Preserved Topic: Middle age spread come early, help! (Page 1 of 1)

Being only 31 (yes! only!) I've been increasingly aware over the past 2 or 3 years that my waistline has been expanding far too quickly. Never really bothered me before but since we had our first child last year I thought I better try and get back in shape again for when he gets a bit older and wants to play football etc. with his dad.

Any tips on weight loss would be GREATLY appreciated.
My wife and I have tried to switch to a healthy diet, (lots of fruit and veg, cut out the fat etc.) and I've sold one of our cars which forces me to cycle to work and back. We've started going swimming twice a week.

What I'm interested in is any other good advice to get rid of my early middle-age spread, come on plenty of you must have been through this and should be able to offer some sage words of advice.

Cheers, Porky





[This message has been edited by TheTrixter (edited 06-27-2001).]

Heh, been there, done that, got the t-shirt
What you're doing is a very good start.
I managed to lose appr 30 pounds by skipping dinner and night snacks only.
I had a good breakfast, a big lunch and nothing or a very light meal (natural salad) for dinner.
In short, nothing to eat after 5 in the afternoon, you never actually use what you eat after 5-6...

This (and no exersice) took 30 pounds of me in about 8 months, and I held the weight for 5 years before it started creeping up on me again.
The best advise is probably, let it take time, all chrash diets trick the body so it tries to restore what it had after the diet.
Good luck.
Dan

Hey, wise words DMS. I had not heard that one about not eating after 5pm. Makes sense, the more I think about it, we have always tended not to get our evening meal until 8 or 9 at night, then getting ready to go to bed by about 10 (don't laugh, I have to get up at 4.30am) so I suppose it's not doing any good whilst I'm sleeping. I'll speak to "the missus" tonight and see if we can put that part of the plan into action.



[This message has been edited by TheTrixter (edited 06-27-2001).]

I've never really tried to lose weight.. I thought i needed to once and started to stop eating and my best friend like freaked out about anorexia or sumthin so i guess i didn't need to... anyways One of my other friends wanted to lose weight before the last school year started cause he was about 20 lbs overweight, so he stopped eating basically everything sweet/fattening... only ate salads and fruit, no bread, very little meat, drank nuthin but water (key thing he said was to get rid of carbonated drinks and caffeine stuff) and he had football practice for half the summer... umm substitute cycling and swimming? Anyways I wish you luck, I'm not fat now but everyone says you get bigger as u get older and that scares me lol

yeah the dont eat in the evening thing seems to be true... i remeber as a kid asking if you had to be fat to be an opera singer (well seemed like a valid question at the time :P) becasue most of them are over wait...becasue supposedly you not meant to eat before a performance...so then by the time it over they would be fucking hungery ..so they stuff them selves and then goto bed ...hence they get fat...??

as for myself i'm thin as...another way to get thin (not a very healthy way ) is to drop a few pills and go dancing all night..you wont wanna eat for the next day :P hehehe plus you burn heapsa fat

Ok.. here is my take on weight loss.

First, eat more ofter but smaller portions, this way your body is always fueled and your metabolizm gets faster.
Don't skip dinner. Eat something small, like a salad, baked potatoe (without butter or sour cream) Remember that breakfast is the most important meal of your day. Get a power bar for lunch or something, just DO NOT STARVE yourself. It's not the way to go. You won't see resaults fast and the method is not healthy.

If you can, get yourself a bottle of pills called STACKER3 They are very good and helped loose weight for many of my friends. ( I am talking loosing weight-20lbs a month, not bad huh?)

Next-excersise, excersises, excercise. It's a good idea to have a work out partner but since you will be doing it with your wife you have that done.

Other than that, just keep being motivated. Eat smart and get yourself some STACKER pills. http://www.stacker2.com/

My wife quickly adds - "water". If you drink the recommended amount each day, it helps the body rid itself of waste easier. It also makes you feel "fuller" when you sit down to eat, thus causing you to eat less.

Additionally, water helps the body digest food, deal with illness, and more.

Geez, with all the talk about drinking lots of water in other threads I assumed you guys were health nuts. First of all, taking those pills is probably the worst thing you can do to lose weight. Dieting isn't much better. If you really wanna get in shape, like anything else, you're going to have to work at it. I like to stay in relatively good shape, I bought a few things from solarflex and work out for a few hours every night. I jog regularly, and on weekends I jog a lot. I eat good with few snacks. This doesn't mean I don't eat snacks, I just control my cravings. Wanna lose weight? Eat less, excercise more. It's the only tried and true method there is.


.sig by Weadah.

If you want to get deep into diet we can do that...

Water, drink water, lots of it.. at least 8 glasses a day. This way you fool your body and make it think that you just ate. As for pills Jestah, with time you reach the bar that your body burn fat very slow. Those pills were designed to help your metabolism speed up a little.

Being a PT in my "past life" I have some experience with proper diet and right way to do your excersises. Sure, you can eat only breakfast for a whole day and go work out for 3hrs a day but this is truly unhealthy way.

You should eat 5 times a day in very small portions. Eat good breakfast, if you are hungry in between grab a granola bar, unsalter pretzels, something with no fat and low calories.

But then again, there is extreme and light. I had my days before when I would wake up at 5am, go to the gym, work out before work and then after work I would go back and do cardio.

Well, well, well, tubby. Finally gonna take the weight, off, eh?

Kneel on linoleum with a pad under your knees. Put a dishtowel in your hands. Put hands on floor and push the towel across the floor, while keeping your back completely straight. Pull back, keeping your back completely straight. To attack the lovehandles, go in a diagnol direction.

Further, pick up a regime of tai chi ch'uan, the original 108 stances, not the new crap. Take care to learn 5 a day and add them to the regime the next day.

Do that every day.

..yep. Every day.

I wake up at 4 to get to work by 8.

Good replya all....Twitch i have to agree here with ya............Ti-chi is the way to go

And i love thast exercise you mentioned.......(wax the floor first)

Lay off the carbs.....exercise and do Ti-Bo or Ti-Chi.......

Ti-Chi is low impact and fun and can be used till your last breath.....

Im nearin 50 and was still able to cut chop and split 10 cord of wood last year.........oh by the way thats a great way to get in shape........muscle a 36 inch bar Husky for a winter.....hehehehehe.............builds those Popeye forarms......

Okay, first, I have to dispell a horrid myth here.

The idea that you don't "use" what you eat after 5 or 6 PM is just foolish. The body is a biological machine. Fat cells are actually just stored lipids for the eventual breakdown to be used to create ATP (energy) for the body to fuel it's motions. Saying that you won't use the food you eat after 5 PM is like saying that your car won't use the gas you put in it if it's after midnight.

There have been some great suggestions here. WATER is a wonderful one. Pugz' wife is right on the ball. Water is needed to aid in digestion and absorption, as well as being the only cooling factor you have while putting your muscles through aerobic, or anaerobic exercise. Water is also essential to the body's ability to break down amino acids, and to process lipids (fats). Also, the idea of eating smaller portions is wonderful as well. North Americans eat, on average, 3 times the recommended amount at any given sitting. Keeping track of your portion sizes, as well as the saturated fat content is a great start.

Now..Fat....yep...that word. Noone (NOONE) should be taking more than 24 grams of fat into their body in a single day. Having said that, there can be a balance from day to day (less here, more there). Now, fat IS NECESSARY to ingest to a certain extent, as it provides lubrication, and aids in the production of ATP during cellular digestion. However, consider that one McDonald's hamburger exceeds the recommended daily intake of saturated fats, and you'll start getting the picture.

Varying your diet is important. Making sure that you're getting enough Vitamin B, Potassium, and Calcium (hey, we're all getting older, we need good bone density) is important to keeping the machine running smooth.

Cutting down on Carbohydrates is also a good suggestion...EXCEPT...you want to cut down on simple carbohydrates..not complex ones. Sugars are carbohydrates..and one of the biggest factors standing in the way of weight loss. The body burns off simple sugars faster than complex carbs...and requires less energy to do so. So...your body stores the complex carbs, burns off the simple sugars, and you've used less calories to do so. Result: The battle of the bulge. Sticking with high end starches (potatoes etc.) full grain breads, and natural rice and pastas will help immensely. Drop the Kit-Kat, kid...it's going right to your waist

Some type of daily exercise is the key. Something aerobic (drop the leg warmers and thong..it just means anything that involves increasing your heart rate, and breathing pattern) Tai-Chi is a good example for toning...and walking (yes walking) a few blocks every night is amazing for the increase of lean muscle mass, and the eventual increase, in turn, of the metabolic, and catabolic rate. Simple equation: Increased Lean Muscle=Increased Fat Loss. As for floor exercises, etc. Great for toning, but ultimately they have fuck all to do with weight loss, unless you do them fast enough to increase heart rate to target parameters. They WILL keep the love handles at bay as long as you manage to lose the weight first, though. Toning just keeps the area nice and tight. If there's fat there, though....then there's going to be fat there

All in all, just eat sensibly..smaller portions..get some good exercise, clean living, and keep track of what you put into your body, as well as what you put your body through. Oh...and one "quick tip"..before you go walking, biking, whatever...drink a cup of black coffee. Caffeine aids in the breakdown of lipids, so that you'll burn the fat more efficiently (stick to one cup, though, or it's hard on your heart)

Hope it helps.

Peter

[This message has been edited by DarkGarden (edited 06-27-2001).]

Yup some deal.
I unfortuantely was a competitive swimmer as a yoot. Since I quite I've had issues with gaining weight but I've lost it. I tend to go a bit commando with my diets because I have to. but here's the keys.

Drink lots of water Everyone says it and it's true I keep a bottle by me at all times that I refill from the office water cooler (I get a new bottle each day on my way to work for cleanliness) I have a friend who's a Dr. and bodybuilder. He gave me this simple tip. If your pee isn't clear your not drinking enough.

Eat several small meals. As stated above this keeps your metabolism burning. If you are hungry, eat a small portions and wait 10 minutes. Then if you are still hungry eat a bit more. You don't need as much food as you think so don't sit down with a huge plate in front of you, eat a little, wait a bit to let your body tell you if it;s enough and then see where you are.

Cut fat AND Carbs, make up for these with proteins. I try to get less than 40 grams of fat per day.
Don't do those silly Atkins diets where you cut all carbs and eat lots of burgers with cheese. These work short term but are almost impossible to maintain.

Sugar is an unecessary carb. Just cause those starburst are fat free doesn't make them okay

Instead of not eating after 4 or 5, I recommend eating not carbs after this time. Carbs are fuel and when not used get stored as fats. however remember you need to eat to fuel your metabolism. A light salad with some fish is a great dinner.

I eat lots of asparagus. Its a diuretic and makes you pee.

I have a digital scale that I get on everyday. One it keeps me honest. Two, It keeps me motivated. Seeing that number go down by one every couple of days keeps you going as opposed to those analog scales where the arm wavers between a couple of pounds.

Switch your exercise routine every 3 months. The biking and swimming is great. After a couple of months I'd reccomend joining a gym and doing some weights a couple of times a week. Losing weight is one thing, Gaining muscle mass helps you look your best and stresses your muscles in such a way that keeps your body working. I do all my sets on 1 minute intervals (6-12 reps and about 30 seconds rest) keep your rest around 30 seconds helps make the gym a cardio-type workout.

When your results start tapering switch your routine.

Cook a lot of food at once. Always keep a meal ready in the fridge. This one helps a lot. I live alone, so for me this is even more imortant. When I cook I make enough for about 3 meals. This way I always have somethign healthy avbailible. Keeps me away from the fast food when I just want to go home and veg.


hope it helps


Walking the Earth like Kane

[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 06-27-2001).]

lol I think DG and I are on the same wavelength


Walking the Earth like Kane

http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl09.shtml

I know several people across the globe that do the above and they are in phenomonal health. The best I have been able to manage so far is a pseudo-paleo-diet.

Yes, water as well. Maybe as much as 2-3 galloons a day. Whistle clean distilled is best.

Yes, exercise is good. Remember, sex is best, all-purpose work-out you can do. Well, with a willing partener of course. Trampolean is #2.

Actually, Sex only burns off calories at a 400/hr average rate (yes I'm sure all of you wanton stallions of your minds will debate this, but read the lit.) And trampolines are unfortunately considered to be high impact, due to the stress people exert on their knees and hip joints when they jump wrong.

Any good aerobic exercise will take into account the size of the major muscle groups worked, as well as the target heart rate achievement, and a low impact strategy.

Cross country skiing is a great example of low impact, with the most major muscle groups worked (quadriceps, hamstrings, erectors, pectoralis majora and minora, gluteals, as well as the laterals and obliques) Anything that you find that works the major groups will help.

Sorry warjournal..I know you have bikinis on the brain, but when it comes to serious inquiries of weight loss, you should do the research. Sex can't hurt, of course...unless he's eating a shortcake off the consentual partner

Peter

Besides how much can you accomplish in 3 minutes?

Me besides hitting the gym 5-6 morings a week I play water polo 3 evenings a week. One of the best sports imaginable (really there have been studies) Works upper and lower body, requires, endurance and burst speed as well as hand-eye coordination.

IU recently found a show called Fit cuisine on the Health Network great recipes that have appropriate proportions of all the important food groups you can find the recipes here


Walking the Earth like Kane

I heard about trampolines being #2 many years ago before special shoes by Nike and high/low impact was in mainstream.

Yes, cross-country skiing is very good, but I'll stick to sex being #1 all-purpose work-out. The main reason being the physiology of the body during sex. There are so many more things going on with the body during sex than with any other exercise.

High/low impact, muscle groups, and such during sex is pretty much up to the couple. ::wink wink::

I take a very wide perspective on this because I have done the research. As relevant to this topic, human anatomy and human physiology. Mainly physiology. (Also human sexuality and sexual deviance, but that's a different story.)

All-purpose, well-rounded work-out? Gimme sex. Free-styling isn't just for skaters, rollerbladers, and bikers.

But exercise and sex basically go hand-in-hand. Spending more time on one usually leads to better experiences with the other.

warjournal....with the physiology then, try a course in kinesiology.

You'll begin to understand that through fulcrum action, the muscle groups are worked. That means that more range of motion, and static lift against gravity, or weight, the greater the strain on the red tissue.

I'm not going to debate your propensity for desiring sex as your workout, but if you want to do comparative analysis, through range of motion, as well as dynamic and static force, you're going to fall short calling it the "number 1 exercise for weight loss" or for strength training for that matter.

Unless your partner is 400 pounds, and on top or hoisted in the air....then...more power to ya, and your Ferrigno like arms.

hehe

Keep the sex..add the water polo and skiing.

Addendum: High versus low impact has been around since the early seventies..the problem is that it didn't have long term effectual studies done then. By the early nineties, the number of total kneee, total hip, and rotator cuff replacements among active people was increasing exponentially, and studies on high impact problems were coming to the conclusion that the pressure on the joints was far from the gain of the exercise in balance. It was concluded that exercise using the same range of motion, as well as comparable force was easily achieved with low to medium impact exercise, thereby rendering high impact a bit pointless. Translated: You get the same effects, without the need for new knees.

You make the call.

[This message has been edited by DarkGarden (edited 06-27-2001).]

Well, I've decided to lose some weight as well. Seems I have the first family reunion in 21 years coming up. If I'm gonna travel half way around the world to attend, I wanna look buff!

One thing my Doctor told me recently was that the Lean Cuisine meals don't work very well. Yeah, they're low in fat, but they're very high in sodium. He said stick to the Healthy Choice meals instead. Thank God those taste better than the Lean Cuisine meals! He also said don't eat less than three hours before going to bed. And those Metabolife pills are bad for you if they contain ephedrine (SP?). That drug causes long term side effects.

Take it from someone who's had colon problems before; unprocessed red meat, as well as large amounts of cheese, will KILL you. If you eat some big hunk of steak, the body tries to process this big chunk all at one time. Very stressfull on the digestive track. Same with the big cheese, like pizza.

My wife, the eternal health guru, is gonna help me toss the pounds. I've got the awesome bike to ride (bike trails close by, as well), and got the water filter to keep out all the crap. My digital scale measures weight and fat content (the step-son is at 4%!). So wish me luck!



[This message has been edited by Pugzly (edited 06-27-2001).]

I heard the trampoline thing in the early eighties, so that matche the time-line. Makes sense. Always a few years behind when a fad (health in the '80s) hits and people start having problems down the road.

So, I guess it comes down to perspective.

Calorie burning? Sex falls shorts. Range of motion? Sex falls short. Building mass? Short. Cardio-vascular? Short. Muscle groups? Short. But some of these things are debatable depending on the couple and goal and all that.

But I'm taking a great deal of things in account. Forfeit some range of motion for other benefits. A simple physiology example: sex helps clear the complection and pumping iron doesn't. And there are more such differences. Hence: All-Purpose. Not for specifically losing 100 pounds, adding 50 pounds of muscle, or being able to do the splits.

All-purpose.

Which I don't think is too out of line with what Trixter is looking for (I'm not trying to make a comment on Trix's sexlife or complection).

I wish people would look at the other, less obvious benefits that sex has. But I'm a hopeless romantic like that.

So, perspective, especially the goal and the most efficient way to achieve it.

I guess all that's left is to agree to disagree.

Eat right, Exersise regularly, Die anyway.

Dammit, DB, how are you going to write a diet book and make millions with THAT as your philosophy? Add some filler and pad it out to 200 pages, for crying out loud!

I *have* to play football, 3 times a week. I can't do anything else, I enjoy football, soccer, whatever the heck you wanna call it... I do not enjoy running, biking, lifting weights, whatever. If you wanna stay fit enough to enjoy your kid, excercise doing something you love and can obsess on a little or you'll (I'll that is) quit from boredom. Don't sweat the lovehandles if you just wanna stay somewhat 'fit', like the man said, gonna die anyhow. If you can play soccer 3 times a week you can keep up with your kid.

Oh yeah, for some reason I've found that I love sprinting sets of stairs at our local high school stadium. Bored to tears with this sort of thing normally but for some unknown reason, I love this and *want* to do it. It makes for a hella powerful football player as well.

Jason

Doh! if you do stairs, sprint UP and WALK down. Down is bad on the knees.

[This message has been edited by JKMabry (edited 06-28-2001).]

Wooaaahhh!!! Too much information for me to take in all at once. . . . . . . .
I will just say off the top of my head, HEY THERE DARKGARDEN, you REALLY know your stuff on this topic. Man oh man!

So what I have picked up so far is:-
Diet: get the pasta, potatoes, rice type-things going, and cut out the fat and simple carbohydrates. Okay, what the hell are simple carbohydrates (I know you mentioned sugar, but what else do you avoid?).
Eat small portions more often to get the metabolism going faster? Okay, that sound workable as long as we're eating the right stuff.

Excercise: aerobic is best yes? Okay am I right then in saying that that means getting the heart pounding and me gasping for breath (like every evenings journey home from work, mainly up-hill!) and practicall drowning after swimming many many lengths at the pool? I like the walking suggestion, as I have some real nice countryside near my house and could fit that in with taking out my son in his pushciar of an evening to get him some extra fresh air and hopefully get him to sleep quicker.
I wouldn't mind trying to tone everything up after I've lost some of the weight, but that is not a priority for me, I am not interested in being a chiselled granite statue. Just need to loose the pounds (stones?) to be able to run more than a block without being totally knackered, and get my heart into good shape for a long retirement (if I make it that far).

Ayway, must go and get another glass of water and get some work done, I've been here 40 mins already and all I've done is read this huge post and type this reply (feeling extremeley guilty, must stay an extra hour tonight).

Cheers guys, keep the good advice coming, its really appreciated

i'll add a couple of additional thoughts on losing weight..

losing weight is more about a life change than about dieting.. change of diet and exercise regimen will be ongoing not shortterm...

forget low-fat products - to be low-fat means some essential fatty acids have been eliminated..

so,
*pick an exercise plan you will be able to live with for a long time..
*do not break from your new food regimen more than once a week... yeah, that means you can have pizza once a week... a PT i met told me i could blow my diet for two consecutive meals ONE day a week not quantitatively but in kinds of foods eaten..
*losing 5-6 pounds a month is more likely to stay gone than 20 lbs lost in a month.. and is healthier for you..

the problem with most restrictive diets?
according to my doctor.. people get tired of being on them after a few weeks so they stop and gain 5 lbs immediately..
why? because the body notices the decrease in the amount of food intake and thinks the it'starving - so it changes to starvation mode.. which means all incoming food is handled more resourcefully than before.. then the dieter notices (s)he is not losing weight anymore and goes off the diet. the body takes a couple of days to realize it is no longer on a skimpy intake and hordes/stores the "extra" as fat.. by the time it decides that starvation mode is no longer needed, it has stored about 5 extra lbs of fat!

i tried *many* diets :} and gained way too much weight (5 lbs at a time).. finally, i tried the carbo less diet, which was working for me, but i found i craved rice and wanted sugar in my coffee! i added that and now i am losing 4-5 lbs a month... 34 lbs in the last 7 months.. other than that, i eat like a bird...

docilebob - Speak for yourself - I plan on living forever. So far, so good.

threep laughs at warjournal's and dg's posts and says:
"well, i've got a plan to base my exercise on a combination of water polo, skiing and sex simultaneously. should give a good all round muscle workout."