I know that there are many ways to successfully lose fat. Making a guide gives people the impression that there is only one way. There is not only one way, I know this. Basically what follows below, is my way for losing fat. I really like it and I think I have become quite successful at it and I have learned a lot in the process. This is basically a way for me to put all the advice I have in one place. So I can refer to it later. I'll update it as I am continually learning.
My guide to losing fat
Introduction:
This is John Stone’s website:
www.johnstonefitness.com He has daily photos, his meals, workouts, everything about the various stages of his transformation. It was what first got me inspired and convinced that I could do the same thing.
Some of the information below came from this thread
http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/s...ead.php?t=9667, but I've added a lot since then.
This is the site where I put all my pictures up from my weight loss last year and this year:
http://www.sickofbeingfat.net/profiles.aspx?gravityhome
As of June 2005, I lost about 45 pounds total, 40 pounds of which was fat. Here's a comparison after 1.5 years of focussing on fitness.
http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/s...ad.php?t=17068
Everything below is basically my answer to the question, “How did you lose the weight?”
OUTLINE:
1. Some general starting advice:
1.1 Tracking Progress
2. Nutrition
2.1 Eating six meals
2.2 Snacking
2.25 New way to think about food:
2.3 What food to eat
2.35 Websites on healthy foods
2.4 Protein shakes
2.45 Eating certain foods at certain times
2.5 Post workout nutrition
2.6 supplements
3. Muscle
3.1 Form
3.2 Breathing
3.3 Tracking progress
4. Cardio
5. Summary
Appendix A: A prioritized list
1. Some general starting advice:
These are some basic things I have learned about losing fat that I really think many people just don't know.
I just want to prepare people that there is a lot of information here, but please read through the whole thing. I am afraid some people will read until they come to a part that they don't agree with, think they can't do, or don't want to do, and then they will stop reading and forget about the rest. You don't need to do everything, but you will find that once you start small somewhere, it is easier to add more things that you learn later. So my advice, is start small. Start with small changes and go from there. Don't throw your life into a tail spin by changing everything at once. Start small and look for results, then add more and more of what you learn.
What determines the amount of fat you have on your body is the following things:
1) the food you eat
2) the amount of muscle you have
3) the amount of cardiovascular exercise you do (running, biking, etc.)
I ranked them in that order because that is the order of importance they have. However, many people only seem to think the third one is how you lose fat and ignore the first two.
The reason why muscle is so important, is because the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn all day long just by being alive.
Some other important things to remember.
-Don't get overwhelmed. There is a lot of information out there. Some of it contradicts itself. A lot of people say you have to do things only their way, when it is not true. I try to keep things really simple and only make changes if things aren't working.
-Everyone is different. Just because some person did a certain exercise, doesn't mean that is the best thing. It's best to start with really basic changes in diet and then go from there. Eventually you will figure out what works best for your body.
-Even the simplest changes in the way we eat can be incredibly hard to stick with. When and what we eat has been determined from when we were very young, so it is hard to change these habits. Don't expect to do it overnight. Take things slow, and you will be more adjusted.
-In terms of changing your diet, you need to pick foods that you like and will be willing to stick to. this takes time to find food that is both healthy and you like. It's hard but you have to do it or you will be miserable. Edamame beans has been a savior for me, I love them.
-Lastly, unfortunately you really can't think of this as something you will do for a little bit to lose weight and then after that, you will go back to the way you were. That is what a diet is, and that is why they don't work. I am always going to eat 6 meals from now on, because I think it is a better way. I am always going to strive to eat healthy meals. this doesn't mean that I can't eat a cheesesteak or candy or a big dessert like once a week. I just don't do it everyday. You can change how intense you are about it from month to month. Maybe you really want to look good for summer so you decide to eat really clean (that is what it is called when you don't eat junk) and have no bad food at all. And then you can take a break and increase the amount of unhealthy food you have.
1.1 Tracking Progress
If you are just starting. Definitely do yourself a huge favor and take some photos of yourself. It may seem weird. But when you start to make progress, your start photos will be tremendous motivation for you. Now, I can't believe that I use to once look like my start photos. But I did because I have proof. I went to the trouble of taking weekly photos as well. I would absolutely recommend at least monthly photos. You will be so glad you did. In terms of tracking your progress, use as many tools as you can. The scale is only one tool to use. Last year I weighed myself daily and took body measurements weekly. I think daily weighings maybe too often, as you get too attached to the reading. The most important thing is weekly body measurements with a myo-tape measure like this one
http://www.allsportsnutrition.com/pr...productid=3918 or here
http://www.allsportsnutrition.com/pr...productid=4096 it come with a digital body fat tester.
I measure the following to the nearest 0.25 inch:
waist (after exhaling and without sucking in at all, let it all hang out and measure the widest point)
hips (with feet about 4 inches apart)
wrist
chest
I measure the following flexed:
bicep
forearm
quad
calf
The reason measurements are so important, is that when the waist and hip measurement decrease, there is no denying that is good progress and a decrease of fat. The scale is not so clear.
Using measurements and your weight, there is a body fat % calculator here:
http://www.healthcentral.com/coolto...odyfattest.aspx
The key is that you want your body fat % to drop. your total mass multiplied by (BF%/100) is the amount of body fat mass you have. You want this to go down.
Also I measure BF% weekly with the digital body fat calculator. I have only started doing this recently though. It takes a little practice to get use to it.
For the beginning, I would definitely recommend:
Start photos (front, side, back, whatever you like)
weekly myotape measurements (then get BF% from website, record everything in a spreadsheet)
weekly weigh-ins
monthly photos (same as start)
Tracking your progress is very important, I can't stress this enough. When you get tired and lazy and you just don't want to workout or cook your own food, looking at the progress will give you the motivation you need. It is such a huge benefit.
2. Nutrition
Nutrition really is the most important thing, so I want to start with this. The goal of this section is to introduce you to nutrition that works for fat loss. At least what worked for me. The general guide lines are easy to say in a few lines.
Eat more often. Six meals a day are preferred over three. Why six? Well, it works. But further, I think it is a compromise between, spreading food out over a period of time is better than eating it in one lump sum. You can imagine having one extremely large meal is not as good as three meals spread throughout the day. Well, likewise, eating 6 meals distributes the food throughout the day even further. You could eat more than 6, but that gets a little inconvenient as 6 meals usually amounts to eating every 3 hours while you are awake. Most people do eat more than 3 meals but they just don't think of it that way. If you count afternoon snacking and late night snacking, these are certainly meals, but most people eat junk food instead of something healthy. When you are eating healthy food every 3 hours you are keeping your body burning fat all day long. If you are never hungry and you are never stuffed, this is the goal, the ideal condition for fat loss.
Eat the same amount of carbohydrates as protein. For most people this involves eating a lot more protein, as we tend to eat way more carbs than protein. However, there will be nothing low-carb in the below info. The key is to choose low fat protein sources and low fat, slow digesting carbohydrates. For liquids, water is the way to go. You need lots and lots of water for fat loss.
For more info, continue reading. You can also skip to the appendix for a prioritized list of what I think are the most important things to concentrate on for fat loss.
2.1 Trying to eat six small meals –
this is really easy to say and hard to actually do. Our culture revolves around the three-meal system to the point that it is second nature to us. It’s easy to remember to eat at noon because everyone around you is doing it, but it is hard to remember to eat again at 2:30, when you are in the middle of something at school or work. The method I used for getting use to it when I first started out was to split my usual lunch and dinner in half. Take your normal lunch and eat half at noon when most others eat. You will still feel hungry only half way through your lunch. But stop eating anyway. Put your sandwich (or whatever) down, wrap it back up, put in the fridge, do something to put it out of reach. If you drink a whole glass of water (or several) and wait about five minutes you’ll find that you broke the momentum of your eating and you are not as hungry anymore if at all. Then eat the other half a few hours later at 2-3pm. Since you didn’t stuff yourself at lunch, you will be looking forward to the next meal and will be less likely to miss it. Do the same for dinner.
This is a great way to get your body use to eating smaller portions. Because, just like our bodies have been trained to eat only three times a day, they are also trained to get a certain size meal (usually large). And in addition, if you grew up like I did, you were also taught to finish everything in front of you (which is bad when you don’t prepare your own food; portions are always too big). You need to break these habits and re-train your body to be satisfied with smaller meals more often. Even if you don’t actually change what you eat at this point, eating this way will be better. You will never be full and you will never be starving. These are ideal conditions for fat loss. Then if you start to change the food you eat as well, you will really be able to lose fat.
So along with breakfast, if you split lunch and dinner in half, you have 5 meals right there. A midmorning snack would give you six. Make up names for the extra meals like second breakfast and second lunch if it helps. You can feel like a hobbit. Now that I have been eating this way for about 10 months, I will get really hungry if I go 4 hours without food. And I will get stuffed if I try to finish an entire sandwich. A last important thing, is that all of this becomes much easier to do when you eat slowly. I use to eat way too fast and be finished in 5 minutes. And often end up eating a lot more than I really need. Try taking a drink of water after every bite. Also chewing 10-20 times before swallowing is good too. I found that the slower I ate, the less hungry I was when I stopped eating.
2.2 How to handle snacking –
This is hard to do because it usually involves a small amount. Someone brings in cookies, “here just try one, it’s so small”. There would be a weekly ice cream party for the department, someone else brings in cake. Other people just have chips and crackers at their desk. All of it seems so little and harmless, but after a week, it really piles up. The best way for me to handle it was to not eat anything that I didn’t plan for a day in advance. If I knew that there was an ice cream function coming up the next day, then I would change my diet to accommodate. I would choose healthier things the day before. If anyone offers you food, and you didn’t plan on it the day before, don’t eat it. Tell your self this is your rule. It keeps things really simple. You still get to snack if you want but you have to plan for it. If you think in your head that a little cookie is fine, it will be hard to draw a line at how often is okay and before you know it you’re snacking on every little thing. Set a 24 hour plan ahead rule on snacking.
2.25 New way to think about food:
I have learned to think about food differently. Like I said above, making food choices is a very deeply ingrained unconscious process most of the time. If you are like I was, when you get hungry you would say to yourself, "what do I feel like eating?" And then you would sort of analyze your body's mood, your cravings, look at your available options and pick something. This isn't necessarily bad, but it is a horrible system to use when you are attempting to clean up your diet. (By "diet" here I mean the body of food that mkes up what you eat. Like cows have a diet of grass. I don't mean some system of restricting calories.)
When thinking about what food to eat, instead of just thinking about satisfying some inner craving within you, think about the fact that the food is fuel for your body. This completely changed my opinion of food. You know that whole, "You are what you eat", I always thought it sounded a bit pompous but it is has a good point. Although I think the idea of food as fuel to help you live and do things is an even better concept.
Now, you may be worried. You may be thinking, food as fuel? You mean I am never supposed to derive pleasure from food again? I'm not supposed to endulge myself? I'm not supposed to live life to the fullest? No, I am not saying that. Food is a big part of culture. Every now and then it is good to endulge in a treat, to try a new fancy restaraunts with rich food. To celebrate with friends and family at special occassions. So it is still okay to do this and to eat lots of different food while doing it. BUT, here is the kicker. Meals for pleasure should be the vast minority of your meals. Okay. It's that simple. In a given week, greater than 90% of your meals should be food as fuel for your body, and only a few meals need to be food for pleasure. Now when I say, a meal should be fuel, I just mean the first priority should be that it is healthy, and then a lower priority is the taste. I am not saying you have to eat dirt, or cardboard. You can choose food you like. I am just saying, when you are playing the mental game of , hmmm, what should I eat, think about the fact that a vast majority of your meals should be fuel, not an endulging pleasure.
And lets face it, when you are working and stop for lunch. You are not at a big eventful occasion in your life, you are not experiencing food from another culture, or being given the rare treat of a meal of a good chef, you are simply giving yourself energy to keep going through the day. This is the perfect time for fuel. Not pleasure. So, no, you don't need to stop off at burger king, because it will fulfill some pleasure craving in you. This is just lunch, it doesn't need to satisfy your inner craving. It is fuel. But soon you will like healthier food more and more so this gets much easier.
2.26 More ways to think about food
Changing your eating habit is possibly the hardest thing you will ever do. What you desire to eat is hardwired into your brain over the past couple decades. Putting food in your mouth triggers all kinds of chemical changes in your brain and the rest of your body, in addition to the most obvious one, pleasure, all types of other emotions get tied to food.
One time I was starving, because I had gone too long without eating. I whipped myself a quick sandwich of tuna on whole wheat, took one bite and it was amazing how fast my stomach was quieted, simply by putting the bread and tuna in my mouth. I had not swallowed at all. This is a clear indication that tastebuds are constantly communicating with the brain, and there is an amazingly strong connection.
I think the key for me was to separate the food choosing process from the actual point when I am hungry. you don't want to have it be time for a meal and then you ask yourself, hmm, what do I want to eat. And then you evaluate your mood and what type of food would satisfy your craving at that moment. This is not the way to do it at all. Because you are giving yourself the oppurtunity to let your cravings control what you eat. And then if you are strong and still choose healthy food, you still had to think about your cravings which makes you feel deprived. This deprived feeling wears on you over time. there is only so many times you can give yourself the deprived feeling before you will say, enough! I can't live this way always depriving myself.
So this is not the way. You need to separate the food choosing from the actual point when you are hungry. You need to have a clear idea of what you will be eating for the entire day in the morning. You need to think of the meals that you will eat as fuel for your body. Fuel that will keep you going, fuel that will make you strong and give you energy. Don't even consider your cravings, don't even bring them into the picture. Then you will never have the deprived feeling which is the real killer. Don't give yourself the oppurtunity to choose the wrong food or choose the right food and feel deprived.
Did you ever take a drink of something, but you were expecting it to be something else. Like you thought you were drinking soda but it was actually juice. It will always taste bad even if you actually like the drink normally. It is because you were sending signals to your brain that you were about to drink soda and then the tastebuds get ready for that, but then a completely different drink hits them and they freak out and you get a bad taste in your mouth. I think the same thing happens when you consider what food to eat. If you think in your head should I get chicken wings or a turkey sandwich on whole wheat. Your brain remembers what chicken wings taste like and gets excited for them because they are good, and then when you make the right choice and go for the turkey on whole wheat, it tastes so much more bland because you had been considering eating the chicken wings. The thing is, you weren't just thinking about chicken wings, you were weighing the options of putting them in your mouth, this sets all the chemical up for, here comes chicken wings! But if you know you're getting the turkey on whole wheat from the the beginning and you don't even need to think about it, it tastes better and you don't feel deprived.
2.3 What food to eat:
First off, in terms of drinks. Water is the best thing to drink. Avoid soda, juice, ice tea and other sugary drinks. You are really just better off with water. Fat loss requires various celluar functions and all of these will works better if you body is well hydrated, so keep it hydrated all day long. Most people recommend 1-2 gallons a day. I shoot for somewhere in between.
All food can be broken down into three types: fat, carbohydrates and protein. This sounds really simple, but I didn’t know anything about it when I started out. I mean, I’ve heard of fat, protein and carbs, but I didn’t know that all food is made up of some combination of the three. If you take the grams of protein and multiply it by 4 calories, take the grams of carbs and multiply it by 4 calories and the grams of fat and multiply it by 9 calories, you actually get close to the number of calories listed on the package for things. If it’s off a little that is probably because the numbers aren’t exact. But generally it’s accurate. This was quite mind-blowing when I first learned it.
At least for Fat and Carbs, there are many subgroups within the main group and it is good to know them too. To learn more about this people need to read Marcus’s sticky on Nutrition for weight loss,
http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/s...ead.php?t=1222 . It should be required reading for anyone that comes to the forum.
It’s good to know this stuff because for fat loss, people recommend a certain macronutrient split based on calories (not grams). So if you eat 2000 calories a day and you want to eat 40% protein, 40% carbs and 20% fat, then you would eat 800 calories of carbs, 800 calories of protein and 400 calories of fat. That would be roughly, 200 grams of protein, 200 grams of carbs and 44 grams of fat. You can get very technical when trying to determine what macronutrient split to use and how many total calories you should eat (see the sticky by Marcus, he explains many great ways to do it). There are complicated formulas to tell you how many calories to eat (they can be found in Marcus’s sticky above). There is also a general rule that works for most and that is the number of calories you eat should be 10 times your body weight in pounds.
My goal was to go for 40:40:20 as a ratio. I never actually counted things out like John does, I just used that as a goal. I tried to pick foods and meals so that I was eating the same amount of protien as carbs and then I would only have a little bit of fat. However, I didn't want to count calories, I needed things to be simpler in order for me to actually do it. I think total calories is important. But even more important is just eating clean in general. If you don’t really want to worry about counting specific numbers just yet, come up with a list of clean food and concentrate on eating only them. When you eat clean, the food has less calories, so 2000 or 1800 calories winds up being a hell of a lot of food. When I asked myself what clean food is, I came up with this:
- Low fat protein (chicken, tuna, protein shake)
- Good carbs
- Good Fats
There is a lot of info on carbs. I try to separate them into good and bad, based on the glycemic index (see marcus’s post for what this is). The truth is that, there is no real good or bad food, you can really eat anything if you tailor your diet and exercise accordingly, but I didn’t trust myself to be that meticulous with my system. So instead I just developed rules. This is a good carb, that is a bad one, and then I would eat mostly good carbs and the bad carbs very sparingly. Basically the good carbs take a long time to breakdown in the body and the bad carbs breakdown very quickly.
So bad carbs are: pasta, white bread, anything potatoes (including fries, and chips), white rice, regular bagels, and anything with lots of sugar like soda, candy, anything with lots of high fructose corn syrup, basically what most of us think of as carbs.
The good carbs are: vegetables, wheat or multigrain bread/bagels/pasta, oatmeal - old fashioned or regular, just don't put any sugar on it, or at least minimal.
Good fats are in nuts, fish, olive oil, natural peanut butter. Bad fats are in red meat, processed fast food, candy, snacks, cakes, pastries, donuts, anything with trans fats, you get the idea.
For more info on trans fat, see post 18 below :
http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/s...5&postcount=18
Okay so my system is not very technical. But it was a good start for me. I found it much easier to make a list of food that was either a low fat protein, good carb, or good fat and eat only that food rather than a detailed system where I kept track of my macronutrient split.
Here is an example of food that is on my “good for eating” list, but also I like it. There are many more good foods, these are just the ones I eat. I tried to separate them based on what they were a good source of, some things are listed in multiple categories.
Protein
lean chicken breasts
tuna
whey protein
turkey lunch meat
low fat ground turkey
fat free hotdogs
meatloss sausage patties by Morningstar
sushi
Lean Pockets Ultra
eggs
eggbeaters (got sick of these fast though)
low fat beef jerky (although lots of salt, beware)
Protein bar, Odyssey, 30 g of protein, only 7 g of sugar
edamame beans
black beans
salmon
shrimp
Carbs
whole wheat bread
whole wheat pasta or reduced carb pasta (basically the same thing)
whole wheat bagel
Cinna-raisen crunch cereal by Kashi (relatively low sugar)
Any vegetables such as lettuce, tomatoes, green beans, broccoli, cucumber etc.
edamame beans
Lean Pockets Ultra
bananas
Fat
peanuts
peanut butter
olive oil
fish: salmon, swordfish, other white fish
Note: a word on peanut butter - Although your basic skippy peanut butter reports that it has zero grams of trans fat, this is actually because the serving size is small enough that the amount of trans fat is below the FDA's rules for listing fat. Those FOR peanut butter claim this is a good thing and that it is perfectly fine to eat. Those AGAINST peanut butter claim that is still bad and will add up and they should still list it. I say it is totally up to you, on whether you want to eat. I eat very little peanut butter (a couple tablespoons a week) that I just go with skippy anyway. If you eat a lot more of it, probably best to go with natural peanut butter.
After a few months I finally tried to start logging my daily food intake and what I essentially did was build one day of food. I wrote up six meals for about 1900 calories (I was 210 pounds) for the whole day, so that I could actually see how much food that was, and then everyday I would roughly eat the same amounts. I would vary the type of food, but as long as I stayed somewhat similar and stuck to my list of clean food, I was able to lose fat.
Here is an example of a typical day:
Meal 1: Kashi cereal with skim milk
Meal 2: two bananas and protein shake (post workout meal, for days I lift) or maybe a whole wheat bagel on non-lifting days
Meal 3: Turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread with lettuce, tomatoes.
Meal 4: Protein bar, odyssey
Meal 5: Chicken breast (or hot dog on whole wheat bread, or tuna), greenbeans, edamame beans.
Meal 6: protein shake (before bed, if I’m still hungry)
2.35 Websites on healthy foods
Here are some links to great websites on healthy food that I got from Guava. The first one lists the
world's healthiest foods and I'm glad to see a lot of the foods I eat are on it. The second one lists some
super foods. I eat about 9 of 14 on a regular basis. Woohoo!