TL;DR this is what works for me, feel free to add to it.
I had pretty good habits and was on a decent fitness track when I got a bit derailed. It's probably a familiar story to many in here - I let an inattentive driver take me out while riding a motorcycle and ended up doing a couple of surgeries and lots of physical therapy and completely quit my exercise habits. I have a plate in one arm now but am otherwise fully recovered. This happened in 2020, followed by gym closures, working from home, and all of the madness. Then on the tail end of that came a job change that included a lot of long hours and travel (and delicious high calorie restaurant meals and beer). I had a hell of a time trying to get back into my good fitness habits, and my national chain gym membership was barely being used. My body type is lean athletic (thanks, dad!) but I look and feel terrible when I get out of shape. Muscle depletes, and all of the weight moves to belly and lower back. My body gets sore and I feel tired all the time. I went from a fit 220 to an unfit 245 and was continuing to lose ground.
I changed roles at my company again a few of weeks ago to a job with way less travel and restarted the regiment that worked well for me in the past. I can see the results already (down to 235 as of today), so I thought I'd share here what I am doing in case anyone else can take away ideas or add suggestions.
- Use a calorie tracking app, follow its guidance, and tell it the truth. I was using MyFitnessPal but since it went to hell I moved to LoseIt. It seems to be working well so far and my progress matches what it predicted with my calorie goals. I have goals set for macro-nutrients and am low carb, heavy protein. MY goal right now for losing is about 2k calories plus exercise calories, usually 2600 to 3k, and my maintenance level intake at my activity level is somewhere around 3k. By contrast, a couple of my favorite 22 oz beers (Dragon's milk stout) is around 750 calories, and a good burger and fries is 1500 to 2k. Not much room for breakfast and lunch if I do that. Absent any tracking I can easily eat and drink upwards of 5,000 calories. It sounds like a lot, but a typical catered lunch on the road is 1500 on its own, without soda or the cookies they all seem to toss in.
- Manage (or eliminate) the Beer and Alcohol intake. I love beer, but committed to 0 beer until I reach 230 lbs, and no alcohol at all except weekends until I reach my goal body fat %/ weight. Honestly without beer, the weekend-only thing is easy. And I always track drinks in the app, those are unfortunately not free calories. If you haven't figured it out yet I am a big bearded biker and a 22oz mug looks like a normal glass in my hands. It goes down pretty damn easy, too. Picture the "lebowski" version of Thor and you're on the right track.
- Pick a regular time every day to exercise that actually works for your life. I get up at 5am every day and hit the gym for about an hour. It's the only time that actually works for me, and it's hard as hell for the first week or two but once it becomes a habit, it's easy to keep up. I know it sounds funny, but whenever I hit the snooze bar I jokingly say to myself in Pokemon style "Obesity, I choose you!" It has become a running joke between my wife and I - saying things like "I chose obesity today because I had to go to work early."
- Use tech to help measure and track progress. I use this scale to track not only weight, but also body fat percentage and muscle mass. It has an app that talks to my phone's health app, and helps me see if I am making progress even when my weight is not changing. Based on my body type and exercise routine, I will need to lose about 30 lbs of fat and gain about 10 lbs of muscle to reach my first goal (net -20 lbs). I will go from 245 to 225 and drop about 10% body fat to be in the 13 to 17 percent range. I also have an apple watch for activity tracking and use the paid version of Gymaholic to track my workouts. It integrates with the watch so I don't need my phone with me.
- Look in the mirror, and at photos, and videos of yourself. We all have a picture in our head of what we think we look like. I recently moved, and my bathroom has a full-length mirror to the left in which I can see myself full body as I stand there taking a piss. It was not flattering, and my lack of fitness showed way more than I realized from a normal straight on upper-body mirror glance. IT helps with motivation.
- Build a workout plan that matches your goals. I want to lose fat and gain muscle. So I set up a 5 day workout in Gymaholic that starts the same way every day with elliptical but rotates the muscle groups by day. I start with the elliptical because it gets my heart rate up and I'm able to keep it up through the rest of the workout. I started with just a 5 minute warmup at a brisk pace, but worked up to 10 minutes with 2 minute normal pace, 30 second heavy pace intervals adding a bit of time each week with a goal to do 20 minutes a day. My M-F workout is Day1 Chest, Day2 Back and Calves, Day3 Biceps and Triceps, Day4 Shoulders, and Day5 Legs and Abs. But I also integrate crunches and pushups every day. Most of the exercises are set up to have a short interval between sets, or a superset that alternates between muscle groups (example, chin-ups and dips are on the same machine). After hitting 140-150 BPM on the elliptical I can usually keep my heart rate above 130 through the rest of the hour workout and watch the calories rack up. If I don't burn at least 500, I'll circle back to elliptical or Abs to round it out. I need the calorie room to actually eat a real meal portion, lol.
- Let your muscle groups rest, but stay active every day - especially if you are in a fat burn. The last thing I want to do is starve myself on the weekend because I didn't burn enough calories, and if I try to do that I will fail. I have heavy bag workouts set up in Gymaholic and a bag hanging in my office, and do punching or kicking drills. My wife and kid are always up for a bike ride, and we do a lot of other things like snowboarding in the winter, kayaking in the summer. My youngest also loves to rock climb at the local climbing gym so I can always get him to go with me there and hold my belay line. Even something as simple as taking the dogs for a walk is a good fill-in on rest days.
-Meal prep and meal plan. I typically fire up the smoker once or twice a week and prep meat for the whole week. Last night I cooked about 10 chicken breasts with just a dry rub, very little calories besides the meat. They are my base for meals for the week along with some tri-tip, ham, and brats from the last run. I added some to a stir-fry last night that I put over rice. Having the hard part or core of the meal ready ahead of time makes meals easier. Today for lunch I'll dice up a chicken breast over a bagged salad. Tonight I am going to simmer some in a fajita seasoning and make tacos, with corn tortillas that are pretty low cal. a few nights ago I shredded some and put it on a grilled sandwich. two slices of bread is not too much carb and calories, and adding half a pound of chicken mixed with pesto and one slice of cheese makes for an unforgettable meal but not a crazy amount of calories.
- Fast in the morning if you can, and manage your daytime calorie intake. Breakfast for me is a double espresso I make at home right after the gym. Then I don't eat anything until about 11a, and that's something light like a protein bar. Wifey does shakes. I usually don't eat lunch until about 1pm, and by then I'm pretty hungry. But I usually go for something high protein and low cal like dinner leftovers, smoked chicken on a salad or something like that. If I get hungry before lunch I will eat something small rather than eating a big lunch meal early.
- Treat yourself, especially as a reward for goals reached. I am really looking forward to that beer when I hit 230. Wifey has these low cal ice cream bars that are pretty good that helps with her sweet tooth. As an admitted snacker I keep snacks around like whole almonds, pistachios, and dried mango (not the sugar coated kind). Sure, I would reach my goals faster if I ate nothing but boiled chicken and broccoli and hit the gym 3x a day, but I would quit that pretty damn quick.
- Find a partner or some source of encouragement and accountability. Wifey and I do this together - we cook healthy meals for each other, and compare calories, activity, and weight loss. We encourage each other, and even when we don't talk about it, when one gets up to work out, the other almost always does too ("I didn't choose obesity today!"). I also chat with my youngest son daily about his workouts - he is following the same 5-day muscle groups and we talk about our workouts with each other. I would love to have someone to hit the gym at 5a with me but haven't yet.
