Losing weight and becoming more fit will make you healthier and more attractive. You can’t effectively gain muscle and lose weight at the same time. In your case losing weight should be the priority. To do this, start tracking absolutely everything you eat using one of the many free trackers available out there, and eat below your TDEE. Invest $10 in a digital scale so you can track more accurately. If you don’t know what you should eat, read this. Exercise is helpful to your general health, but losing weight is almost entirely about diet. Practically all specialized diets are scams, so beware.
To improve your strength and fitness (and attractiveness), barbell training is one of the most effective and safest forms of exercise you can pursue. You should read Rippetoe’s books, his programs are quite likely the best option for beginners. You can pursue weight training even while you lose weight, but you won’t make as much progress.
For fashion, reddit is probably your best bet. Spending money on expensive brands won’t help.
If you want to target success with women in particular, PUA is a better option than the alternatives. Many people dislike it, but it is currently the closest thing to a science there is in the field. The basic idea is to simply make you try more often. That alone will tend to improve your social skills, and success.
Don’t use success with women as a measure for your success. Attraction is based on irrational, primal emotions, and neither women or men, nor rationalists, care to even try and change this. The fact that women are not attracted to you conveys very little useful information. It is better to pursue your goals in order to improve your life in general. Losing weight and becoming fit will improve your quality of life far beyond attractiveness.
I have intentionally kept this short and skipped many details and arguments. Hopefully you can benefit from these as guidelines while improving your life.
Losing weight should not be your priority. Losing fat should. Exercise may lay down muscle that is denser and initially causes a weight gain, but don’t let this discourage you.
Depends on your goals and what exercises you plan to take up. Jogging thin, regardless of -fitness-, is a -hell- of a lot easier than jogging fat. It’s also less likely to cause you injury, speaking from personal experience.
If you’re severely overweight to begin from that’s unlikely to be much of an issue. See Desrtopa.
(ISTR someone—was it Beeminder’s blog? The Hacker’s Diet? [EDIT: here it is] -- recommending tracking body weight because it’s so readily quantifiable until you’re in the ballpark of your ideal weight, but to switch to something better if you want to keep on improving afterwards.)
Weight is more trackable, Losing weight may be less effective, but sometimes, one needs to see the numbers.
Another number is ‘length of measuring tape wrapped around my stomach’. That’s a better number to track. A measuring tape costs under $2 including postage on ebay so it seems to qualify as plenty trackable.
IME breathing in or breathing out, changing posture, pulling the tape tighter or less tight, etc. can easily change the number by a few per cent, so if anything that’s more noisy than the total body weight (provided you always weigh yourself right after out of bed in the morning). (Maybe I’m doing it wrong?)
(I was also under the impression that the very same pair of trousers that fit me tightly the day before yesterday fit me loosely yesterday. No idea what the hell was going on there.)
(I was also under the impression that the very same pair of trousers that fit me tightly the day before yesterday fit me loosely yesterday. No idea what the hell was going on there.)
Changes in what you eat from day to day will alter the amount of water your body is retaining. The water bloat can have surprisingly big day-to-day effects.
I know that the amount of water in my body varies from day to day, so… how comes I was surprised that that water actually occupies space, rather than being stored in the fifth dimension but somehow still detected by my bathroom scale? :-/
(I was also under the impression that the very same pair of trousers that fit me tightly the day before yesterday fit me loosely yesterday. No idea what the hell was going on there.)
Some cotton fabrics shrink in the wash and stretch when worn. I have a pair of jeans that is quite uncomfortably tight immediately after washing, somewhat tight the day after, and fits reasonably until the next wash. Your body may not be what is changing here.
You can’t effectively gain muscle and lose weight at the same time.
This is commonly repeated, but not actually true for people who’re just starting out on exercise. It’s only when you’ve already reached a substantial level of fitness that it becomes an either/or proposition.
If you’re already heavily overweight though, you’re probably better off focusing on losing fat faster rather than worrying about building up muscle at the same time. You may already have a fair amount of muscle under there just from moving around your own body weight.
For complete beginners it is possible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time and it is a good idea to begin exercising now because now is generally a good time to start. If you’re really overweight weightlifting or swimming are good places to start with exercise, running while overweight is hell on your knees and other joints, and this is true of basically all aerobic exercise except swimming.
Malefashionadvice is indeed awesome. Lesson number 1. Wear clothes that fit. Everything else is detail.
PUA stuff works but is overfocused on the median woman or the median club going woman depending on the woman and some of the writers are incredibly misogynistic. And while there is a lot of interesting stuff in the literature making a poinbt of talking to way more people, men and women will work wonders all by itself.
Losing weight and becoming more fit will make you healthier and more attractive. You can’t effectively gain muscle and lose weight at the same time. In your case losing weight should be the priority. To do this, start tracking absolutely everything you eat using one of the many free trackers available out there, and eat below your TDEE. Invest $10 in a digital scale so you can track more accurately. If you don’t know what you should eat, read this. Exercise is helpful to your general health, but losing weight is almost entirely about diet. Practically all specialized diets are scams, so beware.
To improve your strength and fitness (and attractiveness), barbell training is one of the most effective and safest forms of exercise you can pursue. You should read Rippetoe’s books, his programs are quite likely the best option for beginners. You can pursue weight training even while you lose weight, but you won’t make as much progress.
For fashion, reddit is probably your best bet. Spending money on expensive brands won’t help.
If you want to target success with women in particular, PUA is a better option than the alternatives. Many people dislike it, but it is currently the closest thing to a science there is in the field. The basic idea is to simply make you try more often. That alone will tend to improve your social skills, and success.
Don’t use success with women as a measure for your success. Attraction is based on irrational, primal emotions, and neither women or men, nor rationalists, care to even try and change this. The fact that women are not attracted to you conveys very little useful information. It is better to pursue your goals in order to improve your life in general. Losing weight and becoming fit will improve your quality of life far beyond attractiveness.
I have intentionally kept this short and skipped many details and arguments. Hopefully you can benefit from these as guidelines while improving your life.
Losing weight should not be your priority. Losing fat should. Exercise may lay down muscle that is denser and initially causes a weight gain, but don’t let this discourage you.
Weight is more trackable, Losing weight may be less effective, but sometimes, one needs to see the numbers.
I don’t think prioritizing losing weight to the point where you try to avoid muscle gain is A) healthy or B) effective.
Depends on your goals and what exercises you plan to take up. Jogging thin, regardless of -fitness-, is a -hell- of a lot easier than jogging fat. It’s also less likely to cause you injury, speaking from personal experience.
If you’re severely overweight to begin from that’s unlikely to be much of an issue. See Desrtopa.
(ISTR someone—was it Beeminder’s blog? The Hacker’s Diet? [EDIT: here it is] -- recommending tracking body weight because it’s so readily quantifiable until you’re in the ballpark of your ideal weight, but to switch to something better if you want to keep on improving afterwards.)
Another number is ‘length of measuring tape wrapped around my stomach’. That’s a better number to track. A measuring tape costs under $2 including postage on ebay so it seems to qualify as plenty trackable.
IME breathing in or breathing out, changing posture, pulling the tape tighter or less tight, etc. can easily change the number by a few per cent, so if anything that’s more noisy than the total body weight (provided you always weigh yourself right after out of bed in the morning). (Maybe I’m doing it wrong?)
(I was also under the impression that the very same pair of trousers that fit me tightly the day before yesterday fit me loosely yesterday. No idea what the hell was going on there.)
Changes in what you eat from day to day will alter the amount of water your body is retaining. The water bloat can have surprisingly big day-to-day effects.
I know that the amount of water in my body varies from day to day, so… how comes I was surprised that that water actually occupies space, rather than being stored in the fifth dimension but somehow still detected by my bathroom scale? :-/
FWIW, I’ve also experienced the same thing.
Some cotton fabrics shrink in the wash and stretch when worn. I have a pair of jeans that is quite uncomfortably tight immediately after washing, somewhat tight the day after, and fits reasonably until the next wash. Your body may not be what is changing here.
This is commonly repeated, but not actually true for people who’re just starting out on exercise. It’s only when you’ve already reached a substantial level of fitness that it becomes an either/or proposition.
If you’re already heavily overweight though, you’re probably better off focusing on losing fat faster rather than worrying about building up muscle at the same time. You may already have a fair amount of muscle under there just from moving around your own body weight.
I endorse this comment.
Minor quibbles follow.
For complete beginners it is possible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time and it is a good idea to begin exercising now because now is generally a good time to start. If you’re really overweight weightlifting or swimming are good places to start with exercise, running while overweight is hell on your knees and other joints, and this is true of basically all aerobic exercise except swimming.
Malefashionadvice is indeed awesome. Lesson number 1. Wear clothes that fit. Everything else is detail.
PUA stuff works but is overfocused on the median woman or the median club going woman depending on the woman and some of the writers are incredibly misogynistic. And while there is a lot of interesting stuff in the literature making a poinbt of talking to way more people, men and women will work wonders all by itself.
Feel free to PM me if you want to talk more.
For more information on fitness, check out /r/Fitness. Especially their FAQ.
Seconding the Rippetoe program recommendation, it worked well for me.