Hi all,
I recently found out that as a part of my job I get access to a small gym in the building. I think it has your basic cardio equipment and some other stuff for building muscle (but small enough I don’t think there is equipment to do stuff like dead-lifts or whatever in there).
I don’t know anything about working out really, but I could stand to lose some fat, which draws my attention to the treadmill that they have. I am not so concerned about building muscle and everything that involves.
I have mostly neglected going to gyms for 3 reasons.
- They are usually out of my way
- I don’t usually have the time
- I don’t want to spend what they charge
All three of these are now non-factors now that I have found out I have access to this one.
I would be using it twice a week as that is how often I am actually at the location.
So my question is, since it’s not really something I have ever looked at - if I want to lose a bunch of fat, what do I do? I can try to diet first off, and I am glad to take suggestions on what worked for other people in that regard, but more so I just don’t know how long or how fast I should run, what equipment is good for this otherwise, or really anything about using a gym.
Please note that the facility is self-serve and has no staff - they just have cleaners come in each day to clean it, the rest is up to you. I do not have the money to spend on something like a personal trainer, and the location doesn’t offer such things as well given its self-serve nature.
Thank you.
Lots of people already mentioned that you lose the weight in the kitchen, not the gym, but I still don’t see many or any recommendations for counting calories. Truth is most people have no idea how many calories are in the stuff they consume and when I decided to lose weight using a calorie counting app was the number one thing that helped me out. After a while you learn and don’t need to keep logging anymore but at first it was invaluable in my journey losing 35kg.
The easiest way to keep calories down is to meal plan with healthy ingredients. My usual routine that could be broken once in a while when I felt like it or went out was:
Breakfast: one bowl of Cheerios/corn flakes or unsweetened oatmeal.
Lunch: a large salad with whatever you want just not too much dressing (hint: using Tupperware to toss the salad lowers the amount of dressing you need) or tofu and broccoli sauteed in teriyaki sauce
Snack: whatever you want just don’t go overboard with it
Dinner: a protein bar or protein shake
Combine that with 30 minutes cardio and another 30 of weight training five days a week.
I personally lost around 10 pounds a month. It takes a lot of dedication to keep it up though but you can see results in about two months to keep you motivated. Frankly this only worked because I was an onsite employee the whole time, working remote gives way more temptation to eat.
i’ve never understood how to do calorie counting. like you could never eat at a restaurant. you’d have to weigh everything unless you only eat pacxaged meals. it seems like a massive change to your life.
It’s definitely a massive effort but yeah, it works, lost 35kg doing that.
You get pretty good about estimating, you learn by weighing stuff at home then you can just guesstimate, it doesn’t need to be absolutely perfect to work. But to be honest if you’re serious about your diet then restaurants are always gonna be a cheat, the reason the stuff tastes good at the restaurant is because they charge it with the good(bad) stuff.