As you all may already know I was formerly 420 pounds of fat. I don’t sugar coat it, I was just plain fat and lazy. It took me a while but I managed to get to where I am today with a bit of will power and A LOT of hard work. There are plenty of articles available online about how to diet and how to train in the gym but none of them really cater for people who are overweight or extremely overweight.

The programs that are available will generally give advice for people who are only slightly overweight and advise you to “modify accordingly” but how the hell are you meant to do that when you are 100 or even 200 pounds heavier than the example given? Since I have been there and done it I can give you a good run down on the dos and don’ts when trying to shift those pounds. This will be different to the article I wrote on the misconceptions that surround the dieting world as I won’t cover the same ideas that I did there.

So on that note, let’s begin. Here is how I see the whole concept in pyramid format:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We will start our break down at the top of the chart.

Cardio

Ah cardio, the bane of every dieters life. I don’t actually know many people who enjoy cardio, it’s boring and soul destroying at times but it is an absolute must for heavier dieters. Now when I talk about cardio I don’t mean for you to jump onto a treadmill and try to run flat out for as long as possible, which is just a recipe for disaster; what I mean is to find something that works on your aerobic capacity, the heart is a muscle after all so why shouldn’t it be trained? Since we will be using a larger than average dieter as our baseline (me for example at my “prime”) we will take the vital statics of 420 lbs., 6”2’ at 21 years old.

When I began on my journey I had decided that cardio was a must and that I was going to have to sweat it out of if I wanted to get to my desired goal. I had a look at all the options available to me at the gym and decided that the cross-trainer was probably my best bet. The reason I chose the cross-trainer is I found it to have the least impact on my knees. Now I know you may be thinking that your knees are fine but think about it this way, 5 minutes of running at a bodyweight of 420lbs will produce a tremendous amount of force on the knees (roughly 860-1260 lbs. of force on each knee per foot fall[1 mile = 400 steps avg. = 344,000 – 504,000lbs of force endured!!!]). I personally stuck to 30-60 minute sessions AFTER I had done a weight lifting session, combing anaerobic and aerobic exercise is a sure-fire way to lose weight as well as retain a little of the muscle you have.

I do not see the point in doing cardio and not building up a sweat. These people who I see going onto the treadmills for a walk and come off drier than when they went on are doing it wrong, all kinds of wrong! If you plan on hitting the treadmill, set it to a speed where you are breathing heavy but able to talk but only in short bursts. Set the treadmill to a slight incline as well to simulate walking up a hill, it will make it tougher but you will get more work done in a shorter space of time. The other thing to remember about cardio is that it isn’t a social occasion. It is not the time to chat to your friends or put in half the effort. Sure if you want to talk to your friend while you both walk or are on the cross-trainer then by all means do so but make sure you follow the rule of short bursts as that way you will still be working hard but your mind will be taken off the tedium of cardio.

One approach I took to cardio was to combine weight lifting and cardio together. To accomplish this I would use complexes. Complexes are basically multiple moves strung together either for time or rep ranges. So a basic complex would look like the following:

• Overhead Press x 10
• Squat x 10
• Deadlift x 10
• Bent Over Row x 10
• Curl x 10
• Repeat x 3-5

In the above complex you would take a barbell, be it Olympic or smaller curl bar, add weight to it that would allow you to perform 10 reps of each exercise with the last few reps being tough but doable and then perform the exercises back to back with no rest. After you have completed all exercises you would rest for 1-2 minutes and then do it all again. This may sound easy but believe me by the time you get to the 3^rd or 4^th set you will be sucking hard for air. The benefit of complexes is that you combine both aerobic and anaerobic exercise therefore training your muscles as well as your cardiovascular system.

The only other way of getting cardio that I would recommend is to push some form of prowler or sled. Pushing a prowler will really test the men from the boys or the ladies from the girls so to speak. The prowler is basically a sled which has low handles and high handles but also is able to accommodate increased loads. On the two upright high handles you are able to weight the prowler with as much weight as you want, although I suggest starting out with absolutely nothing on it at all. The first few sprints with the prowler will seem easy, your heart rate will increase but we expected that, it is when you get to anywhere above 4 sprints with the prowler that things start to get tough. Your legs will start to seize up due to the increased blood flow to your thighs and your heart will be trying to hammer its way out of your chest. It is not uncommon to feel extremely nauseous after a good prowler pushing session, a sign that you have definitely worked hard enough.

I’m going to leave the cardio section here as I believe I have given you plenty of information to go on to set your own plan up.

Weight Training

Now I know what you may be thinking, why would I want to bulk up when I’m trying to lose weight? Well the answer is that you won’t be bulking up. Lifting weights does not equal mutant muscles within a few weeks or months. Sure you can go about dieting with cardio and diet alone but at the end of it all you will be wondering why you have lost all this weight and still don’t look like whoever you imagined you would. The reason for that is your lack of lean muscle mass. Bodybuilders take years to get their bodies to the size they are and generally they are eating at a calorie surplus, that is to say they are eating more than they burn off to gain muscle/size. The role of weight lifting in terms of losing weight is a critical one, it will allow you to retain and possibly even increase your lean muscle mass which in turn will allow you to burn more calories at rest (BMR).

Muscle mass burns calories even while at rest, up to 50 calories a day per 10 pounds of muscle so if you had 180 pounds of lean muscle mass that would be 900 calories being burnt by your muscles just being there, add that to your exercise and daily activity and you will find that you have a fairly high calorie expenditure for the day.

When undertaking a weight training program I would advise that you start off slowly and build from there. Although there are a plethora of machines available that allow you only to travel in the one plane of motion therefore isolating specific muscles I believe it is far better to combine both free weights and machine work to get the best of both worlds. With free weights you will be following the same plane of motion as the machines but you will be incorporating your stabilizer muscles since you have won’t be guided by a linear machine. Machines will mimic many of the motions that you will go through with free weights but will allow you to concentrate purely on the intended muscle rather than having to control multiple muscles.

Let’s take the bench press for example, with the free weight bench press once the bar has left the hooks you will be in control and have to stabilize it from swaying around in all directions. Once the bar has stopped swaying you will have to them control the bar on the concentric and eccentric phase of the lift which will incorporate the pecs, delts, triceps and lats all working together to keep the body tight helping you drive off the bottom while keeping the weight stable. When you move to the chest press machine you will work generally only one plane of motion as with the traditional barbell bench press you will work three. The machine will only allow you to travel straight back and forth (or up and down depending on the machine setup) therefore eliminating the need to stabilize the weight and hitting purely the pecs with very little emphasis on the surrounding muscle groups.

I am not saying that free weights should be used exclusively since machines definitely have their place in a workout program. What I am saying is that free weight work should be the main focus in the program with possible accessory work or exhaustion work being done on the machines when form breaks down with free weights.

When you do start working out with free weights then make sure that you have the correct form down each and every time. Sloppy form can take focus away from the target muscle groups but can also be a quick way to get injured. It is best to have one of the trainers who works at your gym show you the correct way to perform the exercises since trying to mimic what you see in a video is a lot harder than listening to a trainer for 5-10 minutes. My suggestion is to learn how to perform the compound, multi-joint exercises as they give you the most “bang for your buck” in terms of muscle recruitment. The compound exercises that I speak of are:

• Squat
• Deadlift
• Bench Press
• Overhead Press (Military Press)

There are other lifts that incorporate the whole body such as Olympic lifts (snatch, clean and jerk, clean) but they are far more technical and require a fair bit of training and coaching to perform correctly and fluently. With the four exercises above the possibilities are really quite open, you can perform high reps, low reps, explosive sets, max loads, rest pause work, heavy negatives and any number of other variations on the above. Once you are familiar with the lifts I would then start to experiment with the different options available but for now stick to the basics.

The last thing I will say on the topic of weight lifting is that don’t be worried if your weight loss stalls or if you even gain weight for a bit, this is perfectly normal. When most people start weight lifting they experience “newbie” gains which are increases in strength and muscle size but they eventually taper off and your normal weight loss will resume. Being that you are starting off from an overweight perspective you can expect to be fairly strong since (taking the example of the 420 pound male) you are carrying a lot of extra weight around each day and if an “average” sized person were to do this then they would get stronger as well!

And so to our final topic…

Dieting

Let’s face it this is where most people fill falter. Many people can be consistent with cardio or with going to the gym to lift weights but when it comes time to stay strong in the kitchen, everything crumbles. A lot of people have far too many temptations laying around which kill any sort of momentum that they had when they began. In the initial stages of dieting I would recommend keeping all sources of temptation out of sight and out of mind. If that means not buying any and pissing someone off, then do it because your health and happiness are more important than a chocolate chip cookie! I would recommend starting off slow with various dietary changes though as jumping in headfirst is a recipe for disaster since you will be trying to change to much to quickly and ultimately will revert back to your old ways, classic yo-yo dieting.

I’ve been over tips and tricks for dieting in my “Top 10 Tips for Weight Loss” and “What Is a Diet?” blogs so I won’t go over the same stuff here and I won’t ramble on in this section as I have in the previous ones.

What I will say is that due to adding cardio and weight lifting into your regime you may suffer from an increase in appetite since your energy expenditure will be significantly higher. This is normal and it is all about learning what foods will satisfy your hunger the best. A good rule of thumb is that protein rich foods and healthy fats will help keep your satiety levels in check. If you are craving carbs then opt for the wholemeal/wholewheat versions of pasta and rice or go for porridge/oatmeal as they are slow digesting carbs and will keep you feeling fuller for longer. Another quick tip to keeping fuller for longer is to add in more fibrous vegetables such as broccoli, sprouts, spinach and lettuce. The fiber in these vegetables will help you to stay feeling full as well as giving you some pretty vital nutrients, so eat your greens!

Dieting and sticking to it are all about will power, it is all about how you react when someone puts temptation in front of you. When this happens the best thing to do is to think about your goals, ask yourself if eating whatever it is that is in front of you will help you achieve your goals and if the answer is NO then walk away. Of course if this was the case 100% of the time then people would go stir crazy because temptation is all around us in our everyday lives and without little bits of the things we love life

would be miserable. So with this in mind the idea of setting up a day in which you will have a cheat meal where you will eat what you like and really enjoy it.

Many people ask about adding in meal replacement shakes when dieting and to me it is a viable option but I wouldn’t use them as meal replacements, more meal enhancements. By this I mean have a shake as a snack in between your main meals or after training that way you are getting the majority of your food from whole food sources and will get a wider variety of nutrients into your body. I would only really use a shake as a meal replacement if I was in a rush, such as in the morning when I didn’t have time to make a cooked breakfast then I would have a shake with a couple of scoops of protein powder, some peanut butter and maybe a piece of fruit or two to set me up for the day.

If you feel the need to further supplement your diet further then by all means go ahead. There are various supplements to add to your diet but other than those in my supplement post you can add in a multi-vitamin, fish oil caps and glucosamine. The fish oil and glucosamine will help your joints and inflammation if any while the multi-vitamin will cover all the mineral and nutrient deficiencies you may have. Supplements aren’t necessary but they can cover the bases in the background in case you fall short of getting all your nutrients through your food.

Summary

Ok so we have reached the end of this article and in case you are one of these people with a short attention span I will give a quick summary of the ideas and information in this post here. Without further ado:

• Cardio is important, it will help you burn fat and increase cardiovascular health
• Take it easy on with cardio to begin with, running will put undue stress on the knees
• Try out complexes
• Include some form of weight lifting in your regime
• Mix both machines and free weights
• Stick to compound, multi-joint movements on free weights
• Don’t over think your diet
• Relax from time to time and enjoy a cheat meal
• Supplements can help but whole foods should be your main focus

And there we have it. These are what I think are the fundamental rules and guidelines that you should be following if you are starting a journey. Although I have learned a lot of this information over the years on my own recently I have had great guidance from the guys over at the Varisty Gym in Glasgow, Scotland. They run a Varsity Challenge which is a great place to start out your weight loss journey if you are in the area.

If you have any questions or would like some help then drop us a comment, hell even if you feel like correcting our spelling then drop us a comment.

-Andrew

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