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      09-24-2020, 12:49 PM   #2575
NorCalAthlete
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Quote:
Originally Posted by UncleWede View Post
My youngest is maybe 1/2" shorter than I, but pushing 260. His oldest bro and I had an intervention of sorts last night. I was dreading the confrontation, but he seems really receptive to us helping to motivate him to drop a bunch of weight. His bro has been doing a X-fit for nearly a year, and will start dragging him there on Monday.
I've always paid for his membership at the gym but "I thought they were closed right now"

The other thing I know he needs even more is the nutritional counseling. I'm just afraid of places like Lindora, that they will be more about selling him "products" than knowledge and lifestyle changes.
I know they say "abs are made in the kitchen", but IMHO having been an athlete all my life and having weightlifted off and on for 20 years now...I'm gonna go against the strict trainer "wisdom" and shit and say it's 80% workouts and 20% diet.

I've had points where, per the dining facility charts and everything, I was consuming damn near 10,000 calories a day. I've also had points where I only consumed about 1,500 calories a day. My energy levels for workouts have varied but I stick to the plan and just vary the weights accordingly. Edit - additional note : a half ass workout is better than skipping a day. Consistency is key. A wall is built brick by brick and all that. Maybe some days you're able to lay 100 bricks and other days you don't have the energy and only manage 20 bricks, but as long as you keep adding bricks that's what matters. Keep at it, day by day, week by week. It takes about a month to build the habit to where you start looking forward to it or being able to self motivate to drag yourself to the gym and workout.

The primary factor is energy expended during the day has to be greater, by an order of magnitude, than the caloric intake. Doesn't matter if the calories are pizza and burgers or rice and grilled chicken - if you can work it off / sweat it out / etc you'll lose the weight. Additionally, don't be too focused on the pounds day by day - for starters, muscle weighs more than fat, so if you're weightlifting (rather than just doing HIIT cardio and shit to try and sweat out as much as possible) your "weight loss" will be slower or at times even stagnant, and focusing on lbs at that point will discourage you from continuing. Instead, focus on strength gains and tape measurements and it'll be easier to stay on track. I wouldn't focus on time either so much as reps completed, and proper form matters more than throwing weight around. You want steady, piston-like machine movements. If you're jerking shit around and have to use momentum to get it up / down / whatever, your form needs to improve.

Caveat - if you're doing olympic powerlifting like clean + jerk, that doesn't necessarily apply as much, I'm primarily referring to your core workout lifts like bench press, squat, overhead press, rows, curls, lat pulls, etc.

Additional disclaimer - don't fucking eat pizza and burgers every day, you DO have to maintain SOME kind of diet, I'm just saying don't trip too much over sticking to a strict one until you're down at like 12% body fat. If you're up over 20%, focus on the workouts and spending the energy more. Where a lot of people struggle and relapse into bad habits is when they try to tackle the whole problem all at once and stick to some kind of IFBB level super strict diet, workout, etc. Even the most motivated pros have trouble sticking to that shit without their trainers - you're setting yourself up for failure if you set that as your expectation at the beginning of your weight loss journey. I'd even go a bit further and say your trainers are trying to pad in some job security by setting you on that path at times. Sure, for the most optimum results if you stuck to that type of diet / workout you'd drop the weight faster, but a lot of this stuff is mental and you need small successes to build on. If you're immediately failing, time after time, because of super strict or unrealistic goals for yourself, you're going to relapse / yo-yo back to your old weight and beyond.

Some basic starters for diet :
  • No soda. None. Not 0 calorie, not 0 sugar, none. Get that entire category gone.
  • Limit beer intake - if you want to drink shift to wine or hard liquor; if your stomach can't handle that then simply drink less beer.
  • Limit condiments - a grilled chicken salad sounds healthy until you slather it with 5 gallons of ranch dressing. Chill with that shit. Same goes with mustard, ketchup, BBQ sauce, etc. Yeah, it adds flavor and tastes good and whatever...it's still just add-on empty calories.
  • Limit snacks between meals - chips, dip, etc. If you have to snack, make it healthier.
  • Limit junk food - not saying you have to cut it out of your life immediately, I still love a good bacon cheeseburger, but I'd say I indulge that urge maybe once a month at this point. Hell, even a chicken bowl from chipotle can be healthier than Five Guys burgers.

Last edited by NorCalAthlete; 09-24-2020 at 01:01 PM..
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