Hey all!

My vitals are:
49 year old male
5'9"
Starting weight:227
Current weight:190
Goal weight:150

So I host the podcast here at 2+2, called the Pokercast. On our March 1st show with Bill Perkins, we were talking about prop bets and he was generous enough to offer me the following free roll:

I must get to 150 by December 1st. At the time of the interview I was 227. There will be eight weekly weigh-ins starting on Dec 1, continuing to January 26th where I have to be 150 or less each time. If I make it, I win $25k. If I don't, I don't lose any money at all. I also have milestone bets with other friends along the way. One of them is to be 180 by July 22. I bet $1250 to win $4500 on this one.

So that was three months ago. I immediately completely cut bread, rice, pasta, potatoes etc. Strict low-carb diet, about 2000 calories a day. It worked like a charm, pounds fell off. In June I started adding daily exercise, specifically walk/jog interval training on a treadmill. Walk at 3.5mph with a 2% incline for 8 minutes, run at 6.5 on same incline for 2 minutes. Repeat for 60 mins. Burns about 550 cals.

I'm now down 37 pounds to 190 with five weeks left to get to 180. Looking for some guidance on losing the last 10 so I make it with room to spare. Will likely start doing an hour on the treadmill in the morning and an hour at night. Would like to keep calorie intake at 2000, but if I have to drop down to 1750 I could handle that I think. So far I've been strictly cardio, but wondering if some strength training would be a good idea or not.

Also looking for overall help on how to get to 150 by December. I think I'd be most comfortable walking around at about 170, but money is money.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions and ideas!

Adam

I think it's more +EV to hire a qualified dietitian than to wait until randoms give advice on an open forum.

Make sure that your treadmill exercise is as intense as possible - then calories will be burned not only during the exercise but also after it.

GL!

Congrats on the loss so far! Don't listen to ****, you'll get better advice here than from a replacement level dietician.

1.7 pounds per week after you've already lost 37 pounds will be very tough. And the requirement to make 8 weekly weigh-ins thereafter precludes the possibility of a water cut. You will need to lose 40 pounds of actual body mass. There's nothing to it but to run an aggressive calorie deficit (counting calories will be necessary IMO) and do quite a bit of cardio. Read Lyle McDonald's rapid fatloss handbook to get a scientific approach to crash dieting.

It's quite simple.

1400 cals a day for next two months. The last week go zero carbs. Take picture of your current weight at that time and send to Payer.

Force buyout.

I have always found forcing buyouts more likely to keep friendships intact when silly propbets involved.

1400 cals a day should be no problem. Gandhi went on 0 cals a day for three week stretches, multiple times.

Why replacement level? There's $25K on the line. If one specialist isn't reliable enough, OP can hire a council of 5 advanced experts. Unless the terms of the bet are prohibiting it, of course.

+1 that RFL will give you the best shot. gl

Have you stopped losing weight doing what you're currently doing? If not, proceed...

And agreed with the above, you're gonna have to cut kcals more at some point.

Thought about this, as well as hiring a personal trainer if I get stuck at some point. Right now I'm on pace and losing at a good clip so I don't see the need.

Thanks Greg!

Ya, this is what I'm thinking. Tons of cardio and 1800 cals a day. Certainly don't think it will be easy at all.

Buyout very unlikely. BP sneezes at 25k and would likely enjoy watching the pain of those 8 weigh ins!

No terms prohibiting this. Might do this in August.

Agreed, good advice!

Best of luck Adam!

Don't do this. HIIT is significantly worse than LISS especially when highly stressed (like when trying to punt infinite weight).

Do this instead.

Willing to offer ~replacement level dietician advice for ~replacement level dietician prices....

I think weight training is probably ill-advised, not enough calorie burn plus taxing on mental reserves as posted above.

There's also various water manipulation techniques if you get desperate. Weighing in sub 150 is probably hardest the first week, so hitting that target with any means necessary then continuing to lose mass through diet after that is possible.

Adam; what's this guy's motivation? He just enjoys watching someone emaciate themselves? You couldn't get him any higher?

Do you have pics? Maybe we like to see emaciating too!

So you've been hitting the treadmill for 2 weeks now--is this home or gym and have you had any noteworthy pain from it? Have you done much running the past year or two? In general I'd look to get a little variety in your steady state cardio mainly to avoid overuse injuries. Rowing's great (set the resistance to 3), and you can swim forever. Some people even seem to be able to stomach elliptical machines or those "bicycle" death traps. Those are all much lower impact (well except the bicycle when you get hit by a car) and even if it's just once or twice per week over the next 6 months a little relief now and then may help.

Diet I'll leave to you, although I suspect a good professional dietician would just tell you "don't do it".

Good luck!

Oh wow, I just did some research on Bill Perkins. This is real.

Dude, you gotta go for the win. Lol at 5'9 150 being emaciated, you are actually going to be skinnyfat at that weight.

Get Lyle McDonald's book as suggested by others. It's called rapid fat loss and it's somewhere free on the internet. With mostly protein, this is joke easy. Even 140 at 5'9 is easy.

Not only will you get 25k but honestly I think it would be good for you. You are still fat.

loco doesn't know BP personally? What kind of jet setting high-roller are you?

Best thing OP can do is introduce us all to BP and set up a multi-k freeroll so we all achieve our dreams.

OP said he would like to keep eating 2000. That tells me he is still sneaking in junk, lol that's maintenance for a normal 5'9 guy .

Up protein considerably and go to 1600 cals immediately. Get the book. Go for the win!!

Good luck Adam! I'm sure you can win this, take the advice from the experts and 25k should be coming your way.

Oh yeah btw if Bill Perkins likes these types of freerolls and wants to see an Aussie girl drop some weight, look no further��

Hmm...maybe he should offer to double the bet to hit 140?

Yesterday food/exercise:

2 scrambled eggs
1 cup fresh strawberries
1 cup fresh blueberries
1 Starbucks breakfast tea latte (no syrup)

1 BBQ chicken breast on salad

2 cups butter chicken tofurky

Exercise:

90 mins treadmill. 9.5 kilometers, 800 cals burnt
45 min brisk dog walk, 4 kilometers

Weigh in this morning: 190.0

This should be easy if you can ignore hunger. Lift some weights to stay injury free and not look like **** when you reach your goal. Good luck.

Adam,

Most of the advice in this thread is solid, and your goal is comfortably achievable.

As you continue to lose weight, weighing your food and calculating the necessary caloric deficit will almost certainly be necessary.

Good luck; logging your food will be a big help with compliance, which is essentially all this bet is about.

Good luck! It's a low weight for you but very doable, however not on 2,000kcal per day. As you lose weight your body becomes more efficient and needs less.

I'd do a drop to 1,800 calories this week and then drop by 100 calories for subsequent weeks until you stay at either 1,400 or 1,500 calories.

gl, gl, gl, run goot!

So this is the conflicting advice I've been given. To lift or not to lift. What about just core conditioning type stuff to build abs and leg strength etc?

Re: Water manipulation. My co-host on the podcast is an MMA fighter and tells me if I can get to 170 he can get me to 150. Only issue is I don't have any desire to do that 8 times.

Seems like he enjoys putting people to the test!

Joined a gym, no pain or injuries so far. Pretty sore today from the 13k I did yesterday, however. No running for the last couple years, played soccer all my life prior to getting phat.

Good advice on the other cardio stuff, thanks. Will try elliptical and bike. I'm a strong swimmer but don't really enjoy it much.

Can't believe I've got to the point where I'm ok to post these pics that may or may not be me, but here's the before pics:







Definitely real! If anyone has a link to this publication everyone is mentioning it, where it's very low cost PLEASE whatever you do don't PM me. Or do. Either way.

Agreed, still quite fat. Much less fat, but ya.

No junk, pinky swear. I'm over-estimating on purpose.

Go Rexx! I read your thread today.

I can ignore hunger, but would rather eat lots of veg that can satiate the hunger, that's ok right?

This seems really hard and unnecessary? Estimation isn't good enough?

To be honest, I'm likely at about 1800 right now, but ya I think I can handle 1500. I'm long past the carb flu and need to stuff myself.

Trying to get through your thread, it's super long!

Adam,

Calculating your BMI (basal metabolic rate, i.e. the minimum amount of energy your body needs to function per day) and TDEE (total daily energy expenditure, which is essentially just your BMR multiplied by an activity factor) is something that can be done using any number of online calculators in about 30 seconds.

What you eat can be weighed using a $15 food scale and tracked on any number of free websites or apps (MyFitnessPal is a commonly used one).

As (if) you continue to lose weight, estimation will become less and less effective (plus, most people's ability to estimate how much they're eating and the calories per unit mass of what they're eating is atrocious).

So my question would be whether or not a 25K freeroll is motivation enough to do this little bit extra to improve your chances of success? Because from a temporal standpoint, you've got a bit of a cushion, but not much. Spinning your wheels for even a few weeks would be pretty detrimental to your ability to both get to and maintain a sub-150 weight.

Regarding weight training or MMA training or aggressive cardio, I can tell you from experience that lower impact is going to be better while you're cutting. Three hours of ju jitsu, while likely a lot of fun, isn't going to be helpful if it induces you to have a few extra scoops of butter chicken because you "earned it" (especially if you're not actually measuring what you're eating). This bet is about creating and maintaining a caloric deficit, which means it's 90% diet mixed with maybe 10% figuring out just how much low impact cardio you can do to increase your burn without increasing your appetite. The other stuff (becoming more active, lifting, any other **** you may be interested in), while admirable and certainly eventually worthwhile, can wait until a 2am fried chicken binge won't cost you 25K.

Monte,

I think by MMA he is referencing daily sauna sessions and other superficial weight loss methods.

I do agree that any serious exercise is somewhat counter productive, I always end up with more net calories when I exercise due to extra food intake. Probably best to focus on a low caloric intake and add in 15-20 minutes of daily light cardio to avoid becoming lethargic/depressed.