some advice please

[sharpygreen]

After many years of being a fat bd decided it was time to lose the fat.

Joined a gym in march i weighed 19 stone 13 pounds, i am only 5'8" (shock- horror)

All has been going well, my weight started to fall but for the last 3 weeks its stopped current weight is 16 stone 5 pounds.

I go to the gym 3 times a week and do the following.

12 minutes on exercise bike (warming up)

40 mins xtrainer lvl 4 fat burning

30 mins on treadmill lvl 4 fat burning

2000 metres on rowing machine

i am sticking to 1500 calories a day diet

Any advice on what i am doing wrong, how to improve my workouts would be appreciated

[MocMocaMoc]

Assuming your diet is clean, and you're not eating to excess...

Run faster.

; )

[T40ORA]

A different approach to eating?

http://www.leangains.com/

[Hoofy]

Do you look better? If so, keep going. You've developed muscles relevant to the exercise.

[FraserLFA]

Surely it's just muscle growth?

Muscle is heavier than fat

[Ordinary_Chap]

FraserLFA said:

Surely it's just muscle growth?

Muscle is heavier than fat

It's quite unlikely to be muscle stopping the fat loss.

What are those 1500 calories?

Also I'm a very big and sometimes quite boring advocate of using weight lifting to massively increase weight loss. Weight lifting and cardio with a good diet will vastly improve weight loss.

How fast were you losing weight loss before it stopped?

[FraserLFA]

Ordinary_Chap said:

FraserLFA said:

Surely it's just muscle growth?

Muscle is heavier than fat

It's quite unlikely to be muscle stopping the fat loss.

That wasn't my point. OP said the weight loss had stopped, not fat loss and my point was that with all the exercise, the extra muscle could be taking the place of the fat lost. So fat loss may still be happening, but weight won't change as the muscle gained is making up the extra.

[Ordinary_Chap]

FraserLFA said:

Ordinary_Chap said:

FraserLFA said:

Surely it's just muscle growth?

Muscle is heavier than fat

It's quite unlikely to be muscle stopping the fat loss.

That wasn't my point. OP said the weight loss had stopped, not fat loss and my point was that with all the exercise, the extra muscle could be taking the place of the fat lost. So fat loss may still be happening, but weight won't change as the muscle gained is making up the extra.

At 5'8 and 16st 5, fat loss should be absolutely visible even if some muscle mass is being added due to the excess.

There is logic in what you are saying but I'd argue fat loss should be visible at that weight, once he nears his ideal weight or gets below 20% bf then I'd absolutely agree that, that could be the case.

Anyway thats my 2p...

[BenM77]

FraserLFA said:

That wasn't my point. OP said the weight loss had stopped, not fat loss and my point was that with all the exercise, the extra muscle could be taking the place of the fat lost. So fat loss may still be happening, but weight won't change as the muscle gained is making up the extra.

I read your first post as a joke, I think it is highly unlikely someone overweight doing a lot of steady state cardio and on a calorie deficit has put on muscle or plateaued at 5'8 and 16.5 stone.

OP, you are very likely underestimating your calorie intake, fruit juice and cordial can be big culprits as just a normal size glass can be 150+cal.

+1 for the lifting weights suggestion from OC, he has the T-shirt so to speak and knows how this all works. The minimum I would do if I were you is a quick circuit on the machines if you don't want to do free weights.

[a311]

I’ll bow to the superior knowledge of other forum users but here is my 2p.

You’ve lost weight and if you’re doing the same routine as when you were 19odd stone you’re burning less calories therefore you need to put more effort into your work out to continue weight loss, or cut the amount of calories consumed and maintain the routine.

As for foods etc there are good/bad clean dirty calories but whether it’s made up of a 1500 cal portion of lard or healthy stuff it’s still 1500 cals.

To monitor the amount of effort you’re required to put in to achieve varying goals via cardio measure your heart rate. If you know your peak heart rate you can calculate in term of % what rate you need to be at to be in weight loss range, improve anaerobic fitness etc.

[Hoofy]

BenM77 said:

OP, you are very likely underestimating your calorie intake

Ha, there's that!

[King Herald]

1500 calories seems very low, for your weight and your workout regime. Double check your quantities and suchforth as there are some very odd methods of calculating calorific content.

A small bowl of raisin bran with milk is 500 calories, according to the box. Weigh your quantities, just to make sure, as the 100grams they often talk about is miniscule.

When I mentioned I was on 1800 a day several people within this very forum told me I was possibly hindering my weight loss by going into starvation mode, whereby the body starts consuming muscle, reserving fat etc, thinking it is starving.

And it looks like you've done pretty damn well so far losing 3 1/2 stones already. Keep it up.

[Prof Prolapse]

You're doing great but you need to keep stepping up the exercise if you're no longer feeling the benefits.

I'm not sure exactly how this "fat burning lvl 4" correlates to speed but based on that I'd also increase the duration and intensity of your running. You can learn to cheat at rowing and the cross trainer but there's no escaping the treadmill. That's why everybody hates it and jumps on the cross trainer and bicycle after they've warmed up. Once you start running 8 minute miles the weight will start shifting.

You need to keep your calories low if you want to lose weight. As long as you're not feeling faint and you're progressive in building up the exercise then the total amount is probably fine.

At the risk of teaching you to suck eggs, make sure you eat some slow release carbs about an hour or so before exercise. It's not just about the total calories during the day, its about what you've eaten and when. For example, I've just eaten two chicken curry pies totalling ~600 calories of fat and will be running at 5pm. I will be utterly dying and regretting it immensely by about 5.15pm and close to vomiting by 5.30pm. If I'd eaten ~400 calories at lunch and ~200 calories at 4pm of carbs my body would be running much more efficiently.

[T40ORA]

Prof Prolapse said:

At the risk of teaching you to suck eggs, make sure you eat some slow release carbs about an hour or so before exercise. It's not just about the total calories during the day, its about what you've eaten and when. For example, I've just eaten two chicken curry pies totalling ~600 calories of fat and will be running at 5pm. I will be utterly dying and regretting it immensely by about 5.15pm and close to vomiting by 5.30pm. If I'd eaten ~400 calories at lunch and ~200 calories at 4pm of carbs my body would be running much more efficiently.

Definitely the traditional wisdom. But this has caused me to question it. Not the quality of the carbs/food intake but the timing and frequency.

http://www.leangains.com/

[Hoofy]

What's making him sick is just the fact his stomach is full. Drink 2 litres of water before training and you'll vomit very quickly, too.

[Prof Prolapse]

T40ORA said:

Definitely the traditional wisdom. But this has caused me to question it. Not the quality of the carbs/food intake but the timing and frequency.

http://www.leangains.com/

I can't read that whole thing. I can't stand his style of writing. What happened to "Summary - Introduction - Literature review - Conclusion - References"? Do nutritionists not adhere to this?

Anyway.. The bit I read is him re branding the idea that the the body's stress response to a lack of food response is good for peaked alertness and metabolism in contrast to the "little and often" which many of us were taught.

I'm told there's an increasing weight of literature backing up the point. It is also is perfectly logical from an evolutionary perspective. How it relates to carrying out exercise though I think is a very difficult balance to achieve.

At the end of the day even with a fast metabolism you're still running on fumes. I know forcing your body to burn its fat reserves is the goal, but having tried both I would always want at least some carbs to soften the transition from blood sugar -> glycogen -> fat. Rather than just trying to burn off my fat reserves straight away and feeling like st.

Just in my experience anyway. There's probably an element of preference involved.

[horico]

If you're not losing weight, you're never eating only 1500 calories with all that exercise. Calories in v calories out determines weight - what these calories are determines body composition.

Do you write / record everything you eat at the mo?