My advice is also not to try to be magical. Here are some changes to make right away. I'm not sure where you live right now, but here would be our American advice:
1. Stop eating fast food and soda pop! Your
body absorbs junk faster from these sugar drinks then anything.
2. Replace nearly 100% of your drinking habits with water, tea, and some 100% juice. Juice can be higher in
calories, but it's also heathly. Namely grapefruit and orange. With that said, you need to drink HALF your
body weight, in ounces, of liquid. So if you weight 225 drink about 112 ounces of water each day. That can be hard to do I know, but basically just try to drink a lot! Carry water bottles, make frequent trips to the drinking fountain whenever you pass by, drink tea at restaurants etc...
Water is extremely important when trying to loose weight. It suppresses your appetite, because you're full of liquid! And it is needed to flush out the bad stuff through your system, digestive tract, and as you drop the
pounds.
3. At its most basic level,
weight loss will occure when your
body has a deficit of
calories. Let's say you need 2300
calories a day for your
body to function if you sat on the couch the entire day. This is the basic calorie need to simply be alive. No activity, nothing. Your
body has to create heat, pump blood, filter it, move oxegen in and out, run your brain and muscles, etc... And it takes 2300
calories to do it.
So if your
body does not get that, it will have to pull that
energy, or fuel, from something else, which is its
fat stores. If you are active, working out, excersizing, wrestling, and so on, your
body will need more
calories to work. However, you still need that deficit of
calories, to loose weight.
Please note some other things, if you take this to the extreme and just drop all your
calories, thinking maybe if you get no
calories, you will loose all your weight in a week, think again! Your
body will go into a state of
starvation and shut your motabolism down, your blood sugar will drop. Well, BAD things will happen.
What you want to do is calculate how many
calories your
body needs, start calculating how many
calories you expend in a day with your activities, and then create about a 500 calorie deficit of that number. This forum has many links for calculating all those things, it's not to hard to get the numbers.
There are some other things to think about when trying to loose weight. One is that, as a man, you WILL weigh more then you think you should, due to muscle. Muscle is heavier then
fat. Consider, if a guy is 200
pounds and wants to loose 15
pounds, so he works out every day of the week, weight-lifting. Pretty soon he will GAIN muscle and BURN
fat. He might look fit as a fiddle and muscluar, but weigh 15
pounds MORE then when he started! A lot of muscle builders and athelets might be about 5' 11" tall and weight 250
pounds but look like super stars because of muscle mass!
In other words, don't let the scale be your guide, let the mirror be your guide.
That being said, also note that you need to somewhat limit your aerobic activity. Yes that's a shock! But its been found that, for men, a lot of aerobic activity (like bicycling, treadmills, running) tends to burn more muscle then
fat. I don't know how they came up with that. But in any case, if you go to the
gym, instead of 30 minutes on a
treadmill and 15 lifting
weights. Try a 10 minute
treadmill as a warmup to 35 minutes of
weights. A mans
body does better with the muscle building and weight training, then
aerobics.
Consider some more things, if you will. If you starve your
body of
calories and fats and carbs and protein and all that, you WILL burn your muscle, because the muscle has no fuel (protein, carbs) for your workouts and daily activity. Keep in mind that you might loose 50
pounds and go from 225 to 175, but you will loose muscle rather then
fat. And what happens is, you are happy standing on the scale, but you STILL look flabby because your muscle is gone and your
fat is still hanging here and there. Again, it's not the scale, but the mirror that determins your results.
Your life-plan should be a combination of burning some
fat, and converting some
fat INTO muscle. Burning
fat will loose weight, but converting
fat will GAIN weight, but look better.
There is NO short term fix for
weight loss. You must simply change the way you live so that you can have a healthy lifestyle the rest of your life, and never have to worry about weight. But if you take some extreme approach to quick
weight loss (such as extreme low carb like
Atkins), you will loose weight, but put it right back on when the "diet" stops.
Changing your life is not a
diet, it is not short term, it's just something you bring yourself to do.
You are only 16 years old, you are barely even getting started in life and you act like it's all over if you can't talk to a girl. Your girl may not come for another 6 years, it WON'T MATTER. You will love a woman the same today, or in 6 years, when you meet the right one.
My advice for you, my friend, is to monitor EVERYTHING that enters your mouth. I say, don't actually change anything, yet. Just go through your average day, or week, and record everything you do. Next you can analyze it and find where those extra carbs and cals are coming from. Maybe it's the crackers you keep taking at lunch, or the soda every day with dinner. Or maybe you eat a lot of some fruit, thinking it's good for you (which it is), but also contains that extra 200
calories you were missing.
This record will be your start to a new lifestyle!
I suggest, by writing things down, and keeping a log, and writing your GOALS for each day, each week, each month; that you will be accountable to yourself to meet these goals. If you write it down and practice it, it's much harder to fail because you know specifically what you want.
As far as change right NOW that you can do, is split your meals up into 5 or 6 meals a day. It is a VERY common thing that is taught by professionals these days. Eating regularly keeps your blood sugar even, your motabolism pumping (thus expending more
energy and burning
fat) and keeps you feeling fuller, longer, which stabolizes your
hunger pangs.
So my suggestion is, every 3 hours just have a tiny meal, or a snack. Eat a breakfast with some whole grains and protein and fresh fruit, take any extra
diet pill you might like to, such as the kinds which boost motabolism, at this time. A few hours later have a snack bar from
Atkins or Slimfast, or a meal replacement shake. Then later for lunch have a salad or a sandwhich on wheat bread. Or snack on an apple, or nuts, an avacado, boiled egg, etc... Then later have another snack, maybe some beef jerky or anything with the right combo of cals and carbs. For dinner have baked chicken or fish and brocolli.
You don't have to eat bad tasting food when "dieting", because this life change isn't a
diet, it's just, better. You can eat the foods you like, you just have to eat in portions which fit your meal frequencies and cals for the day.
Try staying away from white flower foods and processed foods. "Processed foods" is a category easy to spot, it's basically anything that doesn't grow in nature! A can of soup is processed. An apple isn't. Processed foods have so many chemicals, it's bad on your stomach and digestive system. All those atificial flavors, food coloring, preservitives, and long-winded medical-sounding chemicals. So cut back on the processed stuff.
Lastly, stay away from the trans-fats. Just look on the label and see what kind of oils they use. Try to use stuff like extra virgin olive oil. Stay ABSOLUTELY CLEAR of ANY product which uses high fructose corn syrup (hfcs)! This is very hard to digest and can raise cholesterol levels. Also stay away from hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils.
All you have to do is start recognizing where you are making mistakes in the things you eat and do. All it takes is a ONE wrong "snack" that might be the size of a pack of gum, to ruin your cals or carbs for a day. Multiple mistakes a day, or "splurging" to often, will do you in too. One can of pop a day can lead to 15 extra
pounds in a years time! The little things add up, and that also applies to the GOOD things as well.
That's all for now, have to go to work! But good luck, and sorry for the post length, I know I'm pretty new here, but been doing a lot of reading.
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