[Archived] Losing Belly Fat

[colin]

Just to add to the usual:

A bit of exercise, we all know what the crappy foods are so avoid them as far as possible.

I found that not eating after 18:00 helped me shed a few kilos & helped me sleep better instead of lying in bed feeling like a beached whale with indigestion.

Good luck with it, whatever you do.

[tashor]

I'm only a few years younger than you phillipl - I recently lost around 2 stone and a couple of inches from my waist in 4 months or so by 3 measures - no alcohol; core back/abdominal exercises for a few minutes each evening; and - most importantly - 40-60 minutes a day on a concept 2 rowing machine 5-6 days a week.

Unfortunately I got carried away and in my attempt to up the training regime to achieve a sub 7 minute time for 2000m - god knows why - a time that allows one to claim indoor rowing proficiency - from my fitness base this was too much too soon - I sustained a stress fracture of a rib.

So far this has taken 8 weeks to heal and I am rapidly returning to my former self - however I have enjoyed being fit and slimmer too much and I will soon be back on the path to fitness.

Remember - no pain - no gain - good luck.........

[American]

Breaststroke is very bad for knee joints.

You must be doing it wrong!

[tcj_jones]

Lol, Hughesy - I did find the suggestion of high intensity training for a 50 year old quite amusing!

Bryan, I have lumbar spondylosis (a form of arthritis) and take glucosamine and chondroitin for that - it's supposed to be the most effective comination for joint problems. I find a combination of fish oil (not cod liver oil), bromelain, glucosamine and chondroitin and standard one a day vitamin tablets alongside the anti-oxidents, protease enzymes and anti-inflamatory properties found in foods such as pineapple, papaya and cherries (particularly tart cherries) works absolute wonders. At the end of the day, it can't hurt eating these fruits.

I'd suggest investing in a cheap blender / smoothie maker and go to the pool as many mornings or evenings as you have free. Exercise physiologists will always recommend swimming over any other form of exercise as it is low-impact.

[jim mk2]

You must be doing it wrong!

Common injury for swimmers. Ex-footballers with a history of knee problems should be careful too.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2306818_prevent-br...mmers-knee.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3812862

[thenodrog]

You must be doing it wrong!

Common injury for swimmers. Ex-footballers with a history of knee problems should be careful too.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2306818_prevent-br...mmers-knee.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3812862

Whoosh.........!

[Paul]

Sounds like bloody good salads to me Paul BUT rather pointless to insist on oil and vinegar when they are crammed full of chorizo and feta cheese.

No it's bang on the nail. You have missed the point. Dieting is a pain and very, very boring. Eating good food, which one enjoys, three times a day and avoiding processed foods is the answer. Helman's is a no go area but a good home made vinaigrette is fine. Eating this way also allows one to eat the foods most diets don't allow. If one eats correctly it takes away the desire to snack between meals. So for example yesterday I ate:

Breakfast - weetabix

Lunch - mushroom soup (home made), brown bread. Followed by grapes

Dinner - consomme (home made) with some pasta, chicken, leeks (home grown), green salad (home grown). Glass of red. Home made peach and raspberry crumble!!

With simple planning it's easy. Today's lunch will be a pasta and tuna salad, made with the leftover pasta deliberatley cooked last night with today in mind.

[Ricky]

Lol, it's funny how opinions differ. Bryan says to cut out pasta potatoes and rice yet I lost 4 stone on a diet of basically just that. I did slimming world and green days are basically what Bryan is saying you should avoid

[lockers]

Of course you can, pilates and sit ups etc convert the fat to muscle.

This is the @#/? they feed women to get them to join their classes. Dont believe everything you hear down the leisure centre.

You CAN'T spot reduce fat. Especially in your stomach, good diet and a mix of weights and interval training are the best way to reduce your body fat. The only way to get a flat stomach is to have sub 10% body fat...you cant train fat to come off a particular area, otherwise you wouldnt see so many 'skinny fat' people (skinny arms and legs with a fat belly).

I suggest the original poster has a read of www.stronglifts.com and heads over to www.menshealth.co.uk and have a look at their forum or any other dedicated health and fitness website if mens health aint your thing. Plenty of personal trainers (I am also working towards becoming one) and nutritional experts on there to sort you out a good regime.

[ABBEY]

You must be doing it wrong!

he gets his legs tangled in the zimmer.

[Jimmy Jupiter]

Lol, it's funny how opinions differ. Bryan says to cut out pasta potatoes and rice yet I lost 4 stone on a diet of basically just that. I did slimming world and green days are basically what Bryan is saying you should avoid

I mean no offence but if you had to lose 4 stone you used to be quite a big guy (I lost almost 5 stone last year in order to join the Police Specials so I know all about being chunky) and at that weight we were at just eating less and moving more would see the weight shift pretty steadily. To really get sub 10% body fat then "brown" foods (pasta, bread, potatoes etc) are really recommended to be avoided.

I speak from no experience however, like you I ate them quite liberally when shifting my years of alcohol and curry abuse.

[Denis]

I'm reading this thread with interest as I have a few pounds to loose. I bought a book, a while ago, called the no diet diet. I've only got as far as starting to read it, but what it says makes perfect sense: DIETS DO NOT WORK. You need to permanently change your lifestyle and habits to loose weight and keep it off. The diet industry makes so much money year after year, because DIETS DO NOT WORK. Those of you who have been to weight loss clubs, I'm sure, met people there who had been a few years ago, lost the weight, then put it back on. Instead of going on a diet, you need to PERMANANTLY change your eating/ exercise habits.

Having just typed that I think I should read more of the book and change my habits!

Has anyone else tried the things this book suggests?

[vintageadidas]

I have lost around 6 stone in the past few years.

From 17st to 13st was relatively easy due to my original calorific diet being drastically lowered. Cutting down on my calorie intake coupled with exercise meant the weight was dropping off far too easily (this usually does happen with over weight people though at the beginning of the process). Then I levelled out. I needed to push myself further to lose more weight. However, I didn’t! I kept eating a relatively healthy diet and still exercised but I hovered around 13st 8ib for over 2 years. Still a major improvement on 17st.

Then, 2009 arrived and I decided to lose a little weight due to splitting with the girlfriend. So I started running and cut my diet down again. I am now 11st 4ib which I feel very comfortable at. I shifted the additional 2 stone through the following:

Breakfast – Special K with low fat yogurt tipped over ( I don’t like milk )

Lunch – Salad ( mixed leaves, red onion, cucumber, peppers, chopped chillis, diced chicken, Tzasiki and a warm pitta for mopping up)

Tea – Normal tea.

Exercise – 4 mile run or the gym 4 times a week (mix and match)

Snacks to help combat hunger - fruit, yogurt, hummus with pitta.

Drink plenty of water and if feeling naughty have hard boiled sweets and not chocolate. No fat in them and coupled with exercise that night the sugar won’t have chance to hit your hips.

I also believe you really have to want it! I go tot the gym and see people walking on the treadmill with a bottle of lucozade sport for 30 minutes. They are not sweating and the lucozade probably has more calories in that what they are burning off (pointless) I leave the gym knowing I have worked out – hence the wet patches and my puffing and panting.

[Tris]

[...]

I thought you weren't posting in the restaurant thread as much as you used to ...

[vintageadidas]

I thought you weren't posting in the restaurant thread as much as you used to ...

haha! Very true! Being single now and on a health charge limits my restaurant testing :-(

Still manage the Clog once a month :-)

[philipl]

Thanks for all the input guys.

Must admit I came back from Lancashire a very unfit pudding.

Gently built up the exercise so that I can again do a two hour strenuous walk without thinking about it then sent the car back (driving myself is always a fitness killer for me). Been swimming as well but my wife was jellyfish stung yesterday evening so I guess I'll be going on my own for a while!

Also cut food and alcohol intake dramatically and recently been eating far more fruit and vegetables. None of this is particularly planned/formulated- my life doesn't work that way.

No idea what I weigh now but I've moved two notches in on the belt fastener and that's a good enough measurement for me!

[thenodrog]

Thanks for all the input guys.

Must admit I came back from Lancashire a very unfit pudding.

Gently built up the exercise so that I can again do a two hour strenuous walk without thinking about it then sent the car back (driving myself is always a fitness killer for me). Been swimming as well but my wife was jellyfish stung yesterday evening so I guess I'll be going on my own for a while!

Also cut food and alcohol intake dramatically and recently been eating far more fruit and vegetables. None of this is particularly planned/formulated- my life doesn't work that way.

No idea what I weigh now but I've moved two notches in on the belt fastener and that's a good enough measurement for me!

Odd that you put so much weight on over here Gunner.

a. Is there a definite reason do you think?

b. Do you think that you could lose 2 notches of the belt as easily if you were still over here?

[RovertheHill]

That's been recently debunked.

What has been starting to work for me is live over a mile from mass transport and get rid of your car. Am walking about an hour a day now, between going to and from the tube and walking the dog in the evening.

Agree - have been cycling to work every day (5 miles each way) and playing football twice a week, and we got a dog that needs walking every day. Without altering my diet in any way I have lost 24lbs this year

[JC4LAB]

I suffer from yo yo weight losing some then regaining it back as you drift between being active and lapsing. ...a lot is just fluid loss and and a shrinking elastic stomach..A good belly busting beer and currynight and all hard work goes out the window..

[philipl]

Well dorg, spending three weeks in a bedside vigil at an intensive care unit with excellent NHS bacon butties on ready supply is not particularly good for keeping the weight in check- to be honest I hardly noticed that I was piling it on until I realised I'd become horribly unfit.

As for ease of diet, I cannot wander down the garden and shake oranges out of the trees in Poulton-le-Fylde like I can here nor can I buy a couple of incredibly delicious locally grown peaches for lunch for under a Euro from a street hawker like I can here and did do today and yesterday.

[thenodrog]

Well dorg, spending three weeks in a bedside vigil at an intensive care unit with excellent NHS bacon butties on ready supply is not particularly good for keeping the weight in check- to be honest I hardly noticed that I was piling it on until I realised I'd become horribly unfit.

As for ease of diet, I cannot wander down the garden and shake oranges out of the trees in Poulton-le-Fylde like I can here nor can I buy a couple of incredibly delicious locally grown peaches for lunch for under a Euro from a street hawker like I can here and did do today and yesterday.

Thats not the reason at all. We can buy all those things here easily enough. And cheaply too! It's not quite the third world here yet. However too few of us do on a regular basis.

So is it the lower temperatures outside that make us pig out perhaps to keep ourselves warm? Following on that theme is it then warm houses / offices, central heating and a sedentary lifestyle revolving around cold winter nights ands the telly with no need to primitively walk around to pick fruit from the branches that make us pile on the body fat?

I suggest there is behind your yo-yoing weight than we think.

[S15]

Thats not the reason at all. We can buy all those things here easily enough. And cheaply too! It's not quite the third world here yet. However too few of us do on a regular basis.

So is it the lower temperatures outside that make us pig out perhaps to keep ourselves warm? Following on that theme is it then warm houses / offices, central heating and a sedentary lifestyle revolving around cold winter nights ands the telly with no need to primitively walk around to pick fruit from the branches that make us pile on the body fat?

I suggest there is behind your yo-yoing weight than we think.

That's wrong though.

As Philip said, you can't walk into your garden and shake fruit off a tree, nor can you buy delicious local grown fruit from the street for under a euro.

You have to drive to your local supermarket, and you can pay over the odds for healthy food that tastes good, or you can spend the money Philip is talking and get the blandest food in the world.

It isn't the shops fault, it is totally the climate. Shops have to import fruit, and because of this countries obsession with a bargain, over time local farmers have had to slowly push prices up, so even if we do want to support local farming, we have to pay to do so.

[Paul]

Thats not the reason at all. We can buy all those things here easily enough. And cheaply too! It's not quite the third world here yet. However too few of us do on a regular basis.

So is it the lower temperatures outside that make us pig out perhaps to keep ourselves warm? Following on that theme is it then warm houses / offices, central heating and a sedentary lifestyle revolving around cold winter nights ands the telly with no need to primitively walk around to pick fruit from the branches that make us pile on the body fat?

I suggest there is behind your yo-yoing weight than we think.

I'd say philip's suggestion is perfectly reasonable. I know when I travel spending time in the car, no exercise, eating from boredom and eating more than usual I pile the weight on. Given philip's reason for being in Lanacshire I'd imagine eating properly was the last thing on his mind.

On the other hand the idea of a sedentary lifestyle, beer and poor food certainly account for the increasing number of over-weight individuals we see in society.

[broadsword]

I travel a lot and eating properly is hard, the choices are restrained and the motivation is difficult.

From my experience, exercise is more important than nutrition, but if you can keep the nutrition up as well, the results are greatly improved.

But if your nutrtition is ######, just work your ass off at the gym.

[American]

That's wrong though.

As Philip said, you can't walk into your garden and shake fruit off a tree, nor can you buy delicious local grown fruit from the street for under a euro.

You have to drive to your local supermarket, and you can pay over the odds for healthy food that tastes good, or you can spend the money Philip is talking and get the blandest food in the world.

It isn't the shops fault, it is totally the climate. Shops have to import fruit, and because of this countries obsession with a bargain, over time local farmers have had to slowly push prices up, so even if we do want to support local farming, we have to pay to do so.

Plenty of stands/farmers markets in my area to get fresh, locally grown fruit.