Never mind, I'm going to start doing 4 chug sessions throughout the day, taking 2 lactaid pills each time.

FML! Doing SS for a second time, on it about 2 months and i still cant rep above 135lb on my bench! So embarrassing for a 6"2 200lb person! Starting to think i am just genetically weak!

It may be your technique. Try Dave Tates bench cure on youtube. I am like that with the squat. Getting above 200 pounds is really hard for me but I am up to 135 in the press.

technique sucks prob but benching in general just sucks so bad. I'm not that bad but I'm making very slow progress

are you microloading? There's a link to some cheap 10z washers with a 2" hole in the FAQ. You can put two on each side to go up by 2.5lbs per workout.

Going to read through this whole thread and other stuff tonight but I figured I'd post now since I want to start my workouts over break tomorrow.

I'm 5'10 200 lbs or so, and I'd like to drop about 20 lbs if not more. For the past 2 months or so I worked out 3 days a week in my house at school with various dumbbell exercises, pushups, pullups, and cardio on an exercise bike. Before this I had a few months of laziness caused mainly by being in Vegas for the summer where it's very tough to stay motivated to work out. Over these last 2 months I've seen strength gains but haven't lost any weight to speak of.

My diet is better than that of most college students imo, although I do drink ~3 nights a week. I hardly ever drunk eat but hangovers def lead to subpar eating habits the next day. Aside from alcohol I drink almost exclusively water and milk, with some occasional coffee, OJ, or diet soda. I make a point to eat a solid breakfast although hangovers mess with this at times. I usually eat 3 meals a day, although sometimes only 2 which I realize sucks, with snacks sometimes but not frequently. I eat pizza/fried food probably 2-3 meals a week, and basically never eat total junk like chips, candy, cookies, etc.

Any recommendations for starting to lose weight? If you need more info I'd be happy to provide it. I'm looking for diet advice as well as workout advice for over my break.

Losing weight is more about diet than exercise. Start by making simple changes to your diet which result in you eating less calories. Drink only water. Stop eating processed food. Use one of the many online resources for keeping track of how many calories you eat per day. www.fitday.com is one such resource.

Stinger88 ITT

I think you know what you need to do. Slowly cut out the fried food and copious amounts of drinking and get on Starting Strength.

^^^^^ Yup

get nice and learned up and then start a log if you want, I'm sure would get plenty of good feedback if you did, and would have very good results.

I'm not going to not drink, I'm a 21 year old college student and I want to have fun. I do want to make as many improvements as possible though. I probably eat a few too many cheat meals which I can cut back on. I could probably use to drink more water especially after drinking to reduce the effects of hangovers. It's just tough to do this when my friends I see daily are not doing this but are in better shape, although many are athletes and working out much harder than me.

I did a lot of reading last night and I think my gameplan is to try to eat 5-6 small meals a day, although I'm going to have to cook a lot more to actually pull this off. I've read a little about this but I'm still not totally sure how it works. Sounds like a big breakfast is a plus but after that I should be eating snacks/small meals? I know I should be focusing on lean protein and fruits/veggies but some specific examples would be great. Linking to sites with this kind of info would be great. As for workouts I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing for weights yet, my roommate who's pretty savvy about it is making me a plan that focuses on big muscle groups, I think I'm going to start with this. Starting Strength intrigues me too though, I read about it for about an hour last night. For cardio I'm going to do HIIT, since I'll be doing this at the gym what cardio machine do you think is most effective for this? Also they have a pool so I was thinking about doing some swimming.

Thanks guys!

I think the idea of eating a lot of small meals to stoke up your metabolism is going to have a small impact at best aside from being a pain to implement for most people. The most important thing is going to be your total calories in total calories out balance. Even diets like atkins which work trying to preferentially go after fat cells or whatever it is they say are just a way of getting people to lower their calories in intake by stealth. If you take something which forms the majority of peoples diets (carbs) and ban it it's going to be a bit tricky to make up that shortfall through fat and protein.

A good site to look at is this forum from the author Lyle McDonald and his main body recompostion page which has a tonne of good articles. He also has another similiar forum called monkeyisland.lylemcdonald or something similiar.
http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/login...f9a48b63df1606

I'd recommend you buy or download a book or two from him also. Very good and not like 99% of the other diet books out there. Guide to flexible dieting is a quality book but as are most of his. I've 3 so far but some are more or less applicable to you but i found them all very interesting.

Other good sites are Leigh Peele's page and Alan Aragon's site. The Alan Aragon that our mod smileyeh want's a lovechild with apparently and has been trying to sell us to subscribe to his monthly papers for the past yr

Consider changing what you drink. If you are drinking 20 drinks of spirts mixed with soda a week, switching to a diet soda will instantly cut a whole heap of bad calories from your diet. If you are drinking 20 beers a week, switching to spirts mixed with a diet soda will also cut a fair few calories.

Drinking more water is almost always a good idea.

The impact of exercise on weight loss is gernerally small compared to the impact of a better/lower calorie diet. The effectivness of exercise for losing weight is gernerally very overstated.

What jim said:
Be wary about the advice "pretty savvy" exercise people give you. Most people would consider personal trainers at least "pretty savvy" when it comes to workout advice, but they are usually quite terrible.

Start doing starting strength. Continue researching starting strength. When your savvy friend suggests a different program, ask him why it is more effective than SS.

I love the concept 2 rowing machine, but this is really personal opinion thing. Do whatever keeps you less bored. If swimming laps does it for you, do that. If you like being outside, got to a football field and run sprints. If you have the skills, do some jump-rope.

np

Stinger,

No one is telling you to not drink. But you can't say stuff like "I'm not going to make a change in my lifestyle because I am a college student" and expect big time results. Cutting back drinking is going to have to happen; it has a serious detrimental effect on your training and weight loss in general.

The small meals thing is fine if it helps you manage your caloric intake, but it's not that big of a deal.

Cut back on the beer (drink hard liquor with soda if you can stand it), stop eating pizza three times a week, get on Starting Strength, and maybe do HIIT once a week on the weekends. It's fairly simple stuff.

Can someone please explain exactly how bad alcohol is for you? I'm starting the SS program today and I'm trying to eat/drink right. Is alcohol bad mostly because of the calories or is because it slows down recovery etc? I'm lucky to have a low body fat %, does that mean I can drink a couple of times a week or will it slow down my progress significantly?

The latter. If it was the former, I'd be get bombed all day. Holla.

My problem with alcohol is it impairs your sleep, leaves you dehydrated and tired, and often causes really terrible food intake.

Is getting ****faced every saturday night while you're in college going to affect your training? Sure, but it's not going to be the end of the world. If you're getting intoxicated 3+ nights a week then yea, stop. You also might have a drinking problem.

If you don't get bombed 3+ times a week in college, you have a drinking problem.

Quality reps are key kyle.

boom headshot!

Thremp - Can you give me any idea how big of a difference it makes. Say you go out and have a few beers twice a week. Are we talking about a 10% decrease in progress or a 50% one?

Smiley - I'm not talking about getting black out drunk. I usually switch to one diet coke for every beer sometime after midnight and then a have a couple of glasses of water after I get home. I never feel hung over, but I'm sure it's still affecting my workouts.

What is "a few beers?" If it actually is a few beers, then no, that's not going to cause major problems. If "a few beers" is actually "a few beers away from blacking out and streaking," then yes, that is a real problem.

I'm always a few beers away from blacking out and streaking.

I was assuming that we were normalizing for pathological behavior.

Additionally:

I must disagree, good sir!

tbh i am too, just not that often.

Volume >>> Intensity wrt drankz