Where do I begin?

alexreyn13 · March 2016

Hey guys, I'm new here and looking for some advise to lose weight. I'm 20 years old, Male, weigh about 213 pounds and I'm 5ft7. I've been fairly skinny/little chubby through most of my school years, but over the last 5 years I've gained a fair amount of weight. The hardest part for me isn't even the dieting or the excersise, it's not knowing how much I should work out and what/what not to eat. Most of my day is very sedentary, so most if not all of my physical activity will be from walking or jogging. I don't really have a set goal of how much and when I want to lose weight, even if I only lose a small amount over the year I'll be happy knowing that It's at least working. So anyway, here are some questions I wanted to ask:

1. Is 60 minutes of walking/jogging daily sufficient enough for gradual weight loss?
2. Are those frozen healthy weight watcher type meals fine to lose weight? (most of them are 300 calories or less)
3. Should I eat more in the morning and less for dinner, should it be consistently portioned for every meal or does it not matter as much? Would eating dinner as my final meal earlier in the night help too?
4. I usually order pizza every Friday, will this flat out prevent my weight loss or simply slow it down? (I usually eat very little that day to make up for it, though I can just give it up all together.)

So yeah what do you guys think? Please give me diet suggestions, I'll eat literally anything.

seska422 · March 2016

1. Exercise is great but not required to lose weight. You need to consume fewer calories than your body uses for weight loss.

2. I eat Lean Cuisine for many of my meals. They provide portion control and many are tasty. They are generally high in sodium so watch for that if you are watching your sodium intake. I'll sometimes eat a bag of frozen veggies with the meal for extra volume.

3. Meal timing doesn't matter. Time your eating in a way that works for you. Overall calories are what matter, not when you eat them.

4. To lose weight, you need an overall calorie deficit. You can look at your weekly calorie intake so that you can have some low days and some high days. As long as your weekly calorie intake is in a deficit, you'll lose weight over time. The smaller the deficit, the slower the weight loss.

As for diet suggestions, I would eat your foods in smaller portions. That will make it much easier to stick to a deficit. You might eat some extra of veggies you like for added volume without many added calories. After you log for a while, you can look back through and see where you might want to make some adjustments. For instance, you might decide to eat baked chicken more often than fried chicken to save your calories for other things.

alexreyn13 · March 2016

So, my BMR is about 2000. Does that mean in order to lose weight without exercise, I could reduce my daily calorie intake to 1500? And if I decide to add exercise and say burn 300 calories per workout, I change my daily intake to 1800? Provided the rest of the day I'm fairly inactive?

Yi5hedr3 · March 2016

The reason Pizza is so bad, is the combination of High Carbs and High Fat. Bad combo. Keep your carbs below 100 grams/day. Start with macros of 20/20/60.

ClosetBayesian · March 2016

alexreyn13 wrote: »

So, my BMR is about 2000. Does that mean in order to lose weight without exercise, I could reduce my daily calorie intake to 1500? And if I decide to add exercise and say burn 300 calories per workout, I change my daily intake to 1800? Provided the rest of the day I'm fairly inactive?

Your BMR is the amount of calories you'd burn if your are in a coma. It's what you need to survive. It's generally not recommended to go under that. Try calculating your TDEE - that's Total Daily Energy Expenditure - that's what you burn by being awake and functional. Then take a bit off of that.

You could also enter your stats into MFP and see what it recommends....

alexreyn13 · March 2016

ClosetBayesian wrote: »

alexreyn13 wrote: »

So, my BMR is about 2000. Does that mean in order to lose weight without exercise, I could reduce my daily calorie intake to 1500? And if I decide to add exercise and say burn 300 calories per workout, I change my daily intake to 1800? Provided the rest of the day I'm fairly inactive?

Your BMR is the amount of calories you'd burn if your are in a coma. It's what you need to survive. It's generally not recommended to go under that. Try calculating your TDEE - that's Total Daily Energy Expenditure - that's what you burn by being awake and functional. Then take a bit off of that.

You could also enter your stats into MFP and see what it recommends....

Okay so my TDEE is 2322 daily or 16,252 weekly. Adding a deficit of 500 will leave me at 1822 (Or just 1800 for convenience sake) does that sound about right? I barely even reach that amount in my life now...

BurnWithBarn2015 · March 2016

alexreyn13 wrote: »

ClosetBayesian wrote: »

alexreyn13 wrote: »

So, my BMR is about 2000. Does that mean in order to lose weight without exercise, I could reduce my daily calorie intake to 1500? And if I decide to add exercise and say burn 300 calories per workout, I change my daily intake to 1800? Provided the rest of the day I'm fairly inactive?

Your BMR is the amount of calories you'd burn if your are in a coma. It's what you need to survive. It's generally not recommended to go under that. Try calculating your TDEE - that's Total Daily Energy Expenditure - that's what you burn by being awake and functional. Then take a bit off of that.

You could also enter your stats into MFP and see what it recommends....

Okay so my TDEE is 2322 daily or 16,252 weekly. Adding a deficit of 500 will leave me at 1822 (Or just 1800 for convenience sake) does that sound about right? I barely even reach that amount in my life now...

The honest and hard truth is..you do otherwise you would not have been overweight. This is not to be mean or rude but the truth. You only gain weight when you eat more calories than you burn

To know how much you eat...weigh all your food on a food scale.
Hit around the calorie daily allotment that MFP gives you. And than yes you will lose weight.

I lost most of my weight with controlling and counting and logging every bite i took. And in the beginning with daily walking ( which became after a half year jogging walking and swimming).

HutchA12 · March 2016

You should just enter your stats into MFP set your goal and go off that. It calculates your NEAT which means you add in deliberate exercise. Im 5'7 male 20s was 240 am 150. You defiantly can lose weight easily well above 1500 even probably above 2k. MFP will give you a good set of numbers.

1. Exercise is what you want. I strength train to help preserve muscle mass and do cardio if I want to. There have been periods where I didn't work out and it didn't matter because I watched my intake.
2. Frozen meals are fine. It's all about your calories. I don't eat them.
3. Eat whenever you want. It makes no difference outside of personal preference.
4. You can eat pizza. I'm ordering one right now because I need to fill a big calorie deficit and I feel like it. Just make it fit but you might need to cut it back sometimes if you feel like it is becoming a hindrance. Down to like once a month. That's all up to you.

What you really want to do is just track your food and hit calorie goals. I suggest getting a food scale earlier than later and learn to use it to stave off stalls. I've lost over 40 pounds in the last 8 months just being consistent. Eventually you will want to start looking into more specific eating macros and workout stuff but for now keep it simple. Add stuff gradually and don't burn yourself out.

Where do I begin?

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