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Tired of being out of shape

jkittle99

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So I guess I'm posting here because I need a good kick in the ass to get me started, and keep me going. I'm 34 years old, 5'10" and 204lbs. I'm tired of feeling fat, and my acid reflux issues are just killing me. I was always skin and bones growing up, but after my dad died, I put on 30lbs in a year, and I look like I'm about 9 months pregnant with my gut, which is where most of my weight sits. And I just plain dont feel good anymore. I've got to do something.

I've got bad knees (runners knee) , so high impact stuff hurts. I can't run, but I do like to ride the bike. I've got a stationary bike that i'm going to try and spend some regular time on. I'm thinking about maybe buying a bowflex to try and help boost my metabolism, but I need some advice, encouragement, and support to get through this. My target weight is 150/160, and I'm hoping that if I can get down to that, that maybe JUST MAYBE my reflux issues will calm down - I never had them before I put the weight on.

How many of you have been where I am, and do you have any advice? I'm trying to watch what I eat and track calories using my fitness pal, but I could use some words of wisdom and encouragement. I'm tired of feeling sick.
 

mwlabel

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One of the most important things to remind yourself at this point is that you have to hurt more to get where you want to be. You'll be sore and tired for a couple of weeks while you get back into consistent exercise. Don't just fight through it, love it. Those muscle aches are like hickeys... you should smile when you feel them while you're waking up.

For low impact stuff, find a local gym that has a pool if you can. Swimming is so wonderful.

Food: It's not dieting. It's a lifestyle change. Veggies are your friend, along with fish and chicken. Soda is no longer a thing.

You have a realistic goal, now start coming up with a reasonable plan to obtain that. Are you going to work out 4 days a week? 5? Have you structured your workouts? Do you plan on weighing out your food portions?

Do you have a gym buddy? Get somebody who is going to call you every day to harass you. Pick somebody who will come, literally, drag you out of bed should they have to.

Go kick some ass. Nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished by waiting for it.
 
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One of the best things you can do as far as diet is to just limit your sugar intake, or eliminate as much as possible. It goes a long way when you're also getting active. Bike, weight training, swimming..
 
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Hello there, i applaud your decision to take care of your health. I wouldn't do a starvation diet. But keep in mind you don't have to burn calories you don't eat. Burning 1000+ calories is not fun.

When you workout, don't ONLY do cardio. Lifting helps a lot in weight loss, and overall body composition. The new muscle changes you body composition (bodyfat percentage drops).

Besides that, simply, commit to it. That's the most important one. Baby steps are steps too.

Also the bowflex is an impressive piece of equipment. I find some old fashioned dumbells and a small flat bench are excellent and versatile. Will do wonders if consistency is there. Goodluck!!(y)
 
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I'm in a similar boat. I'm 5' 11", and I was up to 228. In 5 weeks, I'm down to 211, and it's been strictly diet. Now that my diet has stabilized, I'm in the gym 3 days a week, targeting for 175-180. If you want advice on what's worked for me, don't hesitate to PM me. I'm enjoying my life more and more each day, and I feel awesome. I'd be more than happy to offer my support and (admittedly limited) advice. If not, best of luck! I hope you can make your goal a reality.
 

Hoshneer

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Myfitnesspal - Hoshneer

Add me and we'll lose weight together. In my experience just worry about calories. If you're craving and you have the calories enjoy it. Limiting sugar intake does help very much but in the end calories are king. If you have a gym nearby go join it. I am a huge fan of Anytime Fitness.

Food for me is a straight up addiction, I struggle with it everyday. You need to remember that you are always going to fall off the wagon and eat a dirty greasy sexy cheeseburger. It's whether you jump back on the train after is what matters. Consistency is key.

It is also good to download an app or go online and find your daily caloric needs. It helps when you are craving and you know that you can still eat 1000 calories without gaining any weight. Most of all don't put pressure on yourself and stay away from the scale, eat and live healthy. F*#k that stupid scale!
 
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Lots of good advice above and im going to echo some of it but honestly the majority of this is going to be tough love whether you like it or not and I mean it with the utmost respect.

To Start, My chick and I have been exactly where you are. Two and a half years ago we were both overweight, out of shape and eating like crap every single day. (I am 5'7" and weighed 170lbs. I hover around 135 now)

How did we fix it? We changed our diet and started exercising. Pretty crazy right? One of my favorite questions I get asked by people I haven't seen in a while is "OMG You lost so much weight!?!? How did you do it????" My response, I started eating healthy and exercising 6 days a week.... they are always somehow shocked by this response, "oh..." ughh yeah, hate to break it to you but there are no short cuts and not magic bullets with this one. If you want it you have to earn it.

Yes its hard, you will be sore, your are going to crave junk food and I still do now. But if you are are serious about wanting to get in shape you have to quit being lazy and stop making excuses and just do it. NO ONE can do it for you, it is hard, it is work but only you can do it. I tell people there are plenty of days I come home after spending 12+ hours at two jobs and I still exercise and eat a healthy meal before KO'ing and doing it all over again. Is this an extreme case? Yes, but my point being is if you want something bad enough you will make it happen. Even on my off days from my night job there are few things I would like more than to come home kick off my shoes and relax with a cold beer and a nice cigar but I don't make exercise optional and do it anyway as soon as I walk in the door just to get it over with. Because I know that in the same time I could spend dicking around on youtube and smoking a cigar I would have gotten an ass kicking work out in and been done for the night.



With that said, if you can only do one or the other Diet vs Exercise I say change your diet. I should specify there is no "Diet" that will work for you it is a lifestyle regardless of how cliche that may be. You cannot selectively change you diet and expect things to just happen, its all or nothing, you just need to start eating healthy end of story. I am not saying you can never have another soda or cheeseburger what I am saying that you have to earn them and honestly if you commit the time and effort in the gym you will not want to reverse all that hard work for a few minutes of mouth pleasure. I think the occasional cheat meal it totally healthy both physically and mentally and for me personally those cheat meals drive me to work that much harder the rest of the week. But I think you will find once you start eating healthy you will not be craving as much if any of the junk you were consuming before just because of how good you will feel eating real food.

As far as exercise is concerned if you have bad knees but do ok on a bike, do it, do what ever it is that you want and will continue to do. If you hate a workout you are probably not going give your all and you most certainly wont stick with it. I used to think yoga was the stupidest shit on the planet and as someone who also suffers from two bad knees I absolutely love it now. It is basically zero impact, static exercise combined with stretching. Honestly if I could only do one exercise the rest of my life it would be yoga and that is coming from a beer drinking, cigar smoking, ex race car mechanic. Thankfully I am still able to do higher impact stuff but you are going to have to humble yourself to do this so don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and try something new you just might be surprised.

This is going to sound silly but the tipping point for me was my chick making me watch a documentary on netflix called fat, sick and nearly dead. If you need any motivation at all, watch that movie. The truck driver in that movie (I think his name is phil staples) is the most inspirational mofo on the fkn planet to me. Once I saw the transformation he went through I decided enough was enough and if he could do it I have zero excuses. And literally from that day forward everything changed I wish I could tell that guy how much he has impacted my life because he literally inspired me to do a 180. We did the juice thing for a while about 3 months to be exact before switching to an all around healthy diet of lean meat, and lots of veggies. But in those 3 months of drinking juice twice a day everyday we lost over 70 pounds between the two of us without even starting exercising. Once that happened it was game on an we haven't stopped since.

Honestly anyone can do it, you just gotta put in the work, if you really care about yourself and your future you will make some changes and stick with them this cannot be a temporary thing. Lastly if you need some extra motivation or have any questions at all or just wanna talk about this pm me, call me whatever and we can talk about this.

As far as diet is concerned googling lean recipes is a good place to start, print out anything that sounds good and make a binder full of recipes and just toss the ones you dont like.

We cook from here quite a bit Dolce Diet and everything its pretty tasty and obviously not bad for you.

As far as exercise is concerned we started with P90x did it non stop for over a year and a half before giving insanity a try, I thought insanity was too high impact and brought on knee discomfort for me so I went back to p90x for another few rounds. Now I have moved on to kettle bells which I currently love and have been doing keith webers extreme cardio kettle bell workouts a few times a week and get my ass kicked and they are also pretty low impact but do incorporate a lot of squats.

Also if you are going to juice, my advise is just put in EVERYTHING don't juice for taste you can chug that ish anyway. We would literally go to the farmers market every saturday spend 60 bucks and get enough produce for the both of us to juice twice a day everyday that entire week and we would literally make a pitcher of juice containing.... Kale, Carrots, brocoli, ginger, tomatoes, oranges, apples, beets, celery, spinnach, cilantro, parsley, berries, bok choi whatever looked good. One secret I will say is ADD LEMON. Lemon is an important one because at least for me it cuts the green taste down dramatically.
 
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I have some GREAT advise. Feel free to take it or leave it, but here goes.
#1 cut bread! Try and cut 90% (if not ALL) of the bread you eat..
#2 Drink more WATER! Before you sit down to eat Lunch and dinner (notice I didn't say Breakfast ;) ) go, DOWN a 16 oz glass of water!
#3 BUY A GREAT JUICER! SPEND THE MONEY!!! Juice 1 meal a day. Breakfast is a GREAT one to juice! Couple it with 16 ounces of yep you guessed it H20
#4 Take your daily vitamins even if its a kids chewable NEVER MISS A DAY AND spread them out throughout the day..No need to take em all at once! Ohh and take an extra couple on Sunday!
#5 Get your heart rate up for at least 10 min a day doing ANYTHING jumping jacks, twisting, running in place WHATEVER! That's it yes 10 min is all its going to take!

You do this for 6 weeks you will drop 30# or more!.. You do this for 6 weeks and drop 30# You will WANT to do the next phase.

Just remember and you need to say this OUT LOUD EVERYDAY! You are a million dollar piece of equipment, like a race car!! and you would NEVER dump shit fuel or shit oil or shit anything in, on or around a million dollar race car would you? HELL NO! Well you are one! and you need to think of yourself like one! I mean its ok to go burn the tires off from time to time, we all do!

Sorry I started on a tangent there... Man I wish you the best of luck!


Cheers
Jay
 
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bdc30

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I'm going through something very similar at the moment so I can definitely feel where you're coming from. My wife bought a bowflex a few years ago but honestly I don't have a lot of use for it. We've recently bought a Concept 2 rowing machine and I've been using that at least 5-6 days a week for the past couple weeks, trying to average at least 2000m each day. I've done up to 5000m in one sitting but I think it nearly killed me...lol

I also went and picked up a couple dumbbells and have been doing a few exercises with those that I picked up from Mens Health magazine. I have also been watching what I eat, trying to cut back on the junk and drink more water throughout the day. I started taking a mens multivitamin as well and my wife makes me a protein shake about once every other day as well that I use as a meal replacement. Another thing I've cut way back on is my beer/alcohol intake.

It's only been a couple weeks thus far and I've not noticed any huge changes -- although I'll definitely say the first couple days I used the rower I thought I was going to die after doing 500-1000m (around 2min15s/500m pace), but after being on it more often, I can already see my technique improving along with my upper body strength so I don't have to work as hard to get a quick pace and can maintain it over longer distances.

I know it's going to be a long process but I'm feeling the same way as you as far as being in my mid 30's and out of shape and I'm just tired of it.
 
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Josh,

I understand your dissatisfaction with your weight brother! I was 5-10, 313 on July 1 of last year. Now I'm down a total of 80 lbs. and I'm never looking back. Won't rest until I hit 190 (my college weight). I did it by walking an average pace on the treadmill (1 hour each day) and eating a lot of protein, complex carbs and healthy fats. My own reflux issues are gone, I'm happier, I look better and the cigars taste better. :cigar:

As to your decision to start doing something about it: out freaking standing! You have to CHOOSE to make this a part of your daily routine. It's like brushing your teeth or taking a shower. Once you get the ball rolling, it's much easier. "Objects in motion tend to stay in motion."

The key is...baby steps! It has to be a simple, sustainable routine. Don't do too much, too soon. Otherwise, one morning you'll just get up and say, "screw it - I'm not doing this today." Also, when you do it gradually, you greatly reduce the number of annoying overuse injuries (knee pain, shin splints, tendinitis, etc). For now, if I was you, I'd worry less about conditioning (intense cardio :stop:) and more about burning fat (light cardio (y)). The conditioning part can come in 6-8 months, after the bulk of your surplus weight is gone. Adding strength training would be great 2-3 days a week x 20-30 minutes, because as you said, more muscle = more metabolized fat. And you don't have to buy a Bowflex! Bodyweight / pushup training is all the rage because you can do it at home on the cheap. A pair of dumbbells, a core ball and some exercise bands and you're good to go...

Start a conversation with me if you want more details as to how I did this. Most of it can be worked into the average lifestyle without too much difficulty. You can totally do it brother...it's not that difficult! :)

Jason
 
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As many have already said one way or the other is that you have taken the 1st & most important step by consciously deciding that you want to change, take control of your health.
Diet is a lifestyle and NOT just a 30, 60 or 90 day thing and then you go back to eating crap. And you can eat "clean" without only eating "rabbit food"! Sugar reduction is important but hard since so much is added to processed foods, but possible. My Fitness Pal is good for tracking your consumption and I am looking into it more myself.
Get yourself moving in some way! Walking since you can't run, cycling burns A LOT of calories. The gym is your friend! Lifting is not just about bulking, it burns a lot of calories too. And depending on your routine and manner (speed) in which you perform it really bumps up your metabolism.
Besides My Fitness Pal, look into the Whole 30 food plan.
For workouts & motivation, check out bodybuilding.com
I'm 5'11. 174lbs. At my heaviest I was 206. But my body fat % was as high as 33%! Right now down to 21%.
Good luck!
 
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For years I've struggled with my weight. More to the point, I've struggled with m y attitude. I can make the best, kick-ass determination to lose weight and get healthy but part of my brain hates to be "denied" things. For example, I love to hang out in the living room with my wife, turn off the lights, light a couple of candles, and just chat. Until the power goes out and I *can't* turn the lights on. Then I need to have power.

Trying to make large-scale lifestyle changes have proven to be the same challenge for me. I never go on a diet, but I have tried changing my diet. So, this time around, and it seems to be working, is that I am making really small changes, one at a time, until the change becomes a new habit. Step one was to cut out fast food. Now that my body no longer craves it, I'm making my next change - drinking lots of water. After that, the next small change.

The one dietary change that has stuck is to eat more of a Mediterranean diet. Not a "true" one but incorporating a lot of the ideas behind it and it's helped a lot. For example, replacing animal fats with plant fats (olive oil v butter, etc.) and trying to make meat part of the entree instead of the entree itself. I've also pretty much cut out beer and switched to whiskeys, drinking them neat (and less often)

I exercise twice a week for about 90 minutes each time, and will increase that next.

So that's what I am doing and, based on my personality type, it's finally working.

Good luck, brother! I, too, am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
 

SDShark

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One of the most important things to remind yourself at this point is that you have to hurt more to get where you want to be. You'll be sore and tired for a couple of weeks while you get back into consistent exercise. Don't just fight through it, love it. Those muscle aches are like hickeys... you should smile when you feel them while you're waking up.

For low impact stuff, find a local gym that has a pool if you can. Swimming is so wonderful.

Food: It's not dieting. It's a lifestyle change. Veggies are your friend, along with fish and chicken. Soda is no longer a thing.

You have a realistic goal, now start coming up with a reasonable plan to obtain that. Are you going to work out 4 days a week? 5? Have you structured your workouts? Do you plan on weighing out your food portions?

Do you have a gym buddy? Get somebody who is going to call you every day to harass you. Pick somebody who will come, literally, drag you out of bed should they have to.

Go kick some ass. Nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished by waiting for it.
Great motivation here, Alex. Thank you!
 

jkittle99

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Lots of really good posts here, and I appreciate all of the support. I did a nice 90 minute bike ride yesterday and some P90x yoga, which about killed me, and I came in under my daily calorie count, which right now is 1500, but I'll adjust that up or down as necessary. I think tonight (in a couple hours) is going to be cardio night with p90x, and I'm sure that will go a lot better than the yoga did. Gave myself a rest on the bike today (bad knees) but I think I'll be back at it again on Monday.
 
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At 210 pounds, I'd consider upping that calorie target to something like 2100 or even 2300. If you're hungry all the time, you're going to cheat. Take that bit of advice from a confirmed cheater; a higher calorie count with increased activity will promote fat burning and raised metabolism.
 
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At 210 pounds, I'd consider upping that calorie target to something like 2100 or even 2300. If you're hungry all the time, you're going to cheat. Take that bit of advice from a confirmed cheater; a higher calorie count with increased activity will promote fat burning and raised metabolism.
^^^ This! 1500 at that weight is pretty low. Add some healthy fats, complex carbs or lean protein. I agree with socalsailor - 2300 is not too much at all.
 
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I started a "Best Loser" competition with my Rotary club and our team meets every Monday with a fellow Rotarian fitness trainer. Having someone to work out with makes a huge difference!

Even more helpful perhaps was myfitnesspal, as it makes tracking calories and nutrition so easy!

Good luck, I'm 6'2" and have already dropped from 285 to 266 and feel GREAT!
 
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