Body Workout: How I lost 50#

I'm going to start with my SRT rainy day dumbbell workout.

Get 2x 20# dumbbells. No bench needed tho for later if you get one it will help.
Get a jumprope. A heavier leather one would be a better workout but for begginning on a rainy day any ropeyou can successfully jump with is better than nothing.
Get the best jogging shoes you can afford.
Get workout trunks. Mine are basketball shorts. Whatever works.
Get a few T-shirts. I have plain vanilla white t-shirts.

Get in the car and measure off a 1 mile drive away from your house. Obviously a neighborhood street with less traffic is preferred. Later you can find 1.5 & 2 mile routes. This is one way... so 1 mile out + 1 mile back.


Now on a not rainy day, I started this routine. Every morning before I ate I had a cup of coffee and went for a walk. I walked to the end of the neighborhood street. 1 mile. Crap, now I have to walk back. No shortcut. This is why I say find a one mile route Away from your house. Now you Have to do 2 miles just to get home.

On rainy days we do the jumprope instead of the walk. Just do as much as you can. I know its a much harder exercise than walking so I'm not even gonna put a number on it. This is just a stopgap warmup for rainy days.

Then do the following dumbbells routine right away, still warm from walking. If you jump rope, spend exactly one minute catching your breath and drinking water to recover.... then...

I start standing up straight, feet a little more than shoulder width. Take one dumbbell and cup the weight in both palms over the end weights. It should be across your hips or thighs, bar left to right. One hand with weight ball in front of each hip.

Squat down with your back straight. I do deep squats and touch the weight to the floor between your toes of feet.. Don't lean your shoulders forward and bend at the waist. The point of squat is to sit your butt down, not bend at waist.

+So squat, then stand back up. Slower down and up with heavier weights is better for muscle building than fast. Faster movement with lighter weights is better for cardio or aerobic fatburning vs slow.
+Curl your biceps slowly until weight/hands hit your chest. Keep elbows against your ribs.
+military press. Overhead, push that weight straight up over your head to full arms reach.
+Reverse curl the weight behind your head until it hits the back shoulders. Use control so you DO NOT hit your neck with the bar of the dumbbells.
+Now slowly curl up overhead again.
+Lower arms slowly, elbows Down to ribs(weight stays up above elbows)
Curl weight slowly rotating from chest down to hips.

You've returned to start position with arms straigt, weight across your hips or thighs.

That was one Rep.

Now, do this for 100 reps or 5 minutes, whichever comes first.

Anyway, that's what I do.

To lose Weight and stay healthy for life, 20-30 Mins of walking daily is a baseline minimum.

What I did on a regular basis during my -50# loss was a big math equation. I ate 1500-1800 calories per day while burning 3000.

I put on 10+# muscles this year as I lost 50+ net pounds of weight... so I gained muscles while losing fat. I did starvation for 3 months to drop 40#, while doing daily cardio, meaning jogging up to 3 miles on treadmill.

Thinking back, I often went first thing in the morning with my buddy. We'd be so hungry because all we'd have before hitting the gym in the mornings was a protien shake. The body is forced to burn fat reserves. The protien hitting the bloodstream prevented the body from breaking down muscle protien for fuel. Seemed to work, I did lose a lot of weight quickly.


First get your goal firmly in mind.
I determined to lose 50# of fat. I was 301 Sept 1. I made 260 about nov and 250 in Jan. I was willing to do whatever it took to get there. Determination and perseverence. We weighed in daily and I knew if I had cheated and saw it on the scale. Almost every day it was a new lower number, unless I'd eaten too close before the workout.

Visualize your success. I planned to go get skinny jeans St my new lower weight, and send a picture to my wife. I did that, tho I started seeing her/ dating her by then.

I also planned to have my buddy take my pic on the scale showing the number 251 and flex posing my. Arms... never did that yet... saving it for 231 pounds now... new goal.

Be accountable to your workout buddy. This is a major secret of why trainers work. The accountability to remain consistant.

I was going for low caloric intake yet nutritious in the food, and cheap. I knew it was a starvation plan. I had "fast days" on top of this where Id only have 2 meals all day. I knew it was not sustainable... it got so hard in month 3.

Progresso vegetable soup has 160 calories. I got them for $1 at Dollar Tree. 2/day were the bulk of my meals.
Breakfast of maltomeal scooters cereal with soy milk.
Carrots and celery all you want as snacks and fillers.
12+ glasses of water per day.
Protien drink going in and out of workouts.

Daily exercise, jogging 2-2.5 miles usually at a pace I could make the distance. Change speeds from faster to slower and back.

Then do pretty much anything with weights for half an hour or more.

Eventually I found the stronglifts 5x5 program and started working my way up the +5# daily thing...

We did "Day off doubles" too. On a day off from work we'd hit the gym twice.





I pre-fuel for my weights workout completely differently. See posts below for those differences.


I warmup for heavy weightlifting days with 15 Mins on treadmill, then stretch legs and arms & back... after lifting I warmdown with 25-30 Mins on treadmill then stretch hot. This is critical to keep from getting tight and cramping. Pre-workout stretch prevents injuries, Hot stretch increases your flexibility and squeezes the bad metabolic chems like lactic acid back out which have built up in your muscles.

I've now switched the last 3 months to building my upper body especially and gained biceps, trics, shoulders, pecs, lats all bigger. I pre-fuel for my workout with an omlets with bell peps and onions and added Turkey luncHydromaxeat or a couple diced hotdogs... 6 eggs, eat half b4, 1/2 after workout. Also protien shake b4 and another after.

Either stronglifts 5x5 or bodyweight basics.

Start with 10 repsx3 sets of 2 exercises quickly switched. Of :

pushups supersetted with planking.
Pullup assist supersetted with dip assist on same machine.
dumbbells benchpress supersetted with flys.
Shoulders are straight arm dumbell side lifts supersetted with shrugs.
Dumbell Curls supersetted with dumbell reverse triceps curls.


Bicep Curls I got a great tip on. To focus on popping that peak of the bicep up like a point, you rotate your wrists outwards. Waggle the dumbbells out, so your pinky on the inside is slightly higher than the rest of the fingers. Maybe 5° rotation from horizontal. You will really feel it right in that peak spot of your biceps.

Then work your triceps to help stealth pop that bicep measurement too. Dips are the best tric exercise.

I'm really feeling all my upper body grow since I started doing the bodyweight routine. Its filling in all those gaps between the major muscles which doing spot focus weights or machines hit. Also I'm told that machines fail vs freeweights because they control the weight for you. You are really cheating for the vanity of a bigger number. But in the real world, you have to control whatever heavy object you lift. So freeweights fill you out with all those support muscles that help balance that bar. I feel a massive difference.


I warmup with 15 Mins on treadmill, then stretch legs and arms & back... after lifting I warmdown with 25-30 Mins on treadmill then stretch hot. This is critical to keep from getting tight and cramping. Pre-workout stretch prevents injuries, Hot stretch increases your flexibility and squeezes the bad metabolic chems like lactic acid back out built up in your muscles.

Anyway, that's what I do.

To lose weight and stay healthy for life, 20-30 Mins of walking daily is a baseline minimum.

well done on the weight gain and it looks like a solid routine for someone wanting to lose weight.

jut out of interest, apart from from meal timing, what was your approach to nutrition?

Swoops, looks like my edit of the middle one was lost... you know, the workout and diet part... doh.

Thanks Jordey. Ill fix that soon.

First get your goal firmly in mind.
I determined to lose 50# of fat. I was 301 Sept 1. I made 260 about nov and 250 in Jan. I was willing to do whatever it took to get there. Determination and perseverence. We weighed in daily and I knew if I had cheated and saw it on the scale. Almost every day it was a new lower number, unless I'd eaten too close before the workout.

Visualize your success. I planned to go get skinny jeans St my new lower weight, and send a picture to my wife. I did that, tho I started seeing her/ dating her by then.

I also planned to have my buddy take my pic on the scale showing the number 251 and flex posing my. Arms... never did that yet... saving it for 231 pounds now... new goal.

I was going for low caloric intake yet nutritious in the food, and cheap. I knew it was a starvation plan. I had "fast days" on top of this where Id only have 2 meals all day. I knew it was not sustainable... it got so hard in month 3.

Progresso vegetable soup has 160 calories. I got them for $1 at Dollar Tree. 2/day were the bulk of my meals.
Breakfast of maltomeal scooters cereal with soy milk.
Carrots and celery all you want as snacks and fillers.
12+ glasses of water per day.
Protien drink going in and out of workouts.

Daily exercise, jogging 2-2.5 miles usually at a pace I could make the distance. Change speeds from faster to slower and back.

Then do pretty much anything with weights for half an hour or more.

Eventually I found the stronglifts 5x5 program and started working my way up the +5# daily thing...

We did "Day off doubles" too. On a day off from work we'd hit the gym twice.

That's very nice and thanks a lot for sharing. Very helpful for me.
What supplement you are taking to build muscles?Any good protein powder?

You are becoming my star Brother! You may want to become one of the 12 invited into the Ministry!

tizalee;565890 said:

That's very nice and thanks a lot for sharing. Very helpful for me.
What supplement you are taking to build muscles?Any good protein powder?

Click to expand...

no supplement (apart from AAS) builds muscle alone. caloric surplus and adequate protein consumption build muscle coupled with intense resistant training. so the priority is to eat a surplus of calories with a fair amount of protein, aswell as training hard in the gym. if you then want to look in to supplements, whey protein is good to cook with or if you find it hard to get enough protein into your diet through whole foods. creatine monohydrate could also be helpful and is pretty cheap. omega 3 for general health is good too if you have low omega 3 in your diet and/ or high omega 6

and @ loveherdeeply, any news on current progress? and current/ future goals?

I have dropped some weight too but I think it was stress weight loss/: