So I’ve more or less been on a roller coaster with weight through most of my life. I was lean and fit in high school at 6’3"/215 lbs after two years of playing football. By 21 I was up to 255 lbs.
At 21, during the six months I was in the police academy (and for about a month after), I lost 40 lbs. Eight years later I’ve managed to gain it all back and I’m not exactly where I started at 255 lbs.
I’ve started and quit diets, I’ve started exercising and stopped…I had slowly gained weight and managed to keep myself under 240 lbs. for until about a year ago…then I just straight gained 15 lbs.
I’m friggin done with it. I feel terrible and I want to be 215 lbs again. I’ve cut out all soda or other sugary drinks in the past few months. I’ve cut back beer to one good beer a week. I’m working on cutting back portions even more.
I bought a treadmill for my house and I started doing the “Couch to 5k” program on my iphone (15 min run / 15 min walk) plus adding in some more. I’m averaging 45 min a day, 5 days a week.
When I was in the academy it took about six weeks until I started losing weight and it was after about three or four months before I really started shedding it.
My question is, is it enough? Will cutting back and and doing 45 min of cardio 5 days a week work? How long will it take until I start seeing results?
You can lose weight with 25 minutes on the treadmill verses the 45 minutes.
You ever do intervals? Does your treadmill have a setting for that? If not, try walking briskly for roughly 5-7 min for a warmup then what I do when I’m on a treadmill without the interval setting is Ill run for about 2 tenths of a mile then jog for a tenth, then run for two more and so on. Once you build up your stamina you can increase the distance of your run. You can do a mile or even two before you know it. Running at a steady pace for 45 minutes does nothing for me or most ppl for that matter.
You can also do circuit training. Multiple exercises with little or no rest in between. I can post a sample workout for you if you’d like or if your google-fu is strong you can go that route.
count your calories. Lots of free apps out there. You should work out, but to lose weight, calorie restriction is the only way you’ll do it. You can always out eat what you burn (for the most part).
You need to be eating less than 100g of carbs/day to lose weight. Try to get your carbs from vegetables, rather than grains. I would attempt this gradually; if you quit eating processed grains cold-turkey you are likely to “bonk” and fatigue rather quickly.
There are many calorie calculators available. Ideally, stick to protein and vegetables; eating only when you are hungry.
I’ll say it again, cut out grains and you will lose weight far more easily.
This worked for me. I am pretty fit, but have about 10 lbs around my gut that would never go away. Cut out all bread (occasional pizza is all) and within 2 months half of my gut went away. Working on the last 5 now.
Also throw some strength training in there with the cardio. Heavy lifting will help lose the lbs too. Don’t forget recovery days, you can’t wok out every day, non stop and expect your body to keep up. Good luck and keep at it, it only gets harder as you get older…
kaltblitz,
Let me start off by giving you some encouragement, you can do this! A couple of thoughts off of the top of my head: 1. Train with a partner who is more motivated than you. 2. Maybe pick another goal to instead. For instance, train to make it through all of the swat tryouts. That goal may mentally give you a boost to be consistent in your pt. 3. My dept/ academy is the same, they have great support in regaining or staying fit. See what or who in your dept can assist you. I hope this helps. I will be praying for you!