MAB E-Book: Eating & Overweight Beginners

[BendtheBar]

Eating for the overweight trainee. How should a moderate to severely overweight beginner eat during the first year when looking to build muscle?


Notes to participants:

1) Participants should ignoring how others respond and not just chime in with "what he said", if this makes sense. This doesn't mean answers have to be long. I would just prefer them to be independent of what others are saying.

2) Answers can be as long or short as you desire. I want this e-book to be organic and not something that becomes a burden for those responding.

[Off Road]

The first step should be to clean up the diet. Stop eating things that have tons of empty calories and don't add to muscle building. Ditch the chips, sodas, cookies, and ice cream. This simple step can have a big impact on fat loss.

Instead, focus on eating good things like steak, fish, poultry, eggs, milk, nuts, fruits and veggies. These types of foods have value when trying to build muscle and reduce fat. Don't worry about portions, just eat good until you are satisfied.

While you are eating good wholesome foods, start tracking the calories and macros in a daily food log. When your weight levels off, then you'll have a very good idea what your maintenance calories are. This will make further reductions more precise instead of just guesses.

[BendtheBar]

The first thing you should do is resist the urge to view muscle building as bulking and cutting cycles. There are 2 things you need to focus on right now:

1) Train hard. Get stronger on the major compound exercises, and develop a good, consistent habit of getting to the gym.

2) Eating healthy, and properly so you lose weight.

Losing fat while training hard is not going to turn you into some pathetic, tiny shrimp, unless you don't follow the above two suggestions. Focus on the things you can control, and make them happen.

Eat healthy, nutritionally dense foods and aim to lose about 2 pounds per week. If you are very obese, try for more. Make sure you're eating at least 180 grams of protein per day, and taking in at least 30 percent of your calories from fats.

Muscle building takes years. If you spend the next year losing weight and getting stronger, you'll be surprised at how darn good you look.

[bruteforce]

I like OR's advice, but in keeping with the spirit of it all, here is the complete (but still somewhat abridged) version.

Almost all of us instinctively know what we should and shouldn't eat. Some things get muddled by what we are told by the media and other entities, but when it comes down to it, high quality meat, cheese, vegetables, seeds, nuts, roots, fruits, and even grains are pretty decent for you. Depending on your goals and personal metabolism, certain things may work better for you.

It should be clear to anyone that heavily processed meats (hot dogs, bologna, etc), processed cheese food (think velveta or American Cheese singles), sugars, highly refined grains and their products, are a bad idea. This doesn't mean you can never have them again, but limit them severely. There is no reason at all to continue drinking sugared drinks, eating pizza roles, and dipping corn chips in velveta & rotel cheese sauce. Damn that sounds good. But if you want to lose fat, stop eating like that.

Base your diet around good food. Eat real foods that have only 1 ingredient on them. Buy fresh meats, veggies, and the like. Learn to cook. Cooking is a joy once you get good at it. Stop eating at restaurants. If you cook every meal at home, and cook it from fresh ingredients, your health will improve. This is true even if you have bacon and eggs 5 times a week, hamburgers, spaghetti, even more decadent things like Chicken Picatta or Pork Chops in a dijon cream sauce.

Track your intake and figure out how many calories you are taking in. You should be eating until you are satisfied, but not painfully full. This is tricky for me personally, as satisfied is usually 3 burritos past where it becomes difficult to breath. Yet following the above advice, I dropped 145 pounds in a year. As your weight loss slows, adjust your intake and exertion to keep up with the demands of your body.

Don't rush to lose the last 5-10 pounds, as you will need to begin to transition into a maintenance mode. Let them come off slowly, a pound every week or two. This will help prevent the bounce-back that a lot of crash dieters experience.

Above all, don't go back to your old habits. Nothing good can come of that. Enjoy your new health, and live life to an extent never before possible.

[SeventySeven]

Workout in a judgement free zone....bahahaha

Seriously.
Changing daily lazy habits. Taking the stairs instead of elevator, Walking to the store etc. The more active you are the more calories you burn. Also Overweight people tend to have the abilty to move more poundage then your average sized person. Gives you a advantage in the strength department. Take advantage.

[bamazav]

A couple thoughts I have.

Always, always, always remember. It took you X number of years to reach this condition. It won't change over night. Be patient but be faithful and diligent. It can and will happen.

On paper or computer figure out your BMR and your total daily energy expenditure and then try it for a week or two. The calculations are just estimates, everyone is different. Experiment for a week or two to find your true maintenance level and then you can begin to focus on recomposing your body.

Protein is thermogenic. Decrease carbohydrates and increase protein intake. Your body has to work harder to process protein than carbs so you actually are burning more calories converting the protein.

WORK THE LEGS. The largest muscles in your body are in your legs. Do some leg work every session. Resistance work keeps your body burning calories even after you are done working out.

[Off Road]

Diet is more important than exercise when it comes to your weight loss goals. Ideally you'd focus on both diet and exercise, but you cannot out-train a horrible diet.

[dmaipa]

Make it a slow progression into a healthier eating habits. Just by maybe taking out fast food and soda will make a big difference. Then progress to getting more specific with nutrition.

[Ryano]

Don't be concerned with BMI charts. After gaining muscle mass you will still be "obese" on a BMI chart.

[MikeM]

I lost 45 pounds in 18 months and still kept some bad habits. You don't have to be a monk to lose weight, you just have to be smarter about how you let yourself go. I would stick to 2000 cal a day, but hey that could be five bags of chips if I wanted. And I always treated myself to a cheat meal of at least 1000 cal if I made all my workouts for 5 days.

Gradually over the first few months I realized I could do better if I cut out some crap and ate more intelligently, but I still splurged from time to time. As long as you put in the work, AND THAT IS KEY, you will still lose weight.

However, once I got close to my goal weights, I realized diet is completely the answer. Clean up all your crap eating (and drinking!) if you want to hit your goal.

So, I'm saying you don't necessarily have to start out like a monk to get where you want to go. Cut out the most obvious crap in your diet, work like a fiend, cut out some more crap, work like a fiend, and finally realize that if you really want to maximize yourself, cut out all the crap and eat real food to reach your goals.

Lots of ways to skin a cat. Find yours.