Hey, my name is Nick.

Growing up, I was always a big kid... but by big I wasn't nessesarily fat. I played lots of sports, and as an 11 year old in the best hockey division in the city and in great shape weighing 144 pounds being 5'4. I stopped being as active and you guessed it, I put on weight partially due to some body chemistry imbalances that I'm not sure have been completely resolved. I became obese but over the last 3 or 4 years I've slowly, steadily lost weight. Right now, on paper I've only lost 10 pounds but have gone from looking like a whale to just looking rather sloppy on the front.

I don't want to add muscle because frankly I'm already really thick and some say freakishly strong. The weight I've slowly lost over the last few years could most likely be credited to correcting my body chemistry (thyroid problem) and more recently to my healthy diet and my physically active job. Right now, there isn't much room for improvement in my diet but there could always been some adjustments I'm sure.

What is the best way to trim off the rest of my weight? What kind and how much training/excersising should I be doing?

First of all, welcome and feel free to start your own diary to track your progress.

I would recommend that you do cardio and weight training. The cardio will help you trim up and if you do light weights 2-3 x/wk that will help you maintain your muscles.

Thanks for the reply!

Cardio and light weights, thats what I'm going for. 2 or 3 times a week? That sounds pretty good. I have some ankle and knee problems from football in high school and hockey that get adgetated if I get in the habbit of running so I'm thinking the bike is a better idea. The problem is I have no idea how long of a cardio work out I'll need to do before its affective. I grew up mountain biking so much that even if I just get up off the couch after 6 months I can usually keep up to the average rider. 20 minutes gets me sweating and gets my heart rate up but it doesn't seem very challenging. Does it need to be or do I just need to get my heart rate up? As for the weights, the goal is to do reps so that by the end your heart rate is up and your muscles are noticeably tired? no?

Also, what is the time frame I should expect for any results?

Cardio is a good choice to start off with, do as much as you can. Also when you do weights try keeping the weights high and the reps low. This will be less inclined to build a lot of bulky muscle and burn the fat. Keep the reps between 5-12 and really pump up the weight so you can barely manage it.

Good luck with finding the light!

high weight and low reps? I thought it would be the other way around if I wanted to just tone up and lose weight. When you work a muscle really hard it kind of "damages it" and gets bigger because it rebuilds it self to compensate doesn't it? I don't want bigger muscles, i'm pretty thick already... i just wanna be smaller.

yea, your right. It should be high reps, low weight. If you are already happy with your strength, then do 12-20 reps for 3-4 sets.

I've recently joined a boot camp which is entirely based on your own body weight and using fit bands ... I can feel the weight shedding off. However, it is quite intense with the maximum break over a period of an hour is a few 1 minute breaks for water.

For your cardio, running is definately the best, but i'm in the same boat as you. My knee is shot, so i've relied on biking and the elepical machine. It is quite hard for me to get my heart rate up because my legs fatigue faster than my lungs/heart. I get my heart up much faster by just doing my workout routine.

Okay, that sounds better. I don't want to just be working one set of muscles with my strength training, but I will be mostly working on my upper body because I have some muscle imbalance and posture issues i want to get after, so if I do the military press, lat pull down and row -- all excersises that use mostly the same muscle groups one after the other should i still shoot to do 3 or 4 sets consider i'll be doing 20 of each right after the other? Also, how long should take between sets?

Other than that, yeah, i think i'll go with the bike. My legs are really strong and they don't ever tire out it seems so I think that'd be good cardio for me.

Thanks guys!

If all else fails check with wikipedia, its usually more accurate because of the amount of people maintaining it (ie less scamware)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weight_...sic_principles

if you are looking for the cardio benefits of weight training, then your rest should only be about 30s - 1m. And yes, you should do 12-20 regardless of the exercise. If you drop the number of reps, then you are getting back into building size. Before this bootcamp, I was doing 4 exercises per body part and doing 15-20 for each. You will still get strench increases, but you will become more defined instead of just bulky.