Help Me Help a Woman - Page 3

50% less than she currently eats. Don't overthink this. The carbs and stuff don't matter for her. She's not training for a bodybuilding competition or World's Strongest Woman. She's barely even past baseline athletic. She's 5'4" and 160lbs. She needs to learn how to eat like a 'normal' person. People that overeat usually do it on the same crap foods that are readily available. These are the kinds of people that shun foods and refuse to eat certain things for silly and unreasonable reasons ('Oh my god! Oxtail! It's a TAIL!!!'). It's doubly disgusting: they refuse to eat good food and overeat crap. First step would be throwing out everything that doesn't require cooking. She needs to have her habits changed. My guess is every food she has is ready-made and readily-eaten.

lol @ chubby people. No seriously, I'm very anti-dieting and all these insane workouts because even if she loses the weight she wants, she'll gain it back. She should eat what she wants IN MODERATION. The key is moderation and a lifestyle change. 1. Eat all regular food (containing carbs, proteing, vitamins, minerals, etc.) IN MODERATION. She should start with cutting her servings on everything by 1/4. IF that works out okay maybe decrease to 50% of the original amount. She needs to grow up and cut out the junk food (fast food, soda, candy) totally and learn to snack on healthy stuff (fruit, nuts). I believe in light snacks between meals. When she learns some discipline she can introduce some of the unhealthier things in her diet. 2. Lifestyle change: significantly cut back on the vast majority (leaving a few favorites as treats) trashy foods with preservatives in her diet. Just go through her pantry with her and toss shit out. Then get her into the habit of snacking on fruit and natural products. 3. Outside of the gym she needs to stay active. Going up or down less than 3 floors? Walk! Buy a cheap $100 bike and start biking around for little errands. 4. Finally, she definitely needs to spice up her gym routine. Though mine is pretty stale, I'm not really worried about bulking up or losing weight so I don't care. Someone with goals should certainly worry about this. She should take cardio classes in conjuction with her regular routine: spin class, rowing class, aerobics, kickboxing, boxing, other sports. She should do this regularly. I'm no expert, and I don't even follow the final two parts of my advice but like i mentioned I don't have fitness related goals and I am happy with my physique. Someone who isn't needs to get serious. Anyway, if she doesn't ultimately listen to your advice, tell her to whine to someone else. Or somepeople were just destined to be chubby.

Listen to why.. he is giving the best advice I can think of. First of all, don't waste your time helping her unless she is willing to make a real commitment. I once spent 1 hour of my time sitting with a co-worker and telling her how to get started on watching calories, eating right, etc. Then I spent another half hour typing it all up for her as a reference. That's 1.5 hours I will never get back - the woman has not lost an ounce in the 1 year since then... Track calories on fitday. Eliminate junk food and simple sugars. Basically she should eat as little as possible that comes out of a package or a box. Have some good fats every day. And get regular exercise. She does not need to go nuts on gym memberships either. Does she live within a 20 minute walk of a grocery store? Have her buy a shopping cart (Bed Bath and Beyond or Crate and Barrel have these) so that she can walk to the grocery store and back. No elevators - just take stairs. Just simple stuff like that will help. Bottom line - eat less than you burn and combine it with regular exercise and the weight will come off. But it needs a lifestyle change and commitment. If she does all this and then takes in a couple of hours of TV every night on the couch accompanied by a pint of Haagen Dazs then it will be all in vain....

This is an excellent post.

A lady friend of mine came to me for the same advice earlier this year. Her diet was shit and her exercise was an 8 mile "run" 3 times a week ("run" = 10 minute miles). She had a huge ass in a terrible way. She had the WEIRDEST SHAPED BODY IN THE UNIVERSE.

She was afraid of starting strength / stronglifts / all progressive barbell loading routines for whatever the fuck reason; it doesn't matter. So I suggested crossfit (holy shit did someone just say crossfit? what a loser!) While it ain't amazing for strength gaining, crossfit is the the beeessssssst for losing weight. So much fucking high intensity bullshit like "do 30 burpees followed by 20 pullups followed by 20 squat cleans, then do it all two more times! Also they preach rudimentary nutrition (eat meat, nuts, dairy, veggies, no sugar, no processed/microwaveable/ready made food. Common sense shit NOBODY NEEDS TO SEE A GODS DAMNED NUTRITIONIST FOR). Exercises are performed in a group setting where encouragement and comraderie beat the shit out of any group dieting nonsense like weightwatchers.

6 months of crossfit and she is fine as hell (with very little muscle definition.) She is down to 130lb (was 160) and can almost squat 1.5x bodyweight. She jokes that she was "tricked" into barbell lifting, since they start you with tons of bodyweight stuff and ease you into more complicated stuff.

SO, maybe your friend can handle crossfit or something similar. Sure a lot of it is BS, but it's easy to follow and constantly varying so no plateaus. Plus it will be awesome when you can tell her / her friends that she has a mean snatch

Echo what has been said before. Much fewer carbs, and a reasonable caloric deficit with the remainder made up of protein and fat. Does she hold alot of weight around her thighs and belly? If so, then high carbs are probably the worst thing for her due to the excess insulin. She should stop running so much since that is clearly not working and substitute in high-intensity weight training. M

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