Ideal exercises for burning fat? Not focusing on building muscle yet, just wanna stop being fat.

Right now I'm doing ten minutes of elliptical and bike at 70% intensity and seven minutes the rowing machine and just rotating through that for an hour (I usually do five minutes of jogging on the treadmill, but I'm waiting until I can see a physio a our what I think are minor shin splints before I start using the treadmill again). Even though I'm feeling a lot fitter than when I started this about four or five months ago, I'm not losing anything significant. What should I change?

Don't have the time with work and 2 kids lucky my family are not prone to being overweight

Haven't done it myself but maybe suss out some HIIT (High intensity interval training) plans online man. Also saves some time because I think you generally smash the whole workout in 30mins. Obviously then got to make sure your nutrition is on point or otherwise its going to be slow going.

What's your diet like? That might be the problem.

Also, doing weight training increases your metabolism which speeds weight loss.

Two ways to burn fat doing cardio, like Rick said theres HIIT which burns calories quicker due to the high intensity, or you do a low intensity, high volume exercise (such as a 2 hour run) which burns fat as the primary fuel source

The most important aspect of a diet you need to know is that the more energy you intake, the more you need to use up (you can chow down 7 mars bars without a problem as long as you burn it off)

Does anyone do much cycling here?

I have no experience in terms of road cycling but it is something that I'd like to start doing and in a few years time enter some local events.

At the moment I don't own a bike so I've just been using an exercise bike for now, riding 5KM at a reasonable pace each day. Obviously I could do a lot but I've just been easing myself into it, Would anyone have some sort of training program or recommendations on what to do?

Any dietary advice for losing weight apart from cutting out as much breads/carbs and sugars as possible?

There's no one-size-fits-all approach, it depends on your body and your lifestyle, but here's what worked for me:

Keep active and moving
Doing nothing but sit around makes me snacky. Being snacky builds up over time. Get up and walk around as much as possible. When you need to go anywhere <5km away, walk instead of getting a lift/taking a bus. Anywhere longer than that, try to cycle instead. Take up a sport (if you don't already) that you are interested in, and tailor any exercise you do around enjoying that sport more. My gym, running, pool work is all about making me better at football and thus enjoying my football more. I enjoy the workouts because it's linked to a sport I love playing.

Be aware of portion sizes
What size plate do you usually eat off of? For me it was your standard dinner plate, one of those big round jobs. I got a smaller square plate, which looks full with a much more reasonable amount of food on it. Your body will probably react to getting less energy input than it is used to by trying to convince you that you are hungry- the point above this helps avoid that.

Don't demonise food
Carbs aren't your enemy, but moderation is your friend. I avoid processed sugar, but remember that sugar is vitally important to a balanced diet (just not in the quantities you find in say a chocolate bar!) You'll get the sugar you need from fruit (btw, eat fruit and veg. Not just the standard stuff, if you see a fruit or vegetable you've never tried get it and give it a shot. Variety is important, eating apples, oranges, lettuce, tomato, carrot, onion and celery exclusively is not a balanced diet.) Remember that as long as you are aware of what you are eating and how often you do so, it is ok to eat things you like that are "unhealthy" occasionally. You can have fried food, or chocolate, or cake... just don't do it every day/week!

Experiment with what works for you
If you feel you are eating healthy and being active, but not seeing satisfactory results (or you seem to fluctuate unexpectedly) consider trialling removing common causes of digestive problems from your routine. Dairy makes me bloated, so I limit how much I have. Don't be sucked into marketing schemes though. Gluten intolerance is real, but it is quite rare and you would know if you had celiac disease. Gluten-free food is not any more healthy than regular food for regular people (often worse since they mask the inferior texture with taste from sugar etc.)

Don't compare yourself to others. Don't get disheartened
It is a long, hard process. If you want to do this, you are doing it for the long haul. It's a lifestyle change, not a quick fix, and your body needs a lot of time to adjust. Don't look at the media/reality tv/other people in the gym as examples of where you should be. Not only is everyone different, but a lot of what you see on TV is incredibly unhealthy and unsustainable. Aim for results in 12 months, not 12 weeks (though you will notice positive results starting in that time frame)

Do it for yourself, not for anybody else
Don't do it because you feel like others are judging you, or because you want someone to like you. Other people are transient in your life and transient motivators are not good motivators. Do it because you want to feel more confident. Do it because you want to enjoy being active outside. Do it because you want to do it.

Be prepared to fail, and be prepared to forgive that failure and get back up
You will slip, everybody slips. Life will suck for a while and you'll come out of a funk armpit deep in KFC and wonder how the fuck you got there. It happens, the best part about being active is the more you do it the easier it is to recover. Forgive your failings and get back on the horse. Nobody is perfect, it's ok to have to go 'round again.

EG's guide to life:

Just start with doing as many sit-ups and push ups as you can everytime you go into your room. Make sure that by the end of the day, you can do more than yesterday.

I tried that when I was about 18 and I got from 1 push up to 40 in about 12 days. But then I lost interested and I've neve done one since.

Let's just be honest. Like me, you replaced 'situps' with beer, and 'pushups' with Scotch.

If you are going to cut out carbs, do it gradually. Don't go cold turkey on it because you'll inevitably fail pretty quickly, and might end eating even more carbs to make up for it. Choose one particular thing to focus on, and work on that until you think you've got it down, and then you can move on to something else. Secondly, instead of "cutting out" carbs, reframing it as substituting them for a different option. Have some fruit instead of sweets, halve the amount of pasta/rice/potatoes/whatever you're having at dinner and add extra vegetables to your meal instead, try rice crackers instead of chips. (I have no idea what your diet consists of so these examples may not apply). Importantly, find healthy foods that you like. If you're forcing yourself to eat things that you hate, then it's not going to be sustainable for very long.

Work on eating set meals at set times/time ranges. Have breakfast, lunch and dinner, and have a couple of healthy snacks in between if you're hungry. Aim to have something every 3-4 hours. If you're having a snack, put in on a plate and sit down and enjoy it - don't eat food straight from the packet, and try not to eat while doing other things (such as watching tv, going on 442, etc) because then you're not as aware of what or how much you're eating.

Consider if there's anything in particular that has caused the weight gain and poor diet, and address that.

Treat yourself. Seriously. Focus on mainly eating healthy, but if you want some chocolate then have a couple of pieces. It's not going to ruin your diet, it might even help you stick to it for longer. At the end of the day you need to be making lifestyle changes that are sustainable long term. You can eat nothing but vegetables for a couple of months and lose a lot of weight, but in the end you're just going to put it all back on again. Don't think of it as a diet, make it something that can be maintained for a long time.

Also, drink plenty of water. Try to drink water instead of soft drinks or juice.

Oath

Except you don't seem to get fat.

Probably check out this - I'm sure there will be some really good info in here for you: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/forumdisplay.php?f=16


Handy tool to count your calories: https://www.myfitnesspal.com/

Read a book, exercise your mind.

Scoll has hit it out of the park =d>

Most important thing is staying fresh; you keep trying the same things you will get bored of doing it very quickly

My brother and I are trying to complete the challenge shown in the video. Can't get past a 1.30 yet. The planks kill you.

[youtube]41N6bKO-NVI[/youtube]


Edited by chillbilly: 1/12/2015 11:05:36 PM

I counted 29 or 30 push ups which in it self is not that hard, but the planks will be the killer. I will attempt this tomorrow and see how far i get :d

I was pretty cocky, felt I could do it but only got 1:45.

Did this work for you?

I didn't cut out carbs, but yeah. Set meals spread out through the day, reducing snacking and changing the foods that I snacked on, and being more aware of portion sizes all helped. I took a good look at what my eating was like compared to what it should be like, what the main things were that caused the (unnecessary) weight gain in the first place, and I worked on those.
I never ate super healthily and I still don't, but I've still maintained the weight loss for a couple of years now.

If you didnt cut out carbs then why advise someone else to?
Unless someone is morbidly obese or diabetic, cutting out carbs will lead to all kinds of health problems including clinical depression.

:)

I didn't advise him to cut out carbs, he said "Any dietary advice for losing weight apart from cutting out as much breads/carbs and sugars as possible?" so I made suggestions for if he chose to go with this.
There are plenty of people on paleo and ketogenic diets who are perfectly happy and healthy. While carbohydrates are your body's ideal source of energy, proteins and fats are able to be used.
Cutting out carbs may leave you feeling moody and lethargic, but it doesn't cause clinical depression because that's literally not how mental illness works.

:) :) :) :)

Yeah it is :) Literally :)

Atkins was a quack who died of heart disease.

Please link me some proof of that then :) Does that mean you also think depressed people should just eat more carbs in order to get better?

Not talking about the Atkins diet, I said paleo and ketogenic.

it wouldnt hurt, especially in early stages :)

The paleo diet has been widely discredited but its still promoted because it sells books :)

That's not proof, and there is no evidence of that being true. Feeling depressed is not the same thing as clinical depression, which is widely believed to be caused by a gene-environment interaction. A poor diet can make you feel crap, but a "good" diet is not a cure for a mental illness.

I honestly don't give a fuck about low/no carb diets. I've never done one, I won't ever do one, and contrary to your belief I'm not interesting in promoting them to others. Salmon asked for advice, so I gave some advice based on what he appears to want to do. If you have better advice, feel free to offer it.

trident, perhaps the occasional ricecracker might be a good thing in anyone's diet? :)

Too high in salt.