Losing Weight for the Military/AF

Keep pushing yourself.. If you want this bad enough you will--CAN-- do it. Once you reach your goal a bit of advice for you is to keep it up.. I have been in for over 6 years and sometimes have trouble with my PT... I let myself go after basic and I used to KILL the run.. now not so much haha. Best weight loss advice - Watch calories in everything as well as fat grams -- remember sugar turns into fat so its beneficial to watch those as well. Try to lose a reasonable 2 lbs a week.. some weeks you will lose others you will not. Weigh yourself everyday.. If you have friends or family that need to lose partner up with them for added support...

I am thinking about joining up but the British Army not the US, been working out 5-6 days a week for about 6 weeks now to get my fitness levels up to army standard, my running and push ups are what im working on improving the most, as i haven't really ran properly in a long time. I just do a mixture of strength and cardio really, some weights and cardio mixed in together and then just some straight up cardio days with a run. I think its all about building up your core fitness and your strength . if you want some motivation can add me if you like.

Good Luck, but don't forget to maintain.

A friend of mine was in the Air Force and almost got kicked out because he got too fat.

I can't comment on military requirements but I am following the program in Mark Lauren's book, "You are your own gym." He was a Special Ops trainer for the Air Force and he has a great program for basic bodyweight exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, etc. It's a $10 book on Amazon and the nice thing about his program is he details many variations of basic exercises that get you to progress to more reps or more challenging variations (e.g. one-arm push ups).

Also, on his web site - marklauren.com -- he posted his "combat training" running program which may be helpful to you (it's in the "forums" section).

Good luck!

Use the body you have, to get the body you want? I'm doing that!

The AF is shedding people, as are most of the other branches. Additionally, the armed forces can pick and choose who they want because youth unemployment is skyrocketing and recruits with bachelors degrees, a degree diluted to being almost meaningless, are common.

For those and a number of other reasons, the Armed Forces are picky and are not going to have "outreach programs".

How quickly will you get to 150?

That's completely up to you.

At 5' 2" 200, you're more obese than I was (6' 1" and 295) which means that, other things being equal, you should be able to drop weight quickly (generally speaking, the heavier you are, the faster you can lose weight).

My stats are here:

http://cbeinfo.net/weight.htm

Column 5 is the % of weight lost in the preceding 7 days. You can do the math on that but it looks like about 1% a week (not sure). After a quick start, I settled down to losing about 0.5 pounds per day, average, though, per the data in the "Cycles" area, I went through periods of rapid loss followed by periods of no loss.

Perhaps that will give you some idea of what you're facing.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I really appreciate it. I'm definitely going to check them out.

And I'm aware that the armed forces are downsizing, but they still need new recruits, right?

Yes, and they always take on too many. I can't guarantee they need your trade right now or not, it might be an overbourne one

My advice is to not give up! And visit a new recruiting office or else ask to speak with another recruiter. Telling you to come back after you you've lost the weight is lazy of them, as well as unprofessional. Way back in 1999 I walked into the Army recruiting office weighing 204 lbs. Thanks to my dedicated recruiter, 6 weeks later I was at MEPS joining the Army and weighed in at 178, under the max for my age and height. He went to the gym with me 5 days a week after he would normally be off from his recruiting duties. And thanks to both his and my dedication, I lost 26 lbs so I could join the Army. And this was before 9/11 when the Army was meeting it's yearly recruiting goals with relative ease. Now we are in the middle of fighting two wars, so I don't think the Air Force is going to be that selective and say "come back when you've lost weight". They should work with you if they care anything at all about their job as recruiters. So find a helpful recruiter, focus on losing weight now and as you get closer, focus on what you need to do to pass the basic physical fitness requirements just to get into basic training. Then from there keep working on improving your fitness. Good Luck to you.