Re: Best things for weight loss?


"Tom Anderson" <twic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.64.0711271445170.9368@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, Matt wrote:

On a mission here, wondering if you could recommend anything in terms of
supplements for fat loss. I'm not looking for a magic pill or anything
illegal,

Damn, and i was boiling over with ideas there.

just something to assist me in my venture. I've lost almost 30 lbs in the
last 3.5 months and just looking for something to burn off that last 10
pounds.

Ah, the last 10 pounds are always the toughest.

One of the amazing things is that I am getting stronger too, which is
very cool. The improved strength could be a result of better food, more
stamina to lift, or maybe just I'm busting my ass - who knows.

I would tend to favour the ass-busting explanation.

I'm currently 6'4 about 228 lbs and I'm on a reduced cal diet, consuming
about 2000-2500/2700 cals a day I would estimate. I don't count cals, but
these are my ballpark estimates. I consume lots of chicken, egg whites,
veggies, whole grains in the form of bagels/toast (Early in the morning),
cottage cheese, turkey, and berries. I don't drink any soda or juice,
just water and coffee (No sugar, splash of skim milk).

God, you're a walking USDA food pyramid.

My work out is currently weights 3-4x a week, and all the favorites of
this group - flat bench,

Actually, we prefer incline bench now.

squat, and compound movements. I break it down so I'm hitting
chest/shoulder/tri in 1 day, back/bi a 2nd, and legs a 3rd. Since I'm
trying to lose, I go for 3-4 sets (Warm up too), 8-12 reps per set, with
an occasional superset. My key is I am very big on the intensity, I
really am trying to move the weight hard in there and make things happen.

You are indeed pretty much doing everything anyone here would recommend.

In terms of cardio, I'll do stair master / treadmill 3-4x a week, and for
about 20 minutes a pop.

That could be increased, i guess. Cardio exercise is a surprisingly slow
way to burn calories; you need to be putting away a bit more than 60 - 80
minutes a week to get much done that way. We've had a lot of arguments
about this recently, so maybe someone'll leap in here and tell you i'm
wrong (or was that just the rec.running or whatever guys?).

Anyway, it all comes down to the First Law of Thermodynamics: to get rid
of fat, you need to have more energy going out than coming in. You can do
this by increasing output, or decreasing input.

To decrease output, the obvious thing is to do yet more exercise;
specifically, loads more cardio. I wouldn't do this myself, as i hate it,
and the return on the effort is so small, but it suits some people.

The other, cheaty, option is to pop some thermogens; drugs which increase
your body's heat output, thus burning off calories without you having to
do anything except take off your jumper. The most basic one is caffeine,
and the classic strategy is to combine it with ephedrine and aspirin
(although key thinkers say the aspirin isn't necessary) in the good old
ECA stack:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECA_stack

There are other thermogens, but they tend to be rather more hardcore (ie
dumb). Rather than turning up the dial on your body's own thermogenesis
mechanisms, they (or at least some) work by creating a new mechanism, by
somehow creating a chemical route that lets cellular energy be dissipated
uselessly, making heat - what we biochemists call 'uncouplers' and most
people call 'poisons'. The most popular one, historically, is
2,4-dinitrophenol, aka DNP; look it up if you're interested, but basically
it short-circuits the electron transport chain in your mitochondria, which
much like short-circuiting the electrical mains in your house, uses up a
lot of energy and makes a lot of heat, but is not necessarily a wise thing
to do on a large scale for a long time. Here are a couple of vaguely
relevant articles:

http://www.wannabebig.com/article.php?articleid=87&pageid=4
http://www.mesomorphosis.com/steroid-profiles/dnp.htm

Anyway, the upshot is that an uncoupler can help, but the more you use,
and the faster you burn energy, the more you risk fucking yourself up. A
10% increase in basal metabolic rate is likely to be safe, but won't burn
much more energy; a 100% increase will, but will literally boil your skin
off your body.

The flip side to increasing output is to decrease input, and there's only
one way to do that: eat less. Take 500 calories a day off your current
budget while maintaining activity levels, and you'll lose weight.
Specifically, you might like to look into a protein-rich engineered diet
like the protein sparing modified fast, which is specifically designed to
get rid of fat fast while maintaining muscle mass, and thus is rather
popular for the last ten pounds, AIUI.

PSMF, getting to love the rowing machine and a modest pharmacological
intervention should see you right. Oh, and if you have central heating in
your house, turn it off - no sense burning calories from gas when you
could be burning them from fat!

tom

--
Pizza: cheap, easy, and portable. Oh, wait, that's me. Never mind. -- edda


Tom,
I hope that you are being tongue and cheek when you bring up DNP. This guy
seems to be headed in the right direction, so I really don't see how
suggesting bug poison to lose a few Lbs is going to do anything positive. I
much rather this guy take 200 mg of Anadrol/day than DNP.




--
Robert Schuh
"Everything that elevates an individual above the herd and
intimidates the neighbour is henceforth called evil; and
the fair, modest, submissive and conforming mentality,
the mediocrity of desires attains moral designations and honors"
- Nietzsche

http://www.hardbopdrums.com/


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