Weight loss for men - from a girl to her boyfriend

Get him on MFP! Food tracking will make 90% of the difference and there are loads of inspirational, knowledgeable guys who can answer all his fitness questions!

Get him on here. Read www.nerdfitness.com. Have him add me. You can too if you'd like!

just brace yourself, before you know it he'll be in great shape and bugging you to bum along on marathons and the like haha

Suggest he check out the podcasts on fat2fitradio.com. The 2 male hosts of the podcast advocate slow change and transitioning to living like the thinner, healthier person you want to become. The advice is practical and reasonal for men AND women.

My husband went through this espeically when I was working with a personal trainer. He now rides his bike to work as well which has helped. His biggest problem was the sweets, I used to joke that he would have dessert after every meal. Now he just has dessert after dinner and he cut out all of his soda except one Hansen's at lunch. Those 3 changes were easy for him and made him much more aware of what he was putting in his body and he dropped 20 lbs without even trying. So find out from you boyfriend what habits he wants to change and maybe he can find a way to moderate those habits instead of getting rid of the beer and pizza entirely. I think exercise will cause him to want to eat better though. Some men can track calories, I know for my husband, he doesn't get it, and thinks it's pointless for him, but knows it works for me.

Sounds like he just needs to get himself moving again. if he wants to get back into martial arts, sign him up. they will whip him back into shape in no time. No sense in overloading him with the full calorie counting thing if he only has the sophomore 15+. Once he is living the healthy lifestyle and mingling with those that do as well, he will start to have interest in other healthy activities that he hears about.

Hi all!

My boyfriend has been watching me train and run various races, working up to a 5k, to a 10k, 10 miler, half marathon, and now 6 weeks away from a marathon. He is really impressed with my fitness and what it's done for my body (haha) and he is now realizing his weight gain in his stomach.

He is 23, in grad school (graduates in May), and all his college late night pizza eating and beer drinking is catching up to him. He doesn't look at nutrition labels, guzzles 2% milk, and generally just eats junk. He isn't fat by any measure, but he is, in his own words, lazy and has a little beer belly going on.

He has asked for my help in getting started to being healthier and losing weight, but he doesn't know where to begin. He's really laid back and wouldn't do well jumping head first into a precise calorie-counting and exercise regime right away as he works on this thesis and looks for a job.

Anyways, I am trying to find a infographic/website that isn't too overloaded, just the basics, for men losing weight. A lot of the sources I used are pretty girly, and I don't want to turn him off from it, so I would love some help from the men out there on STARTING OUT weight loss for men. As you all know, if you start too fast/too hard, you're more likely to quit - so I'm not talking an intense body building routine, just some tips/pointer.

Thanks so much!

Edit: In the past, he was really into martial arts - he is a black belt in Tae Kwan Do (back in the day!) but it's been probably 7-8 years since he's done it - but he's expressed interest in getting back into something like that

I don't think MFP has to be complicated. For instance, when I first started on MFP I was logging my food religiously. However, after about a month or so, I started to get frustrated b/c things were starting to get too complicated. Eventually, I stopped logging at all, and I noticed that some of my old eating habits were starting to creep back in. So, at the beginning of the year I resolved to take about twenty minutes each evening to plan all my meals out the night before; and I "quick add" all my calories, rather than log each individual item/ingredient. It's much faster, less complicated, and if I have everything planned out in advance, I find that I'm more successful at sticking to it the next day. I still log my water intake and my daily exercise, as these tools help me to stay accountable in these areas. So far, it seems to be working.

As far as workouts go, they don't have to be complicated either. Absolutely, he should get involved in an activity that he enjoys. He'll be more likely to stick with it that way. However, unless he's going to his martial arts class three or four times/week, that alone isn't going to cut it. I would encourage him to pay attention to what he does during the course of an average day. I'm betting that there are some things he spends thirty to forty five minutes a day doing that aren't really necessary. Make daily exercise the priority and cut out the stuff that's not necessary. I'm sure he can find 30min-1hr a day to squeeze in a workout. Maybe some days he could even go running with you. Eventually, though, he will have to add some strength training to maintain adequate muscle mass. Strength training doesn't have to be done at the gym, though. Maybe invest in the P90X system or something like that, which can be done at home with minimal equipment.

First educate him on the calories in beer. That's a lot of guys problem. They might eat okay or not terribly, but taking in a six pack once a week and that adds up.

This is a pretty big deal, actually. You can totally blow your weight loss efforts out of the water with just a few pints in the evening. He needs to understand how beer calories vary with alcohol content and volume, and plan his drinking accordingly.

For myself, I'd rather have fewer *good* beers than switch to some "low-cal" stuff like Miller Lite, so calculate the calories for all my favorites and get them in the plan.

Since most beer calories come from the alcohol, you can get a good estimate by measuring a given beer against a known baseline - say, Budweiser. A 12 oz Bud is 150 calories at 5% ABV. The formula to measure a beer's calories can therefore be given as:

((vol * ABV)/60)*150

So if I have a pint of IPA at 6.5% ABV, then my calories are

((16*6.5)/60)*150 = 260 calories

My much beloved has been so impressed (and to a certain extent shamed) by my weightloss that he's decided it's time to work on losing his beer belly.

Well I say beer belly, but he only drinks beer at the weekends - it's spirits or wine during the week - but it was the potatoes and the crackers & cheese that were his weakness.

He's been watching what he eats and obviously we also share a good wholesome and calorie controlled meal together in the evenings. He'll never join MFP, because he's not a PC bod - he uses one at work and to pay the bills, but doesn't go online like I do (which when you consider that we actually met online is a bloody wonder!:laugh:) However, he did order a static exercise bike(and has a push bike up the shed) but it hasn't seen much use, although it's early days.

I shall be very supportive of his every effort, but I'm not going to be a preachy nagging husband - he gets enough of that just as a matter of course :laugh:

First educate him on the calories in beer. That's a lot of guys problem. They might eat okay or not terribly, but taking in a six pack once a week and that adds up.

This is a pretty big deal, actually. You can totally blow your weight loss efforts out of the water with just a few pints in the evening. He needs to understand how beer calories vary with alcohol content and volume, and plan his drinking accordingly.

For myself, I'd rather have fewer *good* beers than switch to some "low-cal" stuff like Miller Lite, so calculate the calories for all my favorites and get them in the plan.

Since most beer calories come from the alcohol, you can get a good estimate by measuring a given beer against a known baseline - say, Budweiser. A 12 oz Bud is 150 calories at 5% ABV. The formula to measure a beer's calories can therefore be given as:

((vol * ABV)/60)*150

So if I have a pint of IPA at 6.5% ABV, then my calories are

((16*6.5)/60)*150 = 260 calories

I'm a huge beer drinker, or I was. I loved high calorie IPA's. Tell him to do like i did, switch to WHISKEY!

Tell him to follow you while you are running. It's hard at the beginning, but thing will get better