Welcome to the forum Big Daddy!
You can buy a supplement from Clicks, Dischem, etc. called Arthrochoice Advanced(hope admin allows me to post name here) and that should help with strengthening your knees.
There is no way to lose fat specifically from the belly. The body needs to use up the stored fat over time. The initial water weight can be shed quickly. You need to make a serious lifestyle change. There is no quickfix. it could take you 4 months to 12 months to lose 20kg and then you need to keep it off.
Here is my suggestion:
1. Your Diet - I've tried various diets to lose weight. Most were hard to stick to but 5 weeks ago I read up on the 5:2 Fast Diet and decided to follow it. I lost 6.8kg since then. The basic rule is that you must eat a maximum of 600 Calories on 2 non-consecutive days in a week and on the other 5 days you can eat antyhing. But this is just a loose idea of how it works and to make it effective you should eat whatever you want but make the right choices. First calculate your Recommended Daily Intake(RDI) of Calories and you eat at a maximum of 20% to 25% Calories less of your RDI. Join a website like
www.fatsecret.co.za
and that will help you calculate all the calories. On those "fast days" where you are restricted to 600 Calories you should eat low calorie/high volume food like cabbage. 1 cup of cooked cabbage is only 32 Calories whereas 1 cup of cooked rice is around 200 Calories.
2. Cut out sugar & Carbs - this nasty culprit called sugar will always damage your fat loss goals. Switch to coke zero. Start using a sweetener like canderal in coffee/tea and every 2 weeks you must reduce the amount until you can manage drinking tea/coffee with no sweetener at all. Trust me, its easy once you break the addiction that sugar has on you. Reduce your carbs by giving up bread, pizza, pasta, etc. In fact, rather give up anything made from Wheat Flour. A better choice is to eat carbs like oats, maize, etc. Wheat flour is known to cause weight gain and there is too much junk put into bread these days so stay away from it. You can still get full by eating more protein.
3. Water intake - You need to drink at least 2L of water per day. This is a key component to weight loss and I can't stress enough on how much you need it! Drink 500ml when you wake up and before you sleep. Drink 500ml before each meal.
4. Supplements : You need to include a low carb/high protein whey protein shake into your daily consumption. It will help with your knees as well as fat loss.
5. Fat loss products : I've had good results using Fat Furnace Fifteen without having a good diet but I suggest you read the Anabolic section for the thread on FFF. It's 100% herbal but make sure you adhere to my advice on the diet plan.
6. Green Tea - This has loads of weight loss benefits. Drink a cup of green tea every morning and evening.
7. Intermittent Fasting(IF) - A great way to reduce calories is to follow IF combined into your 5:2 Fast Diet. IF is simple. You stop eating at 8pm for 16hours until midday the next day. So basically you skip breakfast but you can have green tea, water and tea/coffee(no sugar and splash of milk). Its easy to get through your morning until midday without eating.
8. Weigh in weekly - keep track of your weight and measure yourself weekly. The fatsecret.co.za allows you to keep a weight journal to track your weight each week. USE IT!
9. Make healthy food choices - instead of french fries(400+ Calories) you can choose to have a baked potato(200 Calories). Its all about eating as much as you want to get full but choosing the foods that are least in calories so that you can eat under your RDI and lose weight/fat.
10. Make these changes as your new lifestyle change and not just something to follow for losing some weight.
All the best
