1. Calories in - Calories out = Change in weight. Eat more than you expend? Gain weight. Expend more than you eat? Lose weight. It doesn't matter what the food IS, whether it be green vegetables or big macs, it just matters how many calories are in it. 2. Macros = Body composition. Most specifically, protein is needed for muscle. Be sure to get enough of it. Carbs vs fat is far less important. "Clean" vs "Dirty" foods also matter little for this. They may have longer-term health consequences in terms of long term consumption, but don't tend to have immediate body-composition effects. 3. Resistance training = body composition. No matter how much protein you have won't matter if you don't actually give your body a reason to need muscle. Whether trying to lose weight or gain mass, weight training gives your body a reason to improve the weight lost (more fat, less muscle) or weight gained (more muscle, less fat). 4. Cardio is far less important than diet. A week's worth of cardio can be canceled out by one extra McDonald's combo. Cardio has it's place- most notable it can help increase the calories to be consumed in a day in lighter individuals (usually girls) who can't manage to eat as little as necessary to actually lose weight. If you do some cardio in the morning then come home and down some recovery shake though you probably just canceled out the calories you just burned off and would have been better staying in bed. I am going to say those are by and far the most important things when it comes to body composition. Not when you eat, not the amount of preservatives in your food or how "processed" it is, not how many meals you eat a day, etc., etc., etc.. Consume the amount of calories needed to promote weight loss, gain or maintenance. Eat lots of protein. Lift heavy. Look good. EDIT: Apparently I am forgetful. Here is a great source: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/
I finally gave in and bought a George Foreman Grill. I made a turkey burger with some sliced eggplant (seasoned with garlic powder) for dinner. Not too shabby.
Told you that you should yield and that resistance was futile. Not my fault you didn't believe me. See, you think post-whoring would help, but I knew it wouldn't cause it gave you more chances to screw up.
Cut the diet coke. Diet soda is honestly no better for you than a regular soda. Just cut it completely, and have maybe one a week as a reward or something. Stick with the water. I personally find that portioning and just being smart about what I'm eating keeps me with a fairly flat stomach. JOE: Always, always, always eat breakfast if you're trying to get your body on a healthy trend. Breakfast is so important. You need it to function throughout the day. Plus, for a while, my morning schedule was screwed up so I stopped eating breakfast, would wait for lunch and eat a decent sandwich and then have a small portion of dinner with veggies and my stomach was quickly becoming less flat and I constantly felt more tired. I firmly believe in breakfast. And water. I think it's good to note that people who are desperately trying to lose large amounts of weight, make sure that you're still eating enough. I think people tend to think that if they skip breakfast, have water, have a yogurt for lunch, and then a salad for dinner they will become skinny and healthy. False. Yeah, for the first week or two pounds will shed off fairly easily since you're cutting everything. However, your body is basically starving so anything you eat will be stored as fat, as part of human starvation mode stuff. And then you'll be so hungry all the time that you'll just say eff it and give up and eat all the crap again and all the weight comes back. And it's usually all the weight and then some. This happened to my best friend several times. She doesn't learn that her "dieting" (more like starving) isn't good. Especially since she would go try to work out at the gym while running on absolutely no protein or carbs. Silly. So yeah, portioning and being smart. As Louis said, you can still eat things you like, but just cut out unnecessary stuff. Only eat half of the cheeseburger, or take off the roll and have just the meat. Stuff like that. When I was a ballerina that helped keep me "stage thin." 1-2 eggs in the morning with a slice of toast or some yogurt, a salad with chicken or tuna or something in it for lunch, and a meat, potato/rice, and vegetables for dinner with some snacking when you get hungry, like a yogurt, fruit etc. throughout the day...it worked for me. I just need to get back on it. It's hard to keep up with when you work 4pm-12am haha.
I can answer that. One of the main ingrediants of Diet Soda drinks (and alot of supposedly sugar-free diet drinks) is something called Aspartame. Aspartame is an artificial sweetener which has been proven to reduce your metabolism burning capeabilities. Chronic drinking of diet drinks that contain Aspartame can reduce your metabolism by up to 30% and when you're trying to lose weight your goal is to increase your metabolism so you can burn calories quicker. Drinking excessive amounts can make it much harder to achieve your goals. That said, if you have the choice to drink a regular soda or a diet one then chose diet. I wouldn't say they're equally as bad but diet drinks should still be avoided if you're trying to lose weight.
Interesting Luke, do you have a link to the study that showed that? I've tried to Google for it, but the only sites that seem to mention it at all at a glance are anti-aspartame sites which go on about "aspartame poisoning", it causing cancer, etc.. Further: "Accordingly, women who consumed aspartame-sweetened foods lost significantly more weight overall and regained significantly less weight during maintenance and follow-up than did those women who were assigned to abstain from aspartame for the study. " http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=547 "Several well-controlled scientific studies were conducted to determine the effect of aspartame on hunger, satisfaction and food intake, and body weight. Based on the overwhelming scientific evidence aspartame does not increase appetite, food intake or weight gain." http://www.aspartame.org/aspartame_myths_weight.html Yes, it's an aspartame site, but it cites actual studies done. "This study suggests possible advantages to supplementing a BDD [Balanced Deficit Diet] with aspartame-sweetened foods as part of a multidisciplinary weight loss program. The small sample size prohibits definitive conclusions but does provide the protocol for a larger, outpatient clinical trial." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3190220
I can't remember where I read the exact article but this taken from Scientific American touches on it a little.
This is the opposite though: It actually revs up the metabolism. I do agree that if you end up eating more because you drank the soda, then that does no good. But assuming you can control your urges, then it won't do any damage by itself. Also, this was of course in rats. The study I mentioned seemed to be in humans. I track pretty much everything I eat every day (though I don't drink diet soda's anyway ). But ultimately, if you want to drink diet soda and aren't overwhelmed with urges to eat more calories than you should then go for it. It's a cost-benefit thing it seems, if the enjoyment of drinking the soda is worth the extra hunger you may experience.
so, i know this may be considered "necroposting" im not sure, since its only been a month since a reply. But i weighed myself yesterday, and I am now 230 pounds. Which means i have lost a total of 50 pounds since November . Now it is time to start saving money to get ink'd. A new Linkin Park tattoo will do fine
I take 30min walks during my lunch breaks now to maintain my current weight. When I was a little heavier I would ride my bike for 30mins daily, and kept with the habit of eating proper foods. Fruit, vegetables, lots of water, etc. Sugary foods and fried foods are a necessary habit to kill if you want to meet your goal weight. Cheers.
Since Nov. 31st I lost 39 pounds on the Paleo diet. Take that motha fucka! Whats the Paleo diet you ask? http://desertcrossfit.typepad.com/Paleo_Food_List.pdf Still doing this until the summit. Started @ 240 now, 201.