stormer94 said:I don't know that you can have an 18-19" arm and weigh 195. Unless that's all you did was target the arm.
I may in fact do just that. I have a bad lower back and left shoulder so I'm not able to do any heavy bench or bent over rows or anything like that. But I may target arms (guns as we used to call them 😉 ), core and legs the most and do rehab type work for the shoulders, pushups for the chest and pulldowns for lats.
Quoted post said:I have lost a pile of weight, and from my own trials and tribulations, I know you can lose about .4 pounds a day effectively. That's 146 pounds a year. 2.8 pounds a week. I think I've seen other people mention that 2.5 pounds a week should be a max number.
Personally, I believe 0.4 lbs per day is too much. In the past I've tried to lose 2 to 2.5 lbs per week and ended up getting weak and sick and losing quite a bit of muscle on top of it. That's why I want to try something different this time around. I still want to have some pizza and beer once and a while too, you know.
Quoted post said:As you lose weight, your body just handles all of that. It knows that you no longer need as much leg mass as your upper body is now 50 pounds lighter. You will still likely be the same proportion. And what makes a person look lean and mean is simply being lean. You can't have great abs if they are covered in insulation. If you have 18" arms now and lose 50 pounds, you're gonna lose some arm diameter. Not because it's all lost muscle, you're losing the insulation.
I may not actually need to lose 50 lbs. I was just throwing a number out there because I have been weighing arund 250 and thought that 200 would be a good "fighting weight" so to speak. I currently tip the scales at 246 as of yesterday morning. I've already lost 9 lbs since this Winter without really dieting or trying. Just letting the warmer weather take it's course. According to my skin fold calipers (yeah, we all know how accurate those things are!) my BF is 20%. So if I lost 50 lbs of just fat I'd have zero % BF. That's obviously not going to happen. But I could set a realistic goal of losing 12% of that 20% which would only be ~30 lbs. That's doable.
Quoted post said:I know a guy that weighs 350 pounds and has 18" arms, he's overweight, not "in shape". I've let my arms get down to about 14", and I kick his butt arm wrestling. Sure he has a "bigger arm"... 🙄 I think you'd be surprised at how much or how little muscle mass you likely have now. Do you have access to one of those fat calculating scales? Even with some debatable accuracy, it's an eye opener.
While true I don't have the pure strength I had 20 years ago, I've managed to keep quite a bit of size. See pics. That was from last Spring when my arms were just below 19" and I weighed about the same as I do right now. I'm obviously pretty smooth but my goal isn't to get into contest shape. Just somewhere around 8% to 10% BF and keep some size. At that point I will reassess and make a decision to lose some more or stay put.
Quoted post said:DON'T TAKE IT "THAT" SLOWLY... 50 pounds over 2 years is to long. You're not enabling yourself, and putting off the inevitable. You need to DO IT! 50 pounds over 2 years is only a .48 loss per week. .48 pounds is like one decent [censored], 2 less cans of Pepsi, etc.... If you need to lose weight, YOU KNOW YOU NEED TO DO IT! :o
"Cowboy up" and make it happen!!! Your knees will feel better, your back will feel better, your sex life will be better (believe that!), your attitude will be better, you'll feel better, spend more time with the family, etc. Those are all things that will SERIOUSLY improve your life. Don't put that stuff off. Don't be the fat guy at the picnic sitting in the corner, be the cool guy playing with the kids, tossing the frisbee, smile on his face, taking his wife on walks to the park. Going to the beach. If you know you need to lose it, you are likely a tad self conscious about it. Make it go away, be the man you know you should be!
You should be able to comfortably (with physicians approval) lose 50 pounds in 20 weeks at 2.5 pounds per week. And if you're making the effort and riding, all the easier. A little over 4.5 months. Start today and lose 50 pounds by the end of October.
The first 10-20 is the easiest.
You can do it man! C'mon, let's go!!! 🙂
Cowboy up! 😄 That's too funny. Don't worry. I'm not the fat guy sitting in the corner at the picnic. My weight is not tied to my self-esteem. Besides, the people who lose weight just to be thin thinking they are going to sit at the cool kid's lunch table are grossly mistaken. They'll be very disappointed if that's why they're doing it. If anything I was more self-conscious about myself when I was a pumped up steroided bodybuilding freak. It felt weird having people stare at me. But I'm older now and I could have some fun with that these days. 😉
I think if more people took a longer term approach to weight loss (i.e. 1/2 lb per week) then they may be able to keep it off. That's where most diets fail as within a certain period of months the dieter will start gaining it back. The yo-yo syndrome isn't only hard on the ego, it's hard on the thyroid, pancreas and endocrine system.
My brother does this [censored] all of the time and is a prime example of the typical dieter. He starves himself or goes on some unrealistic Atkin's styled diet and looses about 30 lbs fairly quickly. As soon as he hits his target he resumes his former eating habbits (as his diet was unsustainable in the first place!) and gains it all back and more because he's screwed up his metabolism.
One advantage of losing the weight slowly is that I won't slow down my metabolism. The bod won't freak and go into "starvation mode" thinking there is a famine. It's great in that it saved my ancestors, but it sucks for me.
