Body hacks: The Fast Diet, aka The 5:2 diet

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#990973 20-Feb-2014 10:19

wasabi2k: Weights are actually immensely beneficial in weight loss.

As you said - greater muscle mass = greater resting energy requirements. Plus the metabolic increase from exercise lasts significantly longer after a weights workout than an aerobic one.

Yep agreed, but it's longer term. Maybe you do weights for 6 months and increase your resting energy rate by 20% (total guess), but in six months doing cardio you can burn thousands of calories with cardio. I guess a balance is important.

I did a lot of weights as an early part of my weight loss, but then switched to mostly cardio. It seems to have worked.

k1wi

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#990975 20-Feb-2014 10:24

I would go as far as to say weights are important at all stages, just as sensible eating is important and cardio - too little food will kill your energy levels.

The focus needs to be on fat loss not weight loss. Hence the latest fad term 'skinny-fat'.

gjm

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#990977 20-Feb-2014 10:30

josephhinvest:
gjm:
asmcar: Interesting conversation here and also a healthy encouraging one for the Geekzone community, I have thought about bringing this up in the past but have never had a good opprotunity.

This has worked for me, I now look at foods and decide whether I really need them or not. It is tough to make changes with a culture currently of oversized portions, unhealthy foods being incredibly cheap (but not filling) and for me a student culture of binge drinking.

If anyone is particularly interested I can post a link to pictures.

All this talk is starting to inspire me to get off my asss and lose the extra 15kg Im totin around. Post some pics up mate (clothed preferably).

Anyone else wanna start a geekzone weightloss challenge or something like that for 2014?

I'm in.
I lost quite a lot of weight (20kg) for my brothers wedding back in Jan 11, came back from Melbourne to being made redundant and 18 months at home with the kids. Now have a great job, but working shifts and very much struggling with my weight, it's all back, and more of course.
I need some way to increase my willpower to stick with it!

Cheers,
Joseph

MyFitnessPal seems to be the way to go so add me if you like, username hinvest

ok Im in for some kind of geekzone weightloss challenge thing. Maybe we should start a new thread and those who wish to participate can join there. Who's keen?

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bazzer

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#990982 20-Feb-2014 10:36

timmmay: Not eating is surprisingly easy, it soon becomes obvious that most people eat way more than they need. Alternate day fasting also seems to work fine. Eating large meals every day starts to feel ridiculous and decadent.

Some people would say it becomes surprising easy to stop eating altogether, but then those people have anorexia nervosa.

I'm not saying you're wrong, and I quite often go a day without eating, just because I'm not hungry or don't get around to it, but there's quite a difference between skipping the odd day and saying "Eating large meals every day starts to feel ridiculous". I'm sure we all eat too much, I definitely do on occasions, so would the same results occur if you just reduced consumption on all days by 5/7 rather than doing 5:2 (or whatever ratio) or is there more at play here?

timmmay

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#990986 20-Feb-2014 10:42

bazzer: Some people would say it becomes surprising easy to stop eating altogether, but then those people have anorexia nervosa.

I'm not saying you're wrong, and I quite often go a day without eating, just because I'm not hungry or don't get around to it, but there's quite a difference between skipping the odd day and saying "Eating large meals every day starts to feel ridiculous". I'm sure we all eat too much, I definitely do on occasions, so would the same results occur if you just reduced consumption on all days by 5/7 rather than doing 5:2 (or whatever ratio) or is there more at play here?

Not eating a couple of meals is easier than reducing each meal's size by 1/3, in my experience. More than 2 or 3 meals in a row would get pretty tough for me, and I always eat well on the between days. I think there's more at play than just reducing calories, maybe physiologically, maybe psychologically.

geekiegeek

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#991016 20-Feb-2014 11:36

http://agymlife.com/50-ways-to-lose-weight/

All good stuff.

BurningBeard

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#991042 20-Feb-2014 12:10

asmcar:
In regards to photos, I have posted the below on reddit before (in r/progresspics) if someone has seen it before that's why. Otherwise here is a 12 months overview of my weightloss.

Today I am pretty much the same as the last photo although I am developing more muscle, it doesn't justify another picture yet!

Well done!!!

That's pretty much me on the left right now... aiming to be where you are on the right.

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#991051 20-Feb-2014 12:19

wasabi2k:
timmmay: It takes a lot of exercise to make up for a bad diet. One muffin can be 500 calories, that takes a solid hour of hard exercise to burn off. Easier to just not eat the muffin.

Once you're down to near a target weight then weights becomes more important. It increases your resting energy use and makes you look better. Of course if you can do weights while you're losing weight that's great, but I wonder if cardio or weights is more important for weight loss. There's probably not right answer.

Weights are actually immensely beneficial in weight loss.

As you said - greater muscle mass = greater resting energy requirements. Plus the metabolic increase from exercise lasts significantly longer after a weights workout than an aerobic one.

That's what I have read anyway.

And as you said - your diet can give you massive benefits and doesn't require huge time commitments - it will probably even save you money.

Someone, supposedly in the know, once told me that you cannot target weight loss. So doing things like sit ups etc aren't going to help you lose weight around your gut. When you exercise, you lose weight from the areas where it first went on. And the best way to lose weight is by exercising with your largest muscles (e.g. your legs).

Of course you can target muscle gain and toning though. Just not weight loss. Does anyone know if there is any truth to this (the weight loss part, not the muscle gain part)?

geekiegeek

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#991081 20-Feb-2014 13:07

Totally true. Sit-ups will not give you a flat stomach they will just give you nice stomach muscles under a layer of fat.

In CrossFit we don't aim for things like weight loss or tone, we aim to get stronger and faster - the leanness just comes as a by-product. Personally I think this is much better then always focussing on weight especially if you are building muscle as your weight may not go down but your body composition will change to muscle over fat.

The best exercise you can do is high intensity short to medium bursts that include resistance.

"I lift weights" but what do you do for cardio, "I lift weights fast"

And don't get me started on "toning" there is no such thing IMO. They way you look "toned" or as I would prefer "Lean" is to drop body fat so that you can see the definition of your muscle. All these woman in the gym with 2Kg weights doing tricep extensions are completely wasting their time.

nzkiwiman

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#998297 3-Mar-2014 17:33

2 1/2 weeks with no Cola in my system, as well as 'attempting' to minimise my food intake every 2nd day (except weekends) and I have managed to drop 4kg in a week

I'm not actively weighing myself, the scales are where I shave so I hoped on and checked out my weight to see if it was going up or down.

Down is good, was worried that I might be gaining weight ...

timmmay

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#998395 3-Mar-2014 20:32

Nice going :)

computernutter

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#1043856 14-May-2014 14:22

very interesting theory, I should give that a try, eating less only twice a week makes sense, because eating less all the time is very hard for some people. This whole thing inspired me to go to the gym more often, I got a bit slack...

timmmay

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#1043865 14-May-2014 14:46

I find fasting pretty easy. I'm doing less these days because I'm concentrating on building muscle, which requires a steady supply of protein and energy to muscles, but I usually do 1 or maybe 2 fasting days per week. I'll go back to alternate day fasting for a couple to drop a bit of fat quickly at some point.

nzkiwiman

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#1044880 14-May-2014 15:47

I need to find time to add exercise into my routine (outside of taking dogs for walk and lunch time walks)
Found that fasting every 2nd day worked well for a while and I could visibly see the result but eventually I evened out and now am not loosing any extra weight, just maintaining the current.

Dingbatt

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#1044985 14-May-2014 17:45

Interesting that this thread has rekindled after 3 months and that people are (mostly) still achieving positive results. Fad diets are usually the most difficult to sustain.
Firstly I have found that to have impressive weight loss results you need to start off as a fat ba$+Ard, I certainly did ( and was often the "one who ate all the pies").
But I have followed a different route from the one espoused at the beginning of this thread. Funnily enough it has been gaining prominence in the media over the past month or so, but I have been doing it for more than 2 years. It's as simple as going low or no sugar. I have dropped from 101 to 85kg the majority of which occurred in the first 6 months. I haven't altered my exercise regime at all and have a fairly sedentary job.
I still have 3 meals a day, every day. But what I don't have is snacks between meals and no longer have morning or afternoon tea or supper. With the driving force of fructose removed from my diet my portion sizes are smaller and I don't feel hungry between meals. Actually 3 meals a day every day isn't entirely true because sometimes if I'm busy in the middle of the day lunch just doesn't occur. But I don't get hunger pangs. The next step was to eat because my body needed fuel, not through habit or boredom.
It's very easy to get preachy about something that has worked personally so I'll stop now.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

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