@silverflame
I’m 36, 6’ tall, 245 lbs and 30% body fat
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I eat about 2000 calories a day (though some days far more!)
You would not stay at 245 lbs if you were eating only 2,000 calories most days. Your TDEE (how many calories you eat per day to maintain your current weight) is 2,296 calories if you're a woman, and 2,495 calories if you're a man. This means that eating just 2,000 calories would put you in a caloric deficit, and you would end up losing weight if you consistently ate 2,000 cals per day.
Buy a digital food scale and start measuring everything you eat and calculate calories based on the scale weight. Eat normally for a week and log and weigh everything you eat per day, and then tally up the calories to see how many calories you're
really eating.
I am a high school principal so I’m often busy and find that I use food to cope with stress pretty often
I work in a public school as well, and I recently started helping out with the basketball team's practices (I'm 2 years younger than you and 40 pounds bigger than you, just for reference). These kids are wearing my fat ass out, and I'm enjoying every minute of it! I will personally do all of the exercises I make the b-ball players do, plus I scrimmage with them. Trust me, practicing with the sports teams will get you some good cardio, conditioning, and agility training. Plus, you'll get to "bUiLd reLatiOnshIps" with the kids.
I feel like I am just looking in too many directions and that I could really use some help picking a target and going for it.
I know the feeling lol. I'd suggest starting with something simple first. Start by doing the following everyday:
- 20-30 squats and push-ups: Look on YouTube for proper form (sump squats work well for duck-footed people, just fyi). If you can't do a typical push-up, then do push-ups against a wall. I'll also do squats and push-ups while at school. 10 in the morning, 10 at noon, and 10 right before I leave the building. Plus you don't sweat much from doing them like this, so you won't stink at work lol.
Then do the following 2-3 times a week:
- Using a timer/circuit app, do 30 seconds of jumping Jacks; 30 seconds of running in place where you bring your knees as close to a 90° angle as possible; 30 seconds of bodyweight calf-raises; and 30 second planks (do planks on a chair if regular ones are too much on your body). Do all 4 exercises 3 times in a row at home, and modify them or exchange them for other at-home cardio exercises as needed. This is a very short circuit, so make sure that you are doing each exercise as intensely (but safely) as you can.
Do all of this for 4 weeks straight, and you will feel a difference.
As for diet, start small by restricting yourself to 2,000-2,100 calories per day, cutting out sugary sodas and fruit juices, and or exchanging them for "zero sugar" drink products. You like ice cream? Get Rebel's Keto ice cream that uses alternative sugar and lactose-free milk. You like bbq sauce? Get the sugar-free BBQ sauces that are now sold in stores. If you like chocolate, then eat dark chocolate only (75% or more, as this tends to have less sugar than popular chocolates). You like coffee with sugar or creamer? Use monkfruit as a substitute for sugar and use sugar-free creamers. I can give you an example meal if you tell me what food dishes you really love.
The key to success is not in cutting out all delicious food dishes that you like, but rather to find low sugar and whole [real] ingredient alternatives to make your food and drinks with. Limit alcohol to the weekend, and feel free to have cheat meals on saturday and Sunday
with the condition that you still stay within your 2,000-2,100 calorie budget.
Also, and this is very important, incorporate green veggies into your daily diet. Start with 2 servings of FRESH green veggies per day, whether it's cooked or raw. None of those canned or precooked veggies. And feel free to eat fruit as well. Fresh fruit does wonders for my gut health. Berries, cantaloupe, kiwifruit, apples, etc, are all good fruits to eat.
