MOJO needs EF's help!!!!

[gotmojo]

I need some seriousely urgent help with this!

I have a great friend (love him like a brother) that I played football with, he always played ball @ approx 330lbs BTW he is 24 yrs old and is 6'1". Although he carried a lot of BF he stayed conditioned (eating / activity) so he could maintain his size to play the position (offensive line).

He dropped from the team at mid-season last year due to time constraints and in the off-season has become part of a band that is now taking up the majority of his time so he will not be playing football anymore. The problem is that during this time period he has become soooo depressed about his weight skyrocketing past 370lbs due to his activity level dropping off so sharply and still eating like he is playing ball. His job is a semi-sedentary one that keeps him in the field driving most of the time with no options for healthy meals. He has been so depressed over this because he feels that it is affecting his health, ability to date, and self esteem especially now that he is going to be visible in a band among other things. He does realize that he needs to do something for himself first and foremost though, so that's good.

Anyway he has gotten so drastic with this that he is threatening to under go gastric by-pass surgery! I am fighting him tooth and nail on this. I am explaining the risks, and also advised that the procedure will end any hopes to play football ever again (I had to use that card)! I have tried to help him with this but he is now completely unmotivated because in the past he always identified his weight with the position he played in football and now that he doesn't play anymore and has gained so much weight he just sees himself as a "fat guy". I talked to him last week and he said he talked to his doctor about this, I think he just said this to get me off his back because he told me his doc put him on an 800 cal per day diet, I know a Dr. would not do this, any Dr. worth his or her salt anyway, and I told him this. I think he put himself on the 800/day to start dropping lbs to prep for the surgery.

Anywho, I made him a deal. I told him to give me 6 months to help him drop some weight and if he wasn't happy with the results or didn't at least agree that it is something that could be done without the procedure then I would pay for him to get it done myself. I love my bro to death and don't want to see him hurt himself (Getting a lil misty typing this.).

Can the members of EF help me out in devising a diet plan for maximum effectiveness. CKD is out for now as he is too undisciplined at this point, I will do CKD with him when he is back in more of a routine with all of this. I have 6 months to keep him from going under the knife and more than likely making a huge mistake. Hell I even bought him a 24 hour access membership to my gym!

The best I can give you on his stats are:

Age = 24
Weight = 370-380
BF = 50% +
Job = 80% driving and 20% spray painting lines on the ground locating underground utilities.
Other activity = playing guitar in a band, that's it.
Diet = before it was all fast food, as far as right now goes I talked to his mom and he is eating clean, but it is only a chicken breast and a cup of veggies at dinner per day, that's it!.

If more info. is needed please let me know.

Thanks in advance,

MOJO

 

[Lifterforlife]

There is a huge problem when you go from high energy expenditure to nothing. You have to adjust your diet to fit your needs. Not to mention the health implications that arise.

I would start him off simple, a CKD or TKD as you mention, especially at where he is is probably unfeasible, and too harsh when used to the caloric intake he is used to.

First off is cutting junk from his diet. This alone will result in a nice calorie decrease, as whole foods are typically less calorie dense, so he will by default decrease calories.

Now, at this point I would suggest a 10% calorie drop. This is very doable, and he should notice no dropoff in in "performance". Continue with this for a couple weeks, until it becomes fairly easy.

Usually a couple to 3 weeks. Then proceed with another one. Keep going along this format, and with the combined energy expenditure from his gym membership, he should see results.

This is optimal, because when he sees results, he will want to continue. It is ironic, I have a friend who was in the exact same position, going to do the same thing. He didn't, followed my advice, and now looks great and is health.

A lot of information to try to put in one post...others I am sure will add. Good luck with your friend. It is hard to watch someone you care for go through this.

 

[gotmojo]

Usually a couple to 3 weeks. Then proceed with another one. Keep going along this format, and with the combined energy expenditure from his gym membership, he should see results.

I guess this is the problem....10% from what? He has cleaned his diet up but is only consuming one meal per day. I have used several calculators and methods to define what his daily caloric intake "should" be with these stats, but they are giving me varying results with differences of 1,000 + calories.

Is there a more accurate way to get the daily caloric intake pinpointed so I could get him off to right start? Seeing as this is the most important part right now.

Oh yeah, the gym part will have to be worked into as well, my gym is 30 min. from his house and he is having major motivational issues right now. I will how ever drive an hour round trip to pull his ass in there if need be.

MOJO

 

[gotmojo]

Also, I almost forgot. Is there a recommended fat burner he could use? I do know that it is best not to use them at this stage in the game, but to wait until a plateau is hit. However, I think this could be a motivational factor for him being that it may help him more mentally than anything for him to think that he is taking something to help his efforts along.

 

[SgtSlaughter]

SeasaPure and Glucurell from AnaFit will work wonders.

 

[gotmojo]

SeasaPure and Glucurell from AnaFit will work wonders.

Great! I will check into these!

 

[Lifterforlife]

I guess this is the problem....10% from what? He has cleaned his diet up but is only consuming one meal per day. I have used several calculators and methods to define what his daily caloric intake "should" be with these stats, but they are giving me varying results with differences of 1,000 + calories.

Is there a more accurate way to get the daily caloric intake pinpointed so I could get him off to right start? Seeing as this is the most important part right now.

Oh yeah, the gym part will have to be worked into as well, my gym is 30 min. from his house and he is having major motivational issues right now. I will how ever drive an hour round trip to pull his ass in there if need be.

MOJO

I am sorry, I must have misunderstood the post. I did not realize he was only eating one meal per day.

This is hardly "cleaning up" his diet. I am quite sure he is suffering metabolic slowdown with just that diet, and is further hindering fat loss. The body is percieving starvation. Cortisol is high, test levels are probably nothing, and again, this exasperates things.

He will need to increase his calories, and on a "steady" basis. Meaning, eating small meals at least 5-6 times per day. Getting metabolism, thyroid back functioning properly.

A slow manner is the way to go. I know the mentality of telling someone to eat more when they are trying to lose is hard, but if you explain to him what is happening and the consequences maybe he will understand.

 

[gotmojo]

I am sorry, I must have misunderstood the post. I did not realize he was only eating one meal per day.

This is hardly "cleaning up" his diet. I am quite sure he is suffering metabolic slowdown with just that diet, and is further hindering fat loss. The body is percieving starvation. Cortisol is high, test levels are probably nothing, and again, this exasperates things.

He will need to increase his calories, and on a "steady" basis. Meaning, eating small meals at least 5-6 times per day. Getting metabolism, thyroid back functioning properly.

A slow manner is the way to go. I know the mentality of telling someone to eat more when they are trying to lose is hard, but if you explain to him what is happening and the consequences maybe he will understand.

I guess I meant "cleaned up" only in the sense that he stopped eating Mcdonald's and Wendy's every day to chicken and veggies (even though it is just for one meal). I do understand the metabolic slow down part, but what would you suggest that his daily intake should ultimately be built up to? I have gotten #'s like 3,500 to 4,800 per day. I mean I don't want him to over feed so much that it negates any results and makes him just crawl back into a hole.

 

[gotmojo]

SeasaPure and Glucurell from AnaFit will work wonders.

Is Glucorell R the same shit that's in T-Rex?

 

[SgtSlaughter]

Is Glucorell R the same shit that's in T-Rex?

Not that I'm aware of.

Gluc-R (R-ALA) slows insulin response to carbs.

Thermorexin' is a fat burner with stimulants in it coffee:, ect.)

 

[gotmojo]

Not that I'm aware of.

Gluc-R (R-ALA) slows insulin response to carbs.

Thermorexin' is a fat burner with stimulants in it coffee:, ect.)

I did a search for it and saw this in a FAQ for T-Rex....

"What kind of diet should I use when on Thermorexin?
ANY. Though a moderate to high carbohydrate diet, in conjunction with Glucorell R supplementation, is HIGHLY recommended. Glucorell R has made low carb and keto diets pretty much obsolete. One of the main benefits of Thermorexin use is the appetite suppression which makes not eating as much, the main failing of most diets, considerably easier."

Maybe not the same as you are speaking of....all though I also found this....

Glucorell R™ contains the most exciting supplement ever allowed into the United States. It's been used in Germany as a glucose uptake enhancer to help prevent and treat diabetes for over 20 years. Now you can use it to help you prevent carbohydrates from making you fat by disposing of them like you did when you were a child. Only doctors doing research were able to buy this supplement. Until now.

Glucose is what your body makes out of the carbohydrates you eat. Then your insulin shuttles that glucose around your body to the cells to use as food. Glucorell R™ makes your muscle cells accept several times more glucose than you do now. By causing the muscle cells to take up so much more glucose you are preventing it from going to the fat cells. That way you are helping to make your muscles stronger while preventing all that glucose from going to your fat cells. When your fat cells get the glucose it makes you fat and over time may eventually cause insulin resistance, leading to adult onset diabetes.

"Glucorell R™, taken before carb meals, insures those carbs are disposed of properly into your muscles helping you to maintain healthy low insulin levels, which is a powerful aid in preventing you from getting fat or insulin resistant."

 

[gotmojo]

Well, it looks like what this is boiling down to is figuring out what the daily intake should be to get started with....

Any direction on this?

 

[zaxxon1982]

Well, it looks like what this is boiling down to is figuring out what the daily intake should be to get started with....

Any direction on this?

Pintoca wrote a weight loss guide with calculators and calorie budgets ( http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=406047 ) that should work for your bro. It's pretty hardcore but totally doable. And it's certainly more reasonable than starving himself until his metabolism grinds to a halt. The program will set up the calorie levels for you based on his weight, bf, and level of activity.

Pintoca's program lays out training as well as diet. I suspect that it is more training than you will be able to convince your bro to do, but maybe not. At any rate, you will need to ascertain your bro's amount of time that is either free or could be redirected to training. He's got a blue collar job which means he probably works (and needs) overtime. I hate to say this, but most likely he will have to cut down on the amount of time spent with his band, and this could be a big problem. You may just have to get him to understand that you are on his side and that at this point in his life he has to choose between his band and his health.

I also want to make a note about supps. I love the AF store supps mentioned above and use Glucorell-R, Sesapure, and PureCEE right now. I have 360 caps of Thermorexin sitting on my shelf that I will consume during my next cut. AF store has fair prices for the results they deliver, but if you start layering together a bunch of supplements the cost can really go up fast. Sesapure for a guy that size is 29 bucks for a 20 day supply (6 a day). That's $1.45/day. TRex is $50 for a 30-day supply. $1.66/day. Glucorell-R is a pill per 30g of carbs. At 3,000 cals/day he's probably eating about 250g of carbs, so that's about 8 pills, meaning a 240-count Glucorell-R is good for 30 days. Another $1.40 per day. So to stack those 3 would cost about $4.50 per day, or about $140 per month. I use all those supps and have seen great results so I'm not commenting on whether they are good values or not. I'm just saying that if you put him on supps that cost $140 per month, now he has a monetary incentive to quit the program so he can stop paying all that $$$. How powerful that incentive is will be a function of his wealth in general, and I have no idea about that.

Having said all that, for some people spending a lot of money on something can increase their commitment to it, so that may work here. You know your bro best and should be able to judge whether the expenditure will make him want to quit to save the cash or make him work hard so the cash he's already spent doesn't go for naught.

 

[gotmojo]

Pintoca wrote a weight loss guide with calculators and calorie budgets ( http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=406047 ) that should work for your bro. It's pretty hardcore but totally doable. And it's certainly more reasonable than starving himself until his metabolism grinds to a halt. The program will set up the calorie levels for you based on his weight, bf, and level of activity.

Pintoca's program lays out training as well as diet. I suspect that it is more training than you will be able to convince your bro to do, but maybe not. At any rate, you will need to ascertain your bro's amount of time that is either free or could be redirected to training. He's got a blue collar job which means he probably works (and needs) overtime. I hate to say this, but most likely he will have to cut down on the amount of time spent with his band, and this could be a big problem. You may just have to get him to understand that you are on his side and that at this point in his life he has to choose between his band and his health.

I also want to make a note about supps. I love the AF store supps mentioned above and use Glucorell-R, Sesapure, and PureCEE right now. I have 360 caps of Thermorexin sitting on my shelf that I will consume during my next cut. AF store has fair prices for the results they deliver, but if you start layering together a bunch of supplements the cost can really go up fast. Sesapure for a guy that size is 29 bucks for a 20 day supply (6 a day). That's $1.45/day. TRex is $50 for a 30-day supply. $1.66/day. Glucorell-R is a pill per 30g of carbs. At 3,000 cals/day he's probably eating about 250g of carbs, so that's about 8 pills, meaning a 240-count Glucorell-R is good for 30 days. Another $1.40 per day. So to stack those 3 would cost about $4.50 per day, or about $140 per month. I use all those supps and have seen great results so I'm not commenting on whether they are good values or not. I'm just saying that if you put him on supps that cost $140 per month, now he has a monetary incentive to quit the program so he can stop paying all that $$$. How powerful that incentive is will be a function of his wealth in general, and I have no idea about that.

Having said all that, for some people spending a lot of money on something can increase their commitment to it, so that may work here. You know your bro best and should be able to judge whether the expenditure will make him want to quit to save the cash or make him work hard so the cash he's already spent doesn't go for naught.

I appreciate the info. on the supps....I have been thinking about the $ aspect too, cuz he is a lot like me in the sense that it is almost impossible to walk away from an investment which that most certainly will be. It's tough for me because I have never had to go through this kinda thing the way he is, I actually have great genetics and it has always been somewhat easy for me to do even after an illness that I had. Although I did run into a prob. recently when I started to cut football weight and tried a calc. that actually caused more havoc than anything. I ultimately just had to go back to what I knew of my own body and all was well.

I am a fan of Pinto's guide. However, this is what started the confusion....I used his calc. and got a # for intake around 3,200 cals, then like a dumbass I tried another that gave me a # of over 4,000. The difference is so great it's confusing which way to go due to the fact that with his mental state I don't have much room to play with to experiment with the #'s cuz if he happens to gain weight all may be lost before I can readjust the cals. Also, how will such a drastic climb in cals. affect him, seeing as at this point he is only consuming approx. the 800 cals. per day right now.

Thanks everybody for the response....I expected more but maybe i'm just anxious to help him out.

MOJO

 

[zaxxon1982]

I appreciate the info. on the supps....I have been thinking about the $ aspect too, cuz he is a lot like me in the sense that it is almost impossible to walk away from an investment which that most certainly will be. It's tough for me because I have never had to go through this kinda thing the way he is, I actually have great genetics and it has always been somewhat easy for me to do even after an illness that I had. Although I did run into a prob. recently when I started to cut football weight and tried a calc. that actually caused more havoc than anything. I ultimately just had to go back to what I knew of my own body and all was well.

I am a fan of Pinto's guide. However, this is what started the confusion....I used his calc. and got a # for intake around 3,200 cals, then like a dumbass I tried another that gave me a # of over 4,000. The difference is so great it's confusing which way to go due to the fact that with his mental state I don't have much room to play with to experiment with the #'s cuz if he happens to gain weight all may be lost before I can readjust the cals. Also, how will such a drastic climb in cals. affect him, seeing as at this point he is only consuming approx. the 800 cals. per day right now.

Thanks everybody for the response....I expected more but maybe i'm just anxious to help him out.

MOJO

Go with the Pintoca numbers. A lot of guides and calculators will throw out numbers that are way too high. His is part of a proven program that Pintoca and many others here have used with success. Good luck.

 

[gotmojo]

Go with the Pintoca numbers. A lot of guides and calculators will throw out numbers that are way too high. His is part of a proven program that Pintoca and many others here have used with success. Good luck.

Thanks for the help bro!!!!

 

[Lifterforlife]

One thing to keep in mind, just as you decrease your calories gradually when dieting, so too must you increase gradually, as when you go that low in calories, your body will be primed for fat storage. If too rapid of an increase, this will just add to his woes, he will gain fat, and be even more against the diet issue and wanting to go with surgery.

 

[RBtrucking4]

I was 380 at one time myself i lost it all in about 8 months i am now down to 215 went the direction of one big meal a day witch entailed basically any kind of food i wanted exept fast food and it worked real well for a while but as i got thinner it stopped working i also lost a lot of muscle but i gained it back pretty quickly and now im stronger than ever. I definately know it can be done without surgery it just takes some motivation. I hope you and your friend the best of luck just tell your friend that the begining is the easy part well at least for me it was the weight came off like nothing. its when you get closer to your ideal weight is when it starts to get harder to lose anything now a days im lucky if i lose a pound a week. If i can do it your friend can do it i used to be the biggest fattest laziest thing you ever seen in your life. Good luck and god bless!

 

[gotmojo]

One thing to keep in mind, just as you decrease your calories gradually when dieting, so too must you increase gradually, as when you go that low in calories, your body will be primed for fat storage. If too rapid of an increase, this will just add to his woes, he will gain fat, and be even more against the diet issue and wanting to go with surgery.

Agreed....So with a metabolism that is just inching along i'm thinking 300 to 500 cal. increase per day each week from what he is consuming now. That should get him up to the proper #'s for daily intake relatively harmlessly.

Good bro stopped by the house last night and I got him to admit that he IS prepping his body for the surgery just as I thought. His Doc put him on the 800 per day to get his BMI down again just as I thought. So this is what I did.....I explained to him that he has a complex now because he is big (he has always been a big dood), But he will have more of a complex when his body dwindles down to that of a 14 yr old boy because he is so used to being "big" that would screw his head up even more and after the procedure there would be nuthin' he could really do about it. For the most part he would just be along for the ride (he agreed). But with a diff lifestyle he will build the muscle and tone under the fat so when it strips away he will be left with the body that he REALLY wants. I also told him that if he loses 100 lbs he would actually weigh 10 lbs less than I do right now. So I said to him "would you rather have the physique of a 14 yr old boy or mine." He said that a no brainer and picked the 14 yr old boy....just kidding, he understood what I was getting at and realized that he really isn't THAT far from what he really does want.

Ultimately I got him to accept what I was sellin' him and he agreed to get on board with it all! I did tell him that I would support whatever he decides but I would never agree that the surgery, without honestly trying the better alternative, is the right way to go. As a matter of fact I told him we could start it on May 1st and he said NO, demanding we start on Monday! So that is good. I think what got him was realizing that fact that he is only 100 lbs away from my size and the fact that I told him to look at it in the sense that he has to jump through all of these hoops for his Doc and a Psychologist for several months before the procedure can be scheduled anyway, so I said "let me get you ready for the procedure and if you are not satisfied, or don't think it is possible to do it this way then I will drive you to the hospital myself." I even showed this thread to him and he realized how strongly I felt about this!

Bottom line is that he agreed to it all and pushed any final decision off untill November, so that gives me 6 months to change his life!

So please keep the info. coming! Great stuff so far!!!!

Thanks again everybody!

MOJO

 

[Ulter]

Glucorell R is no longer in Thermorexin. It was just reformulated this week without it.

Your friend desperately needs the Glucorell/SesaPure combo. Given what you've posted I can't think of a better candidate. It will waste the excess calories he's not using instead of him storing them as fat. The excess insulin he's pumping out is a huge problem for him and Glucorell will take care of that.

 

[gotmojo]

Glucorell R is no longer in Thermorexin. It was just reformulated this week without it.

Your friend desperately needs the Glucorell/SesaPure combo. Given what you've posted I can't think of a better candidate. It will waste the excess calories he's not using instead of him storing them as fat. The excess insulin he's pumping out is a huge problem for him and Glucorell will take care of that.

Thanks for the update....I was actually just looking at the supps to figure out what the best combo may be.

Thanks again everybody!

MOJO

 

[mm107]

gotmojo, got a pm.

 

[gotmojo]

gotmojo, got a pm.

Thanks for the information!!!!

I will check into it!

"k" to you!

MOJO