Losing Weight

jgriffin09

Hi,

Im 22 and 20 stone. Decided to loose the weight just over a week ago. Ive been swimming 100 lengths in the pool twice a day, every day (half breast stroke half front crawl). I swim 100 lengths (25 metres each, so 100 lengths = ~2.5k.m.) in just under an hour.

Foodwise, I have a bowl of porridge with some milk for breakfast, go swimming, then have a chicken snitzel sandwich (mayo, lettuce, egg mayo and onion). Then swim again in the evening and have a low fat chicken wrap for tea.

Any thoughts about the exercise (whether I should go to the gym?) or the food side of things?

Thanks!

Oh an I'm 6" 4' just to give a rough idea of height, weight etc.

corkcomp

jgriffin09 wrote: »

Hi,

Im 22 and 20 stone. Decided to loose the weight just over a week ago. Ive been swimming 100 lengths in the pool twice a day, every day (half breast stroke half front crawl). I swim 100 lengths (25 metres each, so 100 lengths = ~2.5k.m.) in just under an hour.

Foodwise, I have a bowl of porridge with some milk for breakfast, go swimming, then have a chicken snitzel sandwich (mayo, lettuce, egg mayo and onion). Then swim again in the evening and have a low fat chicken wrap for tea.

Any thoughts about the exercise (whether I should go to the gym?) or the food side of things?

Thanks!

Oh an I'm 6" 4' just to give a rough idea of height, weight etc.

ok, exercise is fine but try to vary it - anything that breaks a sweat will be good ... breakfast is ok ... the rest of the diet is poor IMO and you should have a GOOD read of the nutrition stickies on here .... my only other advice is to be patient, you wont shift that ammount of weight in a short period of time but you WILL eventually if you stick to a sensible diet and keep moving! good luck

magotch07

buddy i have been there i was 22 stone a few years back i have lost 5 since then thru excersise.....my advice would be to keep up the excercise and possibly change your diet try cut out the mayo its a killer....at the moment your body is being shocked because of your new regime and you could well lose a lot of weight quickly but then you will hit a wall...its when your at this wall that is is very hard to motivate yourself and important to keep your focus

lonestargirl

2.5km in an hour is a fairly good pace, you need a good mix of distance and high intensity work. Do you do set rests or intervals? Could you post up a typical swim set?

jgriffin09

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Yeah I'll have to change the diet around. The stickies seem like the place to start! I think I've realised that the mayo has to go

At the moment I swim in sets of 8 lengths. 8 front crawl, 8 breast stroke, 8 front crawl etc up to 100. I don't rest at all in that time. How would you recommend I mix it up lonestargirl?

lonestargirl

jgriffin09 wrote: »

At the moment I swim in sets of 8 lengths. 8 front crawl, 8 breast stroke, 8 front crawl etc up to 100. I don't rest at all in that time. How would you recommend I mix it up lonestargirl?

If you do the same thing everyday your body is going to get used to it very quickly. There are a couple of things I would advise you to do.

1) Work off intervals: as an example take a base time of 2:00 for 100m f/c (frontcrawl). Do 10 x 100m f/c on 2:00 (start a new 100m every 2 mins), the quicker you swim the more rest you get. Intervals are a good way of assessing your progress. On a given time start with 5 x 100m increase up to 8-10 and then drop back to 5 x 100m taking 5 secs off the time.

2) Try to up the proportion of frontcrawl vs breaststroke (br/st) in your set. Can you do any other strokes?

3) Mix up the pace: add 10 secs to your base time for 100m do 10 x 100m f/c but made up of 75m steady 25m sprint.

4) Don't get caught up in the number of lengths that you do, if your session contains lots of kick, br/st or sprints you overall distance will be shorter. I doesn't mean you didn't work as hard.


Here are a few sample sessions, I've assumed a base time of 2:00 for 100m for all these sets:

1)
10 mins warm-up, steady swim, mix up strokes

1 x 400m on 8:00
2 x 200m on 4:00
4 x 100m on 2:00
8 x 50m on 1:00
16 x 25m on 0:30
(each group of 400m in this set takes 8mins including rest, take your base time for 100m and adjust set accordingly for your pace)

cool down


2)
10 mins warm-up, steady swim, mix up strokes

repeat by 6: 2 x 50m pull (arms only) on 60
2 x 25 kick on 10 secs rest

10 x 100m f/c on 2:10, (75m steady, 25m sprint)

cool down


3)
10 mins warm-up, steady swim, mix up strokes

16 x 50m on 70 (25m f/c, 25m any other stroke)

repeat by 3: 1 x 200m on 4:00
4 x 75m pull on 1:30

cool down