I have a quick question for anyone who can help. I am a beginner, and I am doing great. My best friend wants to try and get into shape and I am going to try to help her. I don’t expect her to do much with the weights, her gym doesn’t even have free weights, so right now, I told her to do what the trainer at her gym told her to do.
I am supplementing with HOT-ROX, Grow!, and Surge, and a few other things, so I keep my calories at a minimum. I don’t think she should drop her calories that low or else she will possibly lose lbm. She weighs about 143. I weigh the same, but I’m doing the Velocity Diet. So I consume 1100-1400 calories. What would be a good number to start with for her?
Actually the first link I posted for you gives you everything that I think you need.
She needs to do some form of strength training even if it is on a machine. Calorie defecits cause losses in fat and muscle mass. If she doesn’t do strength training too she will likely jack her metabolism up, gain back whatever she lost, and then be in worse shape than she was before.
I think ANYONE new to diets and such would do themselves the greatest service to first read and nail the concepts JB layed out in seven habits. Simply eating, good foods on a solid diet can do A LOT at changing them for the better.
Then take that experience and move from there. Dont get overwhelmed. Start slow and make the changes a permanent fixture to your Life plan.
\Here are a bunch of good diet links, Hope they help,
Phill
Thank you for the advice. I guess I should have told you more about her and what I already have set to show her. First of all, I plan on showing her this site, if she’ll use it, I do not know. But If I feel if I didn’t show it to her I would be doing her a discredit. I have already printed up 7 habits of a highly effective nutritional program and T-dawg 2.0. The reason I wanted a number is because she rarely eats enough real food. After she cuts the bad stuff, she probably won’t eat enough. If I can get her keep up a food log and give her round about numbers, she’s more likely to stick with it. I fear if she starts the food log, she will expect the lower the numbers, the better. My guess right now is about 1500 cals. I don’t know if she’ll continue to exercise, but she seems to really want to do it. Her personal trainer gave her a weight program on the machines, which she was doing pretty well for a little while, but when I managed to go to her gym with her, I noticed it was a little to easy for her. I think I’m going to get her a membership to a different gym for christmas. But for now, I told her to do the exercised her trainer gave her, just to “up” the weight if she doesn’t need at least a little break in between sets, then it was too easy. I’m also trying to get her to start walking. Thanks for the advice, I’m going to go look up some more of these links.
Only thing I would question would be the 1500 intake.
I would say this should not be a starting point to a hypocaloric diet but the basement. As in NO LOWER than this amount for really any grown human eating a fairly clean diet. Under that and you are simply risking to much health wise and wrecking havock on the metabolism. ( with exception of possible short extreme V-Diet type stuff)
I say get her to clean it up first off. If she needs a # shot for 1700 or so to start. Thats should be plenty low to get her losing if she hasnt been starving herself prior to this and wrecked her metabolism allready. If thats the case this will do her the favor of getting it back in shape.
Let the activity take care of the rest, get feuit veggies etc. with every meal, and if she has a problem reraching the intake make sure she is getting her GOOD fats. A handfull of nuts, or replacing a lean meat with a nice peice of Salmon at a meal can go a long ways to getting the K/Cals up without upping the volume of intake much if it all.
Get her to come on here. She has to WANT to make this happen for herself. You are doing a great service but without her own drive it will be all for not.
Plus then if she has questions, she can directly answer them, and just maybe she will get a little inspiration from some of the Fine T-folk.
I think your friend should gradually reduce her calories. For example, if everyday she eats 1500 cals, she should drop it to 1300 cals (all numbers are hypothetical) for a FEW WEEKS and see the results, and then adjust. Velocity is kind of gangster, perhaps a little too hardcore.