Not true man. I've sat down with dietitians before and they told me to take in protein to repair my muscles even while losing weight. Yes I have fat but that's not muscle building protein, your looking at protein the wrong way.

I'm confused. Are you advocating to not intake protein after working out?

-Alex

You have to take in protein after a work out to start helping with the rebuilding of your muscles. Steve's never really lifted a lot of weights, he has always trained martial arts so he's never really done this. As for him losing weight he has taken that path but I want to retain the muscle I have and try to replace the fat I have with muscle so I take in more protein. It's just different ways of doing it. Steve will lose weight faster his way but will lose muscle mass in the process without feeding them properly.

+1.

-Alex

Yes, by all means take in protein. But you dont need extra protein at this stage. Just eat clean and hit your macros. Extra protein will be taxing to your system and your body will tackle that before attacking your fat storage. You have plenty of extra fat to burn from at this point. Get down to the mid teens bodyfat percentage wise then you can start training like a bodybuilder eating all the bro foods. Lol

With the way you are tackling it you will just end up heavier than where you started in the first place. As i said, it should be interesting to see the results from the two different approaches.

Required protein for activity level and his current health status. He doesnt need EXTRA protein when he is already very overweight and has extra fat storage to burn off. Just meeting his macros for eating at a calorie deficet.

That hurts, I'm just fluffy.

Its really going to be a mind blower for you when you are the heavier one of the two of us!! Muhahaha. Gauntlet has been thrown down my brotha! Lol

Any Weight Trainers/Body Builders on Here?
 

Thanks a lot, man. Now what do I have with my shredded wheat tomorrow morning?

Almond milk. Hormone and puss free!

Any Weight Trainers/Body Builders on Here?
 

I will be picking some up tonight. A quick google search revealed all kinds of nasty shit in milk, including fecal matter. Ew.

A fitness section to discuss weight loss, running, bikeing, weight lifting etc etc is a great idea!

I'm 6'7" and normally floated around 280-300lbs and was ok with being a big boy.But the first week of Nov 2013 was a wake up call hitting the scale at 356.4 lbs.I instantly cut out soda, breads and milk.
Stuffed my diet with nothing but lean meats, seafood, veggies and fruits and I drink a ton of water.No working out, just dramatically changed my eating habbits and went from eating 4000-6000 calories a day, now I eat a max of 1800 calories per day with 1 cheat day to eat shitty foods but still stay below 2500 calories for that day.
As of last Thursday I'm 327.2

My goals 260lbs.

Also I use an app called My Fitness Pal.Lets you keep track of meals, you can enter work out and weight Info to track your progress.Takes some time to figure out the entire app but after a couple weeks its cake to use.And really helpful to watch what's going in your body.

Replacing sodas with water just by itself does quite a bit. It wasn't anything for me to drink 4+ cokes before a burger at Chilis in high school. I weighed 220 then and was 5 foot 8ish. I now run, replaced the sodas with water, and the burgers with chicken sandwiches or salads and now weight 175 at 6'2"

I have taken pre-workout for the last few years to get me energized to get myself to the gym.

I have taken quite a few different brands through the years. Axiom (my new stuff) it was an intense workout, and I sustained my energy throughout the workout.

That's a big change! Soda is garbage I was drinking 4-6 coke zeros a day.Eating entire bags of chips, eating out for breakfeast lunch and dinner.

I'm starting to realize even if you eat healthier while eating out the foods still have a ton of calories.But I basically did the same thing you did.

Never thought I would see the day I eat turkey burgers on wheat buns to get my burger fix lol.

Any Weight Trainers/Body Builders on Here?
 

Yep. Even diet drinks aren't good. I only drink them if I'm drinking them with alcohol mixed in, maybe once a week. People who drink water regularly have lower body weight than those who drink diet drinks.

Yep. Grilled chicken sandwiches aren't much better than burgers once cheese and mayo are on them. I typically don't eat them with all that on there. Same with salads, once bacon bits, croutons and some oily dressings are thrown on them you're looking at as many calories as a burger as well. I typically cut anything that has extra oil or fat in my salad as well. I will usually only leave a sprinkle of cheese.


Salad wasn't in my vocabulary until about a year ago, lol.

Diet drinks are actually worse for you than regular sugary drinks due to the aspartame and sucralose in addition the fructose corn syrup. The stuff is poison in your body!

As for the salads and eating out, you couldn't be more right. Some places the calorie count and fat content in some of their salads are WAY worse than eating some of their burgers.

Example: Chili's Buffalo Chicken Salad

Calories (%DV based on daily intake of 2,000 kcal) 870 kcal 43.5%
Calories from Fat 495 kcal

870 calories from a salad and over 50% of that is saturated fat calories and that doesn't include the shitload of Ranch dressing that most people just pour over it. So easily figure 1000 calories or more or saturated fat and sugar. Add sweet tea or a soda to that and holy crap.

So many people think because they are eating a salad it's healthy and couldn't be more untrue!


Also, most places use cheap unhealthy oils and butter to cook with which really makes the calories go up when you eat out.

What's crazy to me us if I eat crap foods or try to sneak in a soda my stomach gets upset now lol. My body don't like the fatty foods much anymore

My salads are normally around 300-350cal, tiny bit of cheese, ham and 1 egg.Then I'm hungry a hour or two after I eat.I try to stick with t
Chicken breast or thin cut porkchops. I can eat two chicken breast and be less calories then a crap salad.

You do realize he said he is trying to BUILD muscle while losing fat right? You can't possibly increase muscle mass while maintaining the same amount of protein.

Fat and protein are not the same. Losing weight as fat doesn't help him build muscle. It will help him burn fat AND muscle even if he maintains 1 gram protein/pound of body weight.

-Alex

Wouldn't it be best to drop weight first, then start lifting?

Atleast that's what I plan to do, I noticed when I lifted and tried to drop weight it didn't work to well for me.

I've been on a gaining phase and due to the diet I was on, I gained more fat than I wanted. I also took in a ton of carbs at the same time and honestly my diet wasn't the cleanest as it could have been. This is just a test for me right now. I am trying to maintain muscle and see if I can shed a few pounds of stomach fat. It's only been 10 days now. I'll give it a few more weeks.

-Alex

Good luck, if you don't have alot of weight to loose it makes sence to try and build and loose at the same time. I have nearly 100 lbs I want to loose so I just look at things a little different I guess.

I hear ya. I am 6 even, 190lbs. I can stand to lose just a few for the tire I started accumulating around my stomach lol.

-Alex

I'm 6' and 236lbs as of this morning. I am losing weight, down 5lbs now. I'm not taking in as much protein as I would if I was trying to get big, I'm about 75 to 100 g of protein away from that. In reality I need to lose another 46lbs but I have done it this way before. Its not fast but I gain strength and start feeling out my shirts better while doing it this way. I'm hoping I get down to around 220 by April.

It's because your body is now at a very high acidic level. Your system is so taxed that your body is trying to fight off just about anything your throw at it due to all the excess acid/weight. It's what your body does to protect its vital organs.

To lower your acidic level, stay away from any kind of processed food (pasta, breads, dairy) and red meat and reduce your portion size of your white meats. Your body is struggling to digest what you are giving it and creating more acid.

It's near impossible to build muscle while on a calorie deficit. Eating what he NEEDS will allow him to maintain what he has while cutting weight. Anything more than that will just be a waste and slow his weightloss progress.

In my opinion from my experience, you should do both. I'm in the same boat as you having a lot of weight to lose. As you lose weight, you want to maintain the amount of muscle you currently have. After all, the more muscle you have the more fat you can burn.

The way Dominic and Blownaltered are thinking isn't really wrong persay, it's just a leaner guy's way of thinking rather than a very heavy persons way of doing things. Us big guys can't approach things like the little guys do. If we did, it would take 5-6 years to get anywhere with weight loss. lol.

Exactly. When you're so overweight the focus should be on learning how to eat cleanly and getting more active. Eat clean, burn more calories than you take in. Pick shit up, and put it down. Keep it simple in the beginning. Otherwise you are setting yourself up to fail later.

Good work man, keep at it.

Valid point. Can't argue that.

Steve I am curious as to what you may have also learned about poultry meats. I love cooking with chicken breasts and turkey. Baked or grilled.

-Alex

I love turkey now. I am cooking turkey loaf tomorrow night. Have that with some green beans or something and its a good meal. Low fat, good protein and tastes great.

Some really good information here. I did a 3 month transformation type workout where I focused on building muscle and shredding fat (think of an accelerated body builder type workout/diet) and I ended up right at 9% body fat. I'm 6ft and ended up weighing 186 when everything was said and done. It's tough to get started and even tougher to stick with it but having a support system, whether it be this forum, friends, or family really really helped push me through it.

Hey Steve I read your post on Cow milk and that is exactly why I don't think that stuff!

Can you give some details on your diet while building muscle/shredding?

-Alex

Also Steve, how much is a gallon of almond milk?

-Alex

What I have learned about the meat industry so far is quite a bit actually. The regular store bought meats (both red and poultry) that you buy from the mass producers isn't as healthy as we once thought.

Red meats - ALL ground meats are washed with ammonia. (Yes, AMMONIA. The same shit that is used in windshield wiper fluids and PineSol!!)

Small steak cutlets are put back together with meat glues. It's a toxic glue but is within federal regulations once it's cooked, but still..glue..in your food. Gross.

Both sides red meat and poultry are ALL fed corn based diets to make the animals extra fat therefor increasing the fat content of all meats.

Poultry - Chickens specifically are highly engineered to keep up with demands. They go from chicks to fully grown in about 7 weeks fed heavily based corn grain and injected with hormones to increase their breast sizes. They get so big, so fast that they are unable to walk due to their bone structures not being able to support the sped up growth.

All of this stuff is passed to you as you eat it.

Find yourself a Whole Foods or Sprouts etc to find organic farm raised meats. You want to eat animals that were fed properly themselves on foods they were meant to eat (grass, proper grains/seeds etc) and not corn fed.


Poultry isn't quite as dense as red meat therefor your body doesn't need to create as much acid to break it down. You want to eat a portion about the size of your palm. Anything more than that will go to fat storage created by high acid levels trying to break down the excess. Your body knows what it can handle and what it can't. Once it's reached it digestion limit, it starts storing it.

It's important to prepare and cook chicken properly too. Completely trim it of all skin and fats. Use as little oil as possible. Preferrably EVOO or coconut oil.

Yeah, I was really shocked when I found out about milk. It sucks too because I really loved drinking milk. I, like most everyone else, fell for the "milk does a body good" marketing campaigns. The food industry has some really disgusting secrets!

It's about $3 bucks or so. I buy it in the half gallon size and it last me awhile. I use it to cook with or an occasional small glass to drink. I usually have it every morning cooked in my oatmeal with organic flaxseed. YUM!

Did you really just say yum to that. I would rather have scrambled egg whites with some Canadian bacon, that's yum.

That's about the same as a gallon of milk. I'll start looking for that, thanks man!

What's interesting is that I had some inclination that foods are drinks were starting to have hormones in them due to how the younger population is developing so early these days. I know it's off topic but, I remember when I was in high school, girls looked like girls, now you can find some 15 year olds that look over 20.

-Alex

I'm still researching eggs. It's a highly controversial topic if they are good for you or not. I'm still on the fence. I eat eggs on occasion, but only organic eggs and the egg white itself. I'm working on lowering my LDL levels which is why the egg thing is "iffy" to me until I can decide on them.

And yes, oatmeal with flaxseed in it, add a banana while it's hot so it melts. YUMMMMM. :)

Exactly. It's also why we are seeing obesity at a much earlier age too.

Makes you think about that joking one liner " Damn girl, I know milk does a body good, but how much milk you drinking!?!"

Irony.

Its wild, I see girls all the time that are fine as hell and then I feel like a dirty old man when I realize they are under 18. Then I realize I am a dirty old man and look again :facepalm:

Lets not fucking blame obesity of these fat bastards on milk and hormones. Lets put the blame where it belongs, in their fucking parents for taking their fat asses to McDonalds every damn day. My wife sees it everyday where she works (pediatricians office), these parents feed their kids what ever they wants. They have kids come in that are 300lbs and 13 years old and they want the doctor to give them a handicapped pass so their kid doesn't have to walk as far and can take the elevator at certain places. The doctors tell them no and the parent goes to a new doctor to get it so their kid doesn't have to exercise. That is where the blame needs to be put not on fucking milk. Look how skinny my kids are and they eat all the shit that you are saying is horrible for you and is to blame. Sorry this one pisses me off, not Steve's comment it the fact these parents do this to their kids because they can't tell them no when the kid wants another fucking cup cake. Your kids fat give him a carrot.

LMAO! Funny, but true post.

Fixed the last part.

<----can't believe he has turned into a hippie. lol

My ex and I joked about Aunt Gemima being the blame for childhood obesity. But I also attribute much of it to the activity of the child. Children have an insane amount of energy. My soon-to-be five year old daughter is like a damn chihuahua when she is in doors. And that is before she may have any sugar. She loves being out doors and will play her ass off. So will her ten year old sister. Both girls trim and active in cheerleading.

ROFL. It's really crazy to witness. I don't go to The Parks Mall anymore because of this.

-Alex