Reddit reviews Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Transform Your Body Forever Using the Secrets of the Leanest People in the World

I take this stuff called a calorie deficit. It's one weird trick doctors hate!

Smart ass aside suplements are just that, to supplement whole food and sun exposure (vit D). There's no magic combination that is "good" at leaning you out. They might help some (placebo or otherwise), but most are ineffective and overhyped by ridiculous marketing. If you're considering a supplement check examine.com for research around it. Most of the time you'll find they give a dose or reality that it's not that great.

To help a little more...by lean out I'm assuming you mean to lose fat while maintaining muscle mass (very very difficult to do both simultaneously). The recipe for that is:

1. eat .8-1 grams protein per pound bw (so 180lb person needs to eat 144-180 grams of protein per day)
   
2. perform resistance training (such as the beginner bw routine in the sidebar)
   
3. be in a calorie deficit
   
   Those are the must haves. Everything else is just to aid those goals and comes down to personal preference. If you really want to learn about nutrition and how it interacts with (and controls) your training/physique you should buy Burn The Fat Feed The Muslce by Tom Venuto. I can't recommend it enough to people first cracking into nutrition. Easy to follow and more importantly its not overhyped bullshit like 99% of the fitness world is.

The best advice i will give you is to go to book store, or online and buy a bodybuilding book. I recommend burn the fat, feed the muscle by tom venuto. dont be intimidated by the word "bodybuilding". Also check out the exercise cure. Since you have medical problems that book will help you also. Both are amazing reads and the two most helpful books i read. Anyway, Bodybuilding doesnt mean becoming a massive machine, its a lifestyle that involves taking care of your body. The discipline that you get from body building will let you look how you want to look, and will help you maintain that look for a long time. But if you want to skip the reading ill give you some tips and pointers that will help you.

1: mental preperation

Almost everyone i know who starts a diet ends up either falling off of it, or gaining weight after they reach their goal. Ive personally done it before also. The reason this happens is because people are ignorant to how dieting works, and how their bodys work. In order to lose fat you need to fight off bad habits and cravings, and replace them with healthy habits. It takes about a month to break bad habits and create new ones, so the first month is going to be really hard. But heres some stuff that will help make it easier for you.

● write down your goals on paper and look at them daily. You should have a short term goal (ex. Lose 10 pounds in 1 month), a 3 month goal (ex. Lose 20 pounds of fat, and be able to run a 5k) and a 1 year goal (ex. run a half marathon). Writing your goals down and reading them will help motivate you and remind you of what you are trying to achive.

● write down daily tasks, but write them as if you already did them. So write down say "i walked today" i did 30 push ups today" "i rode my bike for an hour today." Doing this may sound stupid but it will help you create positive habits, and will rewire your subconcious into doing these tasks. Of you dont write them like that and instead say "i will workout" "i will run later" and so on, you may end up putting off your exercise or procrastinating. This is also great for creating non exercise habits, and breaking bad ones also.

● track your calories! Use my fitness pal, its a free app and its amazing. Track down everything you eat, and visualize exactly what is going into your body. Nutrition is about 80% of the work when it comes to losing weight. The app also will tell you how many calories you can eat to lose whatever weight you want to lose, so its helpful.

2: starting off small

● weight training is key for losing fat. Lifting also wont make you huge, unless you want it to. Start off with a beginner routine with light weights. The weights shouldnt be so heavy that you cant lift them, but also shouldnt be to light that you can do over 12 reps with ease. You want to be able to do between 8-12 reps 3x while feeling it. If you dont want to use weight check out /r/bodyweightfitness for workouts using only your body.

Your body will drop fat fast this way.

3: do cardio

Cardio is very important for your body. It will really help you in the long run. You should do cardio 3x a week, any kind of cardio for an hour. Hiking, walking, bike riding, oliptical machine, steps, etc. Cardio will improve your endurance, help with your asthma and also will make your heart healthy.

4: cut out as much salt and sugar as you can!

That will get rid of fat and bloating and make you thinner. One really easy way to reduce your sugar intake is to only drink water. If you make tea or coffee use splenda. Dont listen to the fear mongerers that say its bad for you. Its really fine and wont do harm to you unless you use like 40 packets of it. Stay away from sodas and juice.

5: eat consistantly, and for the love of god dont skip breakfast!

You can buy a container of egg whites from the store for about 3 dollars. Make a cup of egg whites in the morning and grab a fruit before school and you have a nice breakfast that takes less then 5 minutes to make. Hard boil eggs and grab and go if you need to. Breakfast is super important so dont skip it! Also you can eat as many times a day as you want so long as you stay within your calorie count. I recommend eating 4-5 meals a day to fight off hunger. But you can do it however. Just make sure its consistant, your body isnt meant to yo-yo.

6: sleep!

Lack of sleep leads to poor habits, poor dietary choices and also slows down your body. Get no less then 6 hours of sleep a night, and aim for 8 hours or more.

Hope this helps and i look forward to seeing your progress pictures on here. This is a great community here and i hope you stay on track and reach your dream body! Best of luck :)

I recommend this book:
Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Transform Your Body Forever
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804137846/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_2cW3BbP4B093T

There are four secrets:

• Buy a kitchen scale and eat just the right amounts of protein, carbs, and fat every day, and track how much of each you eat with something like http://www.myfitnesspal.com.
  
• Follow an aesthetics-focused weight lifting program.
  
• Do cardio for at least 30 minutes, 3 times a week, with enough intensity that you can't keep a conversation going easily. HIIT is ideal.
  
• Weigh yourself every day and track your weight with a tool like http://www.trendweight.com. If weight trend isn't progressing the direction you want, adjust the total calories you're eating accordingly.
  
  If you follow all four steps above consistently, you can achieve any look you want. If you don't follow all of them, or you aren't consistent, you will probably improve your looks and health, but you probably won't achieve the magazine-cover look.
  
  I recommend three resources that cover everything you need to know.
  
  

1. There's a ton of free info about all this stuff in the /r/fitness wiki.
   
   
2. I would also recommend Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto. I've spent a lot of money on fitness books and programs over the years, and I think that's probably the best $15 I ever spent. Tom puts together everything you need to know about fat loss, and condenses it down into a very well organized and readable book. I think the only problem with this book is that it's light on training information, and it glosses over a very important topic: proper lifting form.
   
   
3. Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe is basically the bible of proper lifting technique. Once you know correct form, you will be able to follow any lifting program you like.

Not at all. They're for anyone. And if you really want to make it to the goal you're setting for yourself you're going to need to learn the stuff in my book at some point.

For workouts, start with Body Sculpting Bible:
https://www.amazon.com/Body-Sculpting-Bible-Men-Third/dp/1578264006


For mindset, start with my book.

and for learning how to eat, read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Fat-Feed-Muscle-Transform/dp/0804137846

Strength training anatomy for learning how exercises strengthen certain parts, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for basics on training for aesthetics and strength, and Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle for good diet advice.

This is gonna get buried, but 120lbs in 6 months is way the hell TOO MUCH WEIGHT. This is, in effect, a starvation diet and is both extremely bad for you, and your weight will generally slam back on as you drift off of it.

Tom Venuto's book "Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle" will help you get the info you need to isolate your ideal calorie level based on activity level. FWIW, 14-16 is for a moderately active person, 12ish is ideal for a sedentary lifestyle, depending on age.

But anyway, in general a pound of fat is 3500 calories. So, if you cut 3500 calories a week from your maintenance intake, you will lose 1 pound a week. (Maintenance intake being ~14x your weight if you're active at all). So, theoretically, if you drop 7000, you'll lose 2 lbs, etc.

The thing is that you NEVER start eating at your IDEAL maintenance level, unless you've only got 10 or so pounds to lose. It's bad for your body, you'll be very hungry, you'll be lethargic, you'll be an asshole, and your body may well switch itself into starvation mode, where it starts eating muscle to feed itself because it thinks it's dying. You'll likely enter ketosis (which is also a valid diet, visit /r/keto for more info) where you'll drop weight fast but potentially cause issues for yourself. Your bowel movements and urine will be awful, possibly even painful, and you'll generally be uncomfortable all the time. You'll clot less well and have headaches.

So if you weigh 250 and you want to drop weight, you find ~80-90% maintenance level, and eat there. As you approach that weight and find your loss plateauing, you drop again, then rinse/repeat. If you do this while increasing activity level at all, your weight will fall off if you're very large. The closer you get to your target weight, the slower the loss will be, and the more exercise you'll have to do.

I'm glad the OP's brother is doing better, if you try this as a 30 year old you'll fail---or you'll wind up just as big or bigger a year later. 1400 calories a day isn't enough for anyone over about 100lbs.

I’m reading Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle right now and it’d be all you’d ever need.

Buy this book read it, read the chapter in carb cycling and that weight will melt off in 2-3 weeks.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804137846/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_r4Ktxb...