Need to loose 11pounds by july 4th....And gain lean muscles.

[Afranca]

I recently lost 33 pounds. to be more specific I lost 33 pounds in the earlier part of 2012. Shortly aftre I lost all this wait I began to go to the gym, and now I go at least 4 days a week. My goal is to go 5 to 6 days a week. By the end of 2012 I began to notice changes in my body. I noticed that i had muscles places I never imagined, and now I want to completelly tranform my body. I would like to be more of a healthy fit person. My goal is to loose 10 pounds of fat and get lean muscles instead. Should anyone have any suggestion please help. My bigges problem is the food I intake. I defnatly think that I eat my emaotions away. I tend to be a very impulsive person, and looooovvve SUGAR. Anything sweet is my preffered meal. My Dream is to be able to cut my sugar intake by at least half. Please advise. 

Thank you

[Odyssey13]

@Afranca  Best way to lose weight is to log every bite of food you eat. You can do that with the food feature on the dashboard. Once you see what you're eating and making yourself log it, you might not eat as much.

It's a process, but by using your FitBit and walking more, you can do it.

[rokt]

I didn't intend to lose weight, but ended up losing about 15 lbs after I joined Weight Watchers Online with a friend out of solidarity. Logging food was helpful, but what was really helpful was seeing how bad some of my food choices were. A single slice of bread was as caloric as a beer, for example, and the hashbrowns I ate every weekend turned out to be almost a third of my day's nutrition. Once I was aware of how bad these foods were, I cut back on them and that made all the difference. I've since stopped logging, but still avoid hashbrowns.

[ryandotdee]

Your Muscles are already lean,  I do not think there is such a thing as fat muscles 🙂

As for losing the pounds, to gain muscle definition, you need to work out your BMI, and how many calories you need to eat to maintain your current weight, this site has a handy calculator ( http://www.carbsandcals.com/bmi )

So, if, for example you need to consume 2000 calories a day to maintain your current weight, you pick a cut from that, so you might decide to aim for 1600 calories a day.

Combine this with excersize and a proper healthy diet, and you will lose weight.  In order to focus on fat loss you will need to ensure that you are consuming plenty of protein, and a healthy proportion of unsaturated fat (yes, you need to eat fat to lose it)

Hope that helps

[Wild]

Afranca,  It is really enlightening that you know where the challenges are and what you need to do to get the job done.  Sugar is so delightfully delicious yet it is also evil and causes such destruction.  It feeds all known ills and can lead us down the garden path.  I have found that so many others continue to  eat not just because they are 'bad' or have no self control but because the body is screaming to be fed.  What they are ingesting is neither satisfying nor nourishing, therefore the body continues to scream out for more food, or some food likeness, often with no nutritional value whatsoever.  There are solutions.

To your wellbeing,     Wild

[Wild]

Afranca........a PS......as you cut back on sugar, food begins to become a whole new adventure.  When it is further along the spectrum you would be amazed how different it is to slide back into a high sugar intake and discover how nasty it feels.  Yes there is life beyond sugar and how much better on can feel.

Thanks for listening,      Wild 

[Wild]

Hey rokt,  You are absolutely on track when you are 'tracking' what you are up to and what you are consuming.  I have found this discipline to be way more effective than just writing it down.

Have a marvellous day,     Wild

[conejo63]

Excellent advice. 

[ped]

I was  Sugar junkie I tried Adkins  not only did i lose weight I also lost my sugar cravings before I could NEVER pass up cakes cookies etc now I can plus I don't  use sugar  also south Miami diet same principle give up bread and fruits  for two weeks

[Jabrat]

You need to consume more protein and get that white flour out of your diet

[Heybales]

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@Afranca wrote:

I recently lost 33 pounds. to be more specific I lost 33 pounds in the earlier part of 2012. Shortly aftre I lost all this wait I began to go to the gym, and now I go at least 4 days a week. My goal is to go 5 to 6 days a week. By the end of 2012 I began to notice changes in my body. I noticed that i had muscles places I never imagined, and now I want to completelly tranform my body. I would like to be more of a healthy fit person. My goal is to loose 10 pounds of fat and get lean muscles instead. Should anyone have any suggestion please help. My bigges problem is the food I intake. I defnatly think that I eat my emaotions away. I tend to be a very impulsive person, and looooovvve SUGAR. Anything sweet is my preffered meal. My Dream is to be able to cut my sugar intake by at least half. Please advise. 

Thank you

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For the fastest body transformation, for your workouts to have the strongest effect, to burn the fat fastest and maintain weight - eat at maintenance. At least your Fitbit can help there.

Eat enough protein - 0.82 grams per lb of weight, whatever that works out to for you. Fat at 0.35 g / lb bodyweight. Carbs can have the rest, and that may be hard with loving sugar.

Strength train 3 x weekly full body, compound lifts, heavy for you with 3 sets 8-12 reps. Weight should be heavy enough that last rep may not be able to be done with good form. Cardio can be some right after lifting with whatever strength you have left, and only walking on recovery days.

Focus on lifting results - meaning day after lifting is NO intense load on muscles worked prior day, they are trying to repair stronger, let them. Day before is easy cardio, so you don't tire them out. You can't lift as heavy on tired muscles, which means you are not overloading them, which means there is no need to repair them stronger.

Log the lifting manually as the Fitbit will be badly underestimated, and you would not be eating at maintenance then.

Use weight training - power lifting since doing a good workout.

Now eat to meet your goal.

Get 8 hrs sleep for repair purposes.

As mentioned, muscle is not a cut of beef - lean, fat, or marbled. It's whatever it is. Endurance cardio is the only way to get more fat stored around the muscle for easy access.

Perhaps you've heard the term Lean Body Mass (LBM), which is muscle and everything else NOT Fat Mass (FM).

The above routine will make you hungry once you start causing the body to need to make lots of repairs. Hence the easy days, and sleep, and protein. Your body would like you to eat in surplus actually, but hold out, and it'll make use of fat stores while it makes repairs with food you eat.

Now, as to results. One study on men, so hormone advantage there, traded fat and LBM (they didn't measure muscle mass but likely some gained) at the rate of 3.5 lbs over 16 weeks. Metabolism went up 7% from that.

http://jap.physiology.org/content/76/1/133.short

So not fast. Now you see why body builders bulk and cut - it's faster.

Let me know if you need some suggestions on lifting routine. Mention how much time you would have available for that 3 x weekly, and how much cardio you'd like to tack on to the end, and what kind of weight lifting equipment available. If cardio is not calling you as stress relief, 20 min is fine and about max if limited on time.

[Benjboi]

Just my opinion but I wouldn't overly complicate things and stick to some basic ideas. Eat 5-6 times a day but small meals, make sure you have a serving of protein at every meal, cut out white carbs (white flour products), white sugar and white potato and drink 8 glasses of ice cold water a day. Each meal should equate to approximately 300 cals (in practice though so long as you're try to avoid going too much over 2000 cals a day it doesn't really matter how these calories are spread between meals as long as you eat at least 5 times a day).

Exercise wise I would split your week into 6 sessions (3 cardio and 3 weights). The cardio should be focussed on HIITor tabata style workouts and should be limited to 45 minutes MAX and the weights should be focussed on lifting heavy compound lifts (deadlifts, Squats, Barbell Benchpress and Pull ups). Aim to do 4 sets of each with a 1 minutes break in between sets and pick a weight for each that has you struggling to complete the last few reps of the last set and that's it. Follow that and I'm sure you'll be able to achieve what you want.

Just a note of caution though, you can lose body fat pretty quickly but packing on muscle can be a long process (seasoned bodybuilders will struggle to put on even a couple of pounds of muscle a year). So don't get disheartened if you don't see huge growth in muscles a couple of pounds of muscle between now and July will be immense progress.