Weight loss and Conditioning Advice Needed

[Arch]

Hello everyone!

I am completely new here!
I'll give a quick rundown of my "stats" and a brief background.

Weight: Approx. 250-255
Height: 5'11

I am a current college student, and I have socked these pounds on rather fast due to bad habits and the "munchies". My goal is to be down to around 210, then build up muscle mass from that point. Though I am not looking for a "ripped" look per say. Last year I was an avid rugby player at around the 210 mark and have been accepted to play again this year. I seemed to let myself go rather quickly, haha.

I am looking for advice and general opinions on what a good routine would be. I have cut out fast food, late night ordering, all alcohol, and a certain munchie inducing substance. I am also starting from a dead stop of no exercise and personally feel pretty darn out of shape. I will post pictures soon if that helps.

Like I mentioned, I don't want to bulk up from this point, as I would rather shed the pounds then hit the weights. Any and all advice would be helpful, consider me a newbie in all respects. If any more information is needed, just ask!

This would be very appreciated and very very helpful for me, so thank you in advance. =)

-Stephen-

 

[Steve]

I have a couple of random thoughts in no particular order:

1. Stop worrying about bulking up. While focusing on fat loss, bulking up should be the least of your concerns. Muscle growth requires an excess of energy (calories) and fat loss requires a shortage. These contradictory factors should clear up some of your misconceptions. You might also check for some basic concepts pertaining to resistance training.

2. Simply "cleaning up" your food intake will more than likely control calories to an extent where fat is lost. If it doesn't though, you might have to get your hands a bit dirtier and track calories a bit. You need to be in a calorie deficit. If you can "wing it" while still maintaining a deficit, that's great. If you can't though, more serious tracking may be called for. If that's the case, is a nice resource.

3. Here are some very general numbers for you to think about. A safe bet is to try losing 1% of your weight each week. For simplicity's sake, let's call this 2 lbs per week, ok?

You'd like to lose 45 lbs... which using the above formula would leave you at 23 weeks. That's 161 days.

There are 3500 calories in 1 pound of fat. You would like to lose 45 lbs. That totals 157,500 calories. To achieve that in 161 days, you'd need a daily caloric deficit of 980 calories.

Deficit from what though? Well, you need to find your maintenance intake which can be guesstimated to be around 14 calories per pound, assuming exercise. In your case, let's call this 3500 calories.

With all this in mind, a wise calorie goal for you each day might be something like 2500.

Make sense?

4. At this point, any exercise is good exercise as long as you're doing it safely. Try to do something daily... and you don't have to go nuts. Some days you can walk/run. Other days you can lift some weights (focus on higher reps and shorter rests and refer to the link I posted in #1). Other days you can do a circuit of "drills" outside which could include calisthenics, running, jumping rope, etc. The possibilities are endless. And don't get hung up on thinking there's One Right Way to go about this.