First - I love this site:
http://www.exrx.net/Exercise.html
Second - do the math! Weight loss is all about arithmetic. Calories burned must exceed calories consumed (minus calories regurgutated). You can acheive this by counting fat grams, carbs, or calories. Calories is the best approach because you can inadvertently replace say "fat grams" with "carb grams" when doing one of the fad diets.
Grandmaster said:
Oh and I have a question of my own.
I want to lose some weight, and then bring it back with some muscle.
I've read it is easier to either lose all the fat first and then build the muscle, or vice versa. Because it's supposed to be hard to do both at the same time.
Personal References:
I have lost well over 250 lbs during my life time. My wife lost 85 pounds over the last 2 years. I've pumped iron off and on for the last 35 years. I'm currently rebuilding myself after 5 major surgeries in 18 months. I could barely lift 5 pounds when I started. I'm up to 25 pounds now after 6 weeks.
Weight Control:
The only method that works is to stop eating more calories than you burn.
Anything else is a scheme to make some fat doctor and his fatter publisher richer.
Exercise by itself is not adequate to loose weight. At best it is temporary and at worst it will increase your appetite actually causing weight gain. The resulting increased apetite and stretched stomach will saty with you after whatever stops the exercise program. (When I say temporary I mean over "years".) Most exercise programs crap out after 3 months no matter how strong your intentions due to lack of cash to pay the gym, lack of time, illness, injury, life changes (kids, spouse, job). This is the reason most gyms require 1 year contracts.
Exercise:
Use exercise to build or restore muscles and use caloire control for the fat loss. This is a long slow process. Start light! 3-5 pound weights depending on the exercise. Start at one set of 5 repititions. If you feel any strain back off to 1-3 pounds or just use sticks and rubber bands to get a full range of motion back. When you can do 3 sets of 10 repetitions of an exercise add 50% to the weight and start over at 1 set of 5 rep's.
There are multiple types of exercise -
Aerobic - for cardio vascular health and endurance
Strength training - good but should not be done exclusively
Pumping up - (this should be outlawed, it is counter productive)
Aerobic
Exercie bike, tread mill (walking), rowing machine, stair stepper. Never jog, it is the equivalent of hitting your joints with a hammer. Running is less destructive but not feasible indoors and I know several people who were killed or crippled while street running. Using an outdoor track makes you weatehr dependent which leads to a faltering exercise program and
Strength
Free weight, weight machines (best, safer, progressive resistance), rubber bands, isometric.
When you build muscle you require extra protein, minerals and vitamins. This conflicts with loosing weight where you MUST reduce calories. Most high protein food is also high in calories.
If you find a good exercise calorie guide it tells you how long you have to do a given exercise to burn calories. It is DAMN depressing. A bagel w/light cream cheese at breakfast costs an hour on the exercise bike every day. Exercise for weight loss is just not time effective.
Get to know the calorie content of every morsel of food that passes your lips. Your waist line pays for it so you should know the cost.
How did my wife and I do it (diet that is). Several ways have worked:
1) DO NOT EAT OUT! Restaurants have a machine in the back room that directly injects calories into your servings and waist line. Fat and sugar are what makes food taste good. That is how restaurants get you to spend 4-10times what groceries cost to eat at their place. My wifes nemesis was the Starbucks Frappacino (a days supply of fat and sugar hidden in a cup of coffee) and the Whopper (44 grams of fat, a 2 day supply).
2) Skip meals (or almost skip them) and make up for the lost nutrition by increasing protein, veggies and fruit at other meals.
3) I actully, unintentionally invented the Low Carb diet in 1971. I lost 30 pounds in 28 days and actually had more energy. I basically only had one slice of bread a day the rest was meat, yogurt, eggs and veggies. Total weight loss was 50 pounds. This diet failed miserably. Very low carb diets are not sustainable in the real world. You eventually fall off the wagon because of environmental changes (travel, lunch at work, etc.). When you fall off the fall is abrupt because your portion sizes and types are inconsistent with normal eating patterns. i.e. you have learned another bad way to manage your food life style.
Summary
-Drop the fat first through diet. Any exercise program is safer at reduced body weight. Take 30 days to drop weight while doing a minimal exercise program (light weights, extra walking, isometrics, sticks, rubber bands) to get yourself ready without risking nutritional problems.
-Once the bulk of your desired weight loss is achieved then start hitting the weights and aerobics more agressively and adjust your protein/mineral/vitamin intake. By this time you have hopefully shrunk your stomach capacity and meal size expectations so the tendency to overeat due to additional calorie demand will be balanced by that full stomach feeling.
-Figure out the required calorie count to maintain your desired weight then knock off 10-20% from that and do not exceed that calorie level over any 7 day period. Do not go below 1000 calories a day since that can risk serious health problems long term. I pushed my luck in 1971. I was doing about 800 calories a day for 30 days.
Good luck.
Warning:
That "exercise thingy". Avoid on street running and martial arts. The risk of injury is too high and a bad sprain, broken limb, back injury or being run over by a car driven by a cell phone operator will destroy your fitness program. I was never run over by a car (tho 2 friends were) but did have multiple broken bones in Tai Kwan Do, a traumatized planar facia from running and a back sprain that aborted my fitness programs at the time.
