lifestyle change.. need advice!!

sabby01

Hi this is my first post, so please go easy on me im female 33yrs old,size 12, and have 3 children.

At this stage after a couple of failed attempts at losing weight Ive decided that Im going to change my lifestyle and eating habits for good. Theres alot of information out there on how to do this but i thought id start here.

My diet at the minute looks something like this:

9-10am bowl of cookie crisps
1-2pm tuna sandwich on brown bread
5-6pm white pasta with chicken and stir in sauce or potatoes wit meat and veg... some days i would have a bag of crisps or a bottle of lucozade...

My belly is my problem area and id like to put some more muscle and my legs and bum..

Ive started 2 walk now this week as i cant get 2 the gym, just wondering if there is anything else i could do at home while my 2 eldest are in school and my baby is having her nap??

Any advice would b really appreciated


Thanks

Sabby

Tico

Hey Sabby01

For starters i suppose is just to say that your diet needs to be more routine, you're not eating regularly enough, you need to drop the processed breakfast too which is prob the real bad part, you need to eat a healthy breakfast as the saying "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" is not JUST a saying. Your metabolism is off the clock and it needs to be brought back into check, by eating regularly, every three hours ideally, your body will not feel the need to keep storing fat as it does. Once your body knows its gonna be fueled regularly it then doesnt fell the need to stock up any more. When i say eating regularly i mean healthy snacks such as fruit and yoghurt or tuna and juice, small snacks but spreading out your daily food intake is better then restricting it to a mere three meals a day.Its why your body is holding onto this fat.

How often are you walking? and for how long? theres plenty of exercises you can do while in the house using your own body weight including squats, push ups, lunges, close grip push ups etc but by purchasing bands or a swiss ball you can then give yourself much more options and they don't cost that much either

sabby01

Hi Tico thanks for the reply, i have just started walkin for around 40mins each morning, its about a 3 mile walk that i do!! I will b doing the walk 5 days a week, should i do more?? As for the eating, is branflakes ok for breakfast or should i be eating porridge?? Also what sort of yogurts would you recommend??

Thanks

Sabby01

WalterMitty

sabby01 wrote: »

Hi Tico thanks for the reply, i have just started walkin for around 40mins each morning, its about a 3 mile walk that i do!! I will b doing the walk 5 days a week, should i do more?? As for the eating, is branflakes ok for breakfast or should i be eating porridge?? Also what sort of yogurts would you recommend??

Thanks

Sabby01

Youtube will show you a lot of good home workout videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9YCQ5SAq0U

As above, improve diet, eat small meals more often. Eat fresh food, more protein, healthy fats etc. All is in the stickies on this forum.

rocky

Canis Lupus wrote: »

If you refute stuff isn't it more polite and useful to the OP and others to explain why rather than just whacking no's about the place?

Tico wrote: »

Nice one Rocky
I assume based on your answers your in the personal training industry

I suppose I am in the personal training industry, I train myself

Where do I start. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Not for everybody. Plenty of people follow a thing called Intermittent Fasting (see links in my sig), what I took from it is I'm better without breakfast. For losing weight, most important are calories in vs calories burned. Does not matter when you eat them during the day, even if you eat all of them at night, there's no better/worse results than if you eat them throughout the day spread in small meals.

Studies are quoted in the articles below:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/meal-frequency-and-energy-balance-research-review.html

Meal frequency per se has essentially no impact on the magnitude of weight or fat loss except for its effects on food intake. If a high meal frequency makes people eat more, they will gain weight. Because they are eating more. And if a high meal frequency makes people eat less, they will lose weight. Because they are eating less. But it’s got nothing to do with stoking the metabolic fire or affecting metabolic rate on a day to day basis. As the researchers state above:

We conclude that any effects of meal pattern on the regulation of body weight are likely to be mediated through effects on the food intake side of the energy balance equation.

http://www.leangains.com/2008/07/excerpt-from-my-upcoming-book.html "Meal frequency and TEF"

In conclusion, different meal splits have no effect on metabolic rate or fat metabolism.

rocky

On the juice thing, if you have to eat fruit, eat them raw, unjuiced. The juicing process takes away lots of positive things going on in fruit, mainly the fibre. I also prefer to chew my meals rather than drink them. I'm weird like that.

OP, if you have to eat breakfast, go for eggs (scrambled, boiled, fried [in coconut oil, not veggie oil]), and/or porridge. Personally I enjoy fried eggs and cottage cheese (yes, I sometimes have breakfast )

steve McQueen

You have 40 mins walk every day?

stop walking and start this http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/index.shtml

Start the couch to 5k runnin plan 3 days a week, mon, weds, fri
this will get you running.

then on tue, thur and sat you must get out and cycle for 40 mins/ 10 miles, get a cheap bike for 40/50 quid of gumtree

cut out the lucazade and crisps, no butter and no sugar in tea or toast, no beer. eat fresh veg/ salds and lean meat.

maybe start a weight lifting program for mon, wed and fri night to do while your watching telly. do some yoga/ pilates on tues and thurs, search the internet for these

sat and sundays get out and walk with the kids, go swimming, do something active for 3 or 4 hours both days

If you have any severe pains ( i.e. back etc ) STOP and see a doctor

good luck, and stick with it and be patient you will be looking gorgeous and feeling great in 3 or 4 months

sabby01

Thanks everyone for all the replies, it really has been a great help:)

Steve Mc Queen, thanks for your advice, the running is a bit of a problem as i have my 1 year old with me when im doing the walk. Should i do more walking instead??

Thanks

Sabby01

Red Cortina

Hi Sabby,
Fair play to you for making steps in the right direction for getting back in shape:)
With regard to exercise options whilst your baby is napping, I think that Transform (a personnel trainer who posts here) reviewed a bunch of home workout DVDs and rated Davina McCaul's as being one of the better ones, so that might be an option?
The main thing would be to keep making any exercise that you are doing harder and harder. Dan John who is a strength and conditioning coach reckons that any type of exercise works for 6 weeks, but after that your body adapts to it. Therefore the results you will see from doing X amount of exercise in week 1 will be greater than the results in week 6 for the same amount of exercise. So bascially you need to mix things up!

cc87

sabby01 wrote: »

Should i do more walking instead??

Thanks

Sabby01

No, you need to push your body harder, try sprints, lift weights, sort out your diet.

I don't think you are eating enough during the day and what you are eating is poor quality food with loads of refined sugars in there.

If you want to lose weight, sorting out your diet is half the battle.

Read the fitness stickies.

Keep it simple, dont worry about the intermittent fasting. There are far more simple things you need to sort out before you need to worry about things like that.

steve McQueen

sabby01 wrote: »

Thanks everyone for all the replies, it really has been a great help:)

Steve Mc Queen, thanks for your advice, the running is a bit of a problem as i have my 1 year old with me when im doing the walk. Should i do more walking instead??

Thanks

Sabby01

Ok. running is best. But try walking fast so you SWEAT or get a bike with a baby carrier on the back and do 40 mins cardio that way.
Can you get your hubby/ bf to mind babys for 40 mins 3 nights a week so you can go jogging? or is he too lazy to help?

Canis Lupus

sabby01 wrote: »

Hi this is my first post, so please go easy on me im female 33yrs old,size 12, and have 3 children.

At this stage after a couple of failed attempts at losing weight Ive decided that Im going to change my lifestyle and eating habits for good. Theres alot of information out there on how to do this but i thought id start here.

My diet at the minute looks something like this:

9-10am bowl of cookie crisps
1-2pm tuna sandwich on brown bread
5-6pm white pasta with chicken and stir in sauce or potatoes wit meat and veg... some days i would have a bag of crisps or a bottle of lucozade...

My belly is my problem area and id like to put some more muscle and my legs and bum..

Ive started 2 walk now this week as i cant get 2 the gym, just wondering if there is anything else i could do at home while my 2 eldest are in school and my baby is having her nap??

Any advice would b really appreciated


Thanks

Sabby

There's lots you can do but weightloss is diet first and exercise to define what's underneath (that's not entirely true obviously but it's best way of looking at it for now).

Your diet is poor:

Breakfast: No sugary breakfast cereals (even if I personally have an addiction to Jordans raisin clusters but that's more for sitting in front of the tv). Eggs any way you like are awesome as is porridge. You can add healthy things like seeds etc to porridge as well.

Snacks/lunch: Fruit and veg (obviously), nuts and seeds. I mean your lunch for example of a tuna sandwich, is this a tuna mayo sandwich cos if it is then you need to chuck it.

Drinner: Pasta is bold as are stir in sauces, potatoes are also a no go. A bag of crisps and a bottle of lucozade is not a dinner for anyone, ever but you probably know this. Generally speaking try to cut down on the pasta and spuds (processed and carby stuff) and increase lean meat and veg.

I personally, recently, found it incredibly useful to take a moment to weigh my food and using the calories per 100g on almost all packages work out what my portions were costing me calorie wise. It's a tiny bit of faff to begin with but once you do it for a week or so then you'll have most of the stuff you eat regularly weighed. For example when I weighed and calculated the calories in the usual amount of pasta I used to eat in a spag bol my jaw hit the floor (and that wasn't including the bol bit )...

Once you know what you're taking in then use the formula on Gems post: LINKY and it'll show you how many calories you should be taking in to lose/maintain/gain weight. Once you come in on a daily basis under your maintainance then you lose weight and it's remarkably easy once you add in some exercise.

Which leads onto things you can do:

Cardio: Walking is fine initially but not strolling, walk like you've got to BE somewhere :P Skipping is also great and if you're pushing your little one maybe try a small bit of jogging with the pram as well as long as it doesn't shake the life out of him/her :P

Tied in with:

Weights/toning: There is a tonne of stuff you can do here. Youtube bodyweight exercises and you'll get a plethora of things to do. There's nothing stopping you from timing these workouts and trying to do them faster and faster as well. I'd be more inclined to focus on these personally.

The nutrition sticky has more info too on what to eat that's useful.

TommyKnocker

Mod Note: I have deleted a couple of posts from this thread as the offered nothing to the OP or were argumnetative.

Folks if you notice a post that you have a problem with then please simply report it so it gets brought to the Moderators attention quickly, instead of engaging with the poster on thread, as this only tends to pull the thread further off topic.

Best Regards & Thanks

M

TommyKnocker

Hi Sabby01

As has been said above, while your diet is not the worst I have seen, it also could be better.

Have a look at these threads for tips on a healthy diet

• Fitness, the Basics (Incl. Diet & Nutrition
• Nutrition 101

And this video regarding the types of foods to eat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6G_7V8syrw

Then have a look at these two videos for ideas to spice up your workouts. The majority of the exercises in these videos could be done at home with little or no equipment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIP5y8K1zYg

http://www.icechamber.com/videos/mgcomeback1.html

Hope some of that helps.


Best Regards,

M

WalterMitty

Hold child while walking up loads of stairs. Will work your core and lower body.

G86

For the diet, just clean it up, and check out the nutrition stickies. I think you know yourself that cookie crisps aren't the best start to the day! Don't get too obsessed with counting cals though, it's easy to do; just eat less processed crap, no junk food, and work from there.

For exercise at home - could you buy a kettlebell? It'd be a brilliant way to add some weight training to your workouts. There are also loads of bodyweight exercises you could do, and as already said - google is your friend here.

For the running, do you have a garden? You could take the baby out with you and do a workout involving some short interval sprints.