A: Thank you for maintaining such a great site. It's nice to see everything laid out so clearly, especially all the diet and regimen tools you've put together!

I'm 28 years old, 5'7, and am fairly overweight at 245 pounds. My brief history is I was morbidly obese, about 320, by the time I was 18. While in college, I lost about 165 pounds through diet and exercise. Over past ten years, I've gone up and down, with more ups than downs obviously, and long bursts of weight training. I'm recovering from a torn ligament in my left leg, and after three months of no walking, I'm eager to get back into weight training and losing some of the grad school/broken leg weight.

Regarding the fitness/diet regimen your site suggested: it seems fairly rigorous, in particular the diet component (as fat loss is my primary goal at this stage) and I'm curious if the regime is designed for people who are already regularly training. Subsequently, following my initial weight loss, I was left with a fair amount of loose skin/fat deposits in my chest, belly, and lower back. Do you have any suggestions for "targeting" this? Plastic surgery is not an option for me and I've always thought that enough discipline with a healthy life style would eventually help that.

Thank you again for such a comprehensive site!

Q: Congratulations on getting down from 320 pounds, even if you've had your ups and downs lately! And glad that you've found my site helpful. As far as my sample diet plans, you are correct that they are designed for somebody who is weight training, but that does not mean an elite athlete. Any regular person, even an out of shape beginner, who is engaging in heavy whole-body weight training as I recommend on my site -- whether for weight loss or for muscle gain -- will benefit from increased protein consumption relative to the standard FDA guidelines (which are only for 65-80 grams of protein daily).

Numerous studies have confirmed that athletes -- and anybody who spends several hours a week on strenuous exercise is an athlete -- benefit from about 1 gram of dietary protein per pound of bodyweight (less so for very overweight individuals of course since so much of their weight is inert fat). Some studies indicate that as much as 2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight might be beneficial. So in my dietary recommendations I try to aim high and write out what an ideal diet would look like. Of course very few people would have the time and ability to eat like that every day but they can still do their best to try and match my guidelines within the limits imposed by their schedules and budgets.

A few days ago I added a small section to my http://www.mikesfitness.com/content/nutrition article called "Most Important Points" where I go into a little more depth on what is really important when it comes diet and what is less so. Basically, food selection, rather than amount of calories or proportions of protein/carbs/fats, or how frequent the meals are, is the most important point. If you eat only healthy stuff then it's not so important how much or when you eat, as long you don't starve yourself of course. Great thing about healthy foods and meals is that they are so filling that it's difficult to overeat on them. They provide natural portion control. Junk food tends to be opposite: the more junk food you eat the more you seem to crave it. Unfortunately the potato chip slogan is right: "you can't eat just one".

So my diet advice is applicable to everyone who follows my training advice and though few will follow my sample diets exactly, they at least provides a target to shoot for.

As far as the loose skin problem, unfortunately there's no good non-surgical solution for it that I am aware of. Vitamin E oils or creams seem to help some people to some degree but they are certainly no panacea. Over years your skin will naturally adjust but in most cases of very large weight loss, such as 150 pounds in your case, there will likely still be areas where skin is visibly loose. As with most other health issues, I strongly believe that a healthy lifestyle will help your body heal itself faster.