I hope some of my notes help, sorry for a bit of a dump, @inactive_user
I’m sitting at about 50 lbs down, though I was originally 65lbs down total. My goal is about 25 lbs away. My journey has been long. During each phase I’ve learned to adapt a little bit more with a different non-gaining calorie limit, exercise scheme, and lifestyle.
General advice:
Abs are made in the kitchen, muscles are made in the gym. I’ll extrapolate that a bit with another exercise, running. If you get off your butt and run 5 miles a day for one week, you’ll roughly lose 1 pound. If you’re relatively in-shape, that will take you roughly 6 hours per week to do (average 10 min/mile.) Instead, if you shave 500 calories a day, you can do the same thing. So roughly, dropping a can of soda at break, a roll at lunch, and a tiny cookie after dinner. Estimated time wasted to do that: virtually none. Put 5 times more into your diet than what you do into exercise, of any type.
Diet:
Pick what you can live with. Pick what you’re family and SO will not deter your from, and perhaps will even participate WITH you. It doesn’t matter what the foods are, the only real magic is calories in vs expenditure out. Your TDEE (look it up) is something you need to know. How much you take in now is something you need to know. If you can do low-carb, do so. If you can do low calorie, that works too. If you can simply cut portions, you might not only stop the gain, but might tip the scales and slowly lose as well.
Apps:
MFP is your friend as it can talk to most other apps/trackers/scales. Calorie intake logging really is something you need. Without it, you don’t really know what you’re doing wrong, or why you’re making progress.
[ANY FITNESS APP] can also be your friend, but don’t let it fool you into thinking you are doing well on MFP or otherwise. A fitness app should motivate you. If you want to be social with it, so be it. Just make sure you use it.
Gadgets:
A scale is a must. A digital one even better. One that updates your MFP/Phone is even better still.
Exercise: (@espressojim has the best advice)
If you’re just padding your daily TDEE and MFP goals, pick whatever you want to do. But here is one of my learned lessons, and this is as a 49 year-old man who wishes he had done it earlier. Go to the gym. Lift weights. If you have energy to burn after that, do some cardio. Anything else leads to, in my humble opinion, just leaving your shape the same, while whittling down all the edges. Lifting weights is really the only thing that will change your shape. I’m saying this because a lot of people, like me, diet because they don’t want to look like shit. Well, dieting will make you look LESS like shit. But if you want to change from looking like crap to something better, take the correct steps to do so. If you want to go down this path, let me know I can recommend several things to help. If you just want to run/walk/do steps/general cardio, by all means do so. I equate this to the FPS vs RPG debate. If you want to move around a lot, play an FPS. If you want character development, play an RPG.
