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First things first - what you want is entirely possible. The good news is that achieving it is entirely within your control. The bad news is that achieving it is entirely up to you. 
There are two main things to focus on: diet (as in what you eat, not dieting) and exercise. An appropriate diet is far more important than exhausting yourself with an exercise routine. Instructors have told me that improving your appearance is 75-80% about what you eat, and only 20-25% about what exercise you do. It's worth bearing that in mind, as most people have a mindset that they can continue to eat what they want as long as they exercise. That will not work in a weight loss scenario.
You need to bring some structure to your eating routines. Don't try cutting out everything - the best thing you can do is start keeping a food diary initially. Write down every single thing you eat through the day. Leave nothing out - chances are you will be surprised when you add it up just how many calories you are taking in.
Losing weight - specifically, losing FAT - is about two things: consuming less calories, and being more active. A good ballpark to aim for is to take in 12 calories per pound of bodyweight - for you that is around 2700 calories a day. To lose weight, you can cut roughly 500 calories per day off this - so you can aim for an intake of 2200 calories per day. This would allow you to lose 1lb a week (1lb fat = ~3500 calories), but in all likelihood you will lose a lot more than this in the early stages.
A huge aid with this, rather than cutting down on what you do eat, is to evaluate your diet and try to improve it. Macronutrient intake refers to the level of proteins, carbohydrates and fats that you consume. A poor diet will be high in carbs and "bad" fats, and low in proteins and "good" fats. A good diet will be high in protein and have a reasonable balance of carbs to good fats. The ratio many people try to aim for here is 40 protein : 30 carb : 30 fat.
Don't feel lost here - this will all sound like double-dutch initially. As I said, the very best thing you can do is track what you currently eat by taking a note of it, and familiarising yourself with labels showing the nutritional content of foods. If you have a smartphone there is a very useful app called MyFitnessPal which helps you to track your progress and record calorie intake. Chances are you will find your current intake is something like 60 carb : 25 fat : 15 protein. It's still possible to lose weight on this kind of ratio, provided you reduce your calories so you are burning more than you are taking in. However improving your diet will have many positive repercussions for you - you will look better, recover from exercise faster, feel stronger and you will have a healthier body. Further, as you exercise your metabolism will be boosted so you will actually burn fat faster, so it's a cycle of improvement in every respect.
In the short term, focus on what you take in, and be honest with yourself or you will have failed before you have begun. Once you know what you are dealing with, you will be able to make changes. It's not a quick process - any of the quick diet options you see will not work for you long-term, and in fact can cause you to end up getting worse. October this year is a more than reasonable timescale for you to lose a load of fat and feel a thousand times better about yourself.
Finally, I would urge you to join the lads on this thread here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/general-chat/1524465-do-you-work-out-could-you-do-motivation-iv.html
Working with people going through the same thing as you is invaluable and will really help to motivate you. Remember that you don't need to turn into a spandex-clad Mr Motivator type - focus on the food you eat and build the exercise slowly - something like one of those routines to work you up to running 5k would be perfect for you. |
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26-11-2019 05:47:30
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