Large female friend wants help

[dpfisher]

I see this girl every so often (not like that you jerks, I'm not into that) and she asked me for some help losing weight. She is very large 5'4" about 240 and she says she works hard at losing weight and just can't. I told her I'll help but only if she's going to be honest with me and I'm getting her to measure her food and write down everything she eats and everything she DIDN'T eat just because she knew she'd have to write it down (marked as not eaten of course). I reminded her that liquids count too. She apparently just joined a gym and I'll be finding out what she's doing so far and giving her suggestions.

Anyway I have experience with being fat and losing weight but this is like WAYY above my expertise so I need some help getting this set up. I don't even know what the max amount is that's safe to lose per week when you are that big. She wants to jump right in and go nuts with it, I'd prefer to see her make her diet adjustments and exercise increase a bit every week so she sticks to it, let me know if I'm wrong on that. I'm thinking start her off with 500 calories/day below maintenance (she wants to eat hardly anything of course...) and a couple cardio sessions per week then add in weights with cardio afterwards after a couple weeks if she's doing well with that. I'm sure I'm going to have to give her some basic info about nutrition as well before we even work out a diet. Is there any kind of specific macro she should follow? Obviously a lot of the type of diet macros people here do for a few months are a little extreme if she's going to be doing this for a year at the minimum.

I want to do this without supplements of any kind beyond vitamins, she obviously doesn't need them and I don't want her to get the idea that pills will solve her problems.

And yes, I know that this will probably not happen if it's at this point but I like to help people and I like a challenge.

 

[Rosie Chee]

I see this girl every so often (not like that you jerks, I'm not into that) and she asked me for some help losing weight. She is very large 5'4" about 240 and she says she works hard at losing weight and just can't. I told her I'll help but only if she's going to be honest with me and I'm getting her to measure her food and write down everything she eats and everything she DIDN'T eat just because she knew she'd have to write it down (marked as not eaten of course). I reminded her that liquids count too. She apparently just joined a gym and I'll be finding out what she's doing so far and giving her suggestions.

Anyway I have experience with being fat and losing weight but this is like WAYY above my expertise so I need some help getting this set up. I don't even know what the max amount is that's safe to lose per week when you are that big. She wants to jump right in and go nuts with it, I'd prefer to see her make her diet adjustments and exercise increase a bit every week so she sticks to it, let me know if I'm wrong on that. I'm thinking start her off with 500 calories/day below maintenance (she wants to eat hardly anything of course...) and a couple cardio sessions per week then add in weights with cardio afterwards after a couple weeks if she's doing well with that. I'm sure I'm going to have to give her some basic info about nutrition as well before we even work out a diet. Is there any kind of specific macro she should follow? Obviously a lot of the type of diet macros people here do for a few months are a little extreme if she's going to be doing this for a year at the minimum.

I want to do this without supplements of any kind beyond vitamins, she obviously doesn't need them and I don't want her to get the idea that pills will solve her problems.

And yes, I know that this will probably not happen if it's at this point but I like to help people and I like a challenge.

Check out post #2 at http://anabolicminds.com/forum/female-fitness/115732-need-some-advice.html for tips on diet for fat loss.

Ideally, as mentioned 0.5kg (or 0.5% BF) per week is the 'safe' amount to lose if you want to KEEP it off long-term and manage the weight loss better. However, for a larger person 1kg a week would be ok.

Yes, make diet adjustments every week. You don't just try and change EVERYthing at once; that's why most people fail, because they cannot stick to it. Start with something small a week, and NO, NO low calories or eating nothing or cutting out carbohydrates (as you will read in the post mentioned). Supplements are mentioned in it, and she won't need anything but the basics.

As for exercise, for the first few weeks, just get her doing 2-3 20-30 minute moderate intensity walks, and maybe a Full-Body resistance session (mainly bodyweight and introducing her to exercises/technique) to get her cardiovascular fitness improved, and starting to do a regular programme. You could encourage her to go to a group fitness class (i.e. BodyPump) once a week, as it would be motivating, and also aid in weight loss/starting out. No more than 3-4 sessions a week for the first 4-6 weeks though. After that start changing things up, increase intensity or duration of sessions, and modify her weights' sessions, so that she keeps getting results.

It's fairly easy to do with making DIET changes (as well as exercising appropriately - i.e. NOT just cardio (although that will be good to get her cardiovascular fitness levels up, and get her used to doing something); she needs some resistance training, and it is MORE effective than cardio for fat loss). As long as she is consistent, then she should be fine.

 

[Space]

She really needs to get educated on nutrition and the quality of different food. I recommend the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle E-book by Tom Venuto. I'm not affiliated but it's the best beginners resource on weight loss I have ever read. The great thing is it focuses on fundamentals that people who live the fitness lifestyle take for granted but unfit people are completely unaware of.

You really need to get her addicted to this type of fitness lit so she understands whats possible and how she can make the changes in her lifestyle, because just giving her some advice and drawing up a diet is destined to failure unless she has awesome will power focused on her goals.

 

[dpfisher]

She really needs to get educated on nutrition and the quality of different food. I recommend the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle E-book by Tom Venuto. I'm not affiliated but it's the best beginners resource on weight loss I have ever read. The great thing is it focuses on fundamentals that people who live the fitness lifestyle take for granted but unfit people are completely unaware of.

You really need to get her addicted to this type of fitness lit so she understands whats possible and how she can make the changes in her lifestyle, because just giving her some advice and drawing up a diet is destined to failure unless she has awesome will power focused on her goals.

Cool, I'm going to pick up a copy and read it myself then give it to her. I found an online version and glanced through it, it looks pretty reasonable. Actually I'll probably give it to a bunch of people if I like it since my friends are always asking me about fitness and I'm not even in great shape.

I think if I can get her to stick with it for a couple months I won't have to be helping with it much. I know she wouldn't have said anything to me if she wasn't trying to impress me, her friends are always telling me how much she likes me, so hopefully the fact that I'm paying attention to her will give her some motivation to stay with it for a while at least.

 

[crader]

Your plan sounds good to me. I train with some overweight people and there is just alot of things their joints can't handle at that weight.

A good diet is the first step. I believe my trainer has them doing weight training a few days a week with the rest of the days being cardio and diet. Routines are modified on taking it slow and keeping them feeling good about the gym time. As they show the dedication to keep it up she increases intensity slowly so as not to burn them out or tax the heart too much.

 

[EasyEJL]

All of the above is great advice. She needs to forget about "dieting" and instead learn how to eat. She can't view what she is doing as a phase or something she'll stop once she reaches x goal, it has to be a change of life. Lets just say she wants to get down to160lbs. All she really needs to do is eat what maintenance would be for 160, and over time she'll get there. She should target either one meal or one of her weak food points every 3-4 weeks to change. That gives her enough time to have adjusted to the last change and have it feel like a normal part of life. If she complains that she wants faster results, remind her of how long it took her to get to that size.

plus here is some referential stuff for her to think about, or pick up this book. They have it and some of the variations on it at Sams Club even

I feel like I've posted this a thousand times but here it goes again



So do you eat the muffin normally and then eat a ton of other stuff as well? or do you eat 1/3 of the pile of fruit and save the rest for later?


Do you have the tart for 440 cals or just one bowl of the raspberries for 55 cals?



Do you end up eating all the things on the left side, instead of the meal on teh right side that ends up being 1/3 the calories?


This is from Dr Randy Shapiro's Picture Perfect Weight Loss

http://pictureperfectweightloss.com/

 

[Liquid13]

Wooooooooo!!! I love that post EasyEJL

 

[MMAMONSTER19]

first off thats very nice of you to be helping her acheive her goal. and it sounds like you know what your doing to help her. my input is have her do light cardio before her workout to get her body temperature raised to increase the amount of calories burned off during her work out like a 5 min jog before and then add 10mins after her workout with more intensity to start off with nice an easy then as she progresses you can step up the cardio thats what i did for my girlfriend and she has had results with it and is very pleases. For her workouts the resistance training should go well i believe you should throw in dumbells with her training it takes more energy to move dumbbells than cables. so more energy used more calories burned. have her training last between 45-65 mins depending on the intensity used. only supps i would recommend as you said are vitamins and possibly cla been reading up on it and its not a huge helper but it will help out and add effects to her diet. like you said get her diet in check first. sorry if i repeated what someone else said kinda sped through all the other posts, good luck on your quest hope she meets her goal and tell her not to judge by the scale judge by the mirror

 

[dpfisher]

Well a bit of bad news, I'm not sure I'm getting through. "I know what I need to eat I must just be eating it wrong." Also her and her not equally large but still huge roommate are on something called the South Beach diet... no carbs AT ALL for a couple weeks because it "restarts your metabolism" or something and they won't shut up about how it works even though I know they've done it like 5 times in the past and just keep gaining. I just don't understand how they can look at themselves and think "yeah this is working." I'm torn between giving up and being blunt enough to make them cry at this point, neither is really an option I want to go with.

 

[EasyEJL]

actually south beach followed correctly and thoroughly is not a bad diet

 

[dpfisher]

Well then I'll assume the blame rests with them and not the diet but whatever they are doing it most clearly isn't working. Plus I don't see how she can expect me to honestly assess her diet if she starts a no-carb crash diet the week she starts recording. I told her to just eat what she thinks is healthy for a week, record it, we'll take a look at it, and I gave her that book. I guess I'll know in a week if she did it. On another note, yes I've read about CLA but I've also read it can mess up your cholesterol a bit, and like I said I REALLY don't want to give supps to someone that large because it sends the wrong message.

 

[mrchance33]

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