Losing Weight as Quickly as Possible?

Hey Guys

I currently am trying to lose weight and have some questions. I was curious how possible it is to go from 5’6" 165ish pounds to let’s say 150-145ish pounds, to basically look decently in shape in about 4-6 weeks. I have been working on it since late February and worked from 180 to where I am now at anywhere between 160-165 (last time I weighed myself I was about 167, and I’ve lost weight since then, that I can tell).

I do a lot of exercise, I think. I have asthma so cardio is hard, especially running in the smog, etc. I do a lot of DDR on workout mode and do 1000 calories worth nearly every day (6-7 days out of the week, and yeah I know, it’s probably stupid sounding). I do a workout plan that I got from a Men’s Health Magazine, a bunch of crunches, and a number of other oblique/ab exercises. I try to eat 1500 calories and under a day and I drink 8 glasses of water a day too. Been staying away from soda, except for a diet coke maybe once a week.

So, with all this, do you think it’s possible? I know it’ll eventually happen.

As I said before, running is hard to do cause of my asthma/stamina and my neighborhood isn’t that safe.

So what are some other ways I can help lose weight/gain muscle? I’ve been doing pretty well as my face has thinned out, my man-boobs (lol) are reduced, my stomach is flatter, and my love handles are nearly gone, but still not all the way. Good ways to do cardio/burn calories would help, too.

Thanks guys!

Congrats on working towards looking good nekid. Well bro, being a FFB, all I can tell you is that diet was the most important factor in my ongoing quest. Can you post up what you eat on a normal day? Secondly, can you get in a gym? I swear on the power of the stair-stepper. You need a better source of consistent cardio. Thirdly, if you introduce weight training into your regiment you will lose weight and gain muscle if your diet is balanced. As for burning additional calories eat spicy food. I don’t know if its true or not because I found the article in a Weider publication (dont forsaken me!) but allegedly it helps. Being Hispanic I find no trouble making my food capable of melting steel. Any who, I hope I helped. God speed, lad!

Just like Growing_Boy said, congrats and I too am a FFB. Considering you’re not lifting yet, get a gym membership and you can definantly obtain the goal you want, possibly even around that 6 week mark. Even if you don’t get that light you can see a huge difference in your first 6 week of lifting and eating right!

MAKE SURE to read these training articles:

http://www.T-Nation.com/article/bodybuilding/training_for_newbies_part_1&cr=

http://www.T-Nation.com/article/bodybuilding/training_for_newbies_part_2&cr=

AND these nutrition articles:

http://www.T-Nation.com/article/bodybuilding/nutrition_for_newbies_part_1&cr=

http://www.T-Nation.com/article/bodybuilding/nutrition_for_newbies_part_2&cr=

CT is the man for writing those articles! Good luck! (but really luck has nothing to do with it!!)

Okay, so I read those articles, and I’m not really worried about building too much muscle yet, more about getting in shape and losing fat. So, what kind of stuff should I be doing for that? I mean, what kind of exercises should I be doing?

Stair-steppers, huh?

Yeah, there’s a gym near my house that’s like $20 a month. I can go there. It’s part of a University, so it’s pretty cheap.

So I should use stair-steppers and then do what? I mean, how many calories should I burn a day? I’m new to all of this, so yeah, sorry if I sound stupid…

You might want to double your water intake because 8 cups of water is only about half a gallon, walk where you might normally drive or take a bus, and apply HIIT principles to your workout routine(type HIIT into the search bar and be amazed at all he info!). I don’t think you need much else because your progress doesn’t seem to be slowing down and you sound like you are very close to your goal.

Good Luck

You want to gain muscle man. If you just do cardio your going to eat away muscle and gain the fat back quicker.

Muscle is metabolic, your body needs calories to maintain it. Your body doesn’t need energy to keep fat. So what sounds better to you, lifting some weights and doing moderate cardio so you lose fat and tone up at the same time, or doing cardio till your blue in the face and ending up “skinny-fat” and then getting fat again when you fall off the wagon?

You’re not going to get HYOOGE by accident, walk into a gym and look at all the skinny guys lifting weights, it takes years of training and dieting.

So stop doing a million oblique crunches and eating like a bird.

Do you fully understand how difficult and time consuming it is to build an appreciable amount of muscle.

Learn how to eat properly.

Get into a gym.

Please, oh please, don’t mention DDR again.

Worry less about how many calories that you are burning, right now you are cannibalizing all of your lean mass, which will just give you the skinny fat look. You would make a far better visual difference if you add 10lbs of muscle and lose 10 lbs of fat than if you lose 20lbs of fat. Looking good is about body composition, lean to fat mass, not body weight.

Eat something and get to a gym, magical things will happen.

You should really consider throwing some weights around. You aren’t going to get Mr. Olympia status anytime soon, so don’t think you’re going to be too big at all. Stop worrying so much about calories and make sure you aren’t getting to much fat or carbs.

I think we found the problem boys…this guy thinks he’s a 120 lb woman. Sorry man. You need to eat more. especially considering you’re trying to lose fat and not muscle. Muscle burns fat. The more you have, the faster you burn the fat left on your body. The more muscle you lose, the SLOWER the fat comes off and the faster you get fat. Starvation diets kill metabolism, which is precisely the opposite of what you are trying to do. You want a raging metabolism to burn fat.

Get to a gym, do some weight training. Don’t just stick to cardio or you really WILL become a 120 lb woman. Well, maybe not the woman part, but you’ll look like a gulag survivor. I’m pretty sure that’s not the look you want.

Look–it is incredibly difficult to put on lots of muscle. You’ll look better if you did, but I’m not going to try and convince you of that; it’s something you need to discover on your own to really believe. All I’m going to tell you is that if you want to burn fat fast, you need to be doing a combination of heavy weightlifting and cardio, and you need to eat lots of protein every day (which will spare your muscles from being broken down), and a good amount of healthy fats like olive oil, fish oil, almonds, walnuts, avocados, etc. Carbs should come from real fruit mostly.

[quote]superthrustjon wrote:
You want to gain muscle man. If you just do cardio your going to eat away muscle and gain the fat back quicker.

Muscle is metabolic, your body needs calories to maintain it. Your body doesn’t need energy to keep fat. So what sounds better to you, lifting some weights and doing moderate cardio so you lose fat and tone up at the same time, or doing cardio till your blue in the face and ending up “skinny-fat” and then getting fat again when you fall off the wagon?

You’re not going to get HYOOGE by accident, walk into a gym and look at all the skinny guys lifting weights, it takes years of training and dieting.

So stop doing a million oblique crunches and eating like a bird.[/quote]

I AGREE FULLY! You say you are doing 1000 calories a day of energy work [cardio] and only taking in 1500 calories per day??? You’re going to end up going into metabolic shutdown and you’ve no doubt pissed away a portion of any muscle you had. Yes, you want to have a caloric deficit; but you need to be sensible about how extreme you are making it, and you NEED to be weight training to send the signal to your body that muscle tissue is NOT EXPENDABLE!

Woah! Really, no need to jump on the guy. Sheesh.

There’s nothing wrong with DDR cardio. It’s entertaining, and it burns calories. Chances are, you enjoy it and will stick with it longer than if you swam for an hour and a half every day. So don’t sweat that.

Eating 1500 kcal is not a lot of food, but it’s not all that horrible for a 150 lb man with some fat to lose. The advice of many of these posters to eat more is absolutely appropriate were you to weigh twice what you do now. Don’t laugh, many new posters do.

Although it would probably help if you at least did what Aragorn said to.

[quote] Aragorn wrote:
All I’m going to tell you is that if you want to burn fat fast, you need to be doing a combination of heavy weightlifting and cardio, and you need to eat lots of protein every day (which will spare your muscles from being broken down), and a good amount of healthy fats like olive oil, fish oil, almonds, walnuts, avocados, etc. Carbs should come from real fruit mostly. [/quote]

And it probably wouldn’t hurt if you ate a bit more (bit more meaning about 500 kcal.)

Yeah, you don’t need to go crazy and double your cals since you’re cutting–but 1500 is too little for many of the WOMEN on this site. You need to add around 400-500 cals to what you’re eating, and your diet needs to consist of good protein and healthy fats, with some limited healthy carbs thrown in. If you start to gain weight back, don’t suddenly freak out and drop a whole bunch of calories. My suspicion is that you MAY have done a bit of damage to your metabolism from the combination of cardio only and very low calories, likely with low protein content. So in the interests of health, I would suggest that at the very least you do not cut any more calories below 1500. Increase your activity level instead.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that when you do add serious weight training, or any other exercise for that matter, your calorie requirements will go up. So it is not a good idea to cut any more calories regardless. Adding serious hard weight training with compound movements for legs and back as well as your bench will increase the amount of calories you require, so you may be able to lose weight while adding calories from your current state.

Also, it’s worth noting that machines or video games that report calories burned are usually way off…usually too high.

[quote]DanteReb wrote:
I do a lot of DDR on workout mode and do 1000 calories worth nearly every day[/quote]

I lol’d

Seriously, drop the mens health stuff and look into some of the programs on the beginners sticky thread, you’ll be set.

[quote]evansmi wrote:
Seriously, drop the mens health stuff and look into some of the programs on the beginners sticky thread, you’ll be set.[/quote]

Or if he likes the Men’s Health stuff he could pick up the TNT Diet book which is easily the most sane book of that sort that I’ve seen in years.

[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Yeah, you don’t need to go crazy and double your cals since you’re cutting–but 1500 is too little for many of the WOMEN on this site. You need to add around 400-500 cals to what you’re eating, and your diet needs to consist of good protein and healthy fats, with some limited healthy carbs thrown in. If you start to gain weight back, don’t suddenly freak out and drop a whole bunch of calories. My suspicion is that you MAY have done a bit of damage to your metabolism from the combination of cardio only and very low calories, likely with low protein content. So in the interests of health, I would suggest that at the very least you do not cut any more calories below 1500. Increase your activity level instead.
[/quote]

Good advice.

Though, as Aragorn mentions, you may have severely slowed down your metabolism (something you absolutely do not want when trying to lose bf). Are you ever cold (not talking about due to weather, I mean in circumstances where other people aren’t)? Do you sweat at night (when you are just laying in bed)?

One way to kick start your metabolism is to actually eat a hypercaloric (above maintenance) high carb/lower protein/fat diet for a couple days (may take as long as a week, might only take a day). If you are sweating at the end of the day when you go to bed, you have successfully kick-started your metabolism and can go back into your hypocaloric (below maintenance) diet.

Don’t worry too much about gaining fat during this time period. It takes 3,500 excess calories to store a single pound of fat. So, even if you ate 500 calories above maintenance you will only gain at most 1 lb of fat. But, that 1 possible lb of fat gain will also mean that you will burn fat much more effectively for days/weeks/even months after that.

Check out this article:
http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=811783

Again, good advice. My guess is that your caloric intake is far below where it should be. You claim to take in 1500 calories (or LESS!) a day and yet do 1000 calories of cardio (DDR) 6-7 days a week. That means that your body only has 500 (or less) calories a day to run on. That is WAY too little.

If you were to add weight training to what you already do, you’d probably get very little results from it (I honestly doubt that it would improve your results at your current caloric intake). But, if you add weight training and add calories to your diet (at the very least on the days you train), you’re likely to see much improved results.

Another benefit of resistance training is a phenomenon called EPOC (excess postexercise oxygen consumption). Which in a nutshell just means that your metabolism will be elevated for hours after you weight train (in contrast aerobic exercise causes considerably less EPOC than things like HIIT and resistance training).

Re-evaluate your goals based on your responses!