One you’re in full on life-style change mode, I’ll be interested to see what sort of food you’re posting in the “what have you cooked lately” thread. I found it was always easy to make certain kinds of food that were carb/fat rich, but it becomes way more challenging to make a mix of vegetables and lean protein.
I’ve been looking at your posts there for the last 2 years and saying to myself “Yeah…I can’t eat that. Damn.”
Apparently I also can’t eat that, but I have insisted on doing so anyway ;-)
Good luck Adam! You’ll feel better for it and there is definitely a sense of pride as you get closer to your goal.
Sounds great!
So I had a bodybuilding friend clue me in on this, since I’ve had issues with most body weight programs because my body weighs too much. It’s kind of the opposite of what you want for strength training. Instead of building muscle slowly by increasing weight over time, you’re going to start exercising with the highest weight to begin with and then reduce it over time as you lose weight. That doesn’t make sense. It would be like saying, “I want to bench 300 pounds” and starting with the weights at 300 and pushing as hard as you can every day until one day you can actually lift it, but also your goal is slowly reducing every day until it’s 200 pounds.
Of course, he is a gym rat, so it’s no big deal for him to say so given the other considerations with how to train and how hard it is to actually get to the gym. But what I’m saying is, if you can get to some gym equipment or put some in your garage, then maybe think about doing that.
My secondary concerns to bodyweight training is essentially, “look at that guy in the video doing squats first thing. Doing squats is really bad for my knees, if I could get on a machine and push half my weight instead, then that would be a lot better idea.”
I need to get back to the gym. :/
Good Luck. I’m on my own slow trek downward to <200#, a threshold passed in the other direction, 12 years ago.
On weight tracking, I’ve found there’s a lot of noise/oscillation of +/- 2 lbs or so for daily weigh-ins, but that the monthly average shows the true progress (good or bad, mostly good).
On bodyweight exercise, since I like being able to wake -> work-out -> shower without leaving the apt, the mitigation I use for the issue arrendek brought up is to change the technique to make the exercise easier. Eg. for a pushup, instead of doing the classic one (when I started out) I would do the pushups with my hands on the countertop (mostly standing). After a few weeks (and lost weight), I would lower the angle (stool/chair etc.). This continued until eventually I was on the ground.
Thanks folks!
Yeah, I get the limitation on bodyweight stuff, but honestly the only real issue is the squats because I have kinda shitty knees to start with. I might have to lower difficulty or substitute something there if it gets any worse than it is.
As someone with knee problems, the important thing is to take it slowly. If you do too much and aggravate a knee, then it sets you back for weeks, that’s no good.
Having said that, what sort of trouble do you have? I have tracking problems with my kneecaps, especially on the right. A proper knee brace designed to stabilize the patella really helps a ton.
Idk. My knees hurt fairly regularly. Feels like the large muscle of my thigh is going to tear away from my kneecap when I get down toward the bottom of the standing squat. Good times.
Don’t squat that deeply, then. There’s no sense trying to get to parallel or below if it injures you. “No Pain No Gain” doesn’t apply here ;)
When you squat, do your heels come off the ground at all? And what kind of weight are we talking about, all weights or when you load it up fairly heavy?
The reason I’m asking this is that squats are notorious to hurt when the form is off, even a little. It’s the one lift I really needed help on from a trainer friend. Since so many muscles are used, it’s easy for one small one to be weak, and that causes the form to be off, even a little, and for things to hurt, even when they should not. My specific issue wasn’t quite like yours, but in effect, I wasn’t starting with my knees out enough, with my legs in more of a shallow V, versus parallel.
Bad knees are bad knees, but it might be worth even a single 1/2 hour with a good gym trainer. Squats are AMAZING at activating so many muscles that they kick your testosterone levels up. That’s a good thing, especially for us old farts trying to lose weight and look better.
Adam B, you’ve inspired me.
So I’m 6’4" and after trekking to Everest in 2001 I weighed 180 lbs. I was a lean, mean machine.
Cut to today, and now I weigh 250 lbs. That’s 70 freaking pounds! My blood pressure is too high, my good cholestorol is too low, etc.
So it’s time to seriously try and lose weight. I went from 240 to 215 about 5 years ago by basically not eating as much, like a lot. First few weeks I was hungry, my stomach shrank, and 2 cheeseburgers and a chicken sandwich for lunch became half a burger.
I’ve been trying kinda half-assed the last few months with no results. I know my problem, I snack at night. Leftovers, cheese, breakfast bars, you name it. I’m pretty good during the day but sabotage myself at night. Anyone else a night snacker? How did you break the habit?
Well, there’s really one of two approaches: go cold turkey on night snacking or find something that’s satisfying enough to you that you don’t keep nibbling on other things. I suppose a third approach would be to nibble on something like celery that has virtually no calories, but that’s never really worked for me.
And if you are snacking because of boredom, find a way to fix that.
Hah. I fell off hard (general soreness, some bad sleep) and then landed in the damn hospital with anaphylaxis from an allergy shot the other day, so now I’m on steroids that increase hunger and I’m supposed to take it easy for a week or so.
This is not helping me lose weight, dangit!
I was a late night snacker. When I was on hard-core weight loss mode, the rule was no food after 7PM, suck it up loser. Not drinking (EEEEP, I LOVE WHISKEY) helps a lot, as whenever I drink I want a little salt or something to go with my beer/random brown liquid.
The good news is once you lose your weight and you’re in maintenance mode, it’ll feel like LUXURY to have a snack once in a while later in the evening.
My go-to “last call” snack was carrot sticks with romesco. Why romesco? It’s got nuts and olive oil, so it has healthy fats in it that are good for cholesterol, and the fat helps with satiety. I also think it taste quite nice, which is a lot better than I feel about carrot sticks. It’s the closest my ass got to chips and dip for a good 9 months.
Limiting choices helps a lot, but it’s harder t do if you have a big family and they aren’t interested in restricting their diet. If I had cookies and ice cream and other crap around me 24/7 I’d struggle a lot more, but my wife was into my diet, which really helped.
Man, a lot of night snackers!
I only eat when watching movies/serials, not when playing games or reading or boredgaming or whatever. I feel like ultimately it’s a bad habit to break but I’ve tried the light calorie snacks in the past. Cheese dust rice cakes actually aren’t bad. Love that recipe for the almond pepper paste.
(Leaving boredgaming… Maybe we can coin a new term!)
I have that problem too. Especially after my wife goes to sleep. I was good for a while but have been eating more over the past couple weeks. Even though I’m getting 2000+ calories I started feeling hungry all the time. Eventually that led me to eating more unhealthy snacks. One solution is to go to bed earlier. Or, like others have mentioned snack on something that isn’t bad for you and keep the portion reasonable.
On the good side I’ve still managed to keep under 200 pounds after getting under 200 a couple weeks ago for the first time in like 10 years. I’ve been hovering right around 199.
Congrats Rob!
Thanks Guap.
Another thing to try and break the habit for yourself…
What are you usually doing when you snack? Playing games or watching tv?
If so, try and do something different. It’s harder to snack when reading. Do you have a hobby that would also be difficult to snack during? Do you have a treadmill that you can get up and walk on? I did that sometimes to help myself from not eating. The key for me was not to consider how much I wanted to eat. Just get up and get on the treadmill. No thinking allowed! Many times if I could get past those first several minutes of when I started thinking about eating I would then be happy I resisted and it got easier.