Chris PC
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- May 12, 2001
- Messages
- 3,975
I don't follow the Atkins diet because I don't think you need to start a diet with such a low amount of carbs and it does not include what I believe is proper nutrition. Maybe someone can correct me. I'm not sure many people can be very fit and healthy on a fat consuming ketosis diet. You need a balanced diet of protein, complex carbs, and "good" fats, not the saturated ones that Atkins puts you on. I guess I disagree that EVERYBODY should remain in ketosis. Either way, regardless of diet type, the reason its not good to reduce carb intake too much my opinion is 1) it is too unbalanced 2) no carbs means you can become nutrient defficient by missing out on certain foods. Many fruits and veggies have very important nutrition that you need to be healthy. So if you want to do the Atkins or a protein diet, read about it and do it properly. Some people just assume you eliminate carbs entirely forever and they do it on their own. I don't know the whole Atkins diet very well, so perhaps I won't judge it here. Rather, I will present my experience here
Personal benefits experienced from MY PLAN:
I feel my mood is more stable. I feel I can think clearer on a day to day basis. I even suspect my memory is slightly improved.
I love exercise. It makes me feel exceptionally good and without regular exercise, I really feel quite lousy.
I feel very fit and get a kick out of sprinting or doing very vigorous exercise and barely feeling it. I rarely get out of breath now, if ever.
Drawbacks:
Even for someone who only lost 20-25 LBS, I find my clothes no longer fit. I am swimming in my shirts. I am making new holes in my belt. I am also colder outside in the winter because I've lost more fat than I've gained back in muscle. I do feel slim, which is weird. I guess its better than feeling chubby.
MY PLAN
Starving or limiting calorie intake TOO MUCH is bad because of two things: makes you store fat and potentially burn muscle. Burning fat is good, but you want to replace that with muscle to get much more gains in your appearance improvement. Burning fat is not just about your looks, but why not try to be fit and look good too? Just burning fat will leave you too slim with no improvement in strength and fitness. Some people do protein diets and lose fat without exercising. I think you're missing out. Plus, building muscle only burns more fat, even when doing cardio. Most people cannot build lots of muscle on a ketosis no carb diet. I know I couldn't do it very well. Either way, try my plan instead.
If you want to lose weight, you have to think about sugar and its affect on your body and the production of insulin. I am still researching this, but all you need to know, is that refined sugar is not an ideal energy source for us and its particularly EVIL for certain people, more than others. I am not a doctor or a nutritionist, but I know that too much sugar makes your body store carbohydrates and fat AS FAT. But you can eliminate sugar from your diet without eliminating ALL carbohydrates. You can use complex carbohyrates as fuel in order to properly burn fat AND build muscle, just be sure not to eat too much carbos because extra is turned to fat storage.
If anyone wants to lose fat and gain muscle and strength and become fit, then I urge you to follow MY PLAN! If you follow it to the letter, I feel you should achieve long term success.
The determination to reach a GOAL.
First, have a goal in terms of fat loss and fitness. You have to be honestly and absolutely commited to changing your life FOREVER. Your goal is to reduce your body fat as much as possible to a safe level (too much fat loss can actually be unhealthy) and gain muscle size and strength and to improve your overall fitness. Have short and long term goals. You might only be able to get to a certain level in a few months. It shouldn't take more than one year or two to reach your ideal goal of fat loss, but if you are very over weight with lots of body fat, perhaps it will take longer. Don't worry, just stick to thinking about your direction, not where you are on that path. You always want to move towards your goal and NEVER go backwards:
DIET:
Eat less food at first, increasing food intake over time to allow for exercise to be completed without bonking (running out of energy completely).
No sugar. No more refined cane sugar at all. No syrup, no honey. The only refined "sugar" you will get will be from the once a week or so Iced Tea you drink at a restaurant, or if you're really smart, try unsweetened ice tea and use that lemon instead. Other than that, don't add sugar to cereals, and eat things that have little or NO refined sugar. The only sugar you eat should come from fruits and vegetables.
Reduce or eliminate foods high in Saturated Fats. Read about the good and bad fats. Good fats are from fish and olive oil. Bad fats are the saturated kinds from red meat and egg yolks. It doesn't mean you can't eat bad fats, but they make up a very small proportion of your overall diet, and less than 1/3 of your fat should be saturated fat. You CAN nearly eliminate saturated fat from your diet and not have any problems, but you should at least minimize your intake of saturated fats. You want mono-unsaturated fat for the most part.
Don't eat stuff you know is bad like saturated fats, MSG, anything hydrogenated (which is like making something saturated) and avoid aspartame. Don't forget to eat healthy and you don't want to eat synthetic garbage or stimulants. Just eat natural foods.
No desert (especially when starting this diet). Try to get away from desert entirely. Cookies and things like that are hard to eat in moderation because they are densely packed with the wrong things. Almost all cookies have sugar and saturated fat which goes right back into your gut. You can eat desert once in while, once you've developed your fat burning engine, but thats later and regardless, the less refined sugar and fat you eat the better.
DO NOT DRINK ANY JUICE! That is pure sugar.
No Alcohol. Alcohol is fattening because it acts like sugar. A beer or two once a week is ok, but in the beginning, try to avoid alcohol for the first few weeks or the first month.
No bread. NONE. Maybe the odd piece of 100% rye bread, but thats it. You can introduce bread later once your fat burning engine is going, but again, bread = fat almost as much as sugar = fat.
Not essential, but try eating less wheat. Try Barley and oat based cereal and remember 0 sugar goes on that cereal. Whole wheat is ok, but try other carbos. i eat Bran Flakes but prefer grape nuts and oatmeal.
Eat salads and eat complex carbohydrates like whole long grain rice and some whole grain pastas. No more sugar, no more bread.
If you are a veggie, you'll have to do your own research. I am heading down the veggie path, but slowly.
Eat meat in this order:
Fish, Turkey, Chicken. Eat little or no Pork or Beef. Eat as much fish as possible in place of other meats. No batter, no tar tar sauce and no ketchup.
IMPORTANT EATING POINTS AS PART OF YOUR DIET
1) Eat first thing in the morning to get your metabolism going. Even if you are going for a walk, eat a bite of a banana or a handful of cereal. All you want to do before your walk is tell your body "Do not store fat. Food is on the way." This way, when you go on your morning walk, you can burn a bit of fat.
2) Eat throughout the day. Split Breakfast into two meals. Eat a bowl of cereal first thing, then later, have a banana and/or an apple etc. Lunch, eat lunch normally, but save less than half of it for later in the afternoon. Eating the same amount of food spread out over time means you are eating the same amount of food, but you are eating more often and this increases your metabolism, preventing your body from going into fat storage mode. This is why severe calorie deprivation is bad. You may actually burn muscle when starving! You'll lose weight all right! But the wrong mass. You want to burn fat, not muscle.
3) DO NOT EAT AFTER 7 PM, or within 4 to 5 hours of going to sleep with one exception, if you worked out and got back from the GYM later at night, at say 7, 8 or 9 pm, then sure, eat a meal, but make it higher in protein and lower in carbs and fat than it might otherwise be. If you are going to eat at 9 pm cause you're hungry, and when you workout 4 times a week, you will get hungry sometimes, then eat a very small portion of something complex in terms of carbs, maybe high in fiber, like bran cereal, or high in protein. Best not to eat after 7 pm though.
Nutrition:
The following won't help loose weight (fat) but they help keep you healthy.
Eat whole vegtables and fruit. Just look at the healthy food guide and follow that. Try to eat things that have good nutritional qualities. Raw fruits and vegetables are the most nutritious. Eat a few nuts like almonds and walnuts. Avoid peanuts.
Exercise:
1) DIET AND NUTRITION TIMING FOR EXERCISE. Eat a balanced meal of protein, carbs and fat 3 hours before your workout. Everyone is different, but just be sure that A) you have enough energy for your workout but B) You have NO FOOD IN YOUR STOMACH. This is very tricky for me so its sometimes a problem. I apparantly must eat well before my workouts, sometimes 3 1/2 to 4 hours before. Its ok to eat a small amount before, but you'll learn how YOUR OWN body works over time. The best most easiest thing for me to eat before and even during a workout is a banana. Always bring a banana or power bar to the gym to eat right after, or even to grab during your workout if you are running low on energy. Play it by ear and you'll see how your own body works best for you.
Exercising to build muscle and burn fat. Ideally join a GYM with a weight training room. Perhaps join the GYM along with a motivated friend. Ask the GYM to provide you with a weight training plan to build muscle and burn fat.
Weight train 3 to 4 times a week.
For example:
Chest and back x 2/week
Legs and shoulders x 2/week
Cardio 3 to 4 times a week whenever you can fit it in. Sometimes on the same day as your weight training, sometimes on weight training OFF days.
Add 1/2 hour to 1 hour walks/speed walks in the morning and at night if possible. It just burns additional fat and does NOT fatigue you. When I started this PLAN, I was unemployed and I had the extra time. Regardless, throw in a walk here and there to gobble up calories WITHOUT OVERTRAINING
Weight training works like this:
do a "set" of each exercise with each "set" containing x number of reps. Example:
do 3 sets of 8 repetitions
Again, if you've no idea about weight trainig. Simply ask someone at the GYM to give you a plan.
How to do to weight train and cardio exercise to maximize fat loss and maximize muscle gain(very important).
1)You can start off with high reps, but your ultimate goal is to loose fat and gain muscle, so you ideally should get down to 6-8 reps and work at going up to heavier weight. Just do your best. If you find you are able to do 10 or more reps, then go up in weight. Thats how you do it. If you can weight train with a partner, that is very good. You can do what is called working to failure, which means, you do as many repetitions as you can, and then on your last repetition, you'll find you cannot lift the weight alone. Here, your partner gives you a small bit of assistance. It helps push your muscles to the limit.
2) Do cardio 3 times a week. Gradually increase your fitness and level of heart rate etc. Once you become really fit, within a month, you MUST change your exercising in order to burn MORE fat. You must now LOWER the average intensity and not do cardio for too long, for too often. WHY? Because high intensity for longer duration will make your muscles smaller and more efficient. Ok for the longer term, but right now, you want BIGGER and LESS EFFICIENT muscles in order TO BURN MORE FAT. DO NOT DO LOTS OF CARDIO WITHOUT DOING WEIGHT TRAINING!! I did this in my 20's and only became fit and more efficient. My endurance and cardio vascular fitness was good, but I found it very difficult to impossible to burn more fat. The only time I burned fat was going bicycling for 3 or 4 hours and even then it was a modest loss of fat compared to what I would have gotten with weight training. Since I've changed my ways, I have burned MORE fat and gained muscle.
3) In addition to the above, do your cardio with intervals and/or sprinting and change your exercise type. RUN! BICYCLE! ELIPTICAL CROSS TRAIN! STAIR CLIMBER! Circuit train! Go for 1 hour or less of cardio at an easy pace, but during you routine, SPRINT or do INTERVALS at least once a week. Don't just keep increasing your level of resistance and go as hard as possible for as long as you are comfortable. This will not burn as much fat as you need. What I mean is, lets say you are on the crosstrainer at level 14 at 75 RPM when you got to your fitness high. You will now drop down to level 10 at 70-75 RPM and stay there for your 30-60 minute Cardio, but for say four to six 30 second intervals, you will go at a higher level, say up to 15 or 16 at up to 110 RPM. Then you drop back down to 70 RPM at level 10. Keep doing this. WHY? You want to shock your muscles and build muscle. The low intensity will burn calories without making your endurance get too good, which is essentially just making your muscles smaller and more efficient. That is fine for later, but right now, you want maximum fat buring.
Running is one of the most efficient calorie burner. Swimming is good too and probably the #1 calorie burner WHY? You are using your bodies largest muscles repeatedly and under high resistance. After getting into running, don't run too much for too long. Running is the best calorie burner, but again, the more you run, the more efficient you become. Your muscles get smaller and you burn less calories. If you have been running and gotten your fitness up to say running twice a week for 45 minutes and you feel you pace has increased, drop down the pace and run almost as slow as possible, but throw in those 30 second sprints where you literally run faster for 30 seconds and then drop it back down to a very slow pace. Slow means you're well within your muscles abilities and you are simply burning calories. The sprinting burns calories and builds muscle size and strength but does not make you more efficient and increase your endurance to much. You will naturally become fitter and your endurance will increase, but you want to minimize the efficiency improvements and maximize the size and strength increase because these are inefficient and BURN MORE FAT
This trying not to do TOO MUCH cardio and trying not too increase your endurance too much, by becoming too efficient is important. You only need to stress this now, while your muscles are smaller and you are wanting to burn as much fat as possible. As time goes on, your muscles will get bigger and naturally burn more calories. Once you reach a certain level of fitness and fat loss, you may be happy with your bodies fat levels and then you can do whatever you want, provided your body composition remains somewhat constant. So once you reach your goal, or you are within reach of your goal, you might want to increase your endurance for running. Thats fine, but right now, you want to burn fat.
An important thing about running is that it is handy for TIME management. If you really CANNOT go to the gym that day, and you don't want to do any weight/resistance training at home, then go for a 30 minute run. Its fast, convenient and burns the fat while keeping you fit
4) Shock your body. Change your workouts. Use the cross-trainer for a few weeks. Use the bike the next. Go for a speed walk, go for a run, use the stair climber. Change your bench press to decline from flat, change the angle of your incline press. Do a different back exercise. Change what you are doing but keep BUILDING MUSCLE and BURNING FAT. Do your Cardio like this: Cross Trainer 30 minutes, Run 20 minutes. Or Bike 30 minutes and then use the Stair Climber. When you feel the routine is too familiar, change it. Play this by ear, as you do have to stick with certain weight training exercises for a while before gaining, but eventually, you want to change to a slightly different exercise that works your muscles at a different angle. Muscle GROW more when shocked with unfamiliar work once in a while. Routine makes them too efficient.
Abdominal workout
Read up on this. Do upper, lower and oblique ab muscles. If your goal is fat loss and a ripped gut, you won't get it just from doing endless situps. You must do the right exercises and not do too many reps. Once you can do over 30 reps, take shorter breaks, add resistance etc. Going for 200 situps or crunchs makes you fit, but shrinks your abs a bit. YOU DON'T WANT THAT YET. Shrinking fat on your gut is better replaced with larger ab muscles. Read a book called Ultimate Abs. My guide for ABS is to do them at least 4 to 5 days a week. Some people say you can do them every day since they recover quite well over a short time, while others disagree and say you need to rest them at least one or two days a week. Do what you feel works for you. Every day just doesn't work for me. Take at LEAST ONE day OFF ABS per week if you're not sure.
DO NOT OVERTRAIN
Try not to spend 2 hours or more weight training in the GYM four days a week and then run 4 times a week for 2 hours. You get the picture? I usually spend an hour or less each time I weight train. Everyone is different. Listen to your body and don't train too much. You'll get a feeling for what is too much and what is enough to be effective for you. Start with a modest time commitment and increase slowly until you reach a comfortable maximum.
Other tips. Focus on your goal. Do not oversleep. Instead, if you can, get up as early as sensible (say on weekends) and go for a 30 minute walk. Go for walks at night before you go to sleep. Play sports. Socialize with your friends. Eat your fave foods once or twice a month. Enjoy life.
Eat a moslty balanced diet, eat raw fruits and vegetables, eat fish as your meat, don't eat bread and eat as little sugar as possible. DO NOT ELIMINATE ALL CARBS. Eat long grain whole rice and/or pasta. BE CAREFUL WITH PASTA! Too much is WAY BAD. You need pasta for fuel, so eat it according to your exercising.
I fell off the wagon a bit over Christmas, and over the last couple of weeks, with a cold and just not being able to get back into the gym. Then I went away for the weekend with some friends and we ate some things I shouldn't eat like cookies and bread etc. I had barely gained back about 4 to 5 LBS and now I've lost most of that. I'm back into it now and plan to continue my efforts to increase my fitness, increase muscle strength and size, lose fat and increase my overall well being.
Here is a typical week for me:
Sunday-Upper body Chest and Back
Monday-Cardio
Tuesday-Legs and Shoulders
Wednesday- OFF
Thursday-Upper body Chest and Back + Cardio
Friday-Legs and Shoulders
Saturday-Off or Cardio
Each morning and each night I try to go for a 1/2 hour walk.
You can exercise 7 days a week if you like, and sometimes you have to in order to get the cardio days so they don't interfer with leg workouts. For example, I do cardio after weight-training upper body sometimes, but not too much, and I eat soon after. I don't usually do cardio on a LEG workout day.
A note about motivation. If you are doing this PLAN to burn fat because you are genuinely bummed out about your body, then resolve to be positive. Fight depression like you've never done before. Instead of eating food or sleeping when you feel bored or unhappy, just go for a walk. Keep doing this and develop a habit.
I apologize for any spelling or grammer mistakes. I didn't realize writing out my thoughts would take so long. I really followed a PLAN so subconciously, it was interesting and I wrote down what I did over time. Perhaps I will edit it down to the essentials later. But really. If you read and refer to this plan, I think you'll learn what you need and do well to lose fat and become fit.
You can lose weight simply by weight training, doing cardio and consuming fewer calories, HOWEVER, with MY PLAN, you simply maximize fat burning per unit time, plain and simple. You lose fat faster. I've never lost more weight in a shorter time in my life, period, and I feel healthy and fit
There you go. Thats my plan. Good luck
Personal benefits experienced from MY PLAN:
I feel my mood is more stable. I feel I can think clearer on a day to day basis. I even suspect my memory is slightly improved.
I love exercise. It makes me feel exceptionally good and without regular exercise, I really feel quite lousy.
I feel very fit and get a kick out of sprinting or doing very vigorous exercise and barely feeling it. I rarely get out of breath now, if ever.
Drawbacks:
Even for someone who only lost 20-25 LBS, I find my clothes no longer fit. I am swimming in my shirts. I am making new holes in my belt. I am also colder outside in the winter because I've lost more fat than I've gained back in muscle. I do feel slim, which is weird. I guess its better than feeling chubby.
MY PLAN
Starving or limiting calorie intake TOO MUCH is bad because of two things: makes you store fat and potentially burn muscle. Burning fat is good, but you want to replace that with muscle to get much more gains in your appearance improvement. Burning fat is not just about your looks, but why not try to be fit and look good too? Just burning fat will leave you too slim with no improvement in strength and fitness. Some people do protein diets and lose fat without exercising. I think you're missing out. Plus, building muscle only burns more fat, even when doing cardio. Most people cannot build lots of muscle on a ketosis no carb diet. I know I couldn't do it very well. Either way, try my plan instead.
If you want to lose weight, you have to think about sugar and its affect on your body and the production of insulin. I am still researching this, but all you need to know, is that refined sugar is not an ideal energy source for us and its particularly EVIL for certain people, more than others. I am not a doctor or a nutritionist, but I know that too much sugar makes your body store carbohydrates and fat AS FAT. But you can eliminate sugar from your diet without eliminating ALL carbohydrates. You can use complex carbohyrates as fuel in order to properly burn fat AND build muscle, just be sure not to eat too much carbos because extra is turned to fat storage.
If anyone wants to lose fat and gain muscle and strength and become fit, then I urge you to follow MY PLAN! If you follow it to the letter, I feel you should achieve long term success.
The determination to reach a GOAL.
First, have a goal in terms of fat loss and fitness. You have to be honestly and absolutely commited to changing your life FOREVER. Your goal is to reduce your body fat as much as possible to a safe level (too much fat loss can actually be unhealthy) and gain muscle size and strength and to improve your overall fitness. Have short and long term goals. You might only be able to get to a certain level in a few months. It shouldn't take more than one year or two to reach your ideal goal of fat loss, but if you are very over weight with lots of body fat, perhaps it will take longer. Don't worry, just stick to thinking about your direction, not where you are on that path. You always want to move towards your goal and NEVER go backwards:
DIET:
Eat less food at first, increasing food intake over time to allow for exercise to be completed without bonking (running out of energy completely).
No sugar. No more refined cane sugar at all. No syrup, no honey. The only refined "sugar" you will get will be from the once a week or so Iced Tea you drink at a restaurant, or if you're really smart, try unsweetened ice tea and use that lemon instead. Other than that, don't add sugar to cereals, and eat things that have little or NO refined sugar. The only sugar you eat should come from fruits and vegetables.
Reduce or eliminate foods high in Saturated Fats. Read about the good and bad fats. Good fats are from fish and olive oil. Bad fats are the saturated kinds from red meat and egg yolks. It doesn't mean you can't eat bad fats, but they make up a very small proportion of your overall diet, and less than 1/3 of your fat should be saturated fat. You CAN nearly eliminate saturated fat from your diet and not have any problems, but you should at least minimize your intake of saturated fats. You want mono-unsaturated fat for the most part.
Don't eat stuff you know is bad like saturated fats, MSG, anything hydrogenated (which is like making something saturated) and avoid aspartame. Don't forget to eat healthy and you don't want to eat synthetic garbage or stimulants. Just eat natural foods.
No desert (especially when starting this diet). Try to get away from desert entirely. Cookies and things like that are hard to eat in moderation because they are densely packed with the wrong things. Almost all cookies have sugar and saturated fat which goes right back into your gut. You can eat desert once in while, once you've developed your fat burning engine, but thats later and regardless, the less refined sugar and fat you eat the better.
DO NOT DRINK ANY JUICE! That is pure sugar.
No Alcohol. Alcohol is fattening because it acts like sugar. A beer or two once a week is ok, but in the beginning, try to avoid alcohol for the first few weeks or the first month.
No bread. NONE. Maybe the odd piece of 100% rye bread, but thats it. You can introduce bread later once your fat burning engine is going, but again, bread = fat almost as much as sugar = fat.
Not essential, but try eating less wheat. Try Barley and oat based cereal and remember 0 sugar goes on that cereal. Whole wheat is ok, but try other carbos. i eat Bran Flakes but prefer grape nuts and oatmeal.
Eat salads and eat complex carbohydrates like whole long grain rice and some whole grain pastas. No more sugar, no more bread.
If you are a veggie, you'll have to do your own research. I am heading down the veggie path, but slowly.
Eat meat in this order:
Fish, Turkey, Chicken. Eat little or no Pork or Beef. Eat as much fish as possible in place of other meats. No batter, no tar tar sauce and no ketchup.
IMPORTANT EATING POINTS AS PART OF YOUR DIET
1) Eat first thing in the morning to get your metabolism going. Even if you are going for a walk, eat a bite of a banana or a handful of cereal. All you want to do before your walk is tell your body "Do not store fat. Food is on the way." This way, when you go on your morning walk, you can burn a bit of fat.
2) Eat throughout the day. Split Breakfast into two meals. Eat a bowl of cereal first thing, then later, have a banana and/or an apple etc. Lunch, eat lunch normally, but save less than half of it for later in the afternoon. Eating the same amount of food spread out over time means you are eating the same amount of food, but you are eating more often and this increases your metabolism, preventing your body from going into fat storage mode. This is why severe calorie deprivation is bad. You may actually burn muscle when starving! You'll lose weight all right! But the wrong mass. You want to burn fat, not muscle.
3) DO NOT EAT AFTER 7 PM, or within 4 to 5 hours of going to sleep with one exception, if you worked out and got back from the GYM later at night, at say 7, 8 or 9 pm, then sure, eat a meal, but make it higher in protein and lower in carbs and fat than it might otherwise be. If you are going to eat at 9 pm cause you're hungry, and when you workout 4 times a week, you will get hungry sometimes, then eat a very small portion of something complex in terms of carbs, maybe high in fiber, like bran cereal, or high in protein. Best not to eat after 7 pm though.
Nutrition:
The following won't help loose weight (fat) but they help keep you healthy.
Eat whole vegtables and fruit. Just look at the healthy food guide and follow that. Try to eat things that have good nutritional qualities. Raw fruits and vegetables are the most nutritious. Eat a few nuts like almonds and walnuts. Avoid peanuts.
Exercise:
1) DIET AND NUTRITION TIMING FOR EXERCISE. Eat a balanced meal of protein, carbs and fat 3 hours before your workout. Everyone is different, but just be sure that A) you have enough energy for your workout but B) You have NO FOOD IN YOUR STOMACH. This is very tricky for me so its sometimes a problem. I apparantly must eat well before my workouts, sometimes 3 1/2 to 4 hours before. Its ok to eat a small amount before, but you'll learn how YOUR OWN body works over time. The best most easiest thing for me to eat before and even during a workout is a banana. Always bring a banana or power bar to the gym to eat right after, or even to grab during your workout if you are running low on energy. Play it by ear and you'll see how your own body works best for you.
Exercising to build muscle and burn fat. Ideally join a GYM with a weight training room. Perhaps join the GYM along with a motivated friend. Ask the GYM to provide you with a weight training plan to build muscle and burn fat.
Weight train 3 to 4 times a week.
For example:
Chest and back x 2/week
Legs and shoulders x 2/week
Cardio 3 to 4 times a week whenever you can fit it in. Sometimes on the same day as your weight training, sometimes on weight training OFF days.
Add 1/2 hour to 1 hour walks/speed walks in the morning and at night if possible. It just burns additional fat and does NOT fatigue you. When I started this PLAN, I was unemployed and I had the extra time. Regardless, throw in a walk here and there to gobble up calories WITHOUT OVERTRAINING
Weight training works like this:
do a "set" of each exercise with each "set" containing x number of reps. Example:
do 3 sets of 8 repetitions
Again, if you've no idea about weight trainig. Simply ask someone at the GYM to give you a plan.
How to do to weight train and cardio exercise to maximize fat loss and maximize muscle gain(very important).
1)You can start off with high reps, but your ultimate goal is to loose fat and gain muscle, so you ideally should get down to 6-8 reps and work at going up to heavier weight. Just do your best. If you find you are able to do 10 or more reps, then go up in weight. Thats how you do it. If you can weight train with a partner, that is very good. You can do what is called working to failure, which means, you do as many repetitions as you can, and then on your last repetition, you'll find you cannot lift the weight alone. Here, your partner gives you a small bit of assistance. It helps push your muscles to the limit.
2) Do cardio 3 times a week. Gradually increase your fitness and level of heart rate etc. Once you become really fit, within a month, you MUST change your exercising in order to burn MORE fat. You must now LOWER the average intensity and not do cardio for too long, for too often. WHY? Because high intensity for longer duration will make your muscles smaller and more efficient. Ok for the longer term, but right now, you want BIGGER and LESS EFFICIENT muscles in order TO BURN MORE FAT. DO NOT DO LOTS OF CARDIO WITHOUT DOING WEIGHT TRAINING!! I did this in my 20's and only became fit and more efficient. My endurance and cardio vascular fitness was good, but I found it very difficult to impossible to burn more fat. The only time I burned fat was going bicycling for 3 or 4 hours and even then it was a modest loss of fat compared to what I would have gotten with weight training. Since I've changed my ways, I have burned MORE fat and gained muscle.
3) In addition to the above, do your cardio with intervals and/or sprinting and change your exercise type. RUN! BICYCLE! ELIPTICAL CROSS TRAIN! STAIR CLIMBER! Circuit train! Go for 1 hour or less of cardio at an easy pace, but during you routine, SPRINT or do INTERVALS at least once a week. Don't just keep increasing your level of resistance and go as hard as possible for as long as you are comfortable. This will not burn as much fat as you need. What I mean is, lets say you are on the crosstrainer at level 14 at 75 RPM when you got to your fitness high. You will now drop down to level 10 at 70-75 RPM and stay there for your 30-60 minute Cardio, but for say four to six 30 second intervals, you will go at a higher level, say up to 15 or 16 at up to 110 RPM. Then you drop back down to 70 RPM at level 10. Keep doing this. WHY? You want to shock your muscles and build muscle. The low intensity will burn calories without making your endurance get too good, which is essentially just making your muscles smaller and more efficient. That is fine for later, but right now, you want maximum fat buring.
Running is one of the most efficient calorie burner. Swimming is good too and probably the #1 calorie burner WHY? You are using your bodies largest muscles repeatedly and under high resistance. After getting into running, don't run too much for too long. Running is the best calorie burner, but again, the more you run, the more efficient you become. Your muscles get smaller and you burn less calories. If you have been running and gotten your fitness up to say running twice a week for 45 minutes and you feel you pace has increased, drop down the pace and run almost as slow as possible, but throw in those 30 second sprints where you literally run faster for 30 seconds and then drop it back down to a very slow pace. Slow means you're well within your muscles abilities and you are simply burning calories. The sprinting burns calories and builds muscle size and strength but does not make you more efficient and increase your endurance to much. You will naturally become fitter and your endurance will increase, but you want to minimize the efficiency improvements and maximize the size and strength increase because these are inefficient and BURN MORE FAT
This trying not to do TOO MUCH cardio and trying not too increase your endurance too much, by becoming too efficient is important. You only need to stress this now, while your muscles are smaller and you are wanting to burn as much fat as possible. As time goes on, your muscles will get bigger and naturally burn more calories. Once you reach a certain level of fitness and fat loss, you may be happy with your bodies fat levels and then you can do whatever you want, provided your body composition remains somewhat constant. So once you reach your goal, or you are within reach of your goal, you might want to increase your endurance for running. Thats fine, but right now, you want to burn fat.
An important thing about running is that it is handy for TIME management. If you really CANNOT go to the gym that day, and you don't want to do any weight/resistance training at home, then go for a 30 minute run. Its fast, convenient and burns the fat while keeping you fit
4) Shock your body. Change your workouts. Use the cross-trainer for a few weeks. Use the bike the next. Go for a speed walk, go for a run, use the stair climber. Change your bench press to decline from flat, change the angle of your incline press. Do a different back exercise. Change what you are doing but keep BUILDING MUSCLE and BURNING FAT. Do your Cardio like this: Cross Trainer 30 minutes, Run 20 minutes. Or Bike 30 minutes and then use the Stair Climber. When you feel the routine is too familiar, change it. Play this by ear, as you do have to stick with certain weight training exercises for a while before gaining, but eventually, you want to change to a slightly different exercise that works your muscles at a different angle. Muscle GROW more when shocked with unfamiliar work once in a while. Routine makes them too efficient.
Abdominal workout
Read up on this. Do upper, lower and oblique ab muscles. If your goal is fat loss and a ripped gut, you won't get it just from doing endless situps. You must do the right exercises and not do too many reps. Once you can do over 30 reps, take shorter breaks, add resistance etc. Going for 200 situps or crunchs makes you fit, but shrinks your abs a bit. YOU DON'T WANT THAT YET. Shrinking fat on your gut is better replaced with larger ab muscles. Read a book called Ultimate Abs. My guide for ABS is to do them at least 4 to 5 days a week. Some people say you can do them every day since they recover quite well over a short time, while others disagree and say you need to rest them at least one or two days a week. Do what you feel works for you. Every day just doesn't work for me. Take at LEAST ONE day OFF ABS per week if you're not sure.
DO NOT OVERTRAIN
Try not to spend 2 hours or more weight training in the GYM four days a week and then run 4 times a week for 2 hours. You get the picture? I usually spend an hour or less each time I weight train. Everyone is different. Listen to your body and don't train too much. You'll get a feeling for what is too much and what is enough to be effective for you. Start with a modest time commitment and increase slowly until you reach a comfortable maximum.
Other tips. Focus on your goal. Do not oversleep. Instead, if you can, get up as early as sensible (say on weekends) and go for a 30 minute walk. Go for walks at night before you go to sleep. Play sports. Socialize with your friends. Eat your fave foods once or twice a month. Enjoy life.
Eat a moslty balanced diet, eat raw fruits and vegetables, eat fish as your meat, don't eat bread and eat as little sugar as possible. DO NOT ELIMINATE ALL CARBS. Eat long grain whole rice and/or pasta. BE CAREFUL WITH PASTA! Too much is WAY BAD. You need pasta for fuel, so eat it according to your exercising.
I fell off the wagon a bit over Christmas, and over the last couple of weeks, with a cold and just not being able to get back into the gym. Then I went away for the weekend with some friends and we ate some things I shouldn't eat like cookies and bread etc. I had barely gained back about 4 to 5 LBS and now I've lost most of that. I'm back into it now and plan to continue my efforts to increase my fitness, increase muscle strength and size, lose fat and increase my overall well being.
Here is a typical week for me:
Sunday-Upper body Chest and Back
Monday-Cardio
Tuesday-Legs and Shoulders
Wednesday- OFF
Thursday-Upper body Chest and Back + Cardio
Friday-Legs and Shoulders
Saturday-Off or Cardio
Each morning and each night I try to go for a 1/2 hour walk.
You can exercise 7 days a week if you like, and sometimes you have to in order to get the cardio days so they don't interfer with leg workouts. For example, I do cardio after weight-training upper body sometimes, but not too much, and I eat soon after. I don't usually do cardio on a LEG workout day.
A note about motivation. If you are doing this PLAN to burn fat because you are genuinely bummed out about your body, then resolve to be positive. Fight depression like you've never done before. Instead of eating food or sleeping when you feel bored or unhappy, just go for a walk. Keep doing this and develop a habit.
I apologize for any spelling or grammer mistakes. I didn't realize writing out my thoughts would take so long. I really followed a PLAN so subconciously, it was interesting and I wrote down what I did over time. Perhaps I will edit it down to the essentials later. But really. If you read and refer to this plan, I think you'll learn what you need and do well to lose fat and become fit.
You can lose weight simply by weight training, doing cardio and consuming fewer calories, HOWEVER, with MY PLAN, you simply maximize fat burning per unit time, plain and simple. You lose fat faster. I've never lost more weight in a shorter time in my life, period, and I feel healthy and fit
There you go. Thats my plan. Good luck