fat haha.

Ultimately I would rather be 205lbs and muscle than 180lbs and skinny and saggy, so I'm wondering what I should change? I've been told different things by people some say you need to lose all your fat then build muscle or can do both simultaneously if you follow a good workout and diet. I read that book body for life that kind of made sense and those people got good results but who knows how true it is. Also, I'm wondering for my cardio, should I be just doing the 5 miles 3 times per week or being doing interval trianing on a treadmill/eliptical at the gym to get better results?

Any help would be appreciated =)

 

[ocd]

I have a pretty similar size ratio to you. I started at 340 pounds though.

What I did is ignored most of the advice and went for all out burn and I took off 180 pounds in 12 months. I reached an absolute low of 155 pounds. I did this with all out cardio burn and a restrictive diet. The results were exactly that, skinny and saggy.

I can tell you this though. People on this forum who had gone before me advised me to do cardio along with weight training, which it sounds like you are doing, so that's good. The goal is to keep the muscle you already have. When you are fat you generally tend to have a fair bit of muscle to haul it all around, so the more of it you can maintain while you lose the better. I maintained none of it and I can give you some examples of what happened through my experience and why you want to avoid losing muscle mass.

When I reached my goal in May-June I hit 160 and then 155 and I was weak as a kitten. I literally had no muscle mass left. I went golfing for the first time of the year and I could barely swing a club. I didn't put two and two together at the time but this had an impact on my exercise routine and on my motivation and positivity, heres how.

Basically I made more work for myself, because now I have to go back and restore some muscle to even continue on properly, it hurt my self esteem because here I was 155 pounds and I still hated how I looked. It affected my exercise routine as well. Once I got down to about 180 pounds I hit a brick wall and I didn't understand why, I have since put two and two together to figure it out. I ran low on readily available muscle mass for my body to fuel itself off of. I was so low in calories and burning down so hard that my body was using the readily available muscle instead of fat to keep going. When that got low that (I think, I am not an expert) was the brick wall when I all of a sudden couldn't run anymore like I used to. It made no sense to me that I could run harder and for longer periods when I was 220 pounds than when I was 180. This is the best I can figure as to the source of that fitness brick wall for me.

You may have to make peace with the loose skin. I have had to struggle with that. When you lose that fast you are going to have some left, I have lots in my midsection and my thighs. No amount of exercise can fix it and every day you look at it in the mirror it can sap your motivation, make you feel like you are working for nothing, that's what it did for me. One of two things is going to happen with loose skin. Either it will recover over time, and realistically it could take as much as a couple years to fully recover if it will at all, or it won't recover and surgery is the only option. Mentally prepare yourself for both possibilities and don't let the loose skin destroy your progress if some of it remains.

I tell you all this as I am just figuring it out for myself. I have had some serious struggles since taking the weight off with my emotional eating relapsing, and I have identified a lot of my expectations of a perfect body as the source of that. Don't let yourself fall for the trap I did. You won't have a toned up rock hard ab's beach body the second you hit 180. It's going to take time and serious patience to keep the lifestyle up for not months but years, and ultimately the rest of your life after the weight is off to work toward that goal, and then maintain it.

But it sounds like you are doing it right in that respect, doing weight training while you are losing, and getting adequate protein will ensure that you lose less muscle mass which will in turn keep your metabolism higher and make the job and the transition when you get to 180 so much easier. So my advice is listen to the people that say that, I didn't, I didn't understand why they were saying that, and now I do. Hopefully I have explained the why more clearly and convincingly than it was explained to me along the way that it is of help.

Hopefully my advice is sound as well because I am by no means a fitness expert. But there are fitness experts here on this forum and they have some good guides in the stickies to what you should be doing training wise to lose weight effectively while maintaining as much muscle mass as you can. Everything I have read indicates you can forget all about gaining muscle mass while actively in a calorie deficit to lose weight at the same time.

Oh and for what it's worth as well, good job, and keep up the hard work.

 

[biggestloser105]

Make sure you do enough muscle-related exercises while losing weight so you don't lose much muscle. It's much easier to maintain your muscle than to build it.

Make sure you eat a lot of protein, my nutritionist told me to eat 100g of protein each day and I'm a female at 5'5" to prevent muscle loss. Make sure you get 150g a day at least I would think, but from good sources like fish/chicken/eggs.


Also if your concern is to avoid being saggy, consider slowing down your weight loss. If you lose weight slower while maintaining your muscle, it gives your skin more time to recover. Make sure to eat the nutrients for skin, including essential fatty acids, and drink plenty of water. That's what I've read since loose skin is something I'm worried about as well.

You could also try alternating weight loss/muscle maintenance periods with muscle building periods where you'd eat more. It would obviously slow down your weight loss, but building muscle would give your skin something to hang to as the fat goes.

 

[Fitnessmom2]

The sore thing is not a sign that you have worked out hard

it is more a mental indication that you have performed well in the gym

If you are a beginner and you are not use to hard work, you often get sore
OR If you have trained for a longer period of time and then change your reps,sets and exercises that your body is not use to, you will get sore

AND you can be sored if you have trained for a longer time if you increase your weights alot and go heavier

But I have been working out for years and I am hardly sore and I promise you, I train so I feel sick

and we all are different, some get sored very easily and some are never sored even if they train hard as hell

So just make sure you are doing ALL in the gym and you dont have to worry abput if you are doing your best or not by see if you are sore or not

that is just a myth!

If you want to get a bit tighter skin on your belly, you need to focus on train your backmuscles and also your abs with weights, more muscles will fill out your skin a bit

But also you can massage your skinn twice a day with a lotion to stimulate your blood circulation

when you build muscles you need to challenge your self in EVERY workout
if you did 10 reps for your biceps(example) try to do another rep in your next biceps workout until you have hit 15 reps max, and then increase your weights

you can build muscles and lose weight at the same time, but you will build even more and better if you ONLY focusing on build muscles

so train hard with weights and do your exercise and cardio

good luck!

P.S make sure you give your muscles a recoverydrink after every workout with weights protein powder and fast carbs(maltodextrin or banana)