Help/Advice needed

Andy Dufresne

Hi all,

The facts...
37 year old male 6ft 3" and 2 stone overweight and rising, it has to stop!!

The Plan...
No more drinking bar moderate 1,2 beers or Red wine every other Saturday nite, diet and exercise..

The Diet-
Breakfast: Porridge with skimmed milk and 1 tbsl honey

Lunch (alternate days)
- 2 kiwis with natural yogurt, an apple and a banana
- Mixed salad with olive oil and 2 slices wholemeal bread or
- Wholemeal sandwiches with flora and wafer thin ham/turkey
- Glass of milk

Dinner- Pork chop/Chicken/Turkey/Beef/Fish with mashed*/boiled* potatoes and veg (mostly broccoli/carrots and green beans)
-Glass of milk
*(no butter)

No takeaways, minerals, crisps, but occasional bar or biscuits with a cup of tea/coffee)

8 glasses or water but i also drink 6-8 cups of tea daily.

Exercise-
45-60 mins walking with dog 5-6 times a week..

Will i lose weight doing this or am i wasting my time?
What else can i do, what make this plan more balanced, i really only have a gut and will stick to this plan..

Thanks again,

Andy..

EileenG

Generally pretty good, but I would reduce the carbs a bit, and increase protein. Maybe have eggs for breakfast? There's a study which found that people who ate eggs in the morning felt left hungry and ate fewer calories for the rest of the day.

I would put more protein and less fruit into your lunch. Keep some of that fruit for before your workout. Cottage cheese is cheap and handy to throw into a salad.

Go to Fitday.com, open a free account and put your food into it, so you can keep track of your calories. Depending on what is in your meals, that could be a bit light, so you'll be more likely to cheat.

Watch those occasional bars and biscuits. They mount up.

rubadub

I can't recommend weight training (resistance training) enough for fat loss. You would be probably be suited well to it. At 37 if you have been sedentary you will have lost a lot of muscle over the years, and being a little overweight some of that weight is already muscle which would be a shame to lose as it increases your metabolism just having it. i.e. with added muscle you can get away with eating more as you need more calories just to keep yourself warm & alive.

Check posts in the fitness forum for training tips, read the sticky posts at the top of the page. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=252

Are you prone to snacking? if so I would highly recommend splitting your meals up over the day, have 5-6 evenly spaced meals rather than 3 big ones. This shrinks your stomach so you end up feeling full with less food, your next meal is never far away so you resist snacking.

If you must have bars get snack size ones, even the cadburys 5-packs are smaller bars than in the newsagents now. My big problem with bars & biscuits is once a pack is open it is gone, or I come home pissed and eat them all, so try not to have them in the house or within reach. I was thinking of actually freezing my bars! the likes of mars bars & caramels freeze rock solid so if I went for one on the spur of the moment I could not physically eat it! so I would have to leave one out to defrost the night before, as a well planned snack.

When you have finished a weights workout you need simple carbs/sugars to recover properly and give your body energy to build new muscle. I treat this as a bonus/reward after a workout, and try to keep my sugar snacking until then, when it IS actually going to good use.

Workout your calorie intake too, a digital scales is pretty much essential in my mind. This is a good brand and cheap
http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/8422996/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7CKitchen+and+laundry%7C12160029/Trail/searchtext%3ESALTER.htm

Andy Dufresne

Two excellent replies, i really appreciate both, Eileen i will take your advice and will have chang carbs for protein. Rub to answer your questions, i played football up until 3 seasons ago (pretty much non-stop since i was a kid) so muscle still there- just. I do snack, ALOT which is why i want to eat a balanced diet so i'm not starvin myself and losin just water weight, i wanna lose water and fat..

Again folks, Thanks..

jdivision

The posters above know more than me but that wafer thin ham and turkey is full of crap, the meat itself is just the worst leftover bits. I'd eat proper meat, even rashers with fat trimmed (if needs be) rather than that.