I want to lose a few stone and get a lot fitter, I'm not a big fan of running even when fit, so Squash and Cycling are probably my 2 favoured forms of excercise, as well as walking a lot more.
What the hell is a water fast? Is it likely to kill me? Cos obviously if I'm dead I'll start losing weight through decomposing I suppose.
It's another form of keto dieting. Water fasting is as old as the hills, although I'd not recommend blindly jumping into it. You need to use a bit of common sense obviously.
At the moment i'm doing it two to three days per week (week 3). You basically just drink water and nothing else for two to three days, you can go up to 30 days but I'd probably not recommend that unless you are planning to become a monk! 2 to 5 days is typical.
It's good if you have any auto immune problems, and minor aliments. It typically either clears them up, or puts you on the road to recovery. There is a lot of 'Quack pot' stuff written about water fasting online though, so again common sense needs to be exercised.
OK if you're not going to lift weights, it's just going to be down to diet. I'd keep the cardio pretty light, for general fitness you don't really need to do a lot. Just do the squash and cycling for enjoyment and that should be enough.
On the diet front, you can either do one of the following:
VLC diet - Stands for Very low calorie, typically sub 1,000 calories per day but can also refer to sub 500 calories per day. These are your typical 'shakes' type diets, but in reality you could just eat a snickers bar and take a vitamin tablet every day and get the same bang for your buck as the shakes give you. They can be hard work, and leave you feeling hungry and low energy. If the shakes are low in sugars, you typically trip into ketosis and should find your energy levels are fine. Watch out for feeling feint and light headed during the transition to ketosis though, and again use some common sense if you feel feint and eat some fruit or something
Keto diets: various forms, basically you're looking at eating less than 30-50 (depending what you read) net carbs a day. Net carbs are where you take your carb intake, and then minus away any fibre you've eaten in the same meal, giving you a lower carb total hopefully. Keto diets are often miss understood to be linked with just eating meats, you actually need to consume lots of vegetables so that you can stay healthy and get the full benefits. You can also refeed every seven days if you want, and have a four hour binge out on junk.
Paleo diet: This is where you eliminate all grains, with the exception of maybe white rice if you need the extra energy. You stick primarily to fruits, vegetables, meats, poultry, and possibly dairy free. It's the least painful form of dieting i know, and once you're used to it you don't actually feel like you're dieting at all. You can manipulate the eating plan to lose weight, gain weight (performance), or stay stabilise. Once you're happy with your weight, you can also learn to cheat on this diet and have a bit of what you fancy a few times a week.
Low fat diets - Hate them, I'd usually put these in the most painful type of dieting bracket. You're typically going to be calorie restricting to lose weight and eating lots of high sugary foods that will be insulin spiking you on a regular basis and can make you feel like you're starving. People adopting this type of diet typically fail badly and yo yo often. You can get around it by keeping it relatively bland, example bodybuilders might go for meals that are plain chicken and rice, with some veggies thrown in. This type of dieting is still popular with bodybuilders, but bare in mind drugs/ cardio/ and weight training also account for a lot of the fat burning.
I'm sure I've missed something out, but that should be enough to go on. Pick one, give your self a realistic time frame of 1-2lbs of fat loss a week, and let me know which one you prefer. I'll then PM you and go into more detail. You're probably looking at three and a half to seven months to shift the weight
