New member, huge tips needed.

[YouOnlyLiveOnce]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forums. I've looked around a few times before but I thought why not just sign up.

Anyway, I'm a 20 year old male. I'm seeking some tips or help with what I should start with to combat my weight.

To start with I havent weighed myself in a long time but about 4 years ago I weighed about 17/18 stone. Now having not weighed myself in this time and I can see that again, I've put MORE weight on thay I would like to loose it once and for all.

I've got a big build anyway (described to be a rugby player build) so some weight may be from muscle mass but being at 5"9, I know this is a 'very risky' weight. I've broad shoulders and hips but when I feel around those areas its just muscle.

I recently bought a treadmill to help weight loss but seems a waste of my own money as I have used it once.

I eat when I'm bored, I eat when I'm down, I eat when others eat and I don't need too. I have a 'lazy' lifestyle in my own opinion.

A normal working day (4 days a week) for me would be waking up in the morning, getting dressed and sitting at my desk at home working. I'll snack throughout this and I work 11 hour shifts 4 days a week.

I will be offered a meal 'dinner' anytime after 4/5pm and rejecting because either I dont feel hungry or I'm that hungry that my stomach is sore so I won't eat and it will go to waste.

I eat crunchy nut cereal, sausage rolls, bevita biscuits and other snacks laying around such as chocolate biscuits or crisps when they're laying around in a cupboard or fridge.

A day off work (3 days a week) would consist of me waking up in the afternoon, staying in bed watching tv till about 6/7pm. Getting a shower and watching tv till around 10/11pm still snacking but may eat dinner or fast food from a chippy. I'll go out with friends and stay out late till about 6am and probably not eat and feel starved then go to sleep and repeat.

Has anyone got any tips for what can help motivate me? I've checked my BMI estimating my weight and its a pretty scary sight. I want to loose weight. Preferably fast but I know that it can take time, especially from someone my weight and habbits.

 

[-Cory-]

I think the best thing you can do is to try and make a sustainable plan. Maybe don't try to change everything all at once. For example, maybe try to cut out one snack food at a time. The next week cut out another one. The week after that, commit to walking 20 or 30 minutes on your treadmill. Sometimes it's easier to break things down into more manageable pieces.

 

[Evil_Squirrel]

I can relate to your situation, as I have a very heavy set body type and people are very surprised at what I weight as I don't look like I weight that much. Additionally I can relate because in my early 20s I had the exact same habits and did not bother trying to change them until my late 20s when I was 180 kg+

Well here are some tips to start you out, some may apply, some may not depending on who you live with and who does the shopping etc;

Don't look at the BMI, it is a flawed system if you are outside the "average person" range. Additional if you are putting on more muscle you will likely never get into the "normal range".

Set a realistic goal to strive for. It is good to get started early, at 20 you are doing much better than I did. It gets incredibly hard to change your habits and body in general once you get past 30 (I know people hear this all the time and think it is gradual, nope put on nearly 25kg in 1 year once I hit 30, with almost no change in habits).

Some possible goals you could set for yourself, these have worked for me in the past;​

A weight goal in the distant future (like ~1 year+), the reason to set it so far off, is if you set it too close and don't reach it you may feel like you failed. But setting it far enough out you can then adjust it to be more realistic if needed.

​

A strength goal, if you start working out more often this helps a lot being able to see how much more you can lift. As you have not mentioned strength training, I won't delve deeper into this.

An activity goal, my current activity goal is to be able to wear my bloody ski boots without them cutting off the circulation to my legs (I have tree trunk sized calves), at which point I can go skiing. Another activity goal I have is learning a martial art, but is hard to do at my weight.

I would not recommend overly specific or overly broad goals that rely on external factors out of your control, such as "to get this person to notice/like me", "To be the best at blah blah" etc These are not good goals as they have outside factors that you may end up blaming for any thought of failure.​

Track your Calories, and don't switch your diet too quickly, but I found when I tracked my calories (MyFitnessPal on my phone), it gave me a good insight on to how badly I was eating and I made slow sustainable changes because of this.

Don't Change Too Quickly, what I mean by this is don't think you can go from your current lifestyle to that of a professional athlete's over the weekend and keep it up. Yes you might be able to stay on that diet or exercise routine for a couple of weeks, but likely it will be too much stress and change for you to handle long term. Make small changes bit by bit. Once you have "adapted" to the first change, make another.

21 day rule, It takes 21 days to build a habit...more or less. I did not start off loving the gym or like eating properly. I use to drink a 24 of pop every 2-3 days and I use to go out and drink 3 pitchers of beer with lunch when I was in my early and mid 20s. My roommates had an intervention for me...ironically not about the alcohol, but the pop. I hadn't noticed how much I was drinking until they brought out 3 garbage bags full of cans from the past 2 weeks. This made me realize I needed to cut back. It took an entire year for me to stop drinking pop on a regular basis. I drink almost nothing but water now, with beer when I go out for dinner or lunch. A pop only when I want a double spiced rum and coke.

Shopping Habits, again I do not know if you are the one who does the shopping or not but NEVER EVER go shopping hungry. Ever. If I don't have any food in the house before shopping, I will go out to eat before doing grocery shopping. This saves me from buying the "garbage items" that I feel like I crave when I am hungry. This helps me not to buy a huge bag of chips or 4 litres of chocolate milk while I am shopping and lets me make more rational and sane decisions. Again start off slow, the first thing you should do is start reading the labels when you buy things. I was insanely surprised by some of the things I was eating and how horrible they were for me. As I realized how bad they were, I just put them back on the shelf and went with a different option. Sausage rolls come to mind on this one, I switched from Sausage rolls to just sausages on a bun, might not seem like a huge swap, but if you look at the contents it is vastly different. Again the key here is to take things slowly and adjust rather than "throwing out all the junk food and going completely healthy all over the weekend".

I also enjoy snacking a lot, here is some snacks I recommend;​

Baby Carrots & Dip, these are my go to snack for the most part. It even got to the point once when I was shitting out nothing but orange. The reason I go with these is because I like the taste personally, I can eat them mindlessly for the most part without the dip while I am watching TV and playing games. With the dip be a bit cautious about this as this can be fairly high calorie/fat if you don't take it into moderation.

Cheese Crisps, usually made from Parmesan Cheese, these are very tasty, but you can really only eat a few of them at a time as they are so cheesey (literally made just from cheese, but "puffy").

Fruits, grapes and kiwi are some of my favorites.

Protean Bars, they take a bit of getting use to for taste, but they are a pretty good substitute for chocolate bars.

Protean Powder, now from the sounds of it you won't be hitting the gym hard anytime soon, and it might feel a bit embarrassing buying something like this (I know it was for me when I was huge 200+kg), but you are not buying this to put on muscle, but Protean gives you a full feeling quite quickly. Which helps with snacking.
​

Accept Failure, but do not get deterred. Understand that as you are changing you will "stumble and fail" and it can be very hard to find your motivation to keep going. I use to rely on others for motivation. The hot girl at the gym or in class, the prospect of being a great looking guy or the star of the rugby team, etc etc The problem with this sort of motivation is not a long term solution. A much better motivation is that it makes you feel better about yourself overall. I have gained and lost your entire body weight about 2 times in my life. I went from 100kg at my lightest (after puberty) to 210kg at my heaviest (estimate as no scales worked). I am currently sitting at 177kg down from 190kg (January 2016). Least to say I have a few reasons to be discouraged, but I am still hitting the gym 3-4 times a week, still eating relatively healthy and keep count on my calories.

But I am not getting discouraged even though I did not hit my goal weight for this time of year which was 160kg. Why? Because I feel a lot better, both physically and mentally. I am not seeing the losses I want to see, but I am seeing the gains in strength. I am getting frustrated with a couple of doctors unable to give me a sense of what I am doing wrong in order to reach my ultimate goal weight (125kg) and my gut is not reducing. But I will eventually figure this out and fix the problem.

Just remember you have identified the overall problem, but like any good problem solver will tell you, once you have identified a large complex issue, you need to break it down into much smaller pieces and tackle theses one at a time. Drawing a visual diagram of this can help and don't expect 2 weeks of eating better to result in 10 kilos off. If it was really easy, everyone would have great looking bodies.

-The Evil Insane Squirrel

 

[Teressa McClelland]

Nice post and I completely agree with this.