Any advice for this noob? [warning, lots of text]

[brad5452]

Hello! I'm very new to weight loss and unfortunately my lack of knowledge shows it. I normally do a lot of research before joining a forum, but with weight loss it seems that the specifics of the person losing weight and what they have access to makes a huge difference that I don't think I could learn in a reasonable amount of time. Anyway, my goal of this post is to get any sort of advice, though I'd specifically like to know if my workout idea is a good one, by which I mean reasonably capable of reaching my goal, which will be outlined below.

About me
I've recently turned 18, I'm a senior in high school, I'm about 68.5 inches tall and weigh around 210 pounds. I don't have a job yet, which is unfortunate for my goal of weight loss because I cannot buy my own food, so I eat whatever my family eats, plus school lunches on weekdays. My goal is simple. I want to not be fat/ugly. Looking good would be a bonus, or perhaps I'll build muscle after I lose weight, but for now my standards aren't very high which I hope will make up for some of my issues. For example, I don't have a scale of any kind, so I can't measure my own weight nor can I measure out the mass of servings of food for calorie counting. If I had a scale, I would say that I want to lose 60 pounds getting me down to 150, but to be honest I have no clue what 150 pounds looks like and I'm just going off of a general guideline that I heard is healthy. An ideal time frame would be 6 months, and I honestly have no clue if that's reasonable or not. As far as resources for losing weight goes, I've got two arms, two legs, and a bicycle. I don't have any weights or anything like that, and I haven't found any conveniently heavy objects to lift around the house. As mentioned, I don't have a job so I can't buy any equipment or supplements.

My (lack of a) social life consists of talking to one friend online and talking to friends at school. Because I very rarely leave home except for school, I have an overabundance of free time. While this gives me low self esteem and low confidence, it also gives me lots of time to exercise. I have 5+ hours a day that I do nothing with, so that could go to exercise if that would be beneficial. I've heard it's possible to overwork yourself, but I'm not sure what constitutes that. Additionally, my lack of self esteem and confidence might help to motivate me. The main reason I want to lose weight is because I think it will help my social life, which would increase general confidence and self esteem.

Anyway, on to my plan
I've heard that just walking or biking for a few miles burns very few calories, and that high intensity interval training is the way to go. I've also heard that resting is important. So basically my plan would be to do HIIT running every other day, doing it until I feel as if I can't continue to. All other days would be rest days, where I'd just do light walking or something. I'll also try to spread out what I eat and I'll try to get my mom to buy things like celery and carrots that are lower in calories so I can snack on those instead of snacking on whatever I can find around the house. I currently drink coffee almost exclusively during the winter, but I'm going to stop that and switch to exclusively water along with milk when I can get a hold of some. The milk isn't for protein or anything, it's just irresistibly delicious when you drink nothing but water

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[DarkSideHome]

Ok, if your time is limited, go to the stickies on the Fat Loss and Nutrition sections of the Forum. In a couple of hours you can educate yourself on the myths of dieting and working out, and you calculate your TDEE (calories you need to eat to neither lose nor gain weight) and your macros (how many grams of protein and fat you NEED, while the rest are for carbs).


Although I would say it's extremely difficult to eat properly without having a balance at home to measure your food, spend a couple of hours online to learn how to estimate macros/calories by sight. Their are tricks to estimate how many calories in a steak/chicken breast when comparing it to a deck of cards. The same applies to pasta/rice/potatoes, you have tricks to estimate how many calories based on the portion of a plate. It is far from perfect, but it is a starting point given the limitations you have.


As for the workout, just do whatever you can do. I would include some lifting in there if you can afford some weights/gym membership. If you are overobese, I wouldn't rest too many days a week. I'm overobese myself and I workout 6 days a week without burning out. You'll need time to get there, but it is doable.

[JoeA89]

First off, look at the sticky threads at the top of the losing fat board, for a insight. You have to track the number of calories you eat each day, and I'd suggest looking at myfitnesspal which is a free site which can help you track your food to lose weight. Put your stats in mfp, and it'll give you a number of calories you should eat in a day to lose weight. You can eat what you want really, as long as you fit it into your daily limit you'll be fine.

With exercise, walking is great to get into it. You may not think it burns alot, but it does, all of your body gets put to work. Even walking for an hour or so every day will add up over the week. Once you get used to it, slowly incorporate some light jogging in and pick it up