- Jul 4, 2003
- 1,029
- 3
- 195
It seems an increasing number of people on here are starting to realise that looking at the internet all day is having a negative impact on their weight, health and whatever else. Since theres an increasing number of threads asking for advice, im going to start compiling a lot of information and answers that should hopefully provide a decent amount of reading material for people to sort themsevles out with.
What I will say before I begin is that i'm not you, your body has a different genetic make up from mine, it may be more or less resilient than mine. The information contained in here is designed to be broad, and cater to just about everyone, its the basic rules you can follow and still get decent benefits, for excellent benefits you need to get specific, and unfortunately I don't think anyone on here could really get down to the specifics, because we would need to know you well outside of the internet.
The first thing you need to get to know are some technical terms, knowing what they mean, and what the equate to makes everything easier to understand, and you will soon realise how some people manage to spout a pile of crap and have people agree, when they are actually wrong.
List of Definitions/Explanations for dieting:
Stone - 14 lbs (pounds) *note: useful for mathematics later on.
Calorie - An actual calorie is equal to 4.1840j of energy
KiloCalories (Kcal) - 4184j of energy (these are what people refer to when they say Calorie)
Joules (j) - The standard defintion for measuring energy of any kind
Cardiovascular - Exercise designed to increase heartrate and bloodflow.
Muscle Fibre - These make up your muscle, try to think of them as the fibres in a pillow.
Red Fast Twitch - fibres that are linked to speed and endurance
Red Slow Twitch - extreme endurance, think paula radcliffe
White fast twitch - powerlifting and weightlifting
HIIT - High Intensity Interval Training (more later)
ATP (adenosine triphosphate) - The immediate energy stores located in muscles, ready for instant release. (4 seconds of work)
Creatine Phosphate - Takes ADP (the product from burning ATP) and combines it with energy from the body to create additional ATP (further 25-30 seconds of work on top of the previous 4)
BCAA - Branch Chain Amino Acids: The protiens that make up about 60% of muscle fibres. These are used to prodcue energy and are lost during exercise, the idea behind these in supplements is they instantly replace what is lost, and allow the body to use its own BCAA's for muscle growth.
Some more will be explain later on in more detail. For now lets move on to the bulk of the information.
Diet
Everyone seems to think that by eating salad and doing 1 billion situps a day your going to lose all your fat by the end of the week, and have a 6 pack. This is entirely false. What people need to know is your body needs a certain amount of energy (calories) to sustain itself. Depending on your weight, build and Metabolic rate, you will need a certain calorie intake to maintain your current weight. The one's printed as "Recomended daily allowance" etc are guidlines for an average healthy person, if everyone ate like that, then we would all eventually end up around the same weight, but the issue is, not everyone can hit that target so easily.
Each person has set needs they need to reach in order to maintain a functioning body, fat people have a higher rate, and slimmer people have a lower rate.
Application of diet information
Now onto applying some information. The easiest thing to do first of all is to find out if your gaining/losing/mainting your current weight. The best way to get an accruate reading is to weigh yourself naked each morning when you wake up. Write down each day and check after two weeks to see if there is any kind of trend, there will always be fluctuation, but as long as you havent put on/lost significant weight in that time 3lbs or more you should be ok.
The best way to check your target is from the old mathematics of averages. take the highest weight and Lowest weight, and find the middle of the them. eg. 12st 0lbs and 12st 6lbs = 12st 3lbs (Median). Then add together all your weight recordings for the week, and divide to find the average (best to work in pounds only to keep it simple), this gives you the Mean
Now for the end calculations:
If you Mean > Mode that indictes possible weight gain, the higher up your number is, the more likely this is true
If Mean < Mode this indicates possible weight loss. The lower it is, the more likely this is truie
If Mean = Mode then it means your most likely stable in your weight.
At the same time as doing this, try and keep a rough trak of how many calories your eating. Everything should have some kind of guide on it and you can work out a fairly accurate score of this.
Example
Ill use myself as an example now, I have a calorie intake of around 2750 per day, Im not gaining weight currently, but I am slightly overweight at 12st So what you do is the following:
2750kcal = 12st (non gaining)
2850kcal = 12st (gaining) [+100kcal]
2650kcal = 12st (losing) [- 100kcal]
dietary actions
Always work in sets of 100-200 to gauge your bodies reaction to the drop. Work in a time period of around 1 week, and see what happens. When your trying to lose weight, you want your weight to stay the same or go down. If it starts to drop a little, then STAY at that. If it remains the same, shave another 100 calories off. If you begin to gain weight, then increase yourself back to what you were at before, seriously.
Bodily reactions to diets are an important indicator for a few things. First of all, it can give you a quick reading of your body type, which will be either Endomorph, Ectomorph, or Mesomorph.
Ectomorphs have difficulty gaining weight of any kind, these are the people that increase their calorie intake and see almost no change at all. They also have difficulty gaining muscle because of this.
Endomorphs are the opposite, they gain weight easily, but muscle increases slower than fat does. These people will gain fat very quickly if they increase their diet to more than they need.
Mesomorphs are the easy mode of deiting and training. They gain muscle fast, and fat slowly. This isnt a free ticket to gorge and lift weights however.
These three types are the extreme of each possible scenario, and most people will slot inbetween two of these groups in some way. What you have to remember here is "You cant bull**** yourself" this is your genetics, you cant pretend to be a Mesomorph, because if you do, you will **** yourself over. Ectomorphs can reduce exercise and eat more and eventually slow their metabolic rate (this will only increase fat gain) Endomorphs can use exercise to increase their metabolic rate which will lower fat gain. These changes will only be minimal, they wont be able to alter your body type significantly.
what happens when I diet?
The first thing you should take note of here is dieting doesnt mean weight loss, and certainly doesnt mean weight loss. People who crash diet effective starve their body of energy. Our bodies are programmed to recongise a halt to food as a sign there isnt actually any food available. Once this happens it will start to burn your fat stores, however when you eat again, its number one priority is to replenish those fat stores above all else, for the simple reason it doesnt know when its next meal will be available. The end result is the body stores extra fat because its in emergency mode.
What you need to know about fat is it is an incredibly potent source of energy, its easily stored, and this is why it's stored, its the perfect thing to have around when a decent meal isnt available. Your body prizes fat above all other forms of energy, and it doesn't like to use it as a replacement for energy defecits from elsewhere.
So if you decide to diet, you need to do it carefully, by dropping calorie consumption like I outlined up above, you can guage the reaction and see if your body is concerned or not. 100 calories of fat a day is easily considered expendable by the body, 1000 calories isnt. You need to train your body up t each level, and by doing so properly you can increase it's efficiency as well.
Also, by dropping calorie intake gently you can increase fat loss with some mild cardiovascular exercise, this can at times hide the loss to your body from the diet as it can be written off as exercise related. Don't ever crash diet and exercise thats a sure fire way to screw your body up, and it'll take much longer to fix that and get back to where you started than to slowly lose the weight.
in closing
I'll end this with some calorie information that people should know, and im not going to spout crap like people on the TV do, im going to give decent qoutes with some sources that are relevent to people wh play games and ****.
First off, the comparison between Regular soft drinks, and low sugar kind. Ive got infront mf me right now, Fanta ice lemon, and Fanta Orange Zero.
Ice Lemon = 50 calories per can
Orange Zero (low sugar) 3 calories per can
Big Mac (Mcdonalds) = 570 calories = 5 cans of coke or so.
McD's chips (fries) *small* = 210 calories
Add that up with a drink and you have 830 calories or 33% of your daily allowance (the government stated one) 3 meals a day like that and your more or less sorted, so i dont see what the whinging is about. This is why when people go "look how many calories are in this" they obviously dont know what they are on about. The fat content however isnt exactly great.
This ends the part on dietary information for now, im sure there will be questions which I'll address and add to this post as they come.
What I will say before I begin is that i'm not you, your body has a different genetic make up from mine, it may be more or less resilient than mine. The information contained in here is designed to be broad, and cater to just about everyone, its the basic rules you can follow and still get decent benefits, for excellent benefits you need to get specific, and unfortunately I don't think anyone on here could really get down to the specifics, because we would need to know you well outside of the internet.
The first thing you need to get to know are some technical terms, knowing what they mean, and what the equate to makes everything easier to understand, and you will soon realise how some people manage to spout a pile of crap and have people agree, when they are actually wrong.
List of Definitions/Explanations for dieting:
Stone - 14 lbs (pounds) *note: useful for mathematics later on.
Calorie - An actual calorie is equal to 4.1840j of energy
KiloCalories (Kcal) - 4184j of energy (these are what people refer to when they say Calorie)
Joules (j) - The standard defintion for measuring energy of any kind
Cardiovascular - Exercise designed to increase heartrate and bloodflow.
Muscle Fibre - These make up your muscle, try to think of them as the fibres in a pillow.
Red Fast Twitch - fibres that are linked to speed and endurance
Red Slow Twitch - extreme endurance, think paula radcliffe
White fast twitch - powerlifting and weightlifting
HIIT - High Intensity Interval Training (more later)
ATP (adenosine triphosphate) - The immediate energy stores located in muscles, ready for instant release. (4 seconds of work)
Creatine Phosphate - Takes ADP (the product from burning ATP) and combines it with energy from the body to create additional ATP (further 25-30 seconds of work on top of the previous 4)
BCAA - Branch Chain Amino Acids: The protiens that make up about 60% of muscle fibres. These are used to prodcue energy and are lost during exercise, the idea behind these in supplements is they instantly replace what is lost, and allow the body to use its own BCAA's for muscle growth.
Some more will be explain later on in more detail. For now lets move on to the bulk of the information.
Diet
Everyone seems to think that by eating salad and doing 1 billion situps a day your going to lose all your fat by the end of the week, and have a 6 pack. This is entirely false. What people need to know is your body needs a certain amount of energy (calories) to sustain itself. Depending on your weight, build and Metabolic rate, you will need a certain calorie intake to maintain your current weight. The one's printed as "Recomended daily allowance" etc are guidlines for an average healthy person, if everyone ate like that, then we would all eventually end up around the same weight, but the issue is, not everyone can hit that target so easily.
Each person has set needs they need to reach in order to maintain a functioning body, fat people have a higher rate, and slimmer people have a lower rate.
Application of diet information
Now onto applying some information. The easiest thing to do first of all is to find out if your gaining/losing/mainting your current weight. The best way to get an accruate reading is to weigh yourself naked each morning when you wake up. Write down each day and check after two weeks to see if there is any kind of trend, there will always be fluctuation, but as long as you havent put on/lost significant weight in that time 3lbs or more you should be ok.
The best way to check your target is from the old mathematics of averages. take the highest weight and Lowest weight, and find the middle of the them. eg. 12st 0lbs and 12st 6lbs = 12st 3lbs (Median). Then add together all your weight recordings for the week, and divide to find the average (best to work in pounds only to keep it simple), this gives you the Mean
Now for the end calculations:
If you Mean > Mode that indictes possible weight gain, the higher up your number is, the more likely this is true
If Mean < Mode this indicates possible weight loss. The lower it is, the more likely this is truie
If Mean = Mode then it means your most likely stable in your weight.
At the same time as doing this, try and keep a rough trak of how many calories your eating. Everything should have some kind of guide on it and you can work out a fairly accurate score of this.
Example
Ill use myself as an example now, I have a calorie intake of around 2750 per day, Im not gaining weight currently, but I am slightly overweight at 12st So what you do is the following:
2750kcal = 12st (non gaining)
2850kcal = 12st (gaining) [+100kcal]
2650kcal = 12st (losing) [- 100kcal]
dietary actions
Always work in sets of 100-200 to gauge your bodies reaction to the drop. Work in a time period of around 1 week, and see what happens. When your trying to lose weight, you want your weight to stay the same or go down. If it starts to drop a little, then STAY at that. If it remains the same, shave another 100 calories off. If you begin to gain weight, then increase yourself back to what you were at before, seriously.
Bodily reactions to diets are an important indicator for a few things. First of all, it can give you a quick reading of your body type, which will be either Endomorph, Ectomorph, or Mesomorph.
Ectomorphs have difficulty gaining weight of any kind, these are the people that increase their calorie intake and see almost no change at all. They also have difficulty gaining muscle because of this.
Endomorphs are the opposite, they gain weight easily, but muscle increases slower than fat does. These people will gain fat very quickly if they increase their diet to more than they need.
Mesomorphs are the easy mode of deiting and training. They gain muscle fast, and fat slowly. This isnt a free ticket to gorge and lift weights however.
These three types are the extreme of each possible scenario, and most people will slot inbetween two of these groups in some way. What you have to remember here is "You cant bull**** yourself" this is your genetics, you cant pretend to be a Mesomorph, because if you do, you will **** yourself over. Ectomorphs can reduce exercise and eat more and eventually slow their metabolic rate (this will only increase fat gain) Endomorphs can use exercise to increase their metabolic rate which will lower fat gain. These changes will only be minimal, they wont be able to alter your body type significantly.
what happens when I diet?
The first thing you should take note of here is dieting doesnt mean weight loss, and certainly doesnt mean weight loss. People who crash diet effective starve their body of energy. Our bodies are programmed to recongise a halt to food as a sign there isnt actually any food available. Once this happens it will start to burn your fat stores, however when you eat again, its number one priority is to replenish those fat stores above all else, for the simple reason it doesnt know when its next meal will be available. The end result is the body stores extra fat because its in emergency mode.
What you need to know about fat is it is an incredibly potent source of energy, its easily stored, and this is why it's stored, its the perfect thing to have around when a decent meal isnt available. Your body prizes fat above all other forms of energy, and it doesn't like to use it as a replacement for energy defecits from elsewhere.
So if you decide to diet, you need to do it carefully, by dropping calorie consumption like I outlined up above, you can guage the reaction and see if your body is concerned or not. 100 calories of fat a day is easily considered expendable by the body, 1000 calories isnt. You need to train your body up t each level, and by doing so properly you can increase it's efficiency as well.
Also, by dropping calorie intake gently you can increase fat loss with some mild cardiovascular exercise, this can at times hide the loss to your body from the diet as it can be written off as exercise related. Don't ever crash diet and exercise thats a sure fire way to screw your body up, and it'll take much longer to fix that and get back to where you started than to slowly lose the weight.
in closing
I'll end this with some calorie information that people should know, and im not going to spout crap like people on the TV do, im going to give decent qoutes with some sources that are relevent to people wh play games and ****.
First off, the comparison between Regular soft drinks, and low sugar kind. Ive got infront mf me right now, Fanta ice lemon, and Fanta Orange Zero.
Ice Lemon = 50 calories per can
Orange Zero (low sugar) 3 calories per can
Big Mac (Mcdonalds) = 570 calories = 5 cans of coke or so.
McD's chips (fries) *small* = 210 calories
Add that up with a drink and you have 830 calories or 33% of your daily allowance (the government stated one) 3 meals a day like that and your more or less sorted, so i dont see what the whinging is about. This is why when people go "look how many calories are in this" they obviously dont know what they are on about. The fat content however isnt exactly great.
This ends the part on dietary information for now, im sure there will be questions which I'll address and add to this post as they come.
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