Help me please. I'm overweight and need some pointers.

Blitzkrieg

There's lots of rubbish here too. Your equation is flawed for a start. What you describe will lose you weight, but it won't all be fat, it will also destroy your metabolism, causing you to rebound and out weight back on once you've finished. If you lose weight like this, you  will simply become a smaller version of your original self, you won't lower your fat percentage anything like you would with calorie cycling and you won't change your body shape.


The next bit you mention a broadly balanced diet, but mention a ton of foods you should avoid. Why should you avoid pizza or pasties? In fact, if pizza Is your favourite food, I'd recommend you eat two a week, as doing the 100% monk way of only eating 100% healthy will cause most people to fail, go bonkers or both. You literally can eat anything in moderation.

If you eat three meals per day, there's nothing wrong with two of them being healthy and one of them comfort food, so long as you're realy strict on the healthy meals and the comfort food still falls within your needed calorie intake. By strict for healthy meals I mean eating foods high in nothing but complex carbs, high in protein and high in good fat.

For exercise swimming is the best for seriously over weight people, in fact no, scratch that swimming is the best for anyone, for many, many reasons.

Any advice I give is assuming you have no overriding health conditions, I can tell you how to get lean, I can't offer medical advice.

hort2074

No, just ham and salad.

No snacking allowed, unhealthy ones anyway. It is hard work.

hort2074

I was merely stating what worked for me, it may not work for others.

I have kept all my weight off by watching what I eat and exercising (mostly walking) most days.

It may be "totally crazy", it may not be "sensible", but it worked so it may work for the OP.

Blitzkrieg

Yeah your way will "work" for anyone (Weight loss), but along with fat you will lose lean body mass, you will damage your metabolism that you can't now eat normally without piling the weight back on. By normally I mean 2000-3000 calories per day without Planned exercise.

At the calorie intake you were taking/are taking with exercise on top you run the risk of even losing bone density or damaging your heart. A damaged heart is was kills off anorexics. Your way of doing it is probably worse for your health than when you did no exercise and weighed more

hort2074

It was only for 8 weeks.

I feel great [emoji1]

There are millions of people in this world that take 1000 calories a day (or less) for a lot longer than 2 months.

Blitzkrieg

I wrote up a rebuttal, but then deleted it. Good luck in your goals

hort2074

Fair enough.

I'm certainly no fitness expert and just decided to consume less calories, maybe I did go over the top but it worked for me with no known adverse effects.

I'm certainly not looking to get into an argument or offend you in any way, and I realise my response was a tad flippant, apologies for that.

PSM1

If you did that for only 8 weeks, what do you do now?
How many calories do you consume a day at the moment?
Although you may feel no ill effects over 8 weeks the problems Blitzkrieg mentions are chronic long term issues that may not appear for a long time. So you do need to be careful (a bit like a smoker saying they have no ill effects after smoking for 8 weeks!!)
As a contrast to you I have not restricted any foods and eat chocolate, biscuits etc. most days but still maintain my weight around 90kgs (I am 6ft 4 and fairly lean). But then I do a lot more exercise than the normal. So there are many ways to do it as you say but do be aware of the pros and cons of each method.

call of duty 45

The more overweight someone becomes the more impatient they often and understandably become to lose body fat. Many happily fore-go the big prize later for the small prize in the moment.
Being a good coach means being able to empathise and be honest about the length of the journey someone is about to embark upon. Honesty and integrity play as much of a role as our knowledge in many cases. These are people that have been sold, quite literally in many cases ‘the dream’ too many times.
Sometimes a dose of reality is what people need. In today's day and age people appreciate honesty. Something distinctly lacking in an industry that preys often on desperation.
“If I was to sit down with you a year from now and you were to be largely content with your body. More than this, to have a feeling of control over your physical outcome and the choices that impact it.
Having the ability to maintain that physique and have both a good family and social life. If the journey that you'd just undertaken had brought along with it far more pleasurable and positive experiences than pain would you take that?”
Your role is not to dictate, not to demand but to coach someone to a better place than they're presently in.

blue max

When I was significantly overweight (around 150% of my top healthy weight), I found the weight came off pretty rapidly. Now I'm at the top of my healthy weight, it's a daily battle. The scales reflect every morsel I put in my mouth

It makes you aware though. If I see it creeping up, I take steps to reduce it. Rarely does it drop and surprise me. I think I have probably found my 'natural' weight. That is to say, without going overboard on food and doing modest exercise, what I would probably end up weighing.

I find that a little too high, so I have to work at it a little. But I don't starve, just choose healthier options. And that is for life.