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The Boards Better Body Super Challenge 2011
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14-03-2008 12:20pm#1The Boards Better Body Super Challenge! ©
Start Date: January 2011
End Date: March 2011
Open To: anyone who wants to look better, feel better, live better
Welcome to the First Second Third Annual (I’m a long-term thinker…) Boards Summer Beach Body Super Challenge. With the time of year in mind the challenge has been established to encourage any and all willing boardsie to take part in an 8-week communal health and fitness movement to kick-start your goal towards a healthier, happier you. There’s no prerequisite for fitness levels or strength abilities, it doesn’t matter if you intend to be a gym-rat for 8 weeks or simply put on your trainers and hit the pavements; the challenge is open to everyone who wants to improve themselves.
This isn't a competition, it's simply a chance for people who'd like a bit of extra help and motivation to help themselves feel good and get in shape before the summer time. Improvements are all relative - by the end of 8 weeks you may not look like a poster child for Men's Health or Zest but if you've given yourself more energy, more self-esteem, more get-up-and-go and more room in your waistband, then you've succeeded.
However… there are some rules. It is a challenge after all!
The Rules
1. If you’re in, you’re in from the start. You must declare your participation in the challenge within the first week of the start date and have the intention to complete it (illness/ injury notwithstanding) in full until the end date. One of the biggest problems that a lot of people have where fitness and healthy eating is concerned is follow-through. It’s all very well and good promising to eat clean and exercise, but actually going out and doing it is another matter entirely! So with fairness in mind for all those involved, if you're going to do it, do it from start to end.
2. You must exercise at least 5 times a week. That can be any combination of weights and/ or cardio, but you must engage in a minimum of 30 minutes of physical activity for 5 days out of every 7. If you need to you can break up the 30 minutes to 15 minute blocks (such as a 15 minute run in the morning and a 15 min brisk walk at lunch), and each activity must be somewhat physically demanding. Strolling to the chipper is not an example of demanding exercise; brisk walking, cycling, jogging all count as exercise as does lifting weights, rock-climbing, kayakingm, playing soccer or anything that involves raising your heart-rate. Heck, if you’re putting the effort in, even sex can be included in that list of activities (but by 'eck you need to be a messy puddle of sweat by the end for it to count
).
3. There will be a limit of 10 units of alcohol allowed to be consumed each week. I won’t expect everyone to give up the booze completely if you don’t want to, but it’s two months that you will need to cut down significantly. Let's keep the big-picture in mind though, it’s only two months of your life, if you have an issue with that either get over it or get out. Alcohol consumption will make it harder to make the right food choices, harder to get up to exercise, harder to manage your calorie intake.
4. No junk food. No take-aways, no McDonalds, no pizzas, no sweets, no crisps, no fizzy drinks, no popcorn, no chocolate, no sh*te. As with rule 3, it’s 8 weeks of your life, get over it.
Having said that, I’m a realist, and I’m a believer in (deserved) treats. So for one day of every other weekend (3 days in total out of the 8 week challenge) you can eat up to double your daily calorie allowance with whatever foods you like. You can either see this as an opportunity to gorge yourself on crap or as an opportunity to loosen up a bit and eat a little more of the things you’ve been denying yourself. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you end up craving reasonably healthy foods anyway – once you strip junk from your diet your body realises very fast what a waste of calories it is and you begin to tune into what your real metabolic needs are. Trust me, a day of indulgence (and the subsequent feeling of “eeeuuuuurrrggghhh, why do I do that?!?” will be enough to get you back on track very fast.
5. Measurements will be taken every week on either Saturday or Sunday and recorded. You don’t need to publicly announce your measurements, but you will need to show evidence of the recordings (via PM) if they are requested. Seeing progress happen before your eyes is one of the best motivators out there, and watching the numbers fall (or increase if that’s your goal!) is a deeply satisfying and confidence boosting tool. Also recommended, but not required, are photos taken weekly or every two weeks. Take each shot in the same underwear/ swimwear, in the same room, with the same lighting. If you thought watching numbers go down was a help, seeing the changes you’re making to your physique will make you want to run up and down the street, punching the air, telling random strangers how much you rock.
6. The Summer Beach Body Super Challenge is a communal challenge intended to provide support, motivation and encouragement for your fellow boardsie’s. It’s not about everyone trying to better other people, simply about each individual bettering themselves. This is probably the most important rule of all and I can’t reiterate it enough: there will be absolutely zero tolerance of slagging, jibing, attacking, ridiculing or provoking another challenge member. I will not argue or debate with you, I will simply delete any offending posts.
Still to come: How to Prepare, Measurement Guidelines, Efficient Exercise Suggestions and Your Diet: A Lot More Than Half the Battle.22
Comments
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Measurement Guidelines
There are four different methods of measurement that we’ll be using, and the attachment is a pdf that you can fill out for the duration of the challenge to help you track your progress:- measuring tape
- weighing scales
- callipers
- camera/ mirror
Measuring Tape: On the spreadsheet you'll find a ready-to-go table to fill in your tape measurement figures. Ideally take all your measurements at the same time each week (preferentially in the morning) as your body will bloat and expand throughout the day after eating and drinking which can skew your figures. Don't pull the tape too tight, just enough so that it's firm against your skin but not pinching it. Oh and if you have a better spreadsheet for keeping track of your measurements by all means use it!! Just make sure you use the same measurement points so that everyone is using the same parameters.
Weighing scales: We won’t pay too much attention to the figures on the scales but we will use them as part of the overall progress measurement. Depending on what your goals are, you’ll want to know if you’re successfully gaining or losing weight as desired along with the results you’re getting from the measurement tape on the mirror/ camera.
Try and use the same scales each time as there’s a massive amount of variety between individual machines.
Calipers: this isn’t an essential method, but if you’re doing a lot of resistance training tracking your bodyfat will give you a more accurate reflection of the changes you are making to your body. When you use weights it increases your lean body mass (muscle). Muscle weighs more than fat so while you may see your waistline decreasing, your body mass may stagnate or even rise. Bodyfat measuring can help show you that while you may not be losing “weight” you are losing bodyfat and looking better by the day.
If you have a pair of calipers you can use this site which shows you where to take the measurements and has a calculator allowing you to plug in your measurements and it’ll give you your bodyfat. If you have digital calipers like the Accumeasure ones they’ll calculate your bodyfat for you, and full instructions should be included in the packaging. There’s also more information about it here.
Personally I take 3 sets of measurements at each site and use the average of those.
Camera/ Mirror: Obviously the latter you can use at any time but (narcissism aside!!) be wary of spending too much time checking yourself out. Different clothes, different times of day, different light and different sizes and angled mirrors will give you very different views of your body (come on, admit it, we all have “favourite” mirrors that we don’t mind looking in, just as there are those horrific mirrors that make you look ten times older/ heavier/ spottier than you really are
).
If you’re going to take photos try and take them in your underwear or swimwear and take the photos at the same time of day and in the same lighting every week. If, like me, you recoil in horror when you see photos of yourself nearly nekkid… don’t freak out. I promise you that the imperfections you see don’t get noticed by other people. We all have a tendency to zone in on the parts we don’t like about ourselves in photos and miss the good parts that everyone else sees. Try to be as objective as possible about your photos and compare each week (or two week’s if you want to take them with more time between the shots) worth of progress to see how you’re getting on. If there’s no obvious difference ask someone you trust to take a look at them too. If there really is no major difference it’ll give you a chance to go back and reassess your exercise and eating plans to see where you could make improvements.
Your photos should include front, side and back relaxed photos (arms by your side, leg shoulder width apart, head straight and looking straight ahead). You may also want to do flexed shots although if you do please be sure to do flexed shots at every stage. A before relaxed pose set side-by-side with an after shot won’t be a realistic story of “progress”!!
And one final thing - despite everything I've just said, try not to get too caught up in the numbers. There IS a bigger picture to keep in mind so don't stress the numbers on a daily basis - taking measurements at 8am every single morning will simply cloud your judgment and prevent you from seeing your overall progress.0 -
Efficient Exercise Part I
The Official Stuff
NB – at this point in the challenge description it’s really important to point out that if you have never embarked on a fitness scheme before, there are a few things to consider. Although physical activity is perfectly safe for most people, it may be necessary to get a doctor's OK before you exercise.
Talk to your doctor before you start an exercise program if:
• You're a man older than age 40 or a woman older than age 50
• You've had a heart attack
• You have a family history of heart disease before age 55
• You have heart, lung, liver or kidney disease
• You feel pain in your chest, joints or muscles during physical activity
• You have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis or asthma
• You've had joint replacement surgery
• You smoke
• You're overweight or obese
• You take medication to manage a chronic condition
• You have an untreated joint or muscle injury, or persistent symptoms after a joint or muscle injury
• You're pregnant
• You're unsure of your health status*
If you have all those bases covered, then let’s move on...
Why Exercise?
It may sound like a rhetorical question, but why should you exercise? Seriously, why?? I’d happily bet a months’ wages that more than half the responses would be “To lose weight!”. Obviously that’s a great side effect of exercise but this isn’t always enough of a reason to keep you motivated. But aside from weight-loss, there’s some amazing reasons why we should keep active, and it’s actually those reasons that I tend to turn to when I’m questioning why I should bother getting my arse in gear…
1. Exercise improves your mood
It promotes the release of endorphins, the body’s “feel-good” chemicals and helps beat stress. And another side effect of looking and feeling better from exercise it’ll also boost your confidence with your new-found super-body. No matter how crappy I feel before I leave the house, I know that ten minutes into my training I’ll feel on top of the world and it’s always worth the initial effort to get that feeling.
2. Exercise combats chronic diseases
Regular exercise can help you prevent/ manage high blood pressure, boosts HDL (good) cholesterol and lowers LDL (bad) cholesterol, and helps prevent type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and certain types of cancer. It can also help combat depression and keeps your mental health in check.
4. Exercise strengthens your heart and lungs
Your heart is a muscle, and like all muscles benefits from regular exercise. Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues encouraging your heart and lungs to work more efficiently, so you'll have more energy to do the things you enjoy.
5. Exercise promotes better sleep
Regular exercise can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. The timing is up to you — but if you're having trouble sleeping, you might want to try late afternoon workouts. The natural dip in body temperature five to six hours after you exercise might help you fall asleep.
6. Exercise can put the phwoaaarrrr back into your sex life
Regular exercise can leave you feeling energized and looking better, which can have a positive effect on your sex life. It’ll also improve your circulation, which can lead to more satisfying sex. And men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than are men who don't exercise, especially as they get older.
7. Exercise can be fun! Seriously!!!
Exercise doesn't have to be drudgery. Take a dance class. Check out a local climbing wall or hiking trail. Join a MA class (*cough* PM Roper). Exercise with friends (*cough* ask Colm O’Reilly for something new and different). Play footie with your mates. Go for a long walk and a gossip with your girlfriends. Find an activity you enjoy, and go for it. If you get bored, try something new. If you're moving, it counts!
Types of Exercise
You’ll often see fancy terminology being used to describe exercise on the board so I’ll use it here to make these discussions more approachable when you see them again. They’re really just posh ways of describing very simple things if truth be told Please note, I am not saying that any one of these methods is any better than the others and if I looked hard enough I could find studies that show each one of them is superior in some way to the other methods. What you need to do is figure out which one suits your goals the best – most often it’s quite simply the one you’ll stick to
LIT – Low Intensity Training
Just as the name suggests this is training that requires the least intense effort. Slow jogging, brisk walking, any cardio activity in fact that’s done to moderate effort (so that you feel your heart rate rising but you aren’t out of breath and you can still hold conversations) is generally considered LIT (aka steady-state cardio because you use the same pace constantly for your exercise duration. HIT can also be steady-state cardio, just at a different intensity).
Why use LIT?
It’s easy. Stick on a pair of comfy shoes and go walking. If you’re on a calorie deficit (which many of you will be if your primary goal is to lose weight) you may not have the energy to do high intensity exercise and the thought of an 8 mile run will send you straight to bed. A brisk walk on the other hand is manageable and effective.
It’s low risk. Even the most out of shape person can usually do low-intensity cardio training safely. While this is certainly appropriate advice for novice trainers, it does not necessarily apply to the more experienced trainer when it comes to effective training. For the more fitness minded of you out there, be wary of only using LIT to meet your goals – you may be kidding yourself into thinking you’re reaching your true potential when really you’re capable of a LOT more.
It burns a higher percentage of calories from fat. But unless you’re walking for 3 horus a day this is a bit of a “technical” Pro!!
HIT – High Intensity Training
This can apply to both cardio and strength training. High Intensity training generally refers to steady state cardio with high effort involved – prolonged runs or cycles for example. With regards to strength training it was a technique originally hyped by Arthur Jones and later popularised by Mike Mentzer involving training hard for short periods and still remains one of the most popular ways to effectively build muscle.
Why use HIT?
It works. High Intensity Training is probably the single most “proven” ways to get results for both cardio and strength training. If you want to get quicker, run faster. If you want to get stronger, lift heavier. But recognise the stress that you are putting your body under and rest accordingly. A lot of newcomers to training unwittingly burn themselves out by taking the exercise bull by the horns and going flat-out in the beginning, leaving them little or no energy to finish their time goals.
It burns more fat. Technically LIT will burn more calories from fat (with the muscle being the other source. Ideally we’d like all our energy to come from burning fat whilst maintaining all that lean mass we’ve accumulated) but the actual calories burnt from an LIT session will be relatively low. Say, for example, walking for 20 minutes burns 100 calories. Then 50% of 100 calories is 50 fat-calories burned. Now say 10 minutes of high intensity training burns 160 calories. Well, 40% of 160 calories is 64 fat-calories burned. By doing the high-intensity work, you've just burned 14 more fat calories in half the time.
The thing is though, high-intensity training really will burn you out fast. So if you do choose to go down this route (or using HIIT as will be discussed in a moment) be sure to rest adequately and don’t overdo it. 2 to 3 sessions per week should be plenty (and perhaps only 1-2 if you’re just starting out).
HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training
Imagine taking the best of both LIT and HIT and putting them together. The result is HIIT – quick maximum effort, minimal time-input, great results. It works exactly as the name suggests, by doing intervals of light and high intensity exercise. Generally it’s done in a 2:1 rest: work ratio, and for it to work the work portion really has to be “kick-your-ass-so-hard-you-feel-like-crying-after-three-rounds” tough. HIIT won’t work if you put anything less than 110% into it.
Why use HIIT?
It’s fast. An effective HIIT session usually lasts between 12-20 minutes. You’re in and out of the gym in minutes. How many of us genuinely can’t commit 20 minutes to exercise twice a week?
It’s effective. While LIT will only burn calories while you work out, HIIT ramps up your metabolism for up to 24 hours afterwards, so you burn extra calories even as you’re sitting at home after your session!
It’s easy (to plan and execute!). You don’t necessarily need a gym for this: if there’s a park nearby you can do sprint intervals. If you have an available stretch of road you can do cycle sprint intervals. You can do swimming intervals in a pool, rowing intervals, skipping intervals, cross-trainer intervals or you can do weight intervals (Google “Tabata” for the last word in 4 minutes of resistance training hell…). You can even do it at home with dumbbells if you have them (DB thrusters are evilly efficient).
I hope I haven’t lost anyone so far… so now you know of what the available exercise options can be, where do you go next?
One word: move.
Seriously, even if you forget everything I’ve just said just make sure you do one thing: for 30 minutes per week, every week for 8 weeks in total, move.
Given that this is a getting-in-shape-for-the-summer challenge, I’d hazard a guess that for most of you fat-loss will be a primary goal. In order to do that your diet will actually be the most important component of the efforts you put in, but exercise will come a close second, and a commitment to exercise will make it much more likely that the weight sill stay off.0 -
Efficient Exercise Part II
Planning your exercise
Like I said above, the most effective training plan is quite simply one that you will tick to. Even the fanciest regime means nothing if you burn out after two weeks. Attached at the bottom is even a training sheet to help you plan and record what your daily activity is
Ideally you will use a combination of weights and cardio as part of your exercise regime (girls, I will say this only once… you will not, I repeat NOT, get too big/ muscley/ masculine from doing weights. What you will get is toned and teh sexah. While cardio is great for burning calories, weights increase your lean muscle mass which raises your resting metabolism. Once again it’s a way for you to burn more calories by doing nothing – winner!! If you need further convincing…
Cardio on the other hand will give you that lovely “real-time” fat burning feeling. It’s entirely possible to get the same feeling from weights alone, but the level of intensity that’s required is probably asking a bit much of the newcomers to fitness amongst us. Instead try and keep things varied and interesting so that you don’t get bored and you keep your spirits high.
For example:
Monday: weights for one hour
Tuesday: pre-breakfast walk for 45 minutes
Wednesday: game of football
Thursday: weights for one hour
Friday: rest
Saturday: Sprint/ cycle intervals
Sunday: rest
Consider your fitness goals. Are you starting a fitness program to help lose weight? Or do you have another motivation, such as preparing for a 5K race? Having clear goals can help you gauge your progress.
Think about your likes and dislikes. Choose activities you'll enjoy. If you have fun doing the exercises you've selected, you're more likely to keep doing them.
Plan a logical progression of activity. If you're just beginning to exercise, start cautiously and progress slowly. Keep the long-term goals in mind and don’t overdo it.
Build activity into your daily routine. Finding time to exercise can be a challenge. To make it easier, schedule time to exercise as you would any other appointment. Plan to watch your favorite show while walking on the treadmill, or read while riding a stationary bike.
Think variety. Varying your activities will keep exercise boredom at bay. Cross-training also reduces the risk of injuring or overusing one specific muscle or joint. Plan to alternate among activities that emphasize different parts of your body, such as walking, swimming and strength training.
Allow time for recovery. Many people start exercising with frenzied zeal — working out too long or too intensely — and give up when their muscles and joints become sore or injured. Plan time between sessions for your body to rest and recover.
Put it on paper…0 -
Your Diet: Much More Than Half The Battle Part I
The weirdest thing happened when I started to write this portion of the challenge: I was lost for words. Seriously, me, a fine purveyor of waffleishousness, couldn’t think of something to write Well actually that’s not quite true, the problem was more that I found I had too much to say and no idea how to start saying it.
It’s no wonder people get so confused with their dietary requirements – it’s a bloomin’ minefield out there, where do you even begin to start looking for answers to the common questions?! What foods will help me lose weight? What’s the difference between high-carb, low-carb, high protein, low-fat, calorie restricted, cutting, bulking and performance diets? When should I eat? What should I eat? How important are vitamins and minerals? What’s the difference between good fats and bad fats and will they make me fat? Why the heck is protein so important and what foods are it in? How do I plan for meals? How do I get a balanced diet? Aaaaghghghhghgh!!!
It's enough to send you crying into a cream-topped, marshmallow laden full-fat milk bot chocolate. But the thing is, if I was to try and explain everything I’d like to explain I probably wouldn’t finish this sticky in time for the start of the challenge and you wouldn’t finish reading it before the end of it. So instead I’m going to try and cover the very basics - no matter what diet plan you follow, or what your goals are, if you follow these guidelines you’ll be moving in the right direction.
Irrespective of whether you want to lose fat or gain muscle (or even *shock, horror* do both), your diet will be the most important tool you can use to achieve those goals. Exercise will provide additional support for reaching those goals, but what you put into your body dictates how much “weight” your carry around. The exercise you do helps dictate whether that weight is constituted mostly of fat or muscle.
At the end of the day there’s one very simple idea that each and every single one of us can abide by:
Calories In < Calories Out = Weight Loss
Calories Out > Calories In = Weight Gain
Honestly, it’s that simple. But (and there’s always one of those…) in an ideal world the “weight” we want to lose will be fat and the “weight” we want to gain is muscle, so how do we optimise the chances of that happening?
Your body likes to be supplied a constant supply of fuel – small regular meals keep your appetite under control, keep your blood sugar in check, keep your energy levels constant and keep your moods regulated. Eating regular meals is as simple as eating breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack and dinner.
If you want to read a more comprehensive breakdown of what your food is made up of and what it will do for you there’s lots of information in the diet and nutrition sticky but for now I’m going to keep it simple:
I’m not usually a fan of listing “good” or “bad” foods as there’s room for everything in moderation in a balanced diet but I think this challenge could be a great opportunity for us to stop looking at food as just stuff that tastes good, or stuff that you use to feed an appetite, and instead look at food as our body’s fuel - good fuel in the sense that it will postively impact our health and bad fuel that in that it will have no positive effects. Food not only keeps us alive, but if we eat the right foods it can help us fight disease, help us have healthier and stronger nails, hair and skin, help us recovery from injury and illness quicker, and help us to sleep better and live longer.
I guess one of the problems is that some of these “good” foods may on the surface seem quite boring, but please trust me on this – beauty is all in the eye of the beholder. Put the immediate gratification of your taste-buds aside for a moment - which of these foods will make you feel better and do your body more good?
All it takes is a couple of weeks of junk-free eating to notice your energy levels sky-rocketing and your body feeling great. When food makes you feel that good it’s hard to go back to eating badly. In few weeks time you'll look at those photos again and I can virtually guarantee which one you'll levitate towards. Eating well is its own reward and creating a healthy diet as part of your daily habits teaches allows your body to develop it's own sense of well-being. When you eat foods to enhance that well being you'll naturally continue to crave them and junk will be a thing of the past.
Still need convincing? Ok.
Hands up who here enjoys a bit of a sugary treat. I know I do o/ the thing is though, I'm not really sure why sugar is called a "treat" at all. Surely a treat is something that' meant to do you good, or makes you feel good? But here's the thing: sugar has absolutely no nutritional benefits. None. Nada. Zilch. There is absolutely nothing of nutritional benefit to your body from eating sugar. It has no vitamins and no minerals. “But what about the energy it gives you?” comes a shout from the back. Oh yeah, a great big energy rush… which is swiftly followed by an even greater, bigger energy crash half an hour later as your blood sugar levels come freefalling down leaving you groggy, tired and moody. How fab.
All joking aside, refined sugar has no great merit in our diets. That’s not to say that all sugars are bad, or that we have to eradicate sugar from our diets if we want to be healthy, simply that we need to recognise sugar for what it really is: all sugars are not created equally but are a non-essential element to our diet. If you were to cut out sugar and sugar-laden products from your diet it would do you no harm at all, in fact it would probably make you physically healthier. So the next time you want to eat a bar of chocolate or a bag of jellies (my personal downfall) ask yourself if you really, really do want them. Are you acknowledging you’re about to eat it simply to satisfy a passing craving? Will you actually feel better after eating it or will you feel a little bloated, and perhpas a little guilty? Nine times out of ten when I stop myself and ask myself those questions my brain takes over from my taste buds and I reach for a piece of fruit instead – it satisfies my cravings but provides plenty of healthy goodness my body can use.
Instead of hot chocolate choose tea; instead of jellies choose dried apple pieces; instead of ice cream have fruit salad; instead of jam have natural peanut butter; instead of a sugary fruit-flavoured yoghurt have natural yoghurt with a chopped up banana or pear in it – make the right choices, you are in control of your diet after all.
And then there’s the other junk food comforter: fat. Chips, greasy take-aways, doughy, oily pizzas, cheap mayonnaise-laden burgers… (I must make a disclaimer at this point: I’m not talking about all fats, just bad fats. Common senses will tell you that in general junk food usually = bad fats, naturally occurring oils and fats = good). If you take an apple and dunk it in caramel, coat it with chocolate and sprinkle it with hundreds and thousands you can’t really call it a healthy food any more can you? Well essentially that’s what happens in a lot of these highly processed foods. Their fats are modified to such an extent that they become "bad" or hydrogenated and trans-fats as they’re also called. Much like refined sugars, hydrogenated/ trans fats have absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.
So there you have it, the two worst things you can eat in your diet – refined sugar and processed fats. Both of them good foods gone bad. The moral of the story? Steer clear of processed foods. Do that and you've already improved your diet by at least 132%*
Up next, sorting out the good from bad in your shopping trolley…
* May or may not be statistically accurate0 -
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ok everyone, a new challenge thread has been established
So... what are your goals??
I'm in for this. I've just moved from doing a full body workout three times a week to doing Westside for Skinny Bastards, and I've cut back a bit on the running and gone for white collar boxing instead.
My aims are as much extra muscle as I can get, a drop in bodyfat, and hopefully no broken bones.
EDIT: These goals may sound vague, but I've no experience measuring changes to my body, so I've no idea what's a realistic target. For what it's worth, I'm 6'2", 32 years old, and weigh 12 stone. We'll see where I go from here.0 -
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Thanks g'em
I'm in,
my goal is to lose 6lbs (currently 136 and 5'3) and more importantly lose 2 inches off my waist to get it to 32". Even though I'm not fat (anymore) I still have a thick waist and I know this isn't good health wise.
I have a body analysis scales and it tells me my body fat is over 30% (which I doubt) but I want that read to come down by 5% at least by the end of the challenge)
Fitness wise I'm going to run 5k 3 times and visit the gym 2-3 times also. I was doing Starting Strength up till early December but got jaded with it so this time around I'm going to trying supersets as set out by the lovely Tom
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Ok Im in.
Im sick of being the overweight lazy one in my family!
Im not sure about goals though. Mainly I would love to be a size 10 again and be about 9 and a half stone.. Which would mean losing a stone and a half.. Im 5ft 4in so it might be possible!
Seems scary, but I will do my best. Cross my heart!
Might be a silly question, but how many calories a day would you recommend?
For a female, aged 21??
Motivated now! 0 -
My goal is to move from a bmi of obese (God how I hate that word
) to a bmi of just:rolleyes: overweight in the first eight weeks.
I'll probably be taking it a little less extreme with the exercise than most people here, I have fibromyalgia and a rheumatoid arthritis/lupus mix, so I have to be really careful (my rheumatologist told me to try to get jogging, so I have medical advice) At the same time, I need to get healthier to help me get a bit better. I'm doing the couch to 5k three times a week, and brisk walking the other days. Hopefully going to get a swim in once a week too. I'll be doing as much as I can without hurting my body and having to stop in week one.
I've piled on the weight in the past few years. I'm really fed up. I'll be trying to create a higher calorie deficit to make up for the fact that I won't be doing as much exercise as others here.
Do we all start at the same time, or just from now?0 -
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Thank youG'em,
I am reminded of the thread on fixing the basics thread reading the first few posts in this thread. I can't see much in the "fitness: the basics" thread which is as comprehensive and useful as the stuff there.
Just thought I'd throw that out there. I'd forgotten how much I'd put into these posts actually, they need a good bit of fixing up but they're not half bad
what weight are you now?Geansai Rua wrote: »Might be a silly question, but how many calories a day would you recommend?
For a female, aged 21??
Motivated now!
I think we can probably all start from this weekend maybe? Or if people have started already that's coolDo we all start at the same time, or just from now?
For the sake of consistency why don't we say that everyone has to do their measurements this Saturday or Sunday and keep a log of them (either in the Fitness Logs or privately).0 -
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