Physical Fitness, Health & Weight ManagementStaying fit and physically healthy is essential! Remember, we aren't subsitutes for your physician! As always, talk to your doctor before following any suggestions or advice!
All right, so this time last year, at 168 CM (5'6) and 90 kg (198 lbs), I decided to go to the gym to lose some weight. By the time Christmas rolled around, I weighed in at 77 kg (170 lbs). I watched what I ate during the holiday season so weight was stable and continued working out. Problem is, I was stuck on 77 kg for 3 months and it was only at the start of the month that my weight entered 76.5 kg (168.7 lbs).
I've made it a target to get to the normal weight range, I'm getting close, and I'd like to achieve that target.
Why is this slowdown occuring?
Some info to consider when thinking up your advice:
-Go to the gym twice a week. 3 times if I have more spare time, only once when I'm busy with assignments from uni.
-Usually focus on cardio rather than weights.
-When it comes to my diet. Drink water 90% of the time, fast food is a rarity (once every 3 months), eat fruits, and as I'm of Asian background, I have rice with my meal.
you've hit a plateau and have to worh thru it. watch cals. and get out walking more,time between classes? go walking! just don't go starving yourself to achieve your goal.
Mix up your workout, your body may have gotten stuck in a rut. Try a different form of cardio, try a yoga class if you can find the time. Also be careful with how much rice you're consuming, with things like rice and pasta it's easy to consume 3x the suggested serving size which really packs on extra calories.
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the problem with logic is there's too many loopholes
and the problem with truth is that it's usually brutal
you might try adjusting your diet slightly. Try a different macro nutrient ration. Ie, if you normally eat say 40/40/20 (prot/carb/fat) adjust your ratio, but keep the same calorie count. Try eating more for a week or two, yes, more. If your body thinks it's starving, it'll go into starvation mode. If you feed it a constant supply of small meals, your metabolism increases.
Workouts...i've done alot of different routines over the years including Body for life. I'm hooked on P90X right now, it is awsome as is their support community. I've gone from 206 to 189 in 60 days, i'm eating like a horse and working my a$$ off 6 days a week.
Given what you're already doing - my advice is ditch the scales - stop LOOKING!!!
It's not about weight per se, but I'm sure you actually know that by now....
It's about when you're happy with how you look and feel, not some magic number on the dial
Keep up the great work
I know, I know. But aside from people who haven't seen me in a while going "Hey, you've lost some weight", how am I suppose to know I'm losing something?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Keys
Look into low GI foods (glycemic index).
Will do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnybrokenheart
Try eating more for a week or two, yes, more. If your body thinks it's starving, it'll go into starvation mode. If you feed it a constant supply of small meals, your metabolism increases
1. So snack if I feel like snacking?
2. Why only for a week or two?
Well, first off, you should feel pretty good about yourself for ditching the 30 lbs. or so that you have. I have a friend and girlfriend that have been trying to loose some weight and neither has had any luck.
The fact that you've hit this plateux simply means that you're caloric intake and output have re-equalized themselves.
Any sort of strategy to loose more weight will of course involve altering either your diet or your exercise habits, to tip this scale again.
Here are a couple of ideas:
Take advantage of those little bits of time throughout the day that we all have here and there. Even 5 minutes can be an opportunity to get a little bit of exercising in and burn some calories. The worst that can happen is someone might see you and you might feel a little foolish.
I used to run up and down the 3 flights of stairs in the library a couple of times, for example, back when I was in school. I work in an office now, and when nobody is looking I'll go in this spare room and do some lunges, squats, and pushups. I have an exercise ball I have at home that I constantly pick up and do a few exercises with when I'm at home... while watching TV, or while cooking.
We are sort of trained to think that exercising is this big deal. An activity that has to take at least 30 minutes or so, when really even 10 minutes here and there can really start to add up.
My next recommendation would be to hit the weights! Aside from a very small percentage of people with hormonal or thyroid problems, our resting metabolism is almost entirely dependent on our lean body mass (I think fat contributes to it a little, but far less than muscle). In short, increase your muscle mass, and you increase your resting metabolism.
So, I firmly believe that there is a synergy that happens when you weight train and do cardio, that just can't be matched by doing only one. By doing both you also help your heart and vascular system (cardio) and your bones, joints, and muscular system (lifting). From a health perspective you sort of cover all the bases.
It sounds like you have pretty descent eating habits now, so I'd try and just eek in a bit more exercising time if I were you. Perhaps you could get a jump rope. That's something you can just walk outside and do, without having to go to the gym. Jumping rope will also bust your a*s! About 15 minutes is all you need, and it burns calories like crazy. So... go out and get a medicine ball (good to use while watching TV) and a jump rope.
Also, I think it's totally normal to hit a plateax like this every now and then. Remember, this is a process and an attitude change more than anything. It's a different way of looking at life and yourself. You should be proud of how far you've come, and not worry so much about reaching this weight or that weight. The important thing is you have now embraced a healthy mindset.
the recommendation to eat foods with a low glycemic index is definitely a good one. These are essentially foods that require a long time to extract the energy out of, so your blood sugar levels are stabilized instead of experiening a large spike. This means you don't get hungry as quickly.
A good example of this is a bowl of grape nuts (whole grains). A bowl of grape nuts is really filling and the energy stays with you for a long time. Compared to a piece of banana bread or something from Starbucks, the difference is astonding. Low glycemic index foods are also good because they will help you avoid diabetes and insulin resistance.
Eating less and more often is also a good idea. Digesting your food itself requires energy, so if you eat the same amount of food but spread it out, you actually end up taking in less usable calories. This is also good from a blood sugar perspective. They call this the thermogenic effect I believe.
My dad was recently diagnoses with prostate cancer and I've been reading this book called "Superfoods RX", which is very informative about food and nutrition.
Personally, I'm not such a big fan of the "extreme" diets, whether it be Atkins or whatever. I have a sort of conservative approach towards dieting....
Lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains.
Lean meats.
Most of my fats I like to get from veggies, olive oil, fish, and nuts.
Low saturated fat and NO trans fats. This means I have to watch the junk/chip aisles at the grocery store.
When I munch/snack I try to eat low-fat yogurt (Greek yogurt has no sugar in it, so you can sweeten it yourself with honey), nuts, carrots and hummus, etc... instead of chips. I do have a weak spot for Hanover's nine grain sticks, though I doubt they are any better than potato chips.
Sweets are something that I do maybe every couple of days now, instead of everyday. I will have a couple of squares of 85% dark chocolate.
I do believe some of these "extreme" diets can work (there is substantial evidence the Atkins diet works), and they probably do work faster, but I think it's more important to just adopt a healthy mindset. Don't think of it as a race... you have the rest of your life. I believe the "quick fix" mindset that accompanies many of these diets is probably partly to blame for the problem to begin with.
In fact, I don't even think about how I eat as a "diet", because I don't consider it a temporary thing. I try to eat healthy and moderately, as I understand it, and I plan on eating that way for the rest of my life. Any time you are burning more calories than you are taking in you are going to loose weight.
I agree with the posters who said mix your work out up. Maybe add an extra day or walk on your off days.
Also as you lose weight you should comsume less calories because you need less to maintain your current weight.
I do weight wathcers and I use points but for exampls at 150 I was eating 20points but when I got down to 140 I could only eat 19 points if I wanted to maintain my cureent rate of weight loss.
Also I added lean protiens. So I start my day off wiht egg whites and whole wheat toast.
Somtimes you just have to switch things up.
But I have found it is harder to lose that last 10 pounds once you are in a normal weight range than losing the orginal 40 (in my case).
Body builders who get down to 3-5% body fat put themselves and their bodies through torture, some of it extremely unhealthy.
If you work out and eat right, you will lose all but the last few pounds, trying to tackle those last few isn't always the smartest thing IMO.
The things bodybuilders and models do to get ultra lean are definitely NOT healthy, in general. Of course, for them, health isn't the goal anyway.
On a whim I got my % fat checked the other day at the gym, since they were doing it for free, and I came up at 10%, and I've been a pretty dedicated longish distance runner for years.
On a good day you can just see the shadow/outline of a six pack.
Now, competitive level long distance runners will actually get to around 5 or 6% without any sort of weird dieting. They have the lowest % body fat of any athletes, if I'm not mistaken (not including Iron Man, ultra marathons, and all the insane extreme sports of recent years). I'm certainly not competitive. I might consider myself a competitive amateur. Those guys have got something I don't, though, clearly.
one time when i was tring to get to a certain weight i hit a plateau, it took 3 weeks of hardcore cardio, before any weight came off. then it came in bunches.maybe your in the same boat.
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