Wideboy goes skinny

S

Skibum1988

Guest
So start of my diary, Im gonna try and shift 22 pounds. I have a strange build where i'm naturally pretty muscular and a lot of rugby when i was younger has helped that. However, it has also meant i have gotten away with putting on weight, as the muscle still shows underneath. Now by my reconing i'm between 18-26 pounds heavier than my ideal weight.


-- How much weight do you want to lose?
22lbs
-- What is the timeframe for reaching your target weight?
14weeks, or as long as it takes
-- How do you want to accomplish your goal (what methods do you want to use)?
ending my high fat high sugar eating habits, increased exercise
-- Who or what can support you in reaching your goal?
my girlfriend can stop telling me she likes me just the way I am, and hopefully this forum can help me too
-- How realistic is your goal?
I feel it is ambitious but realistic. At the very least I'd hope to lose 18lbs in the 14 weeks
-- When will you start?
Officially started yesterday
What is your current height and weight?
5ft 9.5inches, 85kg
If you were at an ideal weight now, what would that weight be?
75kgs
At what weight would you like to be at four months from now?
75kgs
Why do you want to lose weight?
Health Reasons, Self-Esteem, To get a washboard!
What obstacles could get between you and your weight loss goals?
stress, junk food, injury
Why do you think that you now have a weight problem?
high blood pressure, too heavy,
What lifestyle changes do you think would help you lose weight?
less sugar and fat, more veg and lean meat, more exercise
Do you cook at home often? If so, what do you cook?
quite a lot, broad food a lot of italian cooking
How often do you go out to eat? Where do you go?
twice a week, takeaway, now cutting it down to 0 times a week
What are your three favorite foods?
pizza (cut out now) chips (cut out now) burgers (treat now)
If you woke up tomorrow and your body was exactly the way you want it, what would be different?
i'd be lean and muscular
 
Lost a total of 3 pounds in my first week, despite limited exercise and not being 100% faithfull to my plan. Amazing what cutting out sweets, biscuits and junk food can achieve - saying that it is probably mostly water weight!!!. Getting ichy feet at the moment. Want it to happen faster but dont have the time to start a gym routine at the moment as way too much work on. Got 9 days skiing in the Alps in a couple of weeks mind, which should tear the pounds off me!!
 
Sweat Daily said:
Cool - keep in mind that you-ll have to do an awful lot of skiing to burn off the apres ski, :)
Click to expand...

Hahahah, fortunately this holiday is not about the apres ski, we are going to a little known french resort, popular with french and... wait for it... The Dutch... there are only seven bars and two clubs, and the recurring theme from reviews posted by british seasonnaires is that 'if you don't get in a fight in this place, then you are either female, or dutch'...

Im a professional skiier myself (unfortunately because I am from the UK and can only ski a couple of hours a week on plastic slopes it has still been possible for me to end up overweight!!), an our remit out there is 9 days of filming for a short webisode (web-based ski film) and producing some media for our sponsors.

The two guys I am going with are also professional, but are both much fitter and more technical than I am... I'm going to be playing catchup all week... It's gonna tear the fat off me and hopefully bring back definition to the muscles underneath!
 
Alternate Day Fasting

Has anyone had a go at this... I find the idea seems to make sense. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, basically you don't eat for 24 hours, then you eat normally, then you don't eat for 24 hrs etc etc. The way most plans based on this work is that you will begin your fast after dinner on one evening, fast throughout the next day, and then eat dinner on that evening, breaking the fast at the 24 hr mark. So basically you never actually go a full waking day without eating, but on your fast days you only consume around 25% of your normal daily intake.

The reason it seems to make sense to me is twofold:

Firstly rather than reduced calories on a daily basis (say 20% reduction on every day of a week) it only requires a 70% reduction on two days of the week. Now it seems that our bodies adjust to new routines well - thus following the exact same weights workout continually will show good gains during the early stages, but the rate of gain will soon decline as the body adapts. To me a diet where calorie intake is reduced every day will surely promote the same response from the body (i.e. there will be wieghtloss at first, but then the body will adapt). Obviously this will only be true up to a point, but short of basically starving oneself i think it makes perfect logical sense. It seems that the best way with our bodies is variety - keeping your body guessing with varied weights and cardio workouts appears to produce the best results - so why should diet be any different. If you eat a normal amount 5 days in a week and fast (eat only 25% at the end of the 24hr period) for two of them then your body will not go into starvation mode, your stomach will not shrink, but ultimately you will have reduced your calorific intake for that week.

I think in combination with a healthy diet this is potentially a very powerful tool.

Secondly apparently some studies have shown it to have other health benefits, which i have forgotten already! I think it was to do with insulin, and higher levels of growth hormone. It even may, like calorie restriction, prolong life!!! Its deffo interesting.

What I am doing at the moment is trying to ease myself into fasting. So I am eating normally on one day, and then a significantly reduced calorie intake on the next. Once I get down to the target level of 25% on my reduced calorie days, I will then turn them into a fast (only eating at dinner). Today was my reduced calorie day and by my reconing i ate about 35% of what a normal adult male should eat each day (2500) - I think my daily calorie intake before I started this may have been more like 2900kcal.

Anyway here is what i ate today - healthy? So much better than what i used to eat.

Breakfast - Wholegrain Bran with Sultanas - approx 200kcal

snack - Olives approx 60kcal

Lunch - Green leaf salad with beetroot shavings, peppers, olives, plum tomatoes, cucumber, red-onion, shredded ham and a sprinkling of cheese, with a balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. - approx 330kcal

Snack - Apple slices and grapes 41Kcal

Dinner - Wholemeal bread, low fat spread, turkey sandwich -approx 220Kcal

total 871

871/2500 x 100 = 34.84%
 
PROGRESS - I'm Hooked on this now I have started to see results

Well, when I started on the 28th December I weighed in at 13 stone 6 pounds. In the initial 5 days I lost 3 pounds - this I think was mostly water, and a bit of easy-come-easy go christmas excess. After this point I was worried things might stall. I have been so busy with work (genuinely massive deadlines so working late into the night every night) that I have not had time to exercise. I have not started ADF, nor will I until these big deadlines have passed. In the past 5 days I have lost a further 3 pounds!!! I'm now 13 stone pretty much dead - and that is when hydrated and having just eaten a medium sized meal!!! So pumped.

I have not taken any slimming pills, or even any fancy supplements, I am not starving myself, although I started on alternate days trying to limit my calorie intake for ADF i have now stopped as I was feeling a bit lightheaded on the low cal days, and have lots of work to do.

I am reasonably muscular build anyway, and I have a naturally highish heart rate (which I understand sometimes can mean naturally high metabolism - although it is very subjective). I used to eat by my reckoning around 3000 kcal a day, lots and lots and lots of sugar - i'm a sugar addict. To give you an example of my daily diet at its worst (and this is genuine)

I would wake up, walk to uni and get a large saussage roll and a can of coke (total 650 odd calories, maybe more)

Mid morning I would grab a chocolate bar and often another coke. (400 Kcal)

Lunch I would have a packaged sandwich, bag of crisps and then a chocolate bar, often accompanied by a soft drink (700-800Kcal)

Mid afternoon I would be eating sweets (200kcal)

Evening meal would vary, but always large portions, often I would get takeaway, usually Pizza or Burger and Chips. If I cooked for myself I would have pie with heaps of potatoes and peas, or a large bolognaise or carbonarra pasta (with loads of garlic bread), or a large plate of natchos topped with loads of cheese. I would usually drink a beer and finish the meal with something sweet.

day to day, id say dinner varied from 900kcal - 1800kcal.

Some days I wouldn't eat as many sweets, but i'd say more often than not it was like the meal plan I have outlined above. My diet was not this bad 18months ago, but it had got steadily worse, and I was gaining weight faster and faster.

Now on a day to day my diet is this.

Wholegrain bran with sultanas and dried fruit, with semi-skimmed milk (I cant stand skimmed yet!!) 200-250Kcal

Snack for morning: Low fat youghurt 90kcal or small portion of olives 70kcal

Lunch, Ham / turkey sandwich with a side salad (thin sliced wholegrain bread, good quality thin sliced ham, low fat spread), 230-250 kcal

Snack for afternoon / early evening: graze on olives / fruit or if feeling particularly starved have a plain ham / turkey sandwich. 50-190kcal

Dinner: Lean Chicken breast with boiled vegetable mix (brocoli, carrots, cauliflower, peas, chopped raw red onions - I know its weird but i love them) and small serving of cous cous / wholegrain rice / pasta
450-500 kcal

Post dinner snack (if feel peckish later on) - salad / cherry tomatoes / olives / low fat youghurt. (30-90kcal)

I also drink around two litres of water a day, mostly sugar free orange squash as I hate the taste of the tap water here. That is around 20kcal in total for all the drinks consumed in the day

so that makes my daily total somewhere around 1200kcal.

On top of that I afford myself the occasional treat - today I had a can of beer with my mate after his interview. The other day I have had a treat I had a few slices of pizza.

I'd say it must average out at just shy of 1400kcal per day so far, which is 1600kcal less than I was eating before. therefore 1600kcal over a total of 10 days is 16,000kcal /3500 = 4.5lbs. So therefore I will assume that the remaining 1.5lbs are the water weight I lost at the start. I dont feel massively tired, I have had sugar cravings, but they have passed - I have smoking to fall back on at the moment (5 per day) but that is ending at the end of january too (I realise that this is the thing i need to give up most!).

Anyway longwinded ramble but so pumped to see real results I can see every few days at such an early stage. I realise everything will slow down, but my goal for the next 10 days is to lose another 3-4lbs over the whole 10 day period. I go on holiday on the 21st and it would be amazing to be 12st10lbs when i go away!!!!
 
Progress continues - slightly frustrated with lack of visible change

So now I am down to 12st 9 / 12st 10 ish (my scales seem to vary depening on where they are on the floor). This totals a weight loss of 10lbs in 15 days, which is not bad at all eh? I feel i have been eating rather well as well, certainly rarely feel hunger which is odd. I think that cutting out sugar has actually massively helped my general hunger cravings (in a weird way). If i have really sweet fruit (apples or grapes - I find they instantly make me hungry), same if I have a sweet.

I can't really see any visible difference in my physique when I look in the mirror, but i have noticed that when lying flat on my back my stomach doesnt quite bulge out as much as it used to and my arms and shoulders seem to be slightly more defined! But then again I question whether it is just me desperately looking to spot some visible changes.... After all it has only been 15 days... Im hoping that by the end of the month the changes will be a bit more noticeable. I need to post some picures so have tried to attach some. Unfortunately I lost my pictures from the first day, but found one I took on day 2 - sadly i had my arms in the air (probably to make me look less fat) so I have added photos from day 15 one with my arms up, and one with my arms by my side. I deliberately tried not to suck my stomach in or anything to get as fairer view as possible. Let me know if there is a difference. Safe. Oh for some reason the Before photo has ended up on the far right, and the other two photos are from today.
 
Plateau... Shmateau

So im roughly 20 days in, 10lbs down, which is pretty good. Have been pretty much the same weight for 4-5 days now, at 12st 9 ish (177lbs or 80.5Kg). So I'm assuming I have reached the point where the easy and rapid loss ends. I just have to be really careful to not gain it all back again!!

Still very stoked to be almost half way to my goal in such a short time, but being realistic I know that I can probably only expect to lose weight from now on at a maximum rate of 2lbs per week.

So, off skiing in 5 days now, which is pretty exciting, and should help this fitness mission of mine. As soon as i get back from that then the gym membership starts and so does the intermittent fasting. Will see how that goes, but if I can lose another 6-8lbs in the next four weeks then I would be over the moon. Also going to start doing one hour of walking every day (30mins morning and evening) in addition to the cardio and weights I do at the gym. Hopefully this will work for me! Still i wish weight loss was as easy as weight gain!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top