Hello

Hi james,

I am glad to hear about your new goals and wish you luck all i can give you as good advice is patience and to enjoy your workouts as much as you can and allocate a good portion of your time to enjoy swimming and other physical activities you may later on learn to enjoy. swimming is a great start and the longer you spend there just enjoying what you can will cause you to burn more calories then you probably will do by just setting a random goal. instead of saying lets bur 500 calories today i recomend looking at it this way lets go spend 3 hours swimming. it will all add up much quicker.

Also the first 5 - 15 pounds are going to be mad painful at night your going to feel like your starving and all your going to want to do is eat because of it. this is natural the reason for this is actually people new to working out can loose a lot very very quickly both in water weight and in fat. the trick though is for the first few days when your feeling that is to not eat due to that fealing and stick to the calorie goals on this site and be honest with your self. in 2-5 workout days you will probably achieve a big loss in weight for your first week. this first loss is a big gift and loosing weight after it wont come as fast because this loss is something a body just does when it comes extreme changes it just works really hard to compensate causeing a big loss. The bad news is after this it will be hard to loose weight as fast but the good news is it will feel easier to eat less and hold the weight your body wont have the same cravings at night and through out the day anymore after this first boost of loss. your body is only feeling thoughs cravings due to the extreme losses. So it will feel better to stick to the diet on here you will be more comfortable and you will still continue to lose weight but it will be at a slower but more consistent weight.

i recomend being creative with your foods. high protein low to no fat foods are your friend in diets fat has the most calories and cutting it out of the diet will allocate more foods to more filling proteins and the loved carbs. keep your saturated fats at less then 10% of your calories so callories*.1/9=saturated fats. also divide carbs by 12 and thats how much dietary fiber you want. math wise it sounds easier then done.

so let me explain how i have always done it both when i was younger by accident and how i do it now. One of my favorite breakfasts is a bagle with smoked salmon creamcheese and eggs. this adds up to 650 maybe 750 calories depending on how i pile it on. instead now to get more protein and all and get the same taste i make a sandwich of scrambled egg whites in a cup toast a fiberous english muffin instead of the bagle put some smoked salmon on that and use fat free cottage cheese instead of the cream cheese. thats my common breakfast instead of 750 calories its more of somewhere between 350-450 calories depending on how much eggs i decide to make. but in ratio to protein its about tripple of what my of the 750 calorie sandwich. the old one i had was about 45 grams of protein to 750 calories and the new sandwich is 70 grams of protein to 450 calories of food and it taste great still. dont get egg beaters get egg whites it taste better actually.

So as you can see even though to many carbs can make you fat you still need it to be a good amount of your diet but fat can dropped a lot without feeling a big loss in taste or anything. replacing foods with their fat free option works great. egg beaters, cottage cheese, 1% or skim milk turkey burgers instead of beef. I am a foodie guy and grew up in a family full of food lovers i am the only male under 200 in the entire family so i know there is a difference and once in a while we all need the real deal. thats what the holidays are for but this other stuff is really not as bad as we all really think it is to be. rice cakes suck but turkey burgers and stuff is actually pretty good.

also rotisery chicken or any chicken or fish is a delicious dinner too that will never hurt you. if your really craving beef one of my secrets is pot roast. you really need to cook it low and slow in a crock pot for 10 hours so its lengthy and even though its chuck 20% fat by the time its done cooking even though its tender its extremely low in fat too. you can have like 6-8 ounces of it and your getting a huge protein to fat ratio that will fill you right up too that with veggies and a potato is a great end of the day trick if you have like 600- 800 calories left which will fill you way up.

good luck

Hey James,

You've already won because you have started. You stopped being the old James the second you altered your mindset. Keep on winning Bro! What you think about, you bring about...