Introduction
I've been feeling the need to repay the forum for all of the awesome contained here, and my scripting knowledge completely below standard, so I think I'll try to help you guys with some IRL Stuffs.
I've been chubby all my life, I look back at old pictures and just want to destroy them because I looked so bad. I decided to do something about it last year, right before my 16th birthday. I'm 17 now. With a combo of the gym and my diet, I've lost ~65 pounds to date. Nothing astronomical, but still great progress. Keep in mind this is also while having a pretty full schedule (school). A lot of the time was spent sorting through the shit and finding what actually works.
I can't guarantee this will work for everyone, but this is whats worked for me and it is based of a bunch of different techniques.
How I did it (The Guide)
What works is a combination of things, you can't, in my experience, do one weight loss technique and expect it to work forever.
Do I need to go to the gym?
Going to the gym helps but its not at all mandatory to loose weight. If you decide to go to the gym, do whatever you like. Weightlifting and/or cardio both raise your heart-rate and that's really what your going for. Say you want to do some cardio because you hear that's good for "burning fat", not really. Say you jog for 1 hour. Your burning 400 calories maximum, the equivalent of a muffin. The point of doing cardio is to raise your heart rate, which increases your metabolism.
Bottom line: Go to the gym if you enjoy it, it will better your results but it is not at all required.
Do I need to eat differently?
Mostly. Depends on where it is right now. If you drink pop, stop. If you eat chips, stop. Fastfood, stop. Thats about it, anything else, go ahead eat it. That includes things like ice cream and hamburgers(although not fastfood ones). You need to find your BMI and subtract 500-700 from it. That is how many calories you need to eat, doesn't matter if it is from Icecream or whatever (expect those listed above). MyFitnessPal app for your phone is absolutely amazing just for tracking what you eat. Don't bother with their other shitty features. Also, the biggest part is being honest with yourself. You lie about how many calories your eating and your only harming your progess.
Bottom line: Don't eat what I mentioned above. Find your BMI and eat 500 less than that everyday.
When should I eat?
This is one of the other techniques I have built into my plan. Its called Intermittent Fasting. Basically, you eat during certain hours of the day. I, myself, eat during a 7 hour period during the day. I don't eat breakfast until 1:30pm and I stop eating completely after 8:30pm. Only thing I do outside of that is have a cup of coffee in the morning(before 1:30pm) and drink water after 8:30pm. This gives your body lots of time before waking up and before going to bed to process your food and burn existing fat. This might sound like a load of shit but it works for me and many others. During your 7 hour eating period you can eat whatever(see: "Do I need to eat differently?" above) but it just needs to fit your calorie goal(BMI - 500 = Calorie Goal). At first this will be incredibly difficult, your going to feel like your a starving African child for the first week or so but then your body will adjust to it. Sometimes I go without eating till 2-3pm just because my body isn't hungry yet. Trust me this method, when in combination with what is said above and below, will work. (at least it does for me)
Bottom line: Only eat during a 5-7 hour period during the day, while eating follow the above steps and follow your calorie goal.
What else can I incorporate to help me?
There are a couple little things that I have found to just help with this process:
- Coffee: speeds up your metabolism, makes you poop, helps you stay awake too. If you don't like the taste, stop being a pussy. Jk. But seriously if you don't like the taste you can buy caffeine pills
- Water: If you can slowly up your water consumption to around a gallon a day, that's perfect and your body will thank you.
- High Protein: Eating a shit ton of protein also helps me, if I knew yesterday was a bad day (I gained weight) I know I can fix that with a day of eating high protein foods(chicken/tuna/eggs)
- Fiber: If all those high protein foods "stuffed you up", then you can supplement in some fiber to help your anus out
Is that it?
Yea pretty much. A combo of those steps has allowed me to loose ~65 pounds. I think at my peak I was ~200lbs (A non-active 16 year old who is 5'7" ...that's fat). I'm now ~135lbs and I think I can shred another 15 to be at my perfect weight.
Thanks for reading my ramble that will hopefully help you loose weight. I hope it wasn't too difficult to read. Any questions below are fine but just keep the broscience to a minimum lol.
tl;dr:
- Be active if you can
- Don't eat fastfood, chips, or pop.
- Count your calories and eat a caloric deficit of around 500
- Do Intermittent Fasting
- Drink Coffee/Take Caffeine
- Keep hydrated/Drink ~1 gallon of water a day
- Lots of Protein
- Supplement fiber to keep your bowels moving at a steady pace