Losing the beer gut..
Discussion
paul_y3k said:
mmm interesting reading, but I'm confused.
How come when after joing my local gym, Fitness Last, and specifying on my induction that I wanted to lose weight did the chap just stick me on cardio machines, and never even introduced me to the weights ?
Shall I ask for my money back ?
As LG has said avoid standard NVQ trainers who usually know almost nothing on the subject they are preaching on. There are good personal trainers out there (Goldblum, Mattiake(sp?) and more on here) but they are most certainly rare. How come when after joing my local gym, Fitness Last, and specifying on my induction that I wanted to lose weight did the chap just stick me on cardio machines, and never even introduced me to the weights ?
Shall I ask for my money back ?
For maximum weight loss I believe weights + CV and a good diet will get you there very fast if you're willing to put the effort in. Also bare in mind there is a world of difference from the 'healthy diet' that the government promotes to a healthy diet that produces weight loss.
If you read this book, you'll understand far more than most personal trainers; http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/ultimate-diet-20
At the end of the day exercise is very important if you want to sculpt your body i.e. not be a skinny weakling but diet is about 70% of the end result.
I've learnt a lot since my first attempt and switched from lifestyle gyms to a old school weight lifting gym which I absolutely love.
Here's my first attempt, there's plenty of stuff I do differently today; http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
To clarify, I'm not saying you couldn't use weights as a way to lose weight, but it's far from the most efficient method. As people have highlighted already, diet is key, then cardio work.
If you want to consider the fat burning after exercise effect, that would be most associated with HIIT, hardly appropriate as a starting point for losing weight.
Disclaimer : I'm not an expert, if you feel like proving me wrong, please do.
If you want to consider the fat burning after exercise effect, that would be most associated with HIIT, hardly appropriate as a starting point for losing weight.
Disclaimer : I'm not an expert, if you feel like proving me wrong, please do.
paul_y3k said:
Shall I ask for my money back ?
Only worth it if you stone cold stunner him then storm out with swagger flipping everyone the bird.robm3 said:
I read a book about 2 months ago called Sweet Poison. It had an impact on me so I've cut sugar out of my diet as much as possible.
I was 93kg but now around 89kg
I've not had any significant change to my exercising or diet sugar aside so for me this is working.
Just had a quick peek at that book. Reminds me of the Pure White & Deadly book mentioned on The Men Who Made Us Fat programme.I was 93kg but now around 89kg
I've not had any significant change to my exercising or diet sugar aside so for me this is working.
If you go on Amazon there are quite a few of these books. A few advise how to kick the sugar addiction.
http://sweetpoison.com.au/wordpress/?page_id=111
Local Gym PT blokey (yes one of the lifestyle types) keeps telling me that lifting weights is most important as a mix with the cardio stuff.
The reason he says it is that weights build muscle, and muscle burns more calories when you are simply sitting doing very little.
Whether that is the case I will leave to discussion, but that's the advice he is giving.
Typical program is like 60% cardio and 40% weights.
He also says that the gut is usually the last bit to go.
The reason he says it is that weights build muscle, and muscle burns more calories when you are simply sitting doing very little.
Whether that is the case I will leave to discussion, but that's the advice he is giving.
Typical program is like 60% cardio and 40% weights.
He also says that the gut is usually the last bit to go.
daz3210 said:
Local Gym PT blokey (yes one of the lifestyle types) keeps telling me that lifting weights is most important as a mix with the cardio stuff.
The reason he says it is that weights build muscle, and muscle burns more calories when you are simply sitting doing very little.
Whether that is the case I will leave to discussion, but that's the advice he is giving.
Typical program is like 60% cardio and 40% weights.
He also says that the gut is usually the last bit to go.
Sound advice although my preference is 60% weights.The reason he says it is that weights build muscle, and muscle burns more calories when you are simply sitting doing very little.
Whether that is the case I will leave to discussion, but that's the advice he is giving.
Typical program is like 60% cardio and 40% weights.
He also says that the gut is usually the last bit to go.
I'd also look at the shape of PT's, if they are just skinny dudes then I'd not want to take weight lifting advice from them generally as a rule of thumb.
Also there's tons of research out there that shows for up to 38 hours after weight training the metabolism is ramped up where as doing cardio only its drastically shorter and thats on top of doing the exercise and also the benefit of supporting lean mass.
Cardio is important for health and weight loss but I personally preference weight lifting far above it, I don't have any qualifications in this area but I have spent a lot of time learning and training with very successful people.
As chief ambassador to the ordinary_chap fan club, I can only say; I agree. 
Plenty of skinny feckers out there, but I'd rather not be one of them. Cardio and diet may get you skinny but IMO it's not a good look. Knees and joints will likely be knackered too. Weight training keeps everything moving as it should with the benefit of improving strength, flexibility and appearance. No-brainer for me.
Plenty of skinny feckers out there, but I'd rather not be one of them. Cardio and diet may get you skinny but IMO it's not a good look. Knees and joints will likely be knackered too. Weight training keeps everything moving as it should with the benefit of improving strength, flexibility and appearance. No-brainer for me.
I've just been put on a Low GI diet by a "proper" dietician. I have put on weight following having Pneumonia last year....I was on steroids for six months which help you put weight on which combined with lungs not working properly meant I craved sugars for the energy buzz.
I am not in a position to exercise yet other than walk home two or three times a week so no Cardio exercise. I've lost a stone in just under a month purely by following this Low GI diet and also cutting out as mush fat and sugar as possible.
For example I used to have Porridge in the mornings and put raisins and honey in it...both of those are on the banned list so now if I want porridge I make it the night before and grate an apple to add sweetness. Let it all soak and heat it the next day.
White and Broan bread is banned so it's either Rye Bread or Soya and Linseed of which the latter is suprosingly good. Butter is also banned so it's Olive Oil spread which I find absolutely fine.
Fruit juice is banned but eating fruit is absolutely fine.
Boiled potaoes (not baked or mashed) are fine as is brown rice. I am allowed red meat twice a week as long as there's no fat otherwise it's fish or chicken.
Those are a few of the things but a decent outline I am not doing any calorie counting and have a target to lose two of the three stone I need to lose in three months. At that stage I think we are targetting steady state before pushing to lose more weight a bit later....be interesting to see what the thought behnd that is.
I have never,ever lost weight before without doing cardio alongside dieting.
I am not in a position to exercise yet other than walk home two or three times a week so no Cardio exercise. I've lost a stone in just under a month purely by following this Low GI diet and also cutting out as mush fat and sugar as possible.
For example I used to have Porridge in the mornings and put raisins and honey in it...both of those are on the banned list so now if I want porridge I make it the night before and grate an apple to add sweetness. Let it all soak and heat it the next day.
White and Broan bread is banned so it's either Rye Bread or Soya and Linseed of which the latter is suprosingly good. Butter is also banned so it's Olive Oil spread which I find absolutely fine.
Fruit juice is banned but eating fruit is absolutely fine.
Boiled potaoes (not baked or mashed) are fine as is brown rice. I am allowed red meat twice a week as long as there's no fat otherwise it's fish or chicken.
Those are a few of the things but a decent outline I am not doing any calorie counting and have a target to lose two of the three stone I need to lose in three months. At that stage I think we are targetting steady state before pushing to lose more weight a bit later....be interesting to see what the thought behnd that is.
I have never,ever lost weight before without doing cardio alongside dieting.
LordGrover said:
As chief ambassador to the ordinary_chap fan club, I can only say; I agree.
Plenty of skinny feckers out there, but I'd rather not be one of them. Cardio and diet may get you skinny but IMO it's not a good look. Knees and joints will likely be knackered too. Weight training keeps everything moving as it should with the benefit of improving strength, flexibility and appearance. No-brainer for me.
Why thank you LG!Plenty of skinny feckers out there, but I'd rather not be one of them. Cardio and diet may get you skinny but IMO it's not a good look. Knees and joints will likely be knackered too. Weight training keeps everything moving as it should with the benefit of improving strength, flexibility and appearance. No-brainer for me.
I found your thread the other day, not sure how I missed it but its pretty interesting.
It's here for those that haven't seen it; http://pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Hoofy said:
StevieBee said:
I cannot recommend P90X enough. I'm 4 weeks in, lost a stone and feeling v.good. Requires dedication and a degree of existing fitness but very well worth it.
Out of interest, are you following the recipes/diet recommendations? IIRC that's part of the system, isn't it?A lot of the diet is common sense - cutting out butter, mayo, etc. What's more useful is knowing what 'types' of food to eat and when so you're appropriately fuelled when it comes to workout time. This is covered in the book you get and is quite interesting.
I watched an interview with Tony Horton over the weekend (the chap who came up with P90X) and the interviewer was pushing him on the diet. He said that a good rule of thumb is to look at your plate of food and be able to identify exactly every ingredient on the plate (mayo, for example, isn't a single ingredient as its made of several).
It's very easy to get sucked in to the up-sell approach favoured by the US on things like this but the core workouts are excellent and provided you eat sensibly, you'll get results.
If you want to get some very good advice I know a nutritionalist up here who does skype consultations/meal plans etc. He is very, very good and extremely knowledgable. Take a look at his website www.foodforfitness.co.uk
P.S. he's not a mate or anything, I've used his services before and thought it was excellent VFM.
P.S. he's not a mate or anything, I've used his services before and thought it was excellent VFM.
Cheib said:
For example I used to have Porridge in the mornings and put raisins and honey in it...both of those are on the banned list so now if I want porridge I make it the night before and grate an apple to add sweetness. Let it all soak and heat it the next day.
I'll try that tip.Sugar addict here.
Halb said:
Cheib said:
For example I used to have Porridge in the mornings and put raisins and honey in it...both of those are on the banned list so now if I want porridge I make it the night before and grate an apple to add sweetness. Let it all soak and heat it the next day.
I'll try that tip.Sugar addict here.
StevieBee said:
Hoofy said:
StevieBee said:
I cannot recommend P90X enough. I'm 4 weeks in, lost a stone and feeling v.good. Requires dedication and a degree of existing fitness but very well worth it.
Out of interest, are you following the recipes/diet recommendations? IIRC that's part of the system, isn't it?A lot of the diet is common sense - cutting out butter, mayo, etc. What's more useful is knowing what 'types' of food to eat and when so you're appropriately fuelled when it comes to workout time. This is covered in the book you get and is quite interesting.
I watched an interview with Tony Horton over the weekend (the chap who came up with P90X) and the interviewer was pushing him on the diet. He said that a good rule of thumb is to look at your plate of food and be able to identify exactly every ingredient on the plate (mayo, for example, isn't a single ingredient as its made of several).
It's very easy to get sucked in to the up-sell approach favoured by the US on things like this but the core workouts are excellent and provided you eat sensibly, you'll get results.
I found that whilst a massive change of dietary lifestyle for a lot of people is needed and in the beginning it all goes great with motivation, excitement and the whole "newness" of it, introducing such a huge change often leads to "burn out" quite quickly. You get bored of eating healthy, bored of the same things over and over again, miss the bad stuff and start getting cravings for either sugar or salty foods, whichever you prefer.
As other have said reduce and alter your carb intake to complex, low GI carbs and preferably before 4/5pm and after that, vegs/fish/white meats. The human body isnt designed to eat bread, cakes, sauces etc, we evolved to eat vegetables, grasses and meats. You don't see fat lions or tigers! They "exercise" quite a lot and only eat proteins/grasses. BUT dont cut out fat from your diet completely, you need fats for correct liver, kidney and blood functions, plus a few other things besides.
And to begin with I wouldn't cut out everything you like to eat....have a pizza once a week, have a couple of beers one night....it'll make the dietary change easier to cope with and over time as you see some results coming in, you can either keep cutting down to lose more or just maintain at a level you're happy with.
Instead of having regimented breakfast/lunch/tea (which just isn't how your body is designed to work), if your job allows, have smaller more frequent meals. Even a protein shake on it's own is a meal, without going too far in to intricacies, evening out calorie intake, keeping blood sugar, nitrogen and insulin levels, level throughout the day, goes a long way to lessening the body's storage of fats.
With the exercise, dont go hell for leather trying to do this in a month or two, you're more likely to injure yourself, ache too much to do anything for a couple of days and combined with huge dietary change, make you hate it pretty quickly!
Just start with a few things at a time, if you're a desk jockey like me and you work in high rise office, don't use the lift unless you're on the 30th floor or something!! I work on the 6th floor and you'll be amazed how much your feel doing that 4 or 5 times a day! If you use a bus to get to work, walk a few more stops or get off a few stops early. I see you're getting the bike out, that's great, but in the UK on a cold damp day are you really gonna be so motivated to do it? That's where just being a little more active in other aspects of your life come into play more.
From memory optimum body fat utilisation as an energy source is roughly 50% of full cardio capacity, anything above that you're likely to burn all your glycogen/glucose stores way before your body can begin to breakdown fat for energy, plus fat breakdown requires blood/oxygen, so if you're exercising at full cardio capacity, you're not allowing your body to even begin fat conversion as its too busy trying to fuel the muscles under load, so your body will begin to use muscle over fat for energy.
Exercising with a higher intensity will also promote lactic acid build-up (the burn!!!), which inhibits oxygen getting to the muscle so you'll tire quickly. Longer and lower intensity exercise is much more productive for fat burning. If/or as you get into a more active exercise routine, then more intense cardio will raise your resting metabolic rate, so your body will burn more calories just doing nothing. Switching between a few weeks high and low intensity cardio will be the most beneficial as it will increase your body's ability to use carbs and fats for energy.
I hope any of this makes sense or helps!
As other have said reduce and alter your carb intake to complex, low GI carbs and preferably before 4/5pm and after that, vegs/fish/white meats. The human body isnt designed to eat bread, cakes, sauces etc, we evolved to eat vegetables, grasses and meats. You don't see fat lions or tigers! They "exercise" quite a lot and only eat proteins/grasses. BUT dont cut out fat from your diet completely, you need fats for correct liver, kidney and blood functions, plus a few other things besides.
And to begin with I wouldn't cut out everything you like to eat....have a pizza once a week, have a couple of beers one night....it'll make the dietary change easier to cope with and over time as you see some results coming in, you can either keep cutting down to lose more or just maintain at a level you're happy with.
Instead of having regimented breakfast/lunch/tea (which just isn't how your body is designed to work), if your job allows, have smaller more frequent meals. Even a protein shake on it's own is a meal, without going too far in to intricacies, evening out calorie intake, keeping blood sugar, nitrogen and insulin levels, level throughout the day, goes a long way to lessening the body's storage of fats.
With the exercise, dont go hell for leather trying to do this in a month or two, you're more likely to injure yourself, ache too much to do anything for a couple of days and combined with huge dietary change, make you hate it pretty quickly!
Just start with a few things at a time, if you're a desk jockey like me and you work in high rise office, don't use the lift unless you're on the 30th floor or something!! I work on the 6th floor and you'll be amazed how much your feel doing that 4 or 5 times a day! If you use a bus to get to work, walk a few more stops or get off a few stops early. I see you're getting the bike out, that's great, but in the UK on a cold damp day are you really gonna be so motivated to do it? That's where just being a little more active in other aspects of your life come into play more.
From memory optimum body fat utilisation as an energy source is roughly 50% of full cardio capacity, anything above that you're likely to burn all your glycogen/glucose stores way before your body can begin to breakdown fat for energy, plus fat breakdown requires blood/oxygen, so if you're exercising at full cardio capacity, you're not allowing your body to even begin fat conversion as its too busy trying to fuel the muscles under load, so your body will begin to use muscle over fat for energy.
Exercising with a higher intensity will also promote lactic acid build-up (the burn!!!), which inhibits oxygen getting to the muscle so you'll tire quickly. Longer and lower intensity exercise is much more productive for fat burning. If/or as you get into a more active exercise routine, then more intense cardio will raise your resting metabolic rate, so your body will burn more calories just doing nothing. Switching between a few weeks high and low intensity cardio will be the most beneficial as it will increase your body's ability to use carbs and fats for energy.
I hope any of this makes sense or helps!
i am an instructor and you need to be doing both types of exercise cardio as well as resistance.
Cardio burns calories which is a unit of energy
weights burn fat for energy to repair and feed muscle
you can get a skinng fat person depending upon how they train
alot of this goes down to what you are eating but also remember you need to eat lots of green veggies every day you also need good fats so add in some oily fish such as
Salmon
Mackerel
Anchovies
sardines
Herring
Back to training interval training is without a doubt the best way to go as is metabolic training. With weights at a level you can manage to do 6-8 exercises in a row WITHOUT killing yourself on a scale of 1-10 you won't to be around 6-7 20-30 mins and throw in some cardio 3-4 times per wekk and as long as your diet is pretty good no snacking on junk ohh drink plenty of water, never ever skip breakfast make it porridge good complex carbs keep you going for a few hours any more help email pm me i will be happy to help
Cardio burns calories which is a unit of energy
weights burn fat for energy to repair and feed muscle
you can get a skinng fat person depending upon how they train
alot of this goes down to what you are eating but also remember you need to eat lots of green veggies every day you also need good fats so add in some oily fish such as
Salmon
Mackerel
Anchovies
sardines
Herring
Back to training interval training is without a doubt the best way to go as is metabolic training. With weights at a level you can manage to do 6-8 exercises in a row WITHOUT killing yourself on a scale of 1-10 you won't to be around 6-7 20-30 mins and throw in some cardio 3-4 times per wekk and as long as your diet is pretty good no snacking on junk ohh drink plenty of water, never ever skip breakfast make it porridge good complex carbs keep you going for a few hours any more help email pm me i will be happy to help
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