I would like some recommendations to speed up my weight loss process. I was in great shape 10 years ago. I use to spend about 4 hours a day at the DoJang, and then I got married and we now have 3 kids.
I am older now (almost 33) and started working out again back in April. I goto the gym every morning at 4:30am, I do elyptical maching for 25-30 minutes and situps everyday (150/day now). I also am back in TKD 3 nights a week.
When I started working out I was a little over 250, as of yesterday I am down do 220. When I tested for by Black Belt 10 years ago I was at 175lbs. I realize I will probably never see 175 again, but I would like to get down around 200. The first 25-30 lbs dropped fairly quick, then I kind of plateaued.
I have given up soda and pretty much only drink water.
Any tips for dropping about 20 pounds in the next 6-8 or faster would be great.
Thanks!
Hi Phlaw---I have two words for you that will never fail in the weight loss department:
interval training. Instead of jogging steadily for twenty minutes or half an hour, the interval trainer jogs for fifty seconds of every one of those minutes but sprints all out the remaining ten seconds. This is what happens, according to exercise physiologists who study such things: the body quickly gets to its optimal fat-burning range
and stays there, even when you drop down to a steady jog. And the effect is particularly noticeable the less trained you are (= the worse shape you're in), because at that point, your heart recovery rate is much slower than it is when you're really conditioned, so you stay `in the zone' for longer---that ten seconds of sprinting lasts, as far as your heart rate goes, well into the remaining fifty seconds of steady jogging. But your legs get to recover from the sprint during the jog, so you kind of get the best of both worlds.
The same idea applies regardless of what form your aerobic exercise takes.
One caution though: it's not much fun. There are studies that suggest that the revved-up state of your metabolism that comes from aerobic exercise lasts far longer when you do intervals than just normal aerobic exercise, even if you do the latter for a longer period of time, but the price you pay is that interval training can be kind of unpleasant---it really takes it out of you. When I first started doing them, many years back, I would do half an hour of running and do five seconds of sprints every other minute; eventually I worked my way to twenty minutes of these intervals---some writers call them `wind sprints'---with ten seconds of all out sprinting per minute. And that was
plenty. If you build intervals into your program twice a week, I think you'll see pretty dramatic results over the next six-to-eight week period.
You have to get yourself checked out by your MD if you want to do this (or any serious exercise program really), and you also should do weight training to ensure that your body does start digging away at your protein reserves (aka muscle tissue) to fuel your workout. This is less a danger with intervals than with steady jogging (sprinting is actually anaerobic exercise, like lifting weights; aerobic exercise is what can plunder your muscle protein), but because the body hates to give up fat, it's a danger with any aerobic exercise program. If you do about fifteen minutes of big compound exercises a week, you'll keep your body from going into catabolic mode---resistance training is really necessary to complement aerobic training.
I'd give this program a try---just make up your mind in advance that it's not going to be very much fun. But it feels so good when you finally get to stop for the day...:wink1:
Best of luck!
