some advice please :)

[bfwanderer79]

Hi all - first time poster here.

Basically, I need to do something about my weight and wanted to get some advice from people in the know.

I'm 28, 6'4" 280lbs approx 134kg. I have an exercise bike which, for the last few weeks, I've been using once a day with only one or two exceptions. My routine on the bike is a 10 minute routine, maintaining a speed of around 40-50 kmph (25-30 mph ish). Rising to 60kph (37mphish) for short bursts of about 30 seconds every minute

Is this going to prove fruitful? Should I be working out more on it, faster, for longer? Some people tell me I should be going slower but for longer - thoughts?

I also have a bike at my disposal and there's a swimming pool across the road which, once a nail problem clears up, I intend to be using.

My diet is I will admit not the best, but certainly improving. Breakfast is always cereal (normally special K or similar) or granary toast with low fat spread and normally marmite, although I sometimes have jam. Lunch is generally soup - tomato, or vegetable. and dinner varies depending on what i have in the house, but is normally either pasta or a pie of some description, or beans on toast. something like that. I don't drink soft drinks such as coke in any great volume, perhaps one 500ml bottle of dr pepper a week if that. Most of the day I drink tea or water.

If anyone has any thoughts or advice on how I can best shed weight, to around 16 stone, I would be very grateful. I've set myself a target time of my 30th birthday to achieve this (28th of november next year)

Thanks in advance
James

[iron_worker]

Are you lifting weights at all? I would reccomend it if you aren't. It will really give your metabolism a kick in the butt.

Also it looks to be like you are *way* below maintenance with your diet. I'd say this is a bad approach as your body then decides its time to save all the calories it gets and makes it very hard to lose fat.

You'd be better off determining what your maintenace level of intake cals is and then subtract 200. Do that for a week and if there is no loss then subtract another 200. (Start a diet log and be very detailed with amounts and types of food -> Start measuring proportions)

Your cardio looks ok but with your primary goal of weight loss, I would bump up the time on the bike if you could. You are doing a sort of interval training which is good. A long slow ride can be useful as well.

Hopefully someone else will chime in with some other ideas but thats my suggestions.

IronWorker

[Pitysister]

you need to be eating more dead animal...i don't see any at all in your diet.

[Ross86]

Yeah...if you have a caloric deficit & you're exercising a lot, then your body will lose muscle that wouldn't have been lost had you increased your protein intake.

The interval training is kick ass. Keep it up. Don't do it every day. Alternate longer rides with the 10 min interval ride.

Go to fitday.com to start logging your diet.

[bfwanderer79]

Thanks for the help folks and the positive comments

I'm not currently lifting weights at all, but if it will help then I'll get hold of some.

As to the diet, yeah, I probably don't eat enough meat or fish, I forgot to mention that I take a multivitamin and a fish oil supplement also.

oh and thanks for the link Ross what a great site

iron_worker - how do I work out the maintenance level of calories I need? sorry if that sounds like a dumb question lol - up to now watching what I eat has basically meant don't order so much I can't finish it (easy to see how I got into the state I'm in really), so thoughts of calories etc have never really entered my head.

[Ross86]

Google the Mifflin-St Jeor forumla or the Harris Benedict formula for calculating maintenance calories. That will give you a rough estimate. 2500 calories is a good number to start a cut on if you're looking for a ball park figure.

[kimm4]

Agreed with everyone here. It's crucial that you get the proper eating plan in check. Without it...it doesn't matter what you do for training/or cardio...you'll never get the results you're looking for.

So get your calories in check, throw in a good weight training program and some cardio and you're good to go.

Good luck!!