Obese Beginner Looking for Some Direction

[clobbasaurus]

Hi, welcome and well done on the decision to do something for your health.

@clobbasaurus

Before you start any kind of diet, unless you already know what you’re consuming on a daily basis in terms of calories you’ll have trouble working out where to start. 2500Kcals may be cutting more calories than you actually have to initially. Your goal should be to lose fat while eating as much as possible. Just like keeping cardio minimal to begin with, it will give you more options to fall back on when your progress halts.

Keep a food diary for a couple of weeks and be completely honest with yourself. Get to know exactly what you’re eating (food choices and calories). Then clean up your food choices and start eating a consistent amount of calories daily. Make sure you’re eating enough protein (about 2-3 grams per kilo of bodyweight) You may notice you start losing fat before doing anything any more drastic.

When your progress stalls, add in some more cardio or conditioning and monitor your progress to make sure you’re heading in the right direction (if not up the cardio/conditioning a little more). Eventually your progress will stall again. Only then look at dropping your calories and only by a little bit (200 - 300Kcals) I take the calories from carbs but you could take them from fat if you wanted to. Experiment and see what works best.

Keep that up and you’ll be pleased with where you end up.

I’ve tried more severe dieting approaches in the past and always ended up just as fat or bigger than when I started.

For some really good eating guidelines Google ‘precision nutrition how to fix a broken diet’ you may find that’s all you need to get you where you want without worrying too much about calories or macronutrients.

5/3/1 is a great plan but you could use a linear style of progression at your stage and make some fantastic strength gains. SS a good plan but you have to learn the power clean, which puts some people off. You could try stronglifts 5x5 which replaces the cleans with Pendlay style barbell rows so some say this is a technically simpler program. Either way make sure you learn how to do all of the lifts properly and use the linear progression model outlined in the plans to get stronger fast. When you find you’re no longer progressing after a few attemps at backing off and ramping up again then think about switching up things up a little. 5/3/1 would be a good transition as you still get to use the overhead press, squat, deadlift and bench.