Will this workout plan, if you can consider it that, work for me?

I tried posting this question on Yahoo Answers and I got one answer that wasn't the most informative, although I do appreciate it. I know maybe this is an incredibly long question, but with the other topics I've posted on Giant Bomb and the large amount of informative replies I get from you guys, I figured I might as well try my luck out here. I hope I wasn't wrong in doing so, but I figured pretty much any topic can be considered fair game in the Off-Topic section.

I am doing something called the Deck of Cards workout. It's when you take a deck of cards and assign each suit with a workout and whatever number and suit you get, that's what you do and how much you do. For example, let's say I made Diamonds push ups. If I draw a 5 of Diamonds, I'd do 5 push ups. Right now I only do about 20-30 cards a day, I separate the deck into smaller piles of 5 and do the exercises with 1 minutes rests in between. This is how I've assigned the suits:

Hearts: Star Jumps

Spades: Burpees

Diamonds-Mountain climbers

Clubs: Bicycle Crunches

I started it a week ago, although I've only done it 3 times, and I'm going to increase the number of cards I do. It takes me about 15-20 minutes each time. I also have been eating a lot less than I usually do and I try to drink more water. Is that going to help me lose fat? Is there anything I should replace on that list of workouts? Should I be doing way more? Should I take shorter breaks? Are there any Pre and post workout stretches I should be doing? You don't have to answer it all, but any information you can give me would be helpful.

Also, I'm going to be taking Personal Fitness for my gym this year where we get to use the workout equipment in our school gym. We probably will be using it for about 30-35 minutes a day. Anything workout routines for workout equipment in there?

Thank you to all who answer and, if this type of question is asked a lot, please feel free to delete my topic if you are a moderator or just tell me and I'll delete it, if I'm able to.

For diet, eating less is a good start, but you need to focus on what you're eating. Start by cutting out processed foods. They're loaded with things that are bad for your body. Cut down on pop, candy, chips, and other stuff like that. You know what's good for you and what's bad.

Since you're trying to lose weight, I recommend that you limit carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are converted to sugar in your body. They'll raise your blood sugar. To lower your blood sugar, your body releases fat-storing insulin, which will make you fatter. Don't get me wrong; you still need some carbohydrates. You just shouldn't eat more than 100g of carbohydrates per day when you want to lose weight.

Also, try to eat more fiber and protein. These will keep you feeling fuller longer.

Fiber is good. If I'm not mistaken, it helps prevent carbs from becoming fat. Raising your metabolism is key when trying to lose weight. Cardio and aerobics will help with that. Just walking for a half hour erryday is a great start. Making sure you do something most days for the first six weeks will help build the habit. Whatever format your workout takes, P4 ER episodes, deck of cards workout, whatevs, just stick to it. The more you keep your head in it, the more it will make sense. Trust me, one day you'll wake up and it will click and it'll be like brushing your teeth.

If your serious about getting in shape the easiest thing would just get a gym membership.

I wake up and go to the gym to do about 40 minutes of cardio on an empty stomach. Then around 9pm i go back to the gym and lift weights followed by another 20 minutes of cardio. Throughout the day i eat about 6-7 meals not including my post workout protein shake.

The diet is the most important part of working out, if you want to lose fat or gain muscle and your not eating right, no amount of time in the gym will help you achieve your goals. You say you eat a lot less now, but it's not about eating less it's about eating right.

It doesn't really matter what you're workout plan is if you are trying to lose weight. It is all about diet and doing something physical everyday. Just an hour long run with a good low fat diet and the pounds will fall off. If you can get a swim in then go for it. Swimming is the best.

I know nothing about exercise other than running, and that's pretty hard to build up to if you never have. 
 
I watched a documentary and did some reading last week about Intermittent Fasting. I don't know that much about it but I'll do my best to explain, there is essentially a diet plan where one day you don't eat or eat just one meal, then the next two days you eat normally and repeat. The second and third days you won't eat an extra 2 or 3 meals worth because you won't be that hungry. It helps you lose weight and has extended the lives of mice by 15-20%. Instead of your body producing new cells it repairs the current ones. It also reduces blood sugar, cholesterol and other things. Seriously considering making this my normal diet. It's kind of tough to go a day with only one meal but it looks like there are some impressive benefits. I recommend, if you are interested, to do some more reading, I know I need to. Here's the wikipedia page. I'm sure some of the references linked on that page are far more detailed.

sound wildly arbitrary

ok eating less is a SHIT idea. you want something that is sustainable, just eat the right foods. eat when you are hungry.

you want to in general stay away from sugar and carbs. eat whole foods when you can, food that is less processed.

with exercise you want to build muscle, muscle means your body is spending more calories as you go about your daily life.

more calories spent, thinner you will be.

no more junk food, just make a plan to stay away from anything with HFCS high fructose corn sugar. usually a sign that the food maker doesn't give a fuck.

cards i am unsure about, just work out at least an hour, 3 x a week. go to failure, alternate body parts. legs one day, arms the next. sure someone at gym can fill in the details. 10-20 minutes doesn't sound very long. too short.

if the cards get you familiar with the gym and comfortable there thats great, but you'll need to advance at some point.

Diet. Diet. Diet.

No more soda, breads, sweets, etc.

All you need to be drinking is water. That is it.

Also, try to extend your workout time to 45 minutes- 1 hour. 35 minutes is not enough.

I would also lose that workout plan. It sounds too random and might be counter productive if all you're doing is jumping jacks for 3 days straight.

I would divide your week into high intensity cardio and strength training. 5 days of cardio and the other two days of strength training.

Things you might also want to factor into your life.

• Sleep. Get as much of it as you can. Lack of sleep can attribute to weight gain.
• Try to relieve your stress.
• Limit your food intake
• Stay consistent with your goal! Don't workout and diet for two weeks and then take a week off. Stay with it. This is your life now, accept it.
• After a while your body will hit a plateau. This is when your body adapts to your workout and your progress will eventually slow down and stop. When this happens (you'll be able to tell when) Limit your workout. Try not to push yourself too much during this time. Also eat more calories and mix up your workout with something new and challenging.

You've got to pick one - lose weight or shape up. Typically, you'd want to build up your muscle mass first, so lift medium weight until failure for three to five sets. The more muscle you put on, the higher your basal metabolic rate, and the quicker you burn spare calories. Your legs put on muscle quickly, so don't shy away from squats. After a month of only strength training, you should transition into cardio and resistance. Pushups and pullups are your friends, and start doing diamond pushups as well. Resistance training will help you maintain (but not really grow ) your muscles, and cardio will help your new metabolic rate burn more fat.

When you can do thirty diamond pushups (properly) you're in good shape. Seriously, those things are fuckers.

Health and fitness is a fucking weird subject. You'll see so much advice contradicting each other and a load of misinformation. I'm not trying to say anyone in this thread has so far, it's just been my experience on the internet.

Anyway what are you actually aiming for? Just losing weight, strength, cardio, to look good? Because how you approach it will be different depending on what you want.

If you're looking to improve cardio find something you actually enjoy doing and want to progressively get better at. If you don't enjoy the workout you do, it's going to be fucking hard to sustain. The deck of cards thing will work for sure, as long as like with any exercise, you keep it up regularly. Personally I like jogging and go every other day. Mixing the routine is really helpful for keeping motivation as well. Doing the same 4 mile and 6 mile jogs can be fucking boring. So sometimes I get the bus somewhere and jog back, or just go a completely different route.

For diet, it is really fucking important, and you'll need to get some better advice than I can give. But the best thing I can offer as help is to never under eat. I would recommend around 2500 calories on workout days and 2000 on days off. But a lot of this changes depending on your weight and other factors.

@stinky said:

ok eating less is a SHIT idea.

He's trying to lose weight. That's the exact thing you're supposed to do to lose weight.

@sissylion said:

@stinky said:

ok eating less is a SHIT idea.

He's trying to lose weight. That's the exact thing you're supposed to do to lose weight.

Well not really, under eating is pretty fucking unhealthy and nice one quoting him out of context.

@sissylion said:

@stinky said:

ok eating less is a SHIT idea.

He's trying to lose weight. That's the exact thing you're supposed to do to lose weight.

Sure, if you want it all back in a month.

@sissylion said:

@stinky said:

ok eating less is a SHIT idea.

He's trying to lose weight. That's the exact thing you're supposed to do to lose weight.

We don't know how much he eats, so eating less could very well be valid. Also, I fucking laughed out loud sissylion.

@haffy: @MikkaQ: Who said anything about undereating? If he's started a workout regiment and still feels compelled to eat less, he's most likely overeating to begin with. You speak as if he's trying to become some Olympian and not just lose some weight.

@sissylion said:

@haffy: @MikkaQ: Who said anything about undereating? If he's started a workout regiment and still feels compelled to eat less, he's most likely overeating to begin with. You speak as if he's trying to become some Olympian and not just lose some weight.

No I'm speaking as someone who is in the middle of a weight loss regimen. The one that most people are in, going from overweight to normal weight. Not trying to put on muscle or anything, not trying to lose 100 pounds either.

Eating less is not how you lose weight. Eating better is how you lose weight. You can eat the biggest salad you've had (if it's a good salad and has no croutons or cream-dressing) and you're still going to lose more weight that way than eating a tiny portion of frozen pizza or something.

It's also all about how you use that food energy. Just dieting isn't going to help if you're not creating a real calorie deficit. You gotta move to lose weight.

Intermittent Fasting is the way to go. Shit will change your life, man.

We really don't eat a whole lot at our house except for junk food so I've been cutting down how much I eat of that. I haven't really been eating better foods because someone told me that as long as you work off the calories you got from eating and just don't eat until you are really full (which is what I was doing) you can lose weight. I guess I do need to start eating better foods though.

Sorry everyone, I should have explained that better

@ThatIndianGuy7116 said:

We really don't eat a whole lot at our house except for junk food so I've been cutting down how much I eat of that. I haven't really been eating better foods because someone told me that as long as you work off the calories you got from eating and just don't eat until you are really full (which is what I was doing) you can lose weight. I guess I do need to start eating better foods though.

Sorry everyone, I should have explained that better

Yeah of course you can lose weight by eating bad food, it's just a lot harder. The whole point of having a good diet is to let your body recover efficiently quickly and the diet to be sustainable. If I eat pasta, it's usually around 500 calories and it's easy for me to have enough energy for any sort of activity. On the other hand I could eat a portion of large chips from McDonald's which is also 500 calories. But if I do that I'm going to have a lot less energy and feel hungry pretty shortly after. I really doubt I could be bothered to exercise if I ate junk food all the time, it's just much harder to keep up.

@ThatIndianGuy7116 said:

We really don't eat a whole lot at our house except for junk food so I've been cutting down how much I eat of that. I haven't really been eating better foods because someone told me that as long as you work off the calories you got from eating and just don't eat until you are really full (which is what I was doing) you can lose weight. I guess I do need to start eating better foods though.

Sorry everyone, I should have explained that better

Yeah that's partially true, but it's something you will regret down the line because it will be harder and harder to keep your weight down if you eat junk food. Especially since if you undereat, but only eat fatty foods, your body will store that fat as much as possible, which means you'd actually be gaining weight. So you'd go two steps forward one step back, and that's not very encouraging when you wanna lose the pounds.

@DetectiveSpecial said:

You've got to pick one - lose weight or shape up. Typically, you'd want to build up your muscle mass first, so lift medium weight until failure for three to five sets. The more muscle you put on, the higher your basal metabolic rate, and the quicker you burn spare calories. Your legs put on muscle quickly, so don't shy away from squats. After a month of only strength training, you should transition into cardio and resistance. Pushups and pullups are your friends, and start doing diamond pushups as well. Resistance training will help you maintain (but not really grow ) your muscles, and cardio will help your new metabolic rate burn more fat.

When you can do thirty diamond pushups (properly) you're in good shape. Seriously, those things are fuckers.

You don't have to pick just one. Lifting weights will help you both gain muscle and lose fat. You even said it yourself; "The more muscle you put on, the higher your basal metabolic rate, and the quicker you burn spare calories."

i suggest you look at http://www.bodybuilding.com/ it's a pretty cool website. it has this search result where you want to work on a muscle and what kind of equipment that you want. there are videos of workouts. i'm sure it has diet plans also.

/fit/ on 4chan, the sticky has everything you possibly need to know about getting in shape.

I wouldn't leave my workout to luck with a deck of cards...

I lost 80 pounds a few years ago by eating less, stopped drinking soda completely, and worked out. Running is one of the easiest ways to lose weight. Run long but maybe a little slower distance a few times a week, occasionally shorter faster runs and you should lose weight. Start with a mile then ramp up the milage. If you want to know more about what I did, send me a message.

Check out Scoobies workshopfor some advice, especially if you are a beginner. This guy knows what he is talking about and isn't trying to sell you anything at all. He is just giving out advice that he has learned over the years. No fads, no spending lots of money, no bullshit.

@sissylion said:

@haffy: @MikkaQ: Who said anything about undereating? If he's started a workout regiment and still feels compelled to eat less, he's most likely overeating to begin with. You speak as if he's trying to become some Olympian and not just lose some weight.

Compelled to eat less? If he's working out and barely eating anything, he's not working out right, because if he's eating the proper protein and carbs to sustain energy, then he'll be eating more since he's burning through his food intake. Nice misdirected post.

Hey guys? Fitness isn't fucking rocket science. Do cardio and weight training. Do more of one than the other if you wish to drop fat or build muscle, eat proteins in the morning, and stick to meats, veggies and fruit. PROBLEM SOLVED.

ITT: Nerds on the internet attempting to give fitness advice.

this shit is really fucking simple. Eat less calories than you burn, you lose weight. Eat more than you burn, you gain weight. EVERYTHING ELSE IS BULLSHIT. also wtf is a burpee

A lot of people are saying "run for an hour". That's kinda shitty advice. I'm a competition runner and running for an hour straight isn't as easy as it sounds, especially of you aren't a serious runner. I think a lot of you guys are delusional or need to tell him that walking is okay, too. Do some interval training. Build your cardio stamina up little by little so you don't burn out and give up. Just my two cents

@ThatIndianGuy7116 said:

We really don't eat a whole lot at our house except for junk food so I've been cutting down how much I eat of that. I haven't really been eating better foods because someone told me that as long as you work off the calories you got from eating and just don't eat until you are really full (which is what I was doing) you can lose weight. I guess I do need to start eating better foods though.

Sorry everyone, I should have explained that better

That CAN work, but if you're eating crap, it's still converting to crap, unfortunately. Trust me: 600 calories of Taco Bell and 600 calories of steak, potatoes and salad will NOT be worked off in equal measure and will NOT fuel in equal measure. It's also important to not cut out carbs entirely, but cut BACK on them. It is SHOCKING how many calories are in carbs (2 pieces of multigrain bread are, I shit you not, 250-300 calories), BUT they're still one of the basic building blocks of your metabolism, so cutting them out entirely is MONUMENTALLY unhealthy. A basic workout regiment is a GREAT way to start, though, so you're on the right track.

If you want a good workout and diet regimen I recommend P90x(it may be bit expensive).