Weight Loss Advice

I never had luck with making a detailed plan and micromanaging myself. I made the most improvement when I just made working out part of my routine. With exercise as a priority 4-5 times a week, the dietary changes and sleep schedule fell into place pretty naturally. Most importantly, I felt like a fit, healthy, sexy person who had my shit together, which stoked my enthusiasm for more exercise and a healthier diet. Feedback loop.

Everyone’s given all the advice you need. Reality is that its hard to commit to all of that immediately. Most people struggle to take on ONE fitness focused goal. Id start there.

Either start tracking every calorie or start working-out every single day (or whatever a decent programme/routine requires).

If you can do both thats fantastic. But its more realistic to start with one.

Looking and feeling good is a lifelong journey; theres no rush provided you start and stick to it

Less calories = lose weight. Visible abs = low body fat %. This is what i personally do and it is not for everybody or recommended for beginners.I have 3 kids so i don't have a ton of time to spend hours at the gym. So whenever I go I usually do a lot of drop sets. (Ex: start with 25 lb dumbbell bicep curls and go until failure in form, then move to 20 lb. Dommbells and repeat, then do 15 lb., etc.) This way I get the most 'bang for my buck.' I also don't take many breaks when I'm at the gym to keep the intensity up (usually a minute or 2 between exercises, little to no breaks between sets). If ik really strapped for time I just go as heavy as I can to do 2x12 sets of whatever exercise I can do. I am not a believer of the 'low weight high reps' school of thought as I believe stressing and building the muscle as efficiently as possible without having to spend like 2-3 hours at the gym. But there is a famous quote of 'abs are made in the kitchen.' So I would try to find a good calorie counting app that works for you and honestly just out in what you do now and see the type of macros and stuff you are already eating in a day. Most of those apps have calculators to hit your goal weight in X amount of time. They are not perfect because they don't always fully account with BMI (because BMI is already a pretty shit metric) but I usually go about 600 calories below my maintaining caloric intake and with that yoy should lose about 1-2 lb. A week.

The advice in the comments is all good. I think that trying to challenge the way you think about exercise is an integral aspect. Try to focus on the memory of how good it feels after working out regardless of body image changes. The mental health aspect of exercise is overlooked by most for favor of body image. On top of physically feeling better and having more energy. Work out regularly even when you feel crappy. A shitty work out is better than not working out at all and you will feel better for it. Once you get this established as part of your thinking the rest will be a lot easier.

Edit: Any workout regimen or diet requires discipline which needs to be developed, what can supplement that development process is motivation. Sounds silly but it's true, and remembering how good it makes you feel to use your body can be positive motivation instead of negative self talk being the only motivator.

The body you want is going to be made about 90% by your eating habits and 10% by your gym activity.

My advice is to focus on cutting calories until you're at the lower end of a normal BMI. If you get time to exercise in that window, then great, do that. But if you can only do one thing at a time, cut calories.

Then once you're at a good weight, start focusing more on the workout plan, and the eating habits you've already developed will carry you to success.

Yo. I'd love to help you learn about some of the basic tools you'll need to achieve your goals. There is a vast ocean of bullshit to wade through before we find each little kernel useful information.

Do you have a bathroom scale? You'll need one and a way to take notes. You'll also need a kitchen (or postal) scale to measure your food and a way to take notes. Because you'll be tracking all of your calories every day.

The basic concept here is that you'll need to weigh yourself every day and write down that number. The best way I have found is to do it in the morning as soon as you wake up, after you pee, before eating or drinking and in the nude. You'll get a number that's slightly different depending on the time of day, your hydration level, if you've eaten etc, so taking your weight in the morning when your bladder is empty is widely considered to be the best mode. This is a critical daily step.

Once you have this base line, you'll need to see how your diet affects this. So you'll need to decide how much and what to eat. The point of finding your weight and monitoring it daily is going to tell you what effect your caloric consumption has. A pound of fat is roughly 2000 cal and a pound of muscle is 2500-3000 (if I recall correctly) You'll want to stay on a diet for several weeks at a time and measure its effect on your weight. No measurement is perfect and out bodies aren't perfectly efficient either so you're looking at long term averages. Say you're eating 3000 cal a day for 2 weeks and you stay the same weight, you'll know that 3000 cal is your maintenance intake. This is also critical to your success. Because you'll modify your diet based on this maintenance level of caloric intake. To lose weight (fat and muscle) you'll eat less. To gain you'll eat more obviously. Most people want to limit weight loss to 1 pound a week, although many accept that 2 lbs a week is still healthy for many people.
Your goal is to lose weight and build muscle. So aside from diet you'll need an exercise program for building muscle and diet that supports muscle growth while limiting calories to maintenance or just below.
It is my hope that my post can begin a conversation about our health and goals. Feel free to PM me comrad!

Edit: a little about me. I found myself in a similar situation in my 20s (late 30s now) I am not a competitive athlete but I am happy with my fitness level and appearance. At my worst I was 5'11 260lbs with a 44" waist At my "biggest" I was 225 with 32" waist. Today I'm around 190 with a 32" waist. Mostly because I'm just not lifting 5 days a week anymore and my diet is pretty loose 🙃

Lots of good advice here comrade but one thing I want to add. How you feel about yourself is more mental than physical. You can have a four-pack and still not feel confident enough to take your shirt off (I know because this was me at 21).

I hate to sound like an after school special but you got to love the only body you’re ever going to have. By all means workout, weigh portions, cut fat etc. but along the way make sure you’re creating some lasting self-love also.

Tracking my daily calorie intake and macros was when I really started to understand that lifting weights and going for long walks alone would not get me into the shape I wanted to be. You can find free apps that you put your metrics into that will show you an estimated daily calorie intake for you to lose x weight over y weeks, you can even scan barcodes and the app will pull up nutrition info for you. As far as getting a gym membership, I appreciate where your partner is coming from but for me personally, being in the gym made it easier to stay focused and mentally tell myself "I am here to work". I applaud you for wanting to get healthier, comrade!

What worked before will work again.

Get MacroFactor and use it religiously until you don’t need it any more. Watch the Renaissance Periodization YouTube channel series on weight loss and weight management. Find weight training you enjoy and can stick with. Lift weights 4x/week. You’ll be as close as your genetics allow to those photos in about 2-3 years, or on the way there. Maybe not the timeline you wanted but those guys have been at it for years to look that way and unless you’re extremely gifted you probably will be too. Find joy in the process. Good luck :)

I have ADHD and my hyper fixation is the gym and video games so I’ve gamified everything in my life. I just keep a running notes app of what I’m eating every day and the approximate calories as it’s hard to really know if you’re not the one making the food. As long as I’m in a deficit around 200-500 calories a day I consider that a win. I also lift A LOT.

Just gotta cut calories til you’re losing weight, you can eat less and less til the scale starts goin down or exercise so much that it overtakes your calorie intake, or a mix of the two.

To start, go to the gym, use the equipment there, look up a YouTuber like Jeff Nippard to get an idea of what exercises are gonna do what for where, but the important part is that you go to the gym, lift the weights with good form and high effort.

Keep up the walking, a common recommendation is 10,000 steps a day, aim for somewhere around that mark.

Track your weight on the scale, do not obsess over numbers in the short term, you want to see longer term trends downward of like 1-2% of your weight per month or so. Weight fluctuates a lot for a lot of reasons in the short term, always keep that in mind when tracking your weight to avoid having it demotivate you. You’ll also be adding muscle which is gonna add weight, and muscles a lot heavier than fat is, so you’re gonna have to take that into consideration.

The pictures you posted make me think you’ll be more on the calorie cutting side, especially if you want six pack abs. Six packs aren’t achieved through much more than really low body fat percentage, so you’ll probably want to lean on keeping your calories well in control. Track them, stay ~500 under your maintenance calories but determining maintenance calories is complex and the number adjusts, so focus mostly on seeing progress between the scale and the mirror.

Lastly, be consistent, weight loss is definitely a long journey and sounds like you’ve found success before, so you probably already know that it’ll take consistent time and dedication to reach your goals, especially when you’re trying to get six pack and lean. Find your motivation and stick to it best you can!

You can do it!

Find your baseline calories, eat abit less than that such as 200 kcal less give or take, depending on time frame, health concerns etc. and whatnot and have patience while exercising and sleeping well

Calorie counting is number 1. Calculate your BMR and TDEE (be honest!!) and structure your eating accordingly.

More protein. More whole foods. Far less processed foods. Be conscious of which foods agree less with you (inflammation, constipation, etc).

Lift for muscle mass. 3 sets of 10, not 6 like a powerlifter or 15 like someone who wants to tone.

Controversial: weigh yourself every day. I find on the days I eat poorly and weigh more the next I'm staring that number in the face and have extra motivation to do the right thing. Conversely, after a good day and I'm a little lighter I also have extra motivation to do the right thing.

It's very hard to make progress when you have a cheat day. Idk about you, but I could easily put down 6000 calories in a day if I wanted, and a single day like that is more than 3 days worth of my calorie goal and offsets a full week of calorie deficit.

Be kind to yourself, but not weak. No, you don't get to have ben and Jerry's bc it was a hard day. BUT, you can fit ice cream into your calories if you don't exceed the number. You might just be hungrier than if you ate the same amount of calories of something less calorie dense.

Make peace with the fact that you are trading temporary happiness for future happiness. Also that this isn't a temporary thing at all. Your eating habits not only become lifelong, but also your calorie needs will decrease as you lose weight.

Source: 34m, 5'7", max weight 282lbs current weight 180lbs

I've found that when I try to focus on fitness in itself that the weight loss has been temporary. For me, I'm better able to lose weight when I've set goals where losing weight is a byproduct, not the goal. For me it was hiking. I wanted to push myself in the number of miles I could do, and train to do some hard peaks. This forced me to start eating healthy, first just on the days I was hiking, which led to better eating habits throughout the week. I found that changing my eating habits was easier when it was a way to achieve a different goal than health in and of itself. As I've started to see results in both hiking and my weight, I've found that focusing on health in general is easier as well

Starving and cardio is a good way to make yourself hungry and fall off your diet. Develop muscle that’s calorie hungry and you’ll watch the fat fall off

Couple things that most people ignore when losing weight.

1. You have to do resistance training regularly while dieting to maintain your muscle mass.

2. You can really only successfully diet for 12 weeks at a time. If the amount of weight you want to lose is more than you can lose in 12 weeks you have to split it up. 12 weeks diet, 12 weeks maintenance calories, 12 weeks diet, repeat until desired results are reached. A lot of people lose weight for 12 weeks but try to keep losing weight and their willpower is gone and they go on huge binges and gain all the weight back.

I want to thank everyone wholeheartedly for all of your informative and encouraging respones! I do want to engage the replies in full but it will take some time.

This is coming at a time in my life where I'm confronting many turning points, so I'm grateful for your advise, tips, and suggestions. It's hard to accept but sometimes the best thing we can do to change the world is healing and transforming ourselves first.

Old habits die hard, but I intend to set out on this journey soon. Knowing you have comrades on the path make it that much easier!