Hi all,

As the title states, 158 days. In 158 days i’ll be getting married, and obviously i want to look my best for my big day and i’m looking for some assistance to drop weight, with exercise and by eating the right foods….im not sure what im doing to be honest.

Im quite a beer guzzler, and often binge on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday….and i know this isnt good. Im looking to cut down to 1 day a week, or maybe just minimise my drinking on these days (seriously, i drink between 8 and 10 pints most Fridays/Saturdays…nto good).

I am a member of a local gym, and me and my fiance go approx 3 mornings per week. We do about an hour workout which usually consists of a 20 minute treadmill run, 10 minute stepper, 20 minute cross trainer and a little bit of mat work (press ups/plank etc).

Im not saying that the above is a lot of exercise, but i never see ANY results. So, i thought i’de ask for some advice on workout plans i can use in the gym. Also, i have NO idea about nutrition and what i should be eating to assist me in losing weight (as an example, i still find myself eating loads of cards (sandwiches/pasta’s/baguettes) so any exercise i do seems pretty pointless.

I weighed myself this morning, and i am 14st 10lbs – my target weight is 13st, although i think that may be pushing the boat out a little. If i could get down to 13st 7lbs id be happy, but 13st id be buzzing!!

As i said, im going to definately cut down on the drinking, that’s a certainty. Can anyone advise on what i should be doing in the gym and eating to lose the amount of weight i want? Also, due to my beer drinking over the years, i have a bit of timber around the mid section….ive heard if i do sit ups etc now, ill never lose it and that i should do as much cardio as possible to burn it off….is that true?

Thanks in advance for all your help,

Kieran

OK start off with safety math.
1 pound of fat = 3,500 calories
Ideal loss 24 pounds (good job I’m UK based, many folks here think stones are small rocks)
Calorific value of ideal loss 84,000
Daily calorie deficit needed for this with 158 days 532

This is within the realms of practicality and safe. The normal maximum anyone should ever aim for is 2 pounds fat loss a week to stay healthy, this is 7,000 calories a week or 1,000 a day deficit.
You are at just over half that so this is safe and realistic.

Now the warnings.
The scales are your least accurate measurement. You want to burn fat, you will gain lean mass and your water levels will change daily, especially when used to binging on diuretics (alcohol) so you could lose your weekly just over a pound of body fat have gained a small amount of lean mass and be dehydrated one week, 3 pounds down on the scales, the next week lose 1.5 pounds of fat, gain a little lean mass and be above normal on water due to recovering from a drinking session scales show you up 2 pounds. I know weight is your target but view it as a trend not an accurate gauge, failure to do this will result in failure in over 90% of cases. Use the mirror or your fiancés opinion, after all if she says you’re doing well no-one else matters.

You have been subjected to two of the biggest and most frequently disproven myths in fat reducing fitness, the spot training and cardio only for fat loss. I like cardio, because I am mental but you need variety in your workouts for the best benefit, and to make things even more complex your genetics will control what works best for you. I will give you some generic guidance, no choice when I can’t see you, and invite you to tell me if anything is unclear or unpleasant for you to do.
Fat and muscle are totally different tissue, one doesn’t become the other. When you burn fat it burns from all over, but not evenly. This is the real bad news section. The body uses fat to store energy, every fool knows that, but many are unaware that it also uses it to protect organs, heart and lungs have a nice set of ribs but everything between there and your hip girdle gets nothing but fat and muscle for protection. Because of this the body lets go of this more slowly and applies it faster, especially on women in the extreme lower abdomen because of the reproductive organs, males are not as well designed ours are external.

Food wise, go for all round reduction eating as you normally do in the short term. Changing everything in one go is too traumatic for many so I would advise simply eating 90% of your current diet for a week or two then come back for more detailed guidance.
Cut back on the beer, brewers droop on the honeymoon will not make you popular, so get used to drinking less so you can enjoy married life more. I’m not going to advise how much to drink or not to just get it reduced and keep it there. As a teetotaller I have heard the stories of why I was preferred over heavy drinkers, trust me it’s worth it.

Cardio is good but it needs company. There is no other form of training that burns fat during the workout itself, fact. But all forms of training burn fat during the post workout recovery, and anaerobic training burns more calories during the session.
So keep some of your cardio and replace the rest with some resistance training, if you haven’t done this before get guidance or attend classes like body pump to get the heart rate way up and work the body hard. If you are used to weights try one of Goldfish’s routines on here http://training.fitness.com/weight-t…rst-34522.html he is our best generic weights guy.
Mix things up, do some spinning or interval styled training where the intensity is changed regularly. Keep up some steady cardio if you like it, if not do low intensity circuits instead. The body adapts fast so you will need to find stuff that you want to do, stick to it for a couple of months then change it again. So it could be rowing for static, body pump, and spinning for a couple of months then a couple of months of cross trainer for static, set weights routines and some intervals on the treadmill or rower.

This is vague, I accept that. As I said let me know if you see red flags.

Hi, thanks for the reply. Very informative and some very good information to take away. Do you recommend fasting diets (like the 5/2 (eat, fast, love longer) diet?)

Clearly i need a bit of diet control, so i am going to use MyFitnessPal – based on what i want, and losing 2 lbs per week, its calculated my intake in cals as 1,410 per day – does this sound correct to you? I have taken my measurements also to track along with my weight to allow for increases in body mass (muscle).

If i need to eat 1,410 per day, but i burn 600 cals in the gym (based on machine info), does that mean i have to over eat by 600 cals also?

Thanks for your help again.

My fitness pal is a good monitoring tool but it assumes everyone is average. It will tell you what surplus etc there is based on what you enter for activities. Don’t trust what it says calorie wise on weight training though, it is too averaged for that.
Achieving your target only requires just over 1 pound a week, which considering how much you need to be changing is more realistic. If you prove me wrong and lose 2 consistently that will be great, but keep that as an unrealistic target, they feel great to achieve. By having your standard target as just over 1 a week you can still feel successful by doing that well.
Fasting diets are slower at losing weight long term. They make the body think you are in time of frequent shortage when shores of energy are life savers. The best thing to do is make the body think it’s a time of plenty by eating small consistent meals, or browsing as it’s fashionably known now. I have done this for years before people saw the benefit in full, it’s funny to see the science come into place supporting what many of us have done for decades.
Always have someone else do your measurements, too easy to get wrong.

Ye me and the fiancé measured each other and will do so on a regular basis – would you say weekly mearurements are pointless and maybe go for bi-weekly?

Also, what foods do you suggest i eat. I do an office job and normally throw together sandwiches or east soups or noodles (somethin easy to make). We dont have access to microwaves in work as we are city centre based so the managers see no reason for us to have any

I would say measurements are as and when you feel like it, just make sure its at the same equivalent time, for weigh in when I bother I go for morning after loo and before food. This gives the most stable comparison, and would be likewise on measurements of any kind.
Food ideally needs to follow rough proportions of food pyramid, don’t bother with portion numbers just comparative amount. Mostly complex carbs, bread, rice, potato, pasta, secondary in volume is fruit and veg, you know what these are, next is meat, fish, whole dairy (milk not butter style) etc. and very small amount of additives, this is the killer for most as it includes the spread in your sandwich, the oil you cook with, any sauces, sugar, sweets and treats the lot and should be the cherry on top of the cake not even a small slice of the whole cake. I would say 99+% of people get this wrong but try to be as close as you can.
A bad lunch based on this would be thin sliced bread, masses of margarine and a thick layer of tuna and mayonnaise on 50/50 split, chocolate bar and quarter of orange.
A good sandwich with same type of bread but thick sliced, thin smear of margarine, thin layer of tuna and mayo with 90/10 split maybe a bit of salad, full orange, with some seeds or nuts as an additional, not too many.
Irony of the two, calorific value would be similar but the proportion would mean more energy in the type that you will be able to burn with training before it is put to fat stores, you would also find this satisfying for longer, so it becomes easier to just browse on this through the day.
I tend to cook up rice with eggs or have oats and nuts with some milk and just shovel in constantly throughout the day, but I am regarded more than a little strange in most workplaces.

Haha cheers for all your help. Ill be sure to come back with questions as and when