Posts by durgy

Original Post by dbaird99:

what am I suppose to eat more of?

 Food

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper . .. oh yeah and snack like a calorie counter.

550 breakfast

200 snack

Lunch 450

Snack 150

Dinner 350

Gives one scenario. You could shift some of the breakfast (and lunch) to dinner or to an after dinner snack of 100 calories or so. Or you could make your snacks smaller and put more into dinner or after dinner snack.

First of all WELL DONE ON Sometimes the body says "hey please ease up on me!" It happened to me anyway. Here's one way to deal with it which I call "consolidate your losses and re-attack".

A plateau is a comfortable spot for your body where it has made a soft landing. At that point, get used to that soft landing weight (that your own body selected for you) for a bit. Slowly bring up your calories (on the order of a couple of hundred per week) until your burn rate (as dictated by a "normal" calculator for your age, height and weight) and your calories eaten are equal and you are maintaining the same weight. If you bring up your calories too quick you will get a bump up in weight, so hence the slowly bring it up suggestion.

However long that takes to get your calculated burn and calories in line with your intake is what you need to go through. For example if you have been maintaining at what seems like it should be a 1000 calorie deficit, at 200 calorie increase per week, it  may take 5 weeks to get to a new equilibrium. But get there you will eventually. And then keep it there - yes I know we've stopped losing weight for a while, but take a look at the big picture and long term and not just instant gratification. Poke around this website and read about people's 3 month or longer plateaus, to get a sense of what it feels like to beat your head against the wall. Of course what's the best part about beating your head against a wall? Stopping!

So eventually your body feels good (after all it is eating what it is burning so it gets what it wants and gets to not be stressed out by a perceived famine), but your mind still wants to lose weight. With renewed energy and at your new equilibrium, you cut those calories again to the 500-1000 deficit level and you will start dropping again until your body catches on and you need to take another respite (before a repeat "consolidate and attack").

The body may catch on as quickly as 10% drop in mass or sooner if your calorie deficit is too big for it to handle.

This is what I am doing right now, and I am about at that new equilibrium. I am high normal weight right now, and in a few weeks, I may make a push lower.

Pack my own lunch and snacks. Lunch is a salad. Measure the 1 teaspoon of olive oil rather then eyeball it. Only bring the portion of chocolate, rather than the whole bar - I cannot be trusted to only eat 20 grams if it is available, this I know.

Measuring portions in general helps.

Mostly just drink water or green tea during the day (a skim - instead of full fat - cappucino is an occassional treat) unless it has a purpose. I do drink a pre-workout protein shake, and a glass of unsweetened soy milk with whey powder post-workout. Those would be drinks with a purpose (protein!).

Air pop popcorn and add vinegar or hot sauce to make topings stick instead of butter.

Cook for myself.

General advice when you hit a plateau during weight decline (and yours is a classic 10% or so loss) is get your body used to that new weight. Stop trying to lose for a while and increase your calories gradually to your burn rate. Get comfortable there for a while (I've seen 6 months of maintenance, actually but I am less patient than that), and then take another run at it.

As this is a calorie counting website, people will want to know how many calories you consume. If you do not know what that number is, then you can find it out by using the food logging tools on your account. If the number of calories is too low, many people will flood in to tell you to eat more. It is actually good advice. At "very active", which is the activity you describe, you should be eating about 1878 calories per day to lose about 1% of your body weight per week. However, if you have been restricting calories too much for too long, it may have negatively effected your metabolism. So how are you doing with calorie consumption?

Maintenance weight means eating what you're burning. No calorie deficit. If you've been running a deficit for a long time, then bring the calories up gradually until you reach that happy equilibrium.

I personally have been loving eating more after 7 months or so of calorie restriction. My weight has not shot up, even though I have begun upping my calories. I've added about 1000 calories per day to my eating when all is said and done (from about 1800 to about 2700 or 2800).

At 1200 calories you will be able to alter your metabolism so that you can gain weight on that small amount. I am not sure this is what you are going for. Even worse, once you do start to eat a normal amount you will gain more weight.

I'm pretty sure you are not using this site, or approaching weight loss correctly. (Hint: nearly blacking out from lack of nutrition is a sign of this) Post your height weight and age and folks will be able to help you out with a healthy amount of calories.

The way I understand it, foodwise you do need protein to build muscle. Muscles really won't get bigger with cardio, so you need to do some resistance training (weights or other caltisthenics type stuff - pushups, chinups, etc.).

In the last two weeks I've been drinking protein supplements before and after my workout because it has been really difficult to get to the 1 or 1.5 grams of protein per pound/ per day (depending on who you believe) otherwise. I have seen some definition in my muscles and wish I would have looked at the protein aspect before.

I'm pretty sure I like the definition building

From http://www.phord.com/cc/?m=US&q=f-22-164- 60.45-1.55-0-0-20 I get recommendations of EAT 2617 calories :: BURN 3598 calories :: LOSE 1.96 lb per week

This is your stats on lightly active.

Your body recovers from abuse. You need to feed it to heal it.

Original Post by rnjt:

im the exact same way about breakfast on week days. i tried musclemax's promax whey, tasted ok & i even had it when i had a hangover didn't upset my stomach. however ive been told its not the best one & was given optimum nutrition gold standard whey. not to mention promax is too expensive.

 Whey is a commitment, that's for sure. I was eyeing up this other jar that had 78 portions in it, and cost about a buck a portion. If that stuff turned out to be nasty, that would be tough to swallow (every pun intended).

I went for the Myoplex chocolate protein variety pack and they are pretty tasty. They are not just whey protein and have other stuff mixed in (some micro-nutrients which is good for me as I am not taking other supplements). I've been drinking this abot 45 minutes or an hour before I work out.

I did go for the EAS vanilla whey tub and have put it in fruit smoothies and it is not bad tasting. I will get through that tub in however long it takes (30 portions or some such) and it should remain edible throughout.

Your minimum daily calories are 1500 for at least the next 3 years. Please do check out the links and their relation to mental health as posted by alysha.

Original Post by lovelybecca:

lol This is great!!! #4 is my favorite. Great job durgy, Great job!!!

 

p.s. I do have one question: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?  

 I think I got there at around 468 once. Long time ago, and my tongue may be bigger now.

Exercise helps you to burn calories. Burning more calories than you eat causes weight loss. Both muscle and fat (and even organs in the case of too little eating) will burn off.

When you do cardi depending on your heart rate and what fuel you have in your body different types of tissue will burn at different rates. Taking out water loss (which comes back when you drink water) a person can expect to burn about 75% fat and 25% muscle while doing cardio. Not sure about teh ratio while lifting, but there is a ratio.

When lifting you create microtears in your muscles that when they heal and recover (assuming you are giving your body necessary protein) add muscle. You need down time between weight lifting sessions to heal (at least 48 hours - every other day). You can do cardio every day. Cardio will not build muscle per se, but will support a lean muscle look (take away teh fat and looks what's left).

Muscle metabolizes more calories than does fat, so having more muscle will help your basal metabolic rate. However teh difference is not so huge that you will be able to eat significantly more just because you have muscles . . . its like 10% or some number like that. However, doing frequent cardio means that you are burning calories which you can ingest as food calories pretty much on a one to one basis. Burn an EXTRA 1000 calories (I say extra because if you do an hour of exercise there was an hour of base calories just by living 24 hours that you do not also burn) on the elliptical and if you are at a maintenance weight you can eat 1000 more calories. If you are trying for a one pound per week healthy loss, you'd still get to chow down 500 more calories that day (may I recommend a frozen banana dipped in 20 grams of dark chocolate and a tablespoon of peanut butter melter together; a skim latte a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds and one eigth of a cantaloupe).

I do both weights and cardio, and think both have their merits. Weights 3x  week, cardio (including HIIT) 6 or 7 times per week, as well as abs exercises 3xweek, and try to get in one mellow walk each day either in the afternoon or evening. I did not feel like I was getting good results with weights until I made it a point to eat enough protein. Now it's all good.

I am impatient. When my weight was the same 3 days in a row, and I was at (what should have been based on BMR, calories and exercise) a 1000 calorie deficit, I started bringing my calories up over the course of a few days and was a little lighter on my exercise to try to create a new maintenance equilibrium. It felt better than eating 1800 calories or so a day with nothing to show on the scale and me being hungry (and a bit pissed off!).

Results of the experiment is that I feel freaking awesome because I am eating about what I am burning right now. The scale has not shot up. Assuming I can consolidate my losses (and even if I give back some of those 90 pounds) I'm going to come back at it refreshed with a new healthy equilibrium. And we know how to lose when we are at a healthy (and not a depressed metabolism plateau while eating what should be a deficit) equilibrium - reduce calories, and increase exercise. But by then, I will have given myself a bit of room to operate.

The problem for me with trying to break a plateau simply by doing the same thing is that if something that should be working - the calorie deficit - (and I can count calories like nobody's business and workout for an hour and a half a day like it was a religious experience) is that I really do like food. So if I can see that I will have about the same result (that is staying about the same weight) for a while by bringing my food up slowly and my exercise down gradually (to get to a new equilibrium, rather than a calorie deficit adjusted metabolism equilibrium) call off the dogs, have something to eat and maintain my loss for a bit. This has been workign out for me.

I have seen reports that suggest getting your body accustommed to a new balance for up to 6 MONTHS for each time you lose 10% of your body weight. I am lucky and glad that I lost about a 1/3 of my body weight and got to a "normal" (according to BMI, anyway) weight before hitting my first noticeable plateau. YMMV.