Dids's WSOP '05 Get Less Fat Incentive Plan.

[MrDannimal]

A lot of this has been said, but repeating it can't hurt.

- "Diet" is a bad word. You want a lifestyle change. Dieting fails because your body recognizes when you don't give it "enough" food, and even over several months it will push you to give it more, and it will be more likely to store what you do give it as fat in case it does actually face a starvation situation. If you significantly reduce food intake, your metabolism will actually slow down (absent other factors).

- DRINK WATER! At least 64 oz. a day, but the more you drink, the less your body needs to store (because it knows more is coming). So you actually lose some "water weight" just by drinking MORE water. If you can, drink it ice cold. In fact, if you drank 8-8 oz. glasses of ice water every day, and did NOTHING else, you would lose ~10 pounds in a year just from the energy needed to heat that water to body temp.

Also, drinking all that water helps fight the hunger pangs because the stomach is "full".

- Swap out the crap. People have said to dump the junk food, and to swap out soda for diet soda (I'd say even to skip that and go right to water. The artifical sweeteners in most diet sodas can actually hinder weight loss). Go from whole milk to skim, pick up low fat versions of stuff (dairy stuffs made with skim, like sour cream, cream cheese...).

- At the same time, don't exclude junk food entirely. Doing so just means you're more likely to "cheat". Allow yourself one day a week where you don't worry about the food intake so much (obviously, don't go crazy, but don't worry about some fries or an ice cream cone).

- Whole grains are your friend. Complex carbs don't screw with your blood sugar level as much as simple carbs, so you have more sustained energy. You also feel fuller, longer. Brown rice, whole grain bread, wheat bagels, you name it. Look for bread that has 3g of dietary fiber and 1g of sugar per slice (or more).

- I try to eat 6 small meals a day instead of 3. I'm not eating any more or less, I just eat more often. I'm almost never hungry, so I don't overeat.

- Exercise! I suggest, if you can, to find a partner or group. Knowing that other people are expecting you helps a great deal on the days you don't have the motivation to exercise. Invest in a heart rate monitor, if you can. You want to be able to keep your heart rate around the 70% of "max" to get the most fat burning benefits. Ideally, for 45 minutes or longer at a time (but at least 25 minutes to get into fat burning mode).

You can do weight lifting to build muscle, if you want. Adding muscle will help keep the metabolism high, because muscles burn energy and having more of them will burn more energy. However, I've found that it's often harder to get up the motivation to just go do weight work. If you find some exercise activity you enjoy, and will do regularly, even if it adds less muscle then weight work, you'll get more benefit from it just because you're going to stick with it.

Your plan sounds realistic (2 pounds a week). I'd suggest re-thinking the days you plan to exercise, though. I don't know if you want to have 3 consecutive days like that (Sat-Mon). If you're going to do weight work, you DEFINITELY don't want 3 straight days. You need recovry time. I'd suggest a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then one weekend day as a schedule if you can. You can do consecutive days if you make sure to either do totally seperate muscle groups (upper body one day, lower body the next), but you want to be very sure you've selected exercise that doesn't cross groups to help avoid injury.

Just to add to the pile of "It can be done!" stories:

I started training for a martahon (to be run on 10/24/04) at the start of May. I weighed about 200 pounds (at just over 5' 9"). I usually eat something like half a bagle with lite cream cheese at 7:30am, then a handful of pretzels and a cup of applesauce at 10:00am, then half of a normal lunch at 12:30, and the other half at 3:00. I eat half my normal serving of dinner at dinner time, and then a snack later (some days I just eat normal dinner and no snack). I drink at least 64 oz. of water a day, and often closer to a gallon.

I run 3 times a week. At the start, it was for 30 minutes at a time (one longer run on Saturday). 10 weeks in, I'm running 5 miles on Tuesday and Thursday, and 10 on Saturday. I don't run fast (13:30 miles, on average, which is a light jog), and I walk for 1 minute every 6 minutes or so.

So far, I've lost about 20 pounds (right on your 2 lbs. week). My original goal was to lose 25 lbs. by the marathon (1 lb. per week), so it's going well.

One last thing: If you can afford it (you have insurance, or just cash on hand), get a physical. Get a cholesterol check, and have a Dr. tell you that you're safe to go. Better safe then sorry.

Good luck!