Fitness And Nutrition General

Appreciated.
Yeah I have the Nike watch and chest strap somewhere in my garage I'll get out and start using again.

But ye old question still stands: Loose fat while building muscle, or loose fat while retaining muscle, possible? if so, how?

The first one, known as a recomp, is notoriously difficult, but possible. The bulk-then-cut vs cut-then-bulk is like Apple vs. PC or Kirk vs. Picard. I'd say cut first, and take BCAA's to maintain as much muscle mass as possible.

Lose fat while building muscle very possible for a beginner, becomes increasingly difficult to develop good gains from it later on. Losing fat while retaining muscle is considered a cut. Take off 500 calories from your daily metabolic rate and continue to lift in the 12-15 rep range (or what you currently do, but I wouldnt advise powerlifting routines), eat lots of protein and eat every 3 hours, ect...

Exercise alone isn't going to fix things - you need to adjust your diet too. Keep it up with Shaun T as his stuff is pretty fun. At 160 you should be able to handle Insanity, but you also need to eat right too. Check out the diet plan that comes with Insanity and follow it to a T, no pun intended, and you'll get results.

Not so sure about this - high protein low carb with no exercise makes no sense. How much a day do you play this game? If you have time to play this game 1 hour a day, you have 1 hour a day to exercise. Your health should come first before anything else - before family, before friends, before work, before play. Your health is the most important thing to you other then perhaps your children; it should be treated with that type of commitment.

Tell yourself, I am going to be healthy! I am going to work at this!

Now that you've started the right mentality, you're ready to change.

You need to calculate how many calories you need to eat while exercising 1 hour a day to reach your target body/you. After you've figured this out, you need to create a diet and stick to it. If you don't have a goal to bulk, or don't have a goal to shrink, then wtf is your goal? This is key to figuring out what you should put in your body. I like to keep things simple at first and that's probably what you need to do.

Start out figuring out your caloric needs. A simple way to do this is to take your body weight and multiply it by 12, 13, 14 or 15.

Lets take the median and multiply by 13. So, if you weight 250 pounds, your daily caloric needs are 3250. These are the calories you use everyday to function as a human being. More then this = gaining weight and believe it or not, less this this = gaining weight. The reason is that if you don't provide your body the necessary amount of calories each day to survive, it goes into starvation mode and starts to store calories to prevent it from becoming weak.

In order to lose weight, we need to target those 3250 calories into the right kinds of foods. Lean proteins, complex carbohydrates, and essential fatty acids need to make up your diet. Mix these foods and these foods only, and you're on your way to a healthier you.

Examples of lean proteins:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/276808-examples-of-lean-protein-foods/

Examples of complex carbohydrates:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/27398-list-complex-carbohydrates-foods/

Examples of essential fatty acids:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/301329-list-of-essential-fatty-acids/

OK - now that you know what you can eat, you need to figure out how much of each.

Well, since your diet has probably sucked up until now, you need to start filling your body with the goods. If you want to lose fat, you're going to have to reduce caloric intake.

Back to that 3250 mark - lets move that down 500 calories a day so now you're down to 2850 calories per day. This is now your target for calories.

You'll want a diet to help lean you out, go for a 50% protein, 30% carbs, and 20% fat diet. You can check out the formulas a few pages back on this thread to figure how much of what you should eat.

50/30/20 should only be followed for 1-2 months and then you should adjust back to 40/40/20. As you lose weight, change your target calories so like once you drop those first 15 pounds and are weighing 235, you need to adjust (235*13)-500= 2555 calories a day.

Keep this up and find 1 hour a day to exercise be it a video, weight lifting, treadmill or bike riding; if you stick to it 1 hour a day and follow a healthy diet, you will change your body and how you feel guaranteed.

Thanks Arc. Great advice. Will follow through. You're still bald though. <3

I did include exercise, if you were talking to me.

Green and white tea are fine. Infact if someone is trying to loose weight they are even better.

Green tea will fight cravings and help burn fat. The antioxidants in it are also great for the muscle repair process.

You can either brew it in large amounts then refrigerate it. Or I know they sell sugar-free green tea by the gallon at most grocery stores.

Antioxidants in Green and Black Tea

To start I'd recommend pure water just for acclimation purposes.

Early Grey - I drink at least 4 cups of it a day.

Anyone have any good home workout plans for someone getting back into weightlifting. I really cant make it to the gym everyday because im broke as ***. im 186lb 6'1

Last max i did 3 days ago was.
335lb Bench
405lb squat
495lb deadlift

I was looking at the p90 stuff but it seemed kinda stupid. Just some routine I could follow or anything at home.

Earl grey is black tea yes? If so that's fine it has a good AoX count.

Converting from drinks to straight water is hard enough with diet changes. So the caffeine and flavor from tea and coffee help.

The egcg content is a bit different.

As I get older the more I appreciate water. Everything else just doesn't hit the right spot. But tea is my destresser at work. even if its a placebo effect, I really enjoy it.

Well tea has water -.- or do you mean the taste? I'm the opposite. As i got older the more i appreciated white and green tea. I still consume a gallon of water a day. But i like the effect teas have on the digestive tract and skin. I have to get my 16oz of green tea daily, it has just enough caffeine too wake me up in the AM.

Wii Fit: "It has been 396 days since I have seen you!.... Fatty."

:(

P90X is awesome and far from stupid. If you think you got what it takes then go ahead and try it. It's not for the faint of heart.

IT manager at work started doing P90X about 6 weeks ago. He seems to be melting away.

P90X is good. Don't confuse the cheesy marketing or the Beachbody cultish appearance with the quality of the product.
As for water, it's not THAT hard to switch to plain water. When you get used to water, you actually appreciate it more. I cycle in and out of Diet Coke addiction. When I break the addiction, I switch to just plain water and it is hard for about a day. The next day all I want is water. Yes, tea is awesome, but sometimes people need the break from the caffeine. In an admittedly pseudo-scientific way of thinking about it, you wouldn't water a flower with Diet Coke or tea. Water is the best thing for it. I am not talking about permanent changes, but a cleansing period to drop water weight (and feel better) fast.

The caffeine portion of your comment is correct. Water vs tea/coffee. They are diuretics, which is why you can't survive on them alone.

The question boils down to rather if water only or tea/water or coffee/water consumption are better for you in the long run...

Depends on the week. One week coffee is good for you but tea causes cancer. The next week coffee causes cancer but tea is good for you.

The diuretic effects of caffeine (where they even exist) are actually net lower than the amount of water in these beverages, so you could actually sustain yourself on caffeinated beverages although it might not be the best idea

Yay learning new words on ffxiah!

I had to treat drinking soda like alchoholism. I used to drink like 3 cans of soda a day. Decided to stop so I started weening myself down to like 2cans/day, then 1 then 1 every 2 days. Now its to the point I remind mindself "don't ruin 7 months for 1 can of soda". I've never really developed a liking for tea so, I almost exclusively drink water now. Once in a while I make a protien shake or a smoothy as a treat.

My question: I switched from doing only home/body weight exercises to going to a gym and have noticed one of my pecs is growing slightly faster than the other. Primarilly use dumb bells for chest (press 45, fly 25~30). I'm relatively sure I use correct form, and have the same weight/reps for both arms. Is it better to just ignore it and keep at it and hope they even out or change weights/reps(either up or down) for one of the arms?

Hmm..I'm not doubting this especially because of the brewing process on the leaves...However, I have never actually read that water is a stronger, diuretic than tea. Unless consumed in massive amounts where it disrupts sodium balance.

Are you a female or male? I ask b/c of your avatar :p But also because I know that woman can have slightly varying breast sizes.

Why not switch to the bench press? With dumbness it's always possible your retracting more-so than the other side. If your worried about hurting yourself, you can always do smith machine bench presses which always keep you in correct form.

I know that the strength in my triceps varied a lot when I went back the gym in November. Did a bunch of close-grip bench presses and that seemed to even out my tricep strength/size.
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On that note I HAVE a question about Deoderant!

I sweat A LOT. I've used Mitchum Clinical Strength and it stained(ruined) some of my gym tanks/sleeveless shirts. Any suggestions for deodorant for those of who sweat a lot at the gym?

I didn't mean to say that it's a stronger diuretic, just that any diuretic effect of caffeine is outweighed by the amount of water in the drink!

To be fair, I read the results of one of those studies regarding coffee and their qualifier about the ratios for caffeine to water were pretty ambiguous -- like "a normal cup of coffee." The diuretic impact of drinks with higher caffeine concentration is obviously going to be more significant, although that would never stop me. I just have a little extra water if I'm in a position to care (like when using coffee as a pick-me-up for exercise).

I don't think a dude with his numbers is at risk of being a pansy.

http://freshballs.com/index.html/

That made me laugh way more than I should!

Thanks! Will try that. I was just doing dumb bells cause I don't have anyone to go w/ the gym w/ me and when I first started dumb bells seemed much less likely to crush me to death.

Edit: Quotes are hard.