I have been progressing nicely lately so I might as well share my life's wisdom. I always go a bit overweight and then almost super skinny through most of my 30s and 20s. Last June I was 86kg and now I am hovering around 71/72kg. I've been following a lot of fitness guys for more than 7+ years, but I had to find in the long run through experimentation what works for me. Honestly I mostly gain weight when get lazy and don't walk enough or I am unusually inactive. Health comes first, but life happens...
Here is my top 5 tips that give pretty good and fairly quick results(still up to 6 month depending where you stand):
- Fasting at least a few days a week 12-16-20 hours of no eating(I don't expect you guys to go 20 immediately), you can have herbal tea or black coffee, no sugar. Right now I don't fast, but I am on a fairly strict diet and I already lost the 15 kg I needed to.
- Do push ups, if you struggle start with a small number per set and target 25-30 per set eventually. Eventually try to do at least a 100 for six days a week. Some studies show that going at once is not better than resting 2/3 min and I personally use songs 3-4 min length and do a set at every song
- Running - no especially if you are overweight. It puts too much stress on your legs if you are not used to. Find time to walk every day 5-10km as you get fitter up the pace. I know life happens so target at least 40-50km per week(2000-2500 calories burned easily). I walk around 5.5-6km per hour normally and when I go for 'training walks' I try to keep around or above 7km/hour for at least 3-4km, pretty sure last summer I had quite a few 18 km walks with above 7km per hour
- Keep you macros, calories in-out. For every km you get 50 calories burned up to 70 easily if you go around 7km/hour, keep a track of all your food. Its annoying, but eventually you will find a lot about your metabolism. Make sure its correct, most people severely underestimate how many calories they consume or overestimate how many they burn. Don't trust fitness trackers or subtract at least 25% of what they tell you.
- Weight yourself every day, BUT just for reference. For example
this is my weight since I started doing 200-250 push ups a day for about 3 weeks now after a small two day break. You will get a lot of times the scales going up or down even not budging. Depends very much on what have you eaten, retaining water and things.
- Bonus - it would be nice if you can do the same amount of squats as push ups, but that can be a strain on you legs and then 75-100 is a nice range for both push ups and squats.
Now you will have to keep up anywhere from 6-12 month with a more strict regime and diet, I would suggest no alcohol and after that you can relax yourself. For example doing 75 push ups when you wake up and before bed will eventually take you around 5-10 min once you get in shape and you wouldn't even notice it.
I spend the last 6 moth doing 75-150 push ups and same amount squats per 6 days and by now can easily do it 7 day a week. This year I dropped the squats and doubled the push ups eventually.
I upped the amount above 200 roughly around mid January. First week was rough and I had a cold so I stopped for 2 day. After that I upped the push ups even more and to be fair most days I feel like shit. Honestly I read a lot of forums in the past 3 weeks advising that 200+ push ups a day is too much, but I feel like pushing myself, pun intended.
I will do the whole February on 250+ push ups and see from there. I am going to be 40 this year so I wanted to do one last push(again pun intended) into top form and after that hopefully keep fit through my 40s. Honestly life is funny, I spend most of my 20s overweight, most in my 30s in better shape apart from the last 2 years and if I can keep up I might spend my 40s in even better shape.