A little help?

Hey Folks,

I just stumbled across this site last night, and am so glad I did! I was hoping perhaps I could get advice on my weight loss?

I'm 20, an dstarted calorie counting at the beginning of july which brought my weight down from 182 to 169, and am now sitting back at 172. I would like to get to 155. (Will post pictures if people want)

I bike for an hour every day, lift weights for 3-4 days a week, and am eating anywhere between 1100-1500 calories a day, my estimated calorie burn a day is between 2900-3300 calories. I'm feeling very frustrated because I'm eating all small healthy meals 6 times a day, not eating late, eating vegetables, protein, and carbs, and the scale isn't budging at the rate I think it should be... Any advice? (Sorry if this isn't the right forum to do this in..)

So your daily deficit is at least 1400 calories, and possibly as high as 2200?? That kind of deficit is like an inactive person eating basically nothing at all! Your body is definitely starving. I'm actually amazed that you are feeling and functioning OK at that level. Are you sure those numbers are correct?

My advice is definitely to eat more--lots more!

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I track everything I eat and all my exercise at calorie count.com, they have exact calorie counts for pretty much every product and vegetable out there.

I was feeling pretty exhausted for a while, but I started talking vitamin b12, and am now feeling okay. I'm currently working on getting my iron levels back up to normal by taking iron supplements prescribed by my doctor.

I'm definitely a little scared to eat more than 1500 calories a day, as I fear I'm going to start to put the weight back on, but you think that if I do I will start losing again? How many calories should I be eating a day?

There's lots of iron in plant-based foods, why your doctor prescribed you iron supplements? that's what doctors do I guess... Foods that are high in iron and Vitamin C (vitamin c is said to be good for the absorption of iron): parsley, peppers, chives, spinach, potatoes, tomatoes, broccoli, pokeberry, cauliflower, peas, cress, sprouts, shoots and different leaves of plants.

I'm definitely a little scared to eat more than 1500 calories a day, as I fear I'm going to start to put the weight back on, but you think that if I do I will start losing again? How many calories should I be eating a day?

to lose significant weight each week, eat 500 calories less than what you burn each day, so if you say you burn about 3,000 calories a day (how tall are you? ) then you could eat 2,500 calories, so that's a 3,500 calorie deficit per week, meaning a lost of 1 pound of bodyfat per week (a pound of butter is also about 3,500 calories). If you still want to eat 1,500 calories per day, you can also eat more only once or twice per week, this can boost your metabolism to burn more calories and then to lose more weight.

Wow! 1500 to 2500 cals is gonna be a huge calorie increase for me, but maybe I'll start out with boosting my intake over the weekend.

I'm 5'9" and 20 years old. My doctor recommended iron supplements because my blood tests showed I'm 'almost' anemic. Since then I bought a cast iron cooking pan, and eating more spinach and lentils, but I'll try the other suggestions as well.

If you're not eating enough to support your caloric expenditure and you're worried to boot, then your body is in storing mode. This happens with a lot of people. It won't lose because it wants to survive. We have prehistoric systems which switch on when we are stressed from threat of famine or threat in general. You're running it down with the exercise and not eating enough to support it and you're also worried about weight. Eat closer to what the others recommend, you'll actually lose the fat faster, but first relax. So what if you are not your goal right now? Chill out. Get into a safe place in your mind. Any kind of stress, including nutritional stress, over exercising, spiritual stress, relationship, work stress, etc., can put us in to storing mode. (Cortisol goes up, Leptin goes down, fat goes up or doesn't come off). If you read Brendan Brazier's book you'll see that even though he was exercising intensely everyday and eating healthy, he was putting on fat, because he taxed his adrenals. Chill out. Increase your green food, like 5 cups of dark, dark nutrient dense greens a day. Take it easy for 1-2 weeks. No joke. I took off 2 months of this (but did a little exercise) and didn't gain any weight and then when I started up again, the transformation is easier.

Man or woman? Slow and steady is better for skin. Don't weigh yourself so often. Do heavy weights. Do only 30 min of cardio and do more intervals. But chill out for a week and lower that cortisol. Love the skin you're in now. You take yourself wherever you go, if you are happy with yourself intrinsically, it helps relax you.

Thanks so much for your advice. You're right, I have been really stressed out from work and from the weight loss plateau I've hit. I'll try to relax a bit more, and celebrate my weight loss up to this point.

I started off this morning by adding a flax banana berry carrot smoothie this morning to my usual steel cut oats, and a grapefruit...already 250 more cals than usual!

Is it normal to gain weight after upping my calorie increase to 1800 so my body isn't in starvation mode? Or is my body just in shock?

Right now you're likely seeing water weight. Yes you may go up little but it takes more than a day or two, but relax about it. Address stress first, that puts on fat without even eating at all. Because you're lifting weights you will see weight gains from muscle too, so you could be seeing a plateau (but not really) based on the muscle. Don't look at the scale. Can you fit your clothing the same? I weigh more this month than last month and fit my clothes better. Muscle is heavier and takes up less space. So 5'4" women at 135 wear 3/4 and so does a 115 women. Relax. Do more weights and check to see what your thyroid is doing. Keep sodium low. I will gain 2 lbs in one day from eating salty foods and if I don't drink enough to flush it out, it takes a while to work it's way out.

Do this:

Weigh yourself with a digital to the 1/2 lb scale.

Drink 2 cups of water

Weigh again.

See? You gained a lot.

Woman or man?

If you are on your period, don't even think about how much you weight.

Eat 5 cups of salad and you'll also gain weight. Weight is not what you want to lose, you want to lose fat. So if you want to lose fat, calm down. Stress is number one cause of fat accumulation, even in the most advanced athletes. Read Thrive Diet. (Should be called Thrive LIVE it.)

Change up your work out routine. If you do bike, do walking or sprinting. If you pick up a weight and can do more than 12 reps at once, time to get a heavier weight. Personally, I want to get bigger muscles so I do the heaviest I can handle at 6 reps 2-3 times or less. Then I do stuff like hold for 20 seconds, squeeze, so that it's really working it. When you lift it should not be a sexy thing, face contorts and concentration. But you will look sexier much faster!!!

Heavy lifting (after you've worked up to it) your body will burn FAT for a many hours after, cardio there's hardly any after effect. More muscle, will shape your body and burn more fat for as long as you're alive. Cardio is good, but not as good as weight lifting.

If you eat too few of calories, work out a lot, stress out you end up cannibalizing your muscle and lowering your metabolism in short order (low calorie diets eat muscle and eating muscle makes you look deflated and you end up eating less and less to maintain and then you get bone problems). To get your metabolic rate up, do metabolic things for the long term: lift heavy, eat to support it.

An intriguing University of Colorado study, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 2003, measured post-workout fat oxidation. ("Fat oxidation" is what happens when your body uses oxygen to turn fat into energy, as it does when you're using your aerobic energy system.) The researchers had a group of men and women do a weight workout one day and an aerobic workout another, with each workout burning about 400 calories.

 

Fifteen hours after the weight workout, the men and women were buring 22 percent more fat than they did fifteen hours after their aerobic workout. (New Rules of Lifting for Women)

Veggies ought to be the main source of carbs, I think (less fruit for women as fructose is not regulated by insulin like glucose, so recent research indicates that it gets converted in to fat fast! For some, women especially, just best to stick to greens (lots of greens). And protein up. The body builders and fitness models get 1 - 1.5 g of protein per lb. of weight or 20-30% of the calories per day. But it's tweaked as they know that stuff.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/76/5/911 -- fructose (there was more about it and the folks just removing fructose corn syrup, fruit, and anything fructose and that's all they did and they lost fat fast).

Then there's lots of research on getting good sleep for fat loss.

Read:

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/nutrition/a-calorie-is-not-a-calorie.aspx

A calorie is not a calorie.

Veganly,

Christina

Thank you so much for your help Christina.

Yes, I'm a woman, and like I said have been stressed out, but have also been taking your advice to heart and eating more and worrying about what I'm eating less, but I definitely had a fright when I stepped on the scale this morning. My body must be in shock, since I'm now feeding it the energy it needs, haha. My period shouldn't be here for at least another 7 days, but maybe my body is already starting to retain water, and maybe it's retaining water from the weight lifting as well.

At the gym, I'm definitely changing my routine up everytime I go, and I look for different exercises and increase the weights every week or two so my body doesn't get used to it. I can't really tell if i've lost more weight/ trimmed my body more with my old clothes, because after I dropped my first ten pounds, everything is really loose on me and my pants are falling off me, and I haven't had time really to go shop for a size smaller and see the difference since then.

I'm going on holidays in a few days, so I think that will help me, and will also help me get more sleep hopefully. I think my diet consists primarily of veggies, then fruit, then breads (usually only steel cut oats or kamut puffs, or wasa crackers).

Brown rice protein (my fav)! Less fruit (for now) GREEN UP! Oatmeal is great for breakfast. Go by a second hand shop and get some pants.

Also I've been seeing great results by adding 2 tablespoons (yes it's very hot and spicy) to 1 cup of oatmeal, 2 stevia, and 1 cup of almond milk. Lots of info below and elsewhere on the significant metabolism raising effects of cinnamon.

http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2000/12/01/2065/cinnamon-increases-metabolism-20-fold/

http://www.thyroid-info.com/articles/cinnamon.htm

Most people (women mostly) tend to think they can get shapely on a bird diet. If you read what the Oxygen models are eating, they eat 1 g of protein per lb (meat/whey unfortunately). For animals, colon cancer and boobie cancer (and a host of other problems) it's best to stay vegan and green as possible.

That's a freaking lot of protein but that's why they look like they look, it's not all the exercises; it's the exercise + the protein to protect the muscle they have and the protein to build muscle from the weights they're lifting.

Melissa (veganpersonaltraining.com) is VERY worth the small amount she charges and she's got a diet plan that will get you going and exercises too.

Thanks again for the advice dropsoul! I've dropped my fruit servings a bit and upped protein intake through lentils, chickpeas, soy milk, soy cheese, hummus, and peanut butter. And I'm definitely adding cinnamon to my kamut puffs or oatmeal every morning.

Scale says I've gained three more pounds since last week, but I'm trying not to pay attention to it like you said. Now I'm working on trying to get more sleep! It's a little frustrating how 'slow' this progress is. Ah, well.