Edit: I don’t drink alcohol, it’s just the best way to describe it. From comments I’ll be going on a low carb diet, thank you all.
Explanation: male, 38, 130 pounds. Skinny, low muscle mass but have a beer keg belly.
My day is 7am wake up. Get kids to school. Work until 5. Get kids from school. Cook, shower and then I’m exhausted AF.
I’m semi fit? I’m a mechanic professionally and spring til summer I mountain bike regularly. So my calves are monsters.
But would like… basic at home sit ups. Push ups etc like on a Saturday, would that help at all?
You should also use a James Smith calorie calculator to see what your maintenance caloric intake is. I.e. how many calories your body burns a day with your average routine. Then it’s just a matter of eating less than that to lose weight or more than that to gain weight.
Working out isn’t the primary path to losing weight, though it is of course a big part of staying healthy.
You burn quite a lot of calories in a day just from being alive. The additional calories you’d burn from a brisk 20 minute walk might about to one cookie. It’s far easier to just not eat the cookie.
…but I like cookies.
I’d happily walk a bubch if that means being able to eat more cookies
That’s perfectly okay as long as the ratio of 20 minutes per cookie is understood.
OP has a goal to lose weight though, not just stand still. And with the busy schedule they described, 40 minutes of exercise is hard to fit in, whereas not eating 2 cookies takes no time, and if anything puts time back in your day.
if you stick to your workouts and train to failure, your muscles will grow.
however to eliminate fat, you don’t exercise. you eat less. when you are eating below caloric maintenance, your body makes up the difference in fat. you can’t control where the fat comes from. you just have to maintain that for a long time and it’ll go away. everyone stores fat differently. some in legs, some in stomach, etc.
but you cannot exercise away body fat. it’s like 80/20 diet exercise
Personal anecdote here: I run 40km/week so that I don’t have to be so picky with my diet. I’m offsetting about 2,400cal from my weekly intake.
That said, I need to be careful sometimes because my appetite can surge and I can easily break even and even surpass being in a deficit. Its just a matter of being aware of how much I’m eating in general and adapting to appetite changes.
That said, when I want a pizza I’m gonna smash that pizza down my gullet lol
I run a half marathon 1-2 times a month, and the costco poutine (2000+ calories) really hits different when it’s guilt free