opinion

kindle

Hi

I was just wondering if anyone could give me some pointers and or advice. I am femaile 24 and need to lose 1-2stones. I used to have a really unhealthy diet which I have spent the last year working on improving. Heres what i would usually eat and have been eating for the last 6 months or so, Still havent lost a pound so i was wondering if there are obvious flaws in my diet.

Breakfast: Porridge with seasme seeds/sunflower seeds and Bananna or museli if i am in a rush

Snack: low fat yogurt and or fruit

Lunch: High Fibre/Granary/Pitta bread with tuna/cheese/salad

Dinner: Rice/Pasta with either fish/Quorn and a couple of serving of vegetables.

I dont eat meat as a rule.
I ll usually eat a takeaway once a week but would try to keep it to stir fryed veg and rice or something similiar with the odd bad of chips.

I am relatively active in that I would excercise ie cycle or walk or something of that nature for at least 5 hours a week. I do plan to increase this. Would it be better to join a gym or just to increase it and maybe add some free weights?

Any feedback would be appreciated.
(sorry its such a long post!)

t-ha

Your diet looks good - I could only comment on possibly the portion size as you haven't given it? If they're big then you may need to cut them back, if they're small then you may need to increase them (eating too little can lead to muscle loss and consequently a lower base metabolic rate).

Try drinking more water and take fish oil caps and multi-vits. If that doesn't do it then start dropping your calories - I'ld begin with cutting down on the rice & pasta in your dinner. Drop by 150 kcals/day for two weeks and see if there's any change. If not try dropping again by the same amount for another two weeks. If it's still not working and your daily intake is getting small then the addition of a bit of muscle is probably what's needed (i.e. free weights) and possibly an increase in food intake.

What kind of walking and cycling do you do? If it's powerwalking then that completely sucks for losing weight. There's arguments for using both low and high intensity exercise for losing fat, but pretty much everyone is in agreement that moderate intensity won't do you much good in the body composition stakes.

Basically I would need more info to make a call on exactly what the problem is.

kindle

Firstly thanks for the reply, I will try your suggestions and will pay more attention to the size of my portions. On the excercise front I tend to walk or cycle places as opposed to going specifically for a walk/cycle. So Id say it would be a brisk walk (not too slow but not powerwalking either) and with cycling its usually to work so I tend to keep the pace slow enough (No shower facilities).