Fiddleman

Try and eat good carbs and keep them under 100 a day to lose weight.if you want to lose weight faster, lower your carbs to the amount you are comfortable with. 20-50 carbs is a good range to force the body Into ketosis. That is, you want your body to burn stored fat before carbs. Eating low carb will train it to do just this. Once you are closer to goal, slowly introduce carbs back I to your diet. However, not too many, too quickly or the wrong kind. I had success eating 20-30 g a day for 6 months. After that I added about 100 carbs by eating more veggies, fiber cereal and steel oats. I try and limit carbs from sugar (slip every now and then). You do not need a whole lot of carbs after surgery because you will be focused on eating quality lean protein and that will fill you up.

would you say the 60 % weight loss average for 50% of the people is because they only expect 50% to follow their guidance for success or that 100% follow it, but only 60% succeed because their plan is aimed at satisfying the lowest common denominator or "standard" success for the most number of people and not everyone can succeed with the same plan? I use quotes on "standard" because 100% weight loss would not be standard in their eyes. I would argue for the latter. Some people may follow the doctor plan to a T yet still fall outside of 60% weight loss success for a number of biological or environmental reasons. Some people may fall in the 60 % weight loss success and not follow the doctor plan, again, because of biological or environmental reasons. Just like any diet, not all will succeed by following the "standard" plan because we are all different. If you do find yourself on the unfortunate wrong side of the success line, then it just means you need to adjust the plan so it works for you. None of this might make sense, but if am just trying to logically understand where such statistics make sense given the diversity that exists in the sample set when everyone follows the same "standard" plan.

Ditto!! We are making the final preps for a wild party scene here. Even more wild if the hawks are doing well.

I also want to add that weight loss as a post op very much follows a stair case pattern. From month to month, most, myself included, lose weight for a couple weeks and stall for a couple weeks. It is a pattern that you will come to recognize as you get further out. The reason for this is that during a "stall, " stored fat is converted into glycogen to support the protein synthesis of muscles. Each pound of glycogen requires some 2 pounds of supporting water (don't quote me on the exact numbers; the general principle applies). Once the glycogen is used up, your body releases the water and you will see sudden drops on the scale. And the cycle continues. Eating low carb during weight loss is best so stored fat can be used during conversion to glycogen instead of carbs from food. Your body will use either. Exercise really helps during weight loss, especially lifting, because the glycogen stores are used up faster and the time between these cycles is shortened. For the first 6 months, I tended to eat very low carb (20g a day) and performed moderate exercise. Nothing too strenuous. It was mostly walking, hiking and elliptical. My weight loss followed the stair case pattern.

I needed to get some more xtend and did not want to wait on amazon 2 day prime, so went down to GNC to pick some up. They do not sell it. However, they did sell me on trying usplabs modernBCCA. Here is my opinion: cost: modern bcaa provides 30 servings for 44 dollars. They even had a 2:1 sale going on, but I declined as wanted to try the product first. Xtend at 90 servings for 36 dollars (if you can find that) has a better value. Average price I pay for xtend 90 servings is 50. Taste: modern bcaa is not as sweet as the xtend. I like the sweeter taste of xtend when comparing watermelon flavors. Both are zero calories. Effectiveness: I cannot really judge modernBCAA on effectiveness because I have not used it before a workout yet. However, I did use it after my workout and notice no doms today. Modern bcaa has an 8:1:1:1 ratio of the bcaa blend where xtend has 2:1:1:1 ratio. Does this make a difference that there are 8 parts luecine to the other aminos? Not sure. Modern bcaa has something called sustanine in it that may give it an edge over xtend in terms of doms. Mixability: modern bcaa still had little packets of powder in my bottle even after shaking vigorously for 20-30 seconds. Xtend usually has no clumps when shaking 5 seconds of less. Not a deal breaker, but I wish modern bcaa mixed a little better. Overall, the jury is still out until I can gauge the effectiveness of modern bcaa after some workouts this next week. Has anyone else tried modern bcaa and has an opinion on it?

Everyone stalls no matter what, but it will all work out in the end. Keep believing in your success. It will happen. I had a huge 3 week stall starting at week 5. You may see a stall that will last 1-2 months as you get past month 6. No need to worry. That too shall pass. Keep up the good work!

Not sure about that. I thinking depends on when you get hungry. For me, I eat "dinner" about 2 hours (about 7:30pm) after eating a recovery shake or bar at around 5:30pm. There is typically a gap of 2-3 hours in between my meals daily.

It is best to drink your protein shake as soon as possible after working out. Within 20 minutes is ideal. Within 1 hour is pushing it. You lose the effectiveness of your recovery shake if you wait longer then an hour, but something is better than nothing at all. Even better is if your recovery shake has BCAAs (branch chain amino acids) as your body knows how to transport these aminos to your muscles for optimal protein synthesis even more efficiently than protein that needs to be digested into aminos.

Great job for reaching such a significant milestone. That certainly requires a lot of hard work on your part. Now do the happy dance! You deserve it.

I followed all rules for first 6 months or so, then I defined what maintenance was going to look like for me individually. Absolutely follow the rules until you can fly on your own.

Start shirt size : 4x Start pant size: 48 Current shirt size: medium Current pant size: 32

I think 2 pieces is a serving size.

Those energy balls sound good and not too hard to prepare. They sound like the chocolate paradise energy squares I like from nuts.com, but the costs of making your energy balls is probably much less. I have not had any of the squares for a while, but the principle holds. Ditto on that preworkout oatmeal 2 hours before and the caffeine. The caffeine not only helps a lot with focus and stamina, but does cause fat to be utilized as energy (lots of studies on this). I will do the oatmeal and caffeine song and dance every day before working out. It works for me. I usually try and have a bcaa drink followed by a mix of Protein and carbs immediately following the workout. The bcaa have a faster route to the muscles than protein so drinking bcaa first before the protein is most effective in terms of protein synthesis. This is true also when breaking the fast in the morning. Finally, I want to say that working out hard is not a recipe for weight loss for me. My weight has consistently been higher by 5-10 # since being so active with cross fit (a lot of high intensity cardio and weight lifting). That doesn't bother me. I am more after improving myself as an athlete and about my general body composition then about scale weight.

You do not look like you are dying in your picture. Honestly, you do not. You look healthy.

follow your NUTs advice until it is time for you to make decisions for you based on your own set of goals. For me, that point started during month 5 when I began to get active. if you are active, which I gather you are from your workout description, eating around 2000 works by eat if 7-8 small meals a day of mostly protein. You would need to work up to that caloric goal over time. For me it took me from 700-800 at month 5 to 1100 at month 7 to 1500 at month 9 to 2000 at month 11 to 2200 at month 13. I had to do it in a way that kept my weight the same (at or below goal), but decreased body fat percentage by eating the right types of food at the right time of day. It is still working for me at 18 months out. It is just a suggestion to your question.

It sounds like you may not be eating enough calories to satisfy a good metabolic homeostasis for your body. Try increasing the amount of calories you eat such that there is not such a large deficit in net calories on a rolling week by week basis. Generally you want to eat a little under TDEE for your BMR. Since you are in the gym 5 days a week doing cardio for an hour and lifting on 3 of those days, your body is probably hanging onto all the calories it can get as it needs a certain number of calories to just function day to day. Everyone is different and it will take some experimentation for you to find a good balance of calories consumed versus calories expended that satisfies your body's requirements.

Good luck! You are going to do great.

If you like cake batter flavor (I love it), you might also want to try muscle milk cake batter lite. It is high Protein, low sugar (1g per scoop) and is enhanced with a lot of Vitamins . http://www.amazon.com/CytoSport-Muscle-Light-Batter-Pound/dp/B002SG7NAO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391056752&sr=8-1&keywords=muscle+milk+cake+batter+light

I think everything on your list came true with the exception of dating more. Happily married for almost 14 years. We are both enjoying the sleeved life together. How many couples can you say get to do that?

Go hawks!! We are having a big party come Sunday with lots of people and lots of food. Sleeve friendly of course (snicker snicker).

I bought a relatively new Eddie Bauer knit top that was labelled as medium on the sale tag at value village. I thought great: nice shirt - it is going to fit well as medium tops fit me well. And I like Eddie Bauer clothing for weekend wear when I can find it. When I got home, my wife told me it was really a size small based on the inside tag . I put it down, bummed and forgot about it for a few days. I "found" it again a few days later when looking for a warm comfy shirt to wear and put it on, forgetting that this was a small size. It fit nicely. Just right. I get downstairs and my wife reminds me that i was wearing the "small" shirt from value village. I thought, wow - since when does small fit me. It felt just like a medium in the other tops I wear. Eddie Bauer must run their cuts larger. Regardless, it is kind of neat I fit into a small top comfortably, even with my athlete upper body shape. Perfect fit.

great idea! I went to check if either my ON casein or ON Hydrobuilder has HMB in it. Unfortunately, answer is no (as far as I can tell unless it is renamed as something I do not recognize. Both do have luecine which, again, is a precursor to the HMB. I am not sure if luecine is going to produce the same results as HMB according to research done so far. Wish I knew the answer to that because I do load up from leucine daily in between xtend and the ON products mentioned above.

The episodes are not on demand for direct tv, but it does look like they repeat the episodes often. I set up to record the series for when penny's story comes around again. I've only watch an episode about Melissa.

How has HMB been working out so far? And ZMA? As an aside, have you watched buff dudes on you tube? These videos are really helpful and I can only imagine how the sups would make it even better. I do not do these isolation exercises that so many gym guys are into, but man, I respect what they can accomplish both aesthetically and functionally. I love the episode about the 5 exercises to improve the performance of the back. Very practical for me in order to understand which muscles I need to strengthen to get more power out of cross fit.

Bring the snow and cold back to PNW! I was pretty cold all the time between month 5-10 and stayed warm by wearing thick gloves everywhere (even in the grocery store), by running a space heater in my home office and by burying myself under blankets. I hardly get cold anymore after 10 months (now 18 months). In fact, my body has figured out how to even stay warm in sub freezing temperatures, especially after working out. I like that my body knows how to regulate temperature again.