Diet/Nutrition advice!

John83

Bit of history - 29 year old male, was ill for the best part of the last 12 months which included 6 operations. Absolutely no activity so put on around 2 stone. Thankfully all over me now so am back exercising daily for the last 3 weeks. Exercise includes about 4.5 - 5km (25-30 min) jog everyday. Every second day the jog is preceded by 70-100 pushups and 100 situps. Once/Twice a week I do some small weights just for arms and shoulders.

Okay my question is on diet/nutrition. I'm looking for advice or modifications/changes to my current diet to work with and optimise the exercise to lose weight and after that tone up a bit.

Typical weekday (9-5 desk job):

7.30 - Wake. Orange juice or shot of wheetgrass or both.
9.00 - Work. Coffee. Fruit (apple or clementine).
11.00 - Coffee. Portion of nuts and Fruit (apple or clementine).

13.00 - Lunch: Wholegrain bread sandwich (fillings usually ham, cheese, onion & tomato relish or ham with egg & light mayo). Apple and a low-fat natural yogurt. Cup of tea.

15.00 - Portion of nuts or fruit. Herbal tea.
17.30 - Cup of tea/coffee after work.

18.30 - Exercise (roughly 45-60min).

19.30 - Return. Whey Protein shake (1 scoop with skimmed milk)
20.00 - Dinner. One of the following:

• 75-100g portion of pasta/rice with a homemade tomato sauce (have chickpeas through this). Slice of boiled ham. Green beans.
• Portion of rice with a chicken breast and homemade curry sauce.
• Quick sandwich (if I've to be somewhere)

Dinner followed by a cup of tea or two.

23.00 - Could get peckish. Could have a low-fat yogurt or a small bowl of muesli.

Usually in bed by midnight and asleep by 1am (not a very good sleeper )
Over the day I could drink between 8-12 pints of water.



Weekends have been known to include Saturday night pints followed by chips and a Sunday Roast the following day (no roast spuds, usually have a medium sized baked one instead).


Would appreciate any advice on what I'm doing and how I could correct/modify it to optimise shedding pounds.


Thanks guys.

Orla K

Have you looked through this thread? Do you know your daily calorie needs? You really should read these and stick around (lurking or not) and read as many threads as you can, there'll be disagreements between people but that just means you have to think for yourself and decide who's right, it'll be the best thing you can do.

Where's the fat in your diet too? you need fat (see first link)

The protein shake I see as a bit pointless you could take in more protein in real food, I may be wrong on this but I don't think you really need it that much protein after a run. There's sites that show you good bodyweight exercises but they were on my other laptop that I can't turn on:( so I've lost them.

Have you put in what you ate into something like fitday it'll show you how much carbs/fat/protein your eating. I'd imagine at the moment it's favoured to carbs now.

The most important thing is the first bit find out how many calories you need and read posts and threads here, you'll find other sites with great information through posts here too.

how do you feel about lifting heavy weights? It's just that you have 60mins allotted for exercise per day, and if you use this optimally, you will drop weight really very quickly.

Lifting light weights and jogging is good, but if you want to be great, lifting heavy will seriously speed up and improve you getting back to where you want to be.