deadscreensky
Member
Exercise is a ridiculously hard way to lose weight. Even if you could keep at it there's a good chance it won't even work for you, I know it never did for me. (I lost 130+ pounds in a period of a couple years. Only started to work when I moved away from exercise, and this weight loss paused whenever I got heavily into exercise again.) I didn't understand this at the time, but I get it now. To explain it in simple terms, heavy exercise puts your body in a state where everything you eat afterwards is converted solely to fat tissue, and since your system is already so dysregulated that might be impossible to surpass. Already slim people might not have this problem, but their bodies are very different than your body is.
The quickest and best approach for you is dramatically reducing your carbohydrate intake. Maybe start with under 40 grams a day (fiber doesn't count for that total), it will be rough for a couple days but gets much easier after that. (I'd personally try to go lower, but at your weight that's probably going to show dramatic weight loss anyway.) If you remove carbs in your diet you're naturally going to be hungry, so try to replace them with fat or protein. For example instead of a normal cheeseburger get rid of the bun and ketchup and make it a double, perhaps add some bacon on top of it. Skip the toast for breakfast and have an extra couple eggs, put a lot of butter on them, stuff like that. Bigger fat and meat portions, essentially. More veggies will make you feel better, and I definitely recommend that too, but nearly all of your weight loss is going to come down to swapping carbs out for fat and protein. You want to keep all of this as simple as you can, a complicated and time-consuming plan is less likely to succeed. Even if you ignore/forget everything else I'm saying, reduce your carbs. That will work.
Your goal is to reduce your elevated insulin levels. (Hormones are what regulate fat tissue, not some simple calories-in/calories-out grade school math equation.) Reducing carbs and increasing fats/protein will do that. That's the strategy.
Don't beat yourself up if you mess up occasionally. A few high carb days here and there won't undo your hard work. (The scale will say otherwise, temporarily but that's because carbs make the kidneys reabsorb more sodium and hence your body puts on massive water weight. Go back to low carb and you'll piss it all away.)
Couple that diet with some brief exercise, lots of water, and lots of sleep and you should see significant progress. Some kind of quick muscle building would be best. I personally am a big fan of kettlebell swings, I do 50+ reps three times a week as my primary exercise. Only takes a few minutes, you can do it even in a small apartment, great for correcting posture, it's an effective exercise and it won't strain you so much that you feel starving after. (Again, the food you eat will get turned into fat.) You'll see a difference in body shape fast. Walking is really healthy too, though I found personally when I went too heavy on that my weight loss stopped. Regardless, walking will make you simply feel better, and that's pretty damn important, so try to get in some extra motion.
Also try not to get too crazy about the scale, raw body weight is a really blunt measurement. During my weight loss I would sometimes gain scale weight while also shrinking in clothing sizes and getting visibly thinner. Muscle is dense. (This would always lead to awkward encounters with relatives during various holidays. "Wow, you've lost so much weight, how much did you lose?" "Uh, I put on an extra five pounds." Eventually I just told people I don't look at the scale, which basically became true.)
(The ideal would be measuring actual fat percentage, but I never found a reliable+cheap way to do that.)
Measuring waist and thigh size is an easy alternative, or just pay attention to how your clothes start getting looser. Eating low carbohydrate is actually a really easy thing to do for long periods of time (as long as you compensate with other foods, as mentioned -- never go low cal), you could do it for life and stay healthy that way, so as long as you're gradually losing weight you're good.
I'd expect pretty dramatic and immediate weight loss for you if you do this. None of this should actually be too hard, either. Our weight isn't some moral crusade where we need strength and courage to overcome the evils of sloth and greed. It's just science. If you have issues you need to correct your approach, use better science, none of this has any bearing on your moral worth as a human being.
The quickest and best approach for you is dramatically reducing your carbohydrate intake. Maybe start with under 40 grams a day (fiber doesn't count for that total), it will be rough for a couple days but gets much easier after that. (I'd personally try to go lower, but at your weight that's probably going to show dramatic weight loss anyway.) If you remove carbs in your diet you're naturally going to be hungry, so try to replace them with fat or protein. For example instead of a normal cheeseburger get rid of the bun and ketchup and make it a double, perhaps add some bacon on top of it. Skip the toast for breakfast and have an extra couple eggs, put a lot of butter on them, stuff like that. Bigger fat and meat portions, essentially. More veggies will make you feel better, and I definitely recommend that too, but nearly all of your weight loss is going to come down to swapping carbs out for fat and protein. You want to keep all of this as simple as you can, a complicated and time-consuming plan is less likely to succeed. Even if you ignore/forget everything else I'm saying, reduce your carbs. That will work.
Your goal is to reduce your elevated insulin levels. (Hormones are what regulate fat tissue, not some simple calories-in/calories-out grade school math equation.) Reducing carbs and increasing fats/protein will do that. That's the strategy.
Don't beat yourself up if you mess up occasionally. A few high carb days here and there won't undo your hard work. (The scale will say otherwise, temporarily but that's because carbs make the kidneys reabsorb more sodium and hence your body puts on massive water weight. Go back to low carb and you'll piss it all away.)
Couple that diet with some brief exercise, lots of water, and lots of sleep and you should see significant progress. Some kind of quick muscle building would be best. I personally am a big fan of kettlebell swings, I do 50+ reps three times a week as my primary exercise. Only takes a few minutes, you can do it even in a small apartment, great for correcting posture, it's an effective exercise and it won't strain you so much that you feel starving after. (Again, the food you eat will get turned into fat.) You'll see a difference in body shape fast. Walking is really healthy too, though I found personally when I went too heavy on that my weight loss stopped. Regardless, walking will make you simply feel better, and that's pretty damn important, so try to get in some extra motion.
Also try not to get too crazy about the scale, raw body weight is a really blunt measurement. During my weight loss I would sometimes gain scale weight while also shrinking in clothing sizes and getting visibly thinner. Muscle is dense. (This would always lead to awkward encounters with relatives during various holidays. "Wow, you've lost so much weight, how much did you lose?" "Uh, I put on an extra five pounds." Eventually I just told people I don't look at the scale, which basically became true.)
(The ideal would be measuring actual fat percentage, but I never found a reliable+cheap way to do that.)
Measuring waist and thigh size is an easy alternative, or just pay attention to how your clothes start getting looser. Eating low carbohydrate is actually a really easy thing to do for long periods of time (as long as you compensate with other foods, as mentioned -- never go low cal), you could do it for life and stay healthy that way, so as long as you're gradually losing weight you're good.
I'd expect pretty dramatic and immediate weight loss for you if you do this. None of this should actually be too hard, either. Our weight isn't some moral crusade where we need strength and courage to overcome the evils of sloth and greed. It's just science. If you have issues you need to correct your approach, use better science, none of this has any bearing on your moral worth as a human being.