New Year, New Start, Old Cliche

RoundyMooney

/waves

Started a thread on the main forum, more or less along the lines of the above, but Khannie suggested that I post a record here.

No hiding from the truth, as they say;)

Background:I'm 5' 9" ish, with a small frame, and while I wouldn't class myself as chronically overweight, due to my lifestyle, and exacerbated by my small size, I've suffered with an overhang in the belt area since my early twenties. In the last two years, since I hit the thirty mark, that has gotten progressively worse, to the point that while I still make a 32" waist (I was a 28" in my teens), most of me is compressed above the waistline.

My goals: In a nutshell, to flatten the tummy, and build muscle at the same time, through diet and exercise. (For shocking exposes of my former gluttony, the Fitness thread refers!). I've been told that I should quantify this still further, so need to do research into what my ideal weight etc. should be, and aim for that.

I've set June as a target to reach my ideal weight, with the muscle building being a rolling target, as I honestly don't know how far I can reasonably, or intend to, go.

I haven't ruled out joining a gym either, but I'm going to go it alone for a couple of weeks first, and see how I go.

So, to summarise:

-Photograph, measure, and self assess to give me a rough outline of where I am right now.
-In 6 months, be at my "ideal BMI"
-Modify my diet to exclude takeaways, excess alcohol, and anything fried. (I have gone into this in more depth, see the updates)
-Exercise daily, starting with an hour of moderately paced walking, half an hour morning and evening. Cycling will start, to be alternated with the walking, when I dig the bike out of the shed;)
-Weight training on the home gym to follow, I need to sit down and work out/try a program and see how it goes. Advice welcome on this...

Best of luck to all of you who are travelling the same road as me

RoundyMooney

Just to add, all this kicked off yesterday morning.

I've done some research, and been helped out considerably by the good people on the main forum, and as such I have the diet more or less nailed, for the next couple of weeks anyway. In summary:

-Morning(8am ish): Porridge/wholegrain toast/two eggs scrambled. Glass of water or two, Knorr Vie, Probiotic drink and a multivitamin.

-Lunch (Elevenses)Apple/banana, yoghurt.

-Lunch (1pm or so):Some more wholegrain bread, tuna, piece of fruit.

-Evening meal: Brown rice with everything! Roasted chicken with ready made sauces/roast lamb or beef with lashings of veg (This is what we've had so far, other options are being looked at...)

Water as required, fruit, monkey nuts, cracottes(dry) as snacks.

Have kicked off the walking too, half an hour morning and evening. Can't wait to get the bike out.

RoundyMooney

Combined my walk today (about three miles in total), brought the wife and two strollers too (hills+tired three year old=fat burning goodness).

Bought a scales, a tape, and a big shiny Foreman grill on the way home

Took some measurements too: the photographs are not for public consumption (yet).

-height: 170cm (5'7")
-weight: 76.2kg (12 st 4 lb)
-girth(@ the widest point )38.5"-my waist is about 32" but this is misleading.

Edit: This gives me a BMI of 26.3, not good

I know BMI isn't the full story, but I'm talking about losing about 14lbs to put me comfortably in the "normal" range, which is going to be my initial aim. It's anybody's guess what the erstwhile belly will look like at that point.

As regards calories and whatnot (from G'ems useful notes on nutrition), my RMR is 1763 calories, by a multiplier of 1.4 (activity level), gives a maintenance level of 2468 cals (without exercise)

Diet continues apace, tonight is beef with brown rice, other than that more of the same.

Using www.thecaloriecounter.com , (and what I've recently discoveried as nutritional information on the back of everything) I've worked out what I have, and will eat today in terms of calories, just to see how I'm doing...

tin of tuna-800
wholemeal bread-120
two large eggs-150
one sirloin steak-500
brown rice-265
two bananas-200
stirfry sauce-140

...giving me 2175 calories.

W00t! Exactly where I need to be.

I have also cast a critical eye over my former diet, takeaways and all. Edging quite close to 2,900 calories. No wonder I was piling on the pounds.

I know calorie counting isn't an exact science btw, but by jaysus it makes me feel good when the numbers crunch in my favour...

Getting out the treadmill later, going to bang a few tunes on the Zen, and go for a stationary jog

Will crack open the porridge tomorrow...

RoundyMooney

Not much to report, been tipping at it for the last couple of days.

The walks have gotten longer, and I've had to start leaving the dog at home, because the pace is too much for her.

Scales has me as down three pounds since Tuesday, ergo 12st 1lb.

A little high for comfort, but I'm not going to up the proteins until I start the weight training-hope to put a beginner plan together this weekend. Thanks for the links again, guys.

Happy out with the diet, and in more good news, I've gone from 20-25 smokes a day down to that in three days (8 or 9 a day).

I'll be dropping this further, next week. All in all, I'm quite happy so far, and feel great!

celestial

RoundyMooney wrote: »

Not much to report, been tipping at it for the last couple of days.

The walks have gotten longer, and I've had to start leaving the dog at home, because the pace is too much for her.

Scales has me as down three pounds since Tuesday, ergo 12st 1lb.

A little high for comfort, but I'm not going to up the proteins until I start the weight training-hope to put a beginner plan together this weekend. Thanks for the links again, guys.

Happy out with the diet, and in more good news, I've gone from 20-25 smokes a day down to that in three days (8 or 9 a day).

I'll be dropping this further, next week. All in all, I'm quite happy so far, and feel great!

Sounds like you're doing great. If I can give you a tip, let the scales be the very LAST place you go to check on your progress. Trust how your jeans and t-shirts/shirts fit and how you look in the mirror in the morning. I say morning because your belly size can fluctuate depending on time of day - if you are going to weigh yourself always do it straight out of bed.

RoundyMooney

Thanks celestial.

The tale o' the tape will tell a lot. Others have advised me not to get hung up on the weight (particularly if, and hopefully when, I put on a bit of muscle)

Thanks for any feedback and advice, folks.

maxi-twist

RoundyMooney wrote: »

tin of tuna-800

Im pretty sure a can of tune is ~100 calories, unless u ate 8?

RoundyMooney

LOL, no. I don't like my fish that much

I misread the info, actually only 180 calories (but 800 kJ, which is where I went astray).

Thanks for the heads up.

RoundyMooney

Diet continues as normal, sadly smoked too many ciggies over the weekend, but I expected that in any case...

Doing a bit of treadmill time as well, when I can, usually going 5kmh, 7.5, 10, and back to 7.5.

I'm only doing it over short distances, (1km) to begin with, but it's a good bit more intensive than walking (which I intend to continue with as well), so I'm going to keep at it.

Have been working on a beginning to the weight training as well, and tried out items one through four-to see how it felt.

Started off with stretches, and a few minutes of cardio on the treadmill, as above. I need to buy more weights which limited what I could load without swapping stuff around but I'm not going to fool either myself or others by pretending what I lifted today was anything near what it should be

-Bench Press (3x10x17kg)
-Push Ups (1x10, 2x7 to near failure)
-Barbell Rows (1x14, 1x12)
-Dumbbell rows (2x14)

-Overhead Press
-Lateral Raise
-Dumbbell Curls
-Barbell Curls
-Tricep Extensions
-Bench Crunches.

I'd be aiming for three reps with (most of) these. As a beginner, I don't know how far I should be going here, to failure, or simply into the "burn".

On Monday, I didn't know what a rep or a curl was

This is very new to me, and help is most welcome, as always.

RoundyMooney

Okay, my weight is down 6 lbs since the beginning (eight days ago).

I'm now at 11st 10lb.

I haven't had a great couple of days, as my routine has been upset by a stomach bug on Monday and Tuesday, so no workout, bar the usual walking etc. Diet was fine, but meals were erratic in terms of when I got them :mad:

I'm going to do my first run at the weights since Tuesday, which I'm not overly happy about, but merde happens and all that.

Speaking of which, I've done some more research, and was linked to a handy little blog here by another user, which seems to yield results, so I'm going to try his routine for a while.

I'll repeat it here for posterity.

Three workouts a week (alternating A, B, and C-suggested on Monday Wednesday, and Friday, respectively.) I'll be starting Friday, with A, Sunday, with B, and Tuesday, with C. Walking, and perhaps treadmill time on Wednesday and Thursdays, will fill the gap.

60 second rest between sets.

1k warmup on treadmill (for me, to be increased as applicable, as I progress)

I'll insert weights used here as I go.

The routine: Weights Workout A
Using a dumbbell or barbell for each of these.
4 sets of 10 Chest Press
4 sets of 10 Deadlift
4 sets of 10 Front Squat
4 sets of 10 Bent Over Row
4 sets of 10 Military Press

The routine: Weights Workout B
4 sets of 10 Chest Flye
4 sets of 10 Deadlift
4 sets of 10 Front Squat
4 sets of 10 Pull-ups
4 sets of 10 Arnold Press

The routine: Body Weight Exercises C
4 sets of 10 Press Ups
4 sets of 10 Prisoner Squat
4 sets of 10 Chin Up
4 sets of 10 Back Extension

So, what do you guys think of that? Is it too little, or was my initial take on this too much? I'm in the dark here, as I'm a raw noob

g'em

RoundyMooney wrote: »

Okay, my weight is down 6 lbs since the beginning (eight days ago).

YAY!!!!

RoundyMooney wrote:

I haven't had a great couple of days, as my routine has been upset by a stomach bug on Monday and Tuesday, so no workout, bar the usual walking etc. Diet was fine, but meals were erratic in terms of when I got them

Unfortunately this happens, and it happens to all of us. Even the best-laid plans go awry but at least by doing the initial planning, you've minimized what went wrong. Before the New Year, there was no exercise getting done, but now you're getting annoyed for missing out on two days a week - that means you're still doing four or five days worth of activity each week - that's fantastic!!

RoundyMooney wrote:

So, what do you guys think of that? Is it too little, or was my initial take on this too much? I'm in the dark here, as I'm a raw noob

It's not perfect but it's 100% better than what you were doing before

For now, don't worry about the structure of the weight training plans. Simply get used to using the exercises, get used to how your body feels after it, does it affect your appetite, how long do you need to recover etc.

At the risk of sounding like a septic, great job

RoundyMooney

Thank you. I now feel a little less guilty.

It'll be interesting to see how things pan out.