I really need to lose weight.

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I'm about 220 pounds, and already, I can hear my breath. It hurts me when I undergo exercise (which I have started doing as part of my New Year's Resolution), and I frequently have to clear my throat and cough. I sweat easily, and I am virtually incapable of doing push ups and crunches. I have experienced frequent constipation, pain in my navel, and I overeat. My diet consists of cheese, cheese, soda, and more cheese, as well as come chicken and meat.

I would really like some advice. Some members have said that I need to be put through intense, put-you-in-the-hospital exercise. At one point, I considered taking anabolic steroids/testosterone.

I'm in a pickle.

I would suggest doing some sort of gentle exercise to get you started, walking, swimming (if you like water), that sort of thing. Also you may want to try a lower carb diet to kick start everything. Just cut out the soda (some side effects of this would be headaches and irritability). If you have a dislike for veggies, try to steam them and cover them with butter (sounds counter-intuitive, but the idea here is to lower sugar carbs, veggies have few carbs if they are the right ones like zucchini, broccoli, peppers, etc. don't eat corn, peas or potatoes at first). Also drink plenty of water, it acts as a diuretic, flushing your system while you're burning fat. Drink 2-3 ounces every half hour ( a couple of sips ) a quart to start per day (or liter, whichever).

When you've lost 10% of your weight and feel more energetic, start lifting weights to build muscle which will help you to continue to lose weight.

you have your youth in your corner, you can recover from your dysfunctional diet and your body can relatively rapidly regain its rightful youthful muscle tone and aerobic conditioning. all you have to do, is follow the program below-

*cut out anything white from your diet- this means sugar and starch. no more white bread or derivatives of refined wheat. no potatoes or corn. your carbs must be the low-glycemic-index variety, meaning they are slow-metabolising, releasing energy gradually in your body so you won't have spikes of glucose/insulin wrecking your health.
*eat only lean proteins [limit defatted red meat to the size of a deck of playing cards per day, a bit more chicken/turkey/fish per meal] and ALWAYS remain well-hydrated. by the time you're thirsty you're already dehydrated. your urine should be clear or pale much of the time. NEVER skip meals, instead you should eat 4 to 5 smaller meals per day in order to keep your blood glucose levels uniform, drops in glucose/increases in insulin will cause you to get ravenously hungry, avoid this if at all possible by eating at regular times every day without fail, especially BREAKFAST! and unless you're eating lots of soup, include at least a glass of a no-sugar/no fat liquid with every meal.
*every day without fail, get at least a half-hour of gradually ramped-up physical exertion which breaks a sweat and makes you huff and puff. don't do too much of it or do it too hard at first, give your body a good month to get used to a ramped-up level of exertion, starting from 10 minutes of walking up to a solid half-hour of fast walking, fast in the manner that you are late to work or school.
*invest in good walking shoes and shock-absorbing insoles for your shoes, make sure the shoes fit snugly but not too tight, you want to avoid blisters right off the bat.
*as soon as your body can take it, do interval training in which you do whatever aerobic exercise you've chosen [walking, biking, swimming, jump rope, et al] at close to maximum intensity for defined intervals or periods of time, starting with 30 seconds and gradually working up to 90 seconds or two minutes, tops. start at the bottom! in between the bursts of intensity, slowly drop back down to a tolerable rate- for example, run for 30 seconds as fast as you can safely muster, then drop back down to walking speed until you catch your breath, then gradually work back up to running for 30 more seconds, then gradually drop back down to walking speed. repeat this 10 times per day and i guarantee your capacity for exertion/overall fitness will increase, and your weight will decrease. it worked for me.
good luck to you!

A good place to start is getting into cardio fitness, there are different cardio type machines to choose from at any gym, you can set them to a resistance level that won't kill you for about 20-30min, plus they're easier on your joints than running.

They have machines for exercising different muscle groups, the bigger/more groups you exercise, the more calories you burn.

Going to the gym 3-4 days a week will get you results and give you enough time to rest.

As for the eating, I have this diet plan that works for me (I get a few stares though). I find a food store with the best prices on fresh produce, and buy one of everything in my price range (except for corn and potatoes). The more of a variety you get (fruits and vegetables) the better. Then I just blend it, put it into tupperware and store it in the freezer. Every morning before I have anything else to eat, I eat a tupperware container full of the stuff; as a result, I eat fewer unhealthy items throughout the day because I feel full. Most produce items have few calories and give you a feeling of fullness that processed foods don't give. They also have plenty of fiber and a good water content.

I wouldn't reccomend steroids, I'm cautious like that though. Good luck with the changes, keep us posted.

One simple rule - eat just plants and animals.

This keeps sugar and carbs down.....................weight WILL fall off with a paleo diet.

Cheese isn't good for you in massive quantities. Little bit is OK, but in general large amounts of dairy aren't good for you. So stop the cheese. Chicken and meat is OK. Vegetables are about the easiest thing to lose weight eating, as they have very little calorie density. Also, obviously nutritious. No soda. Switch to water, or make some iced tea and use maybe half a cup of sugar per quart (comes out to like 30 calories per glass) or better, drink unsweetened.

I went from 210 or 215 to 180 in four months by doing these things, some not necessarily good.
I ice skated everyday for an hour to an hour and 20 minutes. Ice skating burns the same calories as jogging, or more even. In my case it burnt over 700 calories an hour, but probably more due to having bad technique at that time.
Ate sorta lower carb, lots of fruit, some meat, lots of fruits and veggies and very little grains, I'd replace bread for burgers with pitas that were like 70 calories each, usually no cheese, lots of mushrooms.
Had lots of caffeinated beverages, usually sugared energy drinks.
Besides my skating, I did maybe 30-45 minutes 3-4x a week on a punching bag.

Using the caffeine is a double edged sword, it certainly works, but it's not good for the body's adrenal glands, and you do end up addicted to caffeine. So the fat burner pills with caffeine/synephrine/other stimulants WILL work, but you might not be able to keep up the exercise performance and metabolic rate without them. I'd say keep the caffeine to say, some coffee in the morning and that's it.

Regarding diet, I used to be 230, and dropped to 210 just by cooking food myself. Make sure the majority of what you eat is cooked from scratch, not from a box, a can, what have you. Also, avoid veg oils besides olive oil. They're not really natural, especially soy and corn, and rapeseed oil (canola oil) wasn't even seen as fit for human consumption until the 60s when they hybridized the plant.

But yeah, basically, find an exercise you actually like doing, and do it everyday. Consistency is key. As far as the thought process of overeating, think to yourself when you eat something "Do I need to eat this?" And much of the time, the answer is no.

As far as the carbs thing, I'd say don't go super low carb. At most go moderate carb. Low carb longterm can screw with your health. Things like potatoes (boiled or baked) and brown rice are good carbs. Just avoid commercial bread for the most part, as 99% of it has veg oil and high fructose corn syrup in it. A good meal setup in my opinion, is like, 1/3 plate full of meat, 1/3 plate full of brown rice or something like that, 1/3 plate full of sauted or steamed veggies. Basically, in a diet, you want it to be a "traditional" diet. IE, what your grandparents ate. Having international food makes life a lot easier. Asian food, and soups especially are good for weight loss, as soups fill you up. Basically learn to cook.

Lastly, anabolic steroids will not help you lose weight. Especially without working out. Most stimulate appetite, and of course will give you some muscle mass, but usually large rapid gains in muscle mass come with some gain in fat. Bodybuilders usually do "bulking" and "cutting" cycles for this reason, they'll gain, say, 30lbs, and then 15 will be muscle, so they'll burn off, say, 20lbs, and then keep 10-12lbs of muscle they've gained usually, some is lost, some was just water retention, etc. Also, being 18, it's dumb to use steroids. Use them when you're like 40 or 50. If you get stuck on steroids now you could be on the needle for the rest of your life. Medically, the shortcut you'd take for weight loss is amphetamines or some other kind of stimulant. Of course, that's not really healthy, but that'd be the way you'd do it.

Anyway, exercise, start with what you can do. Go for a walk or ride your bike or something, and do it consistently. If you find a sport you like that you can devote time to, then do that, that's the probably the easiest way to lose weight and keep it off, as you're training for your sport and can set clear goals, rather than vague goals like most people.

Good luck.

Before you go into any very strenuous excercise, it would be a great idea to get a physical, blood tests done, and/or an EKG. This is just so you can be sure you're not hurting yourself by doing what workouts you're doing. A lot of very overweight and out of shape people make the mistake of overdoing it, and they make their underlying issues worse.

I do know a lot of large people who have to start out walking or doing a mixture of walking and slow jogging. Don't want to go ahead of your heart muscle, that could be bad. What really helped me increase my endurance, and has been known to help people lose weight was following the "Couch to 5k Program", which is really popular, there is even a subreddit on it. A lot of really overweight people use it, even 300lb'ers, so do just out of shape people. I personally used it when I was somewhat fit, but it helped get out of a plateu I had earlier on when my current work out plan "not a plan just running" stopped improving my endurance. After finishing that program, there are more programs that will offer more challenge, for better endurance.

Weight training is also good for you, it will help burn calories, and build muscle. It can also help your cardio. If you are just focusing on losing a ton of fat, you might end up looking skinny fat without the weight lifting to fill you out, then you may get loose skin for awhile until it decides to tighten up which can take a long time. If you can't do a pushup or crunch, youtube "Half pushups", or "Half Crunch" and work your way up. Don't just focus on pushups and crunches though, seek balance, or you could hurt yourself from having unbalanced strength and flexibility. Warm up and stretch before workouts too, stretching is equally important after the work out as it is before.

How I improved my diet overall was cutting the crap. Stay away from it. At most, I would eat a couple junk food items one day per 7 days, and nothing crazy, just a soda or snack. Replace the food with healthy food, or at least not unhealthy food, that you can get some joy from eating. Junk food cravings are hard to get over, so try to find food that's ok for your tastes so you don't go mad. After cutting the crap, I did a bunch of research on how many calories people tend to consume while doing similar amounts of excercise to lose weight. There's a lot of info out there, you might be surprised. Check it out... 1600-1800 worked for me. Mid Fat-High Fat/Mid Carb/High Protein, what worked for me may not work for you. Experiment! That's the fun of it. I myself got very obsessed with improving my diet, so I made a food list and schedule following a 1600-1800 calorie diet, eating the same things most days, for 6 months. Might not sound like a blast, but I lost 60ish lbs. It works if you do it right.

Anabolics won't help you lose weight. They can make you retain water, heavily increase your appetite, and screw your system up without proper knowledge of your body chemistry on a regular basis, cycling, a steroid based diet, and steroid based work out schedule . Steroids aren't magic. To get real results, people who use steroids have to work hard, often times much harder than someone who doesn't.

I really don't think you'll need massive exercise to start losing weight. Do it for your health, but don't stress about it. It's your diet that is bad. Stop drinking soda and replace most of the cheese with something healthier, like nuts. Try eating more plants. You must get constipated a lot with all that cheese.

I used large quantities of green tea to reduce appetite instead of snacking and it worked for me.

Beans should do the trick for constipation. A half cup of Navy Beans over here has 100% of your daily fiber needs, at about 66 carbs, 18 grams protein, and 0 fat. You can't go wrong with some home made bbq baked beans. They are good for you in so many ways. It might be a good idea not to eat so much cheese for other reasons besides constipation problems. Cheese is high in saturated fat and cholesterol.

95% of losing weight is dependent on eating less. Only about 5% of it is dependent on exercise. Exercising vigorously when you are very overweight is a very bad idea because your body will not be able to handle it. You need to get your weight down first by eating healthily.

If you want to tone up once you've lost weight, by all means do some exercise, but the amount of exercise you would have to do to burn off any significant calories would be phenomenal. People seem to think they can burn off an entire pizza with just a gentle half-hour jog. In reality, to burn off an entire pizza you'd probably have to run a half marathon. The main factor in losing weight is eating less calories.

You do that by 1. eating smaller portions and 2. eating the right sorts of foods.

It's OK to indulge in cheese, chocolate, pizza, etc every now and then as treats, but if you want to be at a healthy weight it is NOT OK to eat those things every day for every meal.

Stop drinking soda, drink water, eat vegetables and healthy lean proteins, and limit starchy foods such as bread, potatoes, pasta, etc. Starchy foods like that are basically mostly energy with very little actual nutrition in them, and they are constipating.

You do not have to completely cut out all the foods you ate previously. If you did that, you would miss them too much and crave them, and probably cave and start to binge. So by all means sprinkle a bit of cheese on top of your veggies, and have an occasional glass of coke, but do not eat cheese all the time and do not drink nothing but soda.

If you are constipated it may well be due to overeating. You may be overwhelming your digestive system by simply stuffing too much into it. If you simply cut down on your portion size, and eat smaller meals, your intestines and stomach will be able to process the food properly and do their job in the way that they were designed, without getting clogged up.

Another common cause of constipation is eating too much starchy carbs. White flour in particular is very consipating. If you eat lots of white bread, pasta, donuts etc, those could be clogging you up.

In my personal experience the best thing for curing constipation is well-cooked vegetables. Not baked beans. Baked beans will just make you fart. They will not make your poos come out easily. To make poos come out easily, personally I need lots and lots of well-cooked vegetables. But everybody's body is different. What works for one person may not work for another. So you will need to experiment and see what foods work for YOU to stop your constipation.

For sure. I make sure to drink over a gallon. It took some training myself to do it, but now it's a regular thing, I barely think about. It feels great to be so hydrated too.

To Plodder, while diet is key to losing weight, I respectfully disagree that a 30 minute jog won't make a significant difference when the body is ready for that. I burn about 10 or more grams of fat at the end of a 30 minute jog, carbs and protein calories, I'm not so sure about, but it is easily in the low hundreds altogether including fat cals. My heart rate monitor and treadmill monitor only display fat lost. Even if you walk for 10 minutes you are doing something to get a more active and healthy body. I do know that most doctors will tell overweight and unhealthy people to start out walking at a slow pace or riding the exercise bike, for a short period of time, that still allows you to be able to remain calm and speak easy. This is why it is a good reason to speak to a doctor before exercising though, we can't know how your body will react to any type of exercise, GiftOrCurse.

Like Plodder said, experiment, might as well try the beans and see for yourself, GiftOrCurse! I also eat a large amount of greens myself and I agree they help a lot with constipation. I wanted to mention collard greens and kale, collard greens and kale are high in fiber per cup. WHfoods says 21% per cup steamed collards/10% per cup kale. I personally eat about two cups collards or two cups kale most days, I also eat beans most days too. I had a serious problem going to the bathroom in the past, but these all helped a literal s**t ton. Unlike anything else. Instead of dreading those moments in the bathroom, it almost turns into happy fun times! *Plop

For me I rarely drink fluids with calories except for chocolate milk and sometimes gatorade which is rare. Start exercise slowy and gradually so you do not get discouraged. My goal is to exercise every other day during the week and if I miss one day I just exercise the next day usually. A doctor once told me that it is ok to exercise if you are sick with a cold say (from the neck up) and if you are sick with a stomach flu, etc then maybe not.

Good luck!

I weigh a little less than you but not so much. Hard aerobic exercise is hard for me, but since I enjoy walking , I walk through town everyday moderately, when i don't walk I use my wii for about a half an hour to exercise whether its the wii fit which is my boyfriends, zumba or just dance games.

As far as nutrition think of a plate divided equally into 4 parts. One half of the plate of 2/4 of the plate consists of frujits and or, 1/4 of the plate consists of whole grains such as bread, pasta, and or macaroni, the last 1/4 of your plate should consists of protein or meat. Eggs are considered a good source of protein in the morning, afternoon prtein should consist of deli meats, hotdogs or. For your dairy side you can eat sving size of cheese with your meals.

Or you can picture 2/4 of your plate covered with lasagna that covers whole grains, meat and dairy. Put vegetabbles on half of your plate, and a fruit on the other half with veggies. then you have a good nutritious meal.

You're 18, you can do it! Do it now while you still have the energy and the time!

I'm pushing 40 and I'm over 300. Back when I was a tad younger than yourself, I weighted about 20-30 lbs more than you and I lost it during the course of a summer.

I need to get down to about 190 or so. Just wish the gym didn't hurt so much. ...and that they had wifi.