I know I've posted a lot in this forum and have a sticky called "How to lose weight," but that turned into a long drawn-out thread without easily-accessible information.
So, the point of this post is to outline the basics of losing weight and getting into better shape.
As a disclaimer, don't attempt a weight-loss diet or routine of any sort without talking to your doctor, especially if you have or suspect you have any sort of medical condition. As another disclaimer, everything I say here is based purely on solid scientific research, common sense, biology, and indisputable facts in general. I know what I'm talking about, and I am not feeding you any bulls*** like fad diets or broscience. This is the straight dope.
OK, that said, here we go.
PROLOGUE: THE BASICS
You can't spot reduce. Doing situps will not make your tummy smaller.
Your body is composed of lean mass and fat mass. Fat mass is jiggly and flabby and loose. Lean mass is "toned" and tight. The goal of weight loss is to get rid of the fat mass and preserve the lean mass. This is how you look "toned" - you get rid of fat and build muscle.
1) CALORIE DEFICIT.
Weight loss is all about calorie deficit. At the end of the day, if you consume fewer calories than your body uses throughout the day, you will lose weight. End of story.
It is for this reason that controlling calorie intake is absolutely critical to weight loss. So what does that mean? How do you know how many calories you burn in a day?
Well the first step is to
figure out your BMR. BMR stands for Base Metabolic Rate and basically indicates how many calories your body requires to keep itself alive. This is the approximate number of calories you will burn if you stay in bed all day. For example, for a 160-lb, 5'9, 30 year old male, the number is 1735. You don't stay in bed all day, so you have to multiply this by an activity factor. For the majority of people, you multiply by 1.2 to indicate a basically sedentary lifestyle. This gives 2082 calories in our example. If you are much more active (have an active job etc), click the Harris-Benedict Equation link at the BMR page for more activity factors.
Now for the calorie deficit. The general agreement is that a calorie deficit of about 500 calories a day is healthy, sustainable, and results in the highest portion of fat loss to muscle loss. So our example guy should set a target of around 1582 (round up to 1600) calories a day.
Here is the formula: BMR * 1.2 - 500 = calorie goal.
It can be difficult to eat this little, but if you keep some things in mind it can be easier:
Eat lots of veggies and some fruits.
Cut out carb sources like bread and pasta. This is a surprisingly effective way to lower calorie intake.
Eat fats. Fats are your friends.
Lean meat is your friend too. Eat a lot of lean meat - chicken, tuna, turkey, fish, whatever.
Eat eggs, too. Eggs are great. And don't toss the yolk - eat the whole egg.
2) WEIGHT TRAINING.
This is a touchier subzject than calorie deficit. People have all sorts of bulls*** ideas about exercise, particularly how it relates to weight loss. This is of course due to the fitness industry trying to sell all manner of crap to you, so I can't really blame you. So now I'm going to give you the reality of what is necessary, what you should do, and how to partition your time.
Calorie deficit determines whether you gain or lose weight. Exercise, however, determines the type of weight that you gain or lose. If you run a calorie deficit and lose weight without exercising, your body will consume muscle mass preferentially to fat mass. That's because muscle mass is more "expensive" calorically (you've probably heard that muscle burns more calories than fat) to maintain. The human body is always setting itself up for impending starvation so it tries to keep "cheaper" fat mass instead of muscle mass. So the goal of exercise, besides general health, is to either keep or build muscle mass.
So, on to the practical part: the absolute best way to build or maintain muscle mass, by far, is heavy freeweight training. No ab rollers, no 10-lb dumbbells, no 50 reps of some bulls*** bodyweight crap or machine. If you're a chick, don't worry - heavy weight training will NOT make you bulky or muscley. You just don't have the hormones for it.
The best freeweight routines for normal people like us are ones that focus on big, compound, heavy lifts for 1-3 sets of 4-7 reps. These lifts include squats, overhead press, deadlifts, bench press, and rows of some sort (dumbbell rows are the best). These lifts are not trivial to do, and unfortunately the vast majority of gyms and personal trainers (ugh) will discourage you from doing them because so many people do them wrong and end up hurting themselves or the equipment. So either find a trainer who knows what he's doing or pick up a copy of
Starting Strength to learn how.
A good routine for a woman who wants to lose weight is:
Workout A:
Squats (heavy)
Press
Chinups
Workout B:
Squats (moderate)
Leg curls
Heavy ab work (leg raises, weighted decline crunches, etc).
Week One, do A on Monday, B on Wednesday, and A on Friday. Week 2, do B/A/B. Etc.
The squats and leg curls will lift and give structure and shape to your a** and thighs. Press and chinups will round out your shoulders and give definition to your back.
I'll leave the weight training thing there for now. If you want to know more, read the book or just ask me.
3) CARDIO.
Cardio is good. It's great for your health. It helps you lose weight. It's also the part of "healthy lifestyle" that people tend to hate the most and give up first. But that's not really so bad.
Cardio is the least important thing here in terms of weight loss and health. Heavy weight training already gives your heart a good workout and you can lose weight just as effectively with a calorie deficit.
But I encourage you to do cardio. 30 minutes of any type of cardio 2-3 times a week is plenty to get virtually all of the health benefits of exercise. It will also help drive your calorie deficit up in a healthy way to promote weight loss. It also makes you feel good about yourself.
I won't tell you what cardio to do. Do whatever you want to do. Treadmill, elliptical, tennis, power walking, swimming, whatever. Really makes little to no difference, as long as you're getting your heart rate up.
4) PROTEIN.
Protein is the other side of the nutrition coin. Remember that in order to look good, you need to have some muscle and get rid of the fat. If you don't eat enough protein, your body won't be able to preserve or build any muscle mass.
You want to get approximately 1 gram of protein per lb of bodyweight. Yes, that sounds like a lot. It sounds absurd to most people.
But it\'s absolutely true. If you're not getting enough protein, you are wasting a great deal of effort.
5) SUPPLEMENTS.
This ties into the protein section above. First, let me talk about vitamins. I recommend most people take a multivitamin, vitamin D (if they don't spend much time in the sun), and fish oil. Get 400+ mg of both DHA and EPA (the good stuff in fish oil - check the bottle label for how much EPA and DHA the supplement has). Between this and a diet rich in fruits and veggies you should have your nutritional basics covered.
Now back to protein. It's really, really difficult to get enough protein in your diet without some type of protein supplement, so I'm going to go over those really quickly. Protein powder is great. It's easy to drink and highly effective. There is absolutely nothing wrong with supplementing your diet with some powdered protein. There are lots of protein types on the market, so I will give a very brief overview.
Whey protein. This is by far the most common protein you will see, and for good reason. It's a fast-digesting, highly complete protein loaded with BCAAs (these are good) and low in fat and carbs. It is ideal as a post-workout protein supplement and first thing in the morning to get a little protein into your system quickly.
Casein protein. This is the main protein component of milk. It is also a good complete protein, but it's a slow-digesting protein. This is a good protein to consume at night or in place of a protein-rich meal throughout the day.
Soy protein. This is a good all-purpose protein as well. There is some evidence that it can have androgen-like effects in men if taken in large quantities.
6) NOTES.
In general, it really doesn't matter what you eat as long as you're hitting your calorie and protein goals. There is one exception: Post-workout nutrition. Right after you work out is one of the most critical times of the day. Your muscles are breaking down and your body is generally in a catabolic (tissue-consuming, as opposed to anabolic or tissue-building) state. You want to stop the catabolic process after you work out for effective recovery and muscle maintenance. The best way to do this is to get some fast-digesting carbs and proteins immediately after exercise. That means a post-workout shake, ideally consisting of whey protein and dextrose. A variety of companies make good premixed "recovery" shakes, but it's easier and cheaper to just mix a scoop of whey and a scoop of dextrose yourself.
A whey shake and a banana is an acceptable alternative.
Also, the time before you exercise is also important to performance. This generally doesn't matter much, as most people usually have food digesting somewhere when they work out. However, some people like to work out first thing in the morning.
It's really important to get some carbs into your body before you exercise if you are exercising in the morning. Bananas are one of the best ways to do this.
If you want to GAIN weight, just eat more. Eat 500-800 calories over maintenance, get a lot of protein, and lift hard.
OK I think that covers all the basics I wanted to talk about.
(Note to mods: I think this makes a better sticky than the one already there.)
Apr 28, 2011 @ 15:37:51
But its great work out the knee ups and chin ups. Its hard though holding your own body weight, at least I find it hard but that could be because I am weak. 
