I've been looking to lose some weight and get in better shape lately, but don't really have ready access to a gym because of life circumstances. Figured I'd throw this out there and ask for some advice about working out at home to lose weight with no equipment. I mean there's the obvious push ups, situps, etc. But I'm more looking for advice on how many sets/repetitions, how many days a week, etc. Obviously I plan on dieting a bit as well, but any advice or some kind of link/graphic showing a few basic workout plans would be appreciated.
I figure this post can help some others in the same situation as well given a lot of us want to get in better shape to prepare, but don't have access to the best facilities, and whatnot.
Long post alert!!
Simple stuff you can do at home:
Here's a video from a great yt channel with a tone of pushup variations to target pretty much everything
Also remember to do a lil bit of warming up before your workout (just like a few mins of jumping jacks, high knees, jump rope), and doing some stretching at the end of the day, I usually do that right before I go to bed.
As for amounts of reps, that's the great thing about body-weight stuff, you always do them till failure, whatever that is for you, some people will fail at push-up #10, some at #50, but the important thing is that they reached failure.
3 sets for each exercise is usually enough, I usually do 3 days strength training, and 3 days conditioning, on the strength days I usually do full body, but you could do like bro-splits, I just feel like with body-weight you might as well just do full body.
Conditioning I keep it simple, I usually just do a fuck ton of burpees, 200-300 depending on my mood, takes around 25 to 35 minutes, doing sets of 20 and resting around 40 seconds to a minute in between, you obviously don't have to do that much to start with, figure out a number that challenges you, and then increase it as you get better.
Here's a YT channel mostly dedicated to burpees, he's really hardcore, but you can get some ideas of conditioning workouts from him, bringing it down a few notches so you can start.
Or sometimes I'll do like a HIIT of high knees, 5 minutes wamup(high kness at moderate pace, then 12 rounds HIIT, each round is a minute, and each minute split between high and low intensity, I do 30/30, but you can start with something like 15/45(15 seconds high, 45 seconds low), then 5 minutes cooldown
It's pretty effective, get's the sweat going.
I also do AB workouts every day, at a separate time in the day, quick stuff, like 5 to 10 minutes, very important to train your abs.
If you have some cash to spend I highly recommend the programs you can get here, it's from the same guy of the first YT channel I linked, there's a program called "Xero" there, plus "Xero 2", all bodyweight, 0 equipment stuff.
But you can just as easily build yourself a program from the ridiculous amount of workouts and stuff he has on his YT channel for free.
As for nutrition, I've seen some people already recommending intermittent fasting, which I consider to be a good thing, start small though, the important thing is to cut off snacking, have 2/3 meals in a day period, no snacking in between.
Say, breakfast at 8:00, lunch at 12:00, and dinner at 17:00, you eat at those times, and ONLY at those times, NO SNACKING!
After a while you can go a step further and cut one of those meals out, it's important to start slow because if you go all out when you are absolutely not used to it, you'll have a horrible time, and it will be much harder for you to stick with it, and the key here is consistency.
And of course try to stick with real foods, dump the overly processed stuff, give preference to home cooked if you can, and mind your macros, try to balance out starchy carbs, fibrous carbs and protein.
Easiest way is to imagine your plate divided in 3, each part would be a serving of each one of the macros, I suggest keeping the starchy carbs part the smallest, then fibrous carbs a bit larger, and the largest being protein.
And you eat enough to be satisfied.
Oh, and try to avoid caloric drinks, all you need is water, leave the caloric drinks for when the family gathers on commemorative occasions and whatnot, or for when you go out with friends to the bar, otherwise WATER!
And yes, I mean even fruit juice, eat an orange instead of drinking orange juice, much much better.