Thread: Help out a dude

Originally Posted by Thorsen

One of the absolutely most important things he has to do is keep records. There's no way he's going to keep this up long term without records and information.

Get his weight, height, blood pressure, blood glucose, and measurements to start. Write it all down, put it in a spreadsheet, or sign up to one of the numerous free health tracking websites. fitday.com is what I use and it's great. Keep up the recording, either weekly or bi-weekly remeasure and record.

I would also tell him to write down EVERYTHING he puts in his mouth for a typical day. The important part about this isn't to shame him into eating less, it's to make him really stop and THINK about food. As a compulsive eater who's been overweight my whole life (I recently lost a lot of weight and continue to) I can tell you that the food goes into you without a second thought, without being consciously registered. It helps a lot to stop and think about it rationally.

Good luck to your friend, and a hat tip to you, White, for helping someone out with an incredibly difficult and painful problem.

I never thought of your as overweight, not sure why, but grats on losing what you have!

Thorsen made a great point about records. When you keep tabs on everything you eat in a day, it really opens your eyes to how many calories you are eating. Also, keeping records will be good motivation to show the progress he makes.

Body fat is the best indicator and should be complemented by BMI and the like. Why not weight? Because most of the weight lost during exercise is water...that doesn´t translate to actually loosing body fat; you can also loose muscle if you don´t diet and exercise correctly, and this would translate to weight loss on the scale, but not the right weight you want to get rid of (fat).

Originally Posted by Thorsen

I'm not as overweight White's friend. At my heaviest I weighed 270 pounds. That was earlier this year, I weighed 245 at my last weigh in. I'm hoping to hit 220 by the end of summer.

I'm 6'2 also. Aiming for 190-200 as a healthy weight since I've done a lot of strength training with my brother.

So my internal Thorsen view isn't totally ruined then... Sound's like a good goals though.