Ok first of all, you should be happy, I registered only so I could post and give you some helpful tips
Now, as for your planned loss of weight:
Are you currently gaining or losing weight, or is your weight just standing still?
Start counting calories. I know some people will tell you this is overdoing it and you should just focus on getting your training right to begin with, but if you ask me I'd say it's crucial to know how many calories you need per day to not loose nor gain weight, both when you train and when you don't. When you've learned how much you need to eat, you'll know how much you need to take away to lose weight.
You can use the following formula to get the basic idea on how much you should be eating.
66.5 + (13.75 x kg) + (5.003 x cm) - (6.775 x age). The figure you get is your BEE, your Basal Energy Expenditure. That's how many calories your body burns when resting. Now, the figure isn't 100% correct, especially if you're a little overweight, so deduct some calories from that number. Now, as you understand your BEE won't apply if you workout, so the BEE is multiplied with a stress-and-workout factor which is anywhere between 1.2-2.0, depending on how active your day has been. 1.2 corresponds with spending the day in front of the computer, and 2.0 equals a day in the life of a professional athlete.
When losing weight, I'd recommend you lose no more than 0.5kg/week (you can lose more if you're overweight), but if you lose too much weight your body will start to burn off muscles instead of fat. As a pointer, I'd say that eating around 5-700kcal short of your daily need is enough to have you losing 0.5kg/week.
Anyway, you can use an online calorie counter (there are loads of them, just google), because then you can just fill out what you've eaten, and how much, and their database will do the calorie counting for you!
Dieting is much easier than people think, there is only one way to diet effectively, and that is summed up in two points:
1. Train
2. Eat a little less than you need
That's the basic concept for dieting. If you're not losing enough weight, eat fewer calories, if you're losing too much weight, eat more. Simple as!
Next, try to get as much knowledge as possible on nutrition. Start reading what the things you eat contain, just read everything you can get your hands on regarding training and nutrition. Do this and you'll know exactly what you're doing in no time at all!
So that covers most of the ground regarding nutrition, I think. I won't go into what food is good for you and what is not, as there are literally millions of places where you can read up on this for yourself.
Moving on to your training then...
The most important thing when training is, select activities that are
FUN to you. You will have days when you feel like giving up, but just go train anyway, you'll feel great afterwards, I promise. Whenever I feel like giving up, I tell myself, "just don't". It works for me, but when talking about training it's all about personalizing things to fit for you. Try a whole bundle of different activities, it's not all that important what you do, as long as you're training. When you've trained for a while though, there might be some sense in hitting the gym once or twice per week, but for starters just train and enjoy yourself! Oh and... No shortcuts, it'll come back and cause problems for you later on
I think that covered most of the basic aspects regarding dieting, but if I forgot anything or if anything seems unclear, just ask and I'll try to help you out!
-Trices
CHAT
