December Weight Loss Challenge

alright, I am going to get in on this too.

it's about time I get back to working out 4-5 times a week, eating a bit more healthy, eliminating some foods I should be eating in moderation, but am not, and feeling a bit more energetic and positive.

I went to the gym today for the first time in 3 weeks, and went for a 35 min walk in the bitter cold last night.

I start at x30 and try to get that down to x20.

10 pound increments at a time

I weighed in at 212.5 today. Yesterday my diet was nearly identical to the day before so I'm doing very well there. Instead of going to the gym last night, I did the Wii workout for about 45 minutes and worked up a decent sweat and got my heart rate up. I hope to keep it up!

Lay down the strength training as your framework, and throw in 30 mins of cardio afterwards. Runs first thing in the morning on a 100 calorie protein shake (only) is godlike as well. You want that muscle growth more than anything, which is near impossible to do when cutting calories, but it's always primary objective #1 to shedding fat. Strength training raises the metabolism for a couple days afterwards while the muscles heal...cardio can't touch that in one session like strength training can. If you break up and isolate body parts on different days of the week, you can see how this metabolic increase cascades. Try to eat 5 - 7 times a day within your caloric zone, approx 10% of the calories are burned via thermic effect from digestion (especially protein). Your cannot manufacture protein and your body needs it approx every 3 hours. It's a see-saw process of bulking (exceeding BMR caloric intake to gain muscle) and dropping below BMR requirements to shed fat. Back and forth the process goes, and with each cutting up period you have bigger and better guns to fight the battle so to speak.

In any regard without getting too technical, if you're cutting calories you need to (need to) strength train in the lower rep zone (6-8 to failure) in order to tell your body to hold on to as much muscle mass as possible during this time, otherwise your body will consume muscle tissue for energy. This is like throwing all that hard work out the window. It's not all this severe, however, it has all become very scientific now, and this is the recipe that gets you there the fastest. Straight line.

Ultimately, it's all about tipping the scale towards muscle...it's fat's kryptonite in every way.

I highly recommend this book It's the best there is on the subject:
http://www.formerfatguy.com/burnthefat/burn-the-fat-review.asp

(It can be bit torrented in a matter of minutes).

best of luck!

mookie9999 wrote:

I'm not into the any diet that I consider to be extreme (ie cutting out all of "fill in the blank"). I've been eating healthier, cutting out the majority of junk, and work out more often. Seems to be working. But if it stops, there's always crack to go back to!

Well, it works for me.
I drank on like 15 lbs...lol
10 are gone.

RolandTD20Kdrummer wrote:

Lay down the strength training as your framework, and throw in 30 mins of cardio afterwards. Runs first thing in the morning on a 100 calorie protein shake (only) is godlike as well. You want that muscle growth more than anything, which is near impossible to do when cutting calories, but it's always primary objective #1 to shedding fat. Strength training raises the metabolism for a couple days afterwards while the muscles heal...cardio can't touch that in one session like strength training can. If you break up and isolate body parts on different days of the week, you can see how this metabolic increase cascades. Try to eat 5 - 7 times a day within your caloric zone, approx 10% of the calories are burned via thermic effect from digestion (especially protein). Your cannot manufacture protein and your body needs it approx every 3 hours. It's a see-saw process of bulking (exceeding BMR caloric intake to gain muscle) and dropping below BMR requirements to shed fat. Back and forth the process goes, and with each cutting up period you have bigger and better guns to fight the battle so to speak.

In any regard without getting too technical, if you're cutting calories you need to (need to) strength train in the lower rep zone (6-8 to failure) in order to tell your body to hold on to as much muscle mass as possible during this time, otherwise your body will consume muscle tissue for energy. This is like throwing all that hard work out the window. It's not all this severe, however, it has all become very scientific now, and this is the recipe that gets you there the fastest. Straight line.

Ultimately, it's all about tipping the scale towards muscle...it's fat's kryptonite in every way.

I highly recommend this book It's the best there is on the subject:
http://www.formerfatguy.com/burnthefat/burn-the-fat-review.asp

(It can be bit torrented in a matter of minutes).

best of luck!

Yep, you have to give your body an excuse not to burn muscle along with fat when cutting calories. Weight lifting is so much more important than cardio for fat burning, and many people don't realize this.

fanch75 wrote:

I don't know about "so much more," but it is certainly extremely important, I'd say it's 33% reasonable diet / 33% cardio / 33% resistance training.

I'd say also it's based on where you are in the immediate. For example, if one is heavily overweight, it's better to focus on cardio/reasonable decreased calories to drop the excess, and then to focus on weights / proper daily diet to build muscle to both have a fit look and to maintain a lean body for going forward.

Gotta disagree with you there. No matter how overweight you are, your body will still burn muscle if you're cutting calories and not lifting. I've gone through periods of losing lots of fat without doing a second of cardio...just lifted and cut calories properly. When I first started trying to burn fat a while back, I did nothing but eat less and did intense cardio twice a day...after about a month, I couldn't lose anymore weight on the same caloric intake. That's because I lost muscle and my metabolism crashed. I think that's what happens to many people who "diet". They cut calories and start walking or something, and they lose weight for a little while, then it haults. Then they either give up or try to eat less and less...in turn they burn more and more muscle. Which is why most people will put more weight back on after they go back to their normal eating habits.

And I'd say it's more like 80% diet and 20% training. That's just in my experience though.