Weight loss advise

mohenley

Hi

I have been trying to lose weight and tone up. I am generally pretty active but I have joined gym to try and up my exercise (previous walking and running). I go to the gym 3 times a week for about 1hr 20 (moving to 4). I do about 45 minutes cardio (on machines or spinning/circuits), 30 minutes weight and ab work. I have been doing this for over 4 weeks and have not lost any weight!! I work out in the mornings

I am 5ft 5, weight 61KG, BMI 21 and Body fat 29. I want to come down to 57KG and drop Body fat to 24%.

My typical diet would be:

Breakfast
Cereal with semi skimmed milk - some days I mix cereal with grapefruit. Tea

Snack
Fruit and Tea

Lunch
Brown bread sandwich with salad (no butter), and some protein (either chicken, ham or salmon/tuna). No mayo

Snack
Fruit and tea

Dinner
Normally 3 potatoes with some meat and veg (either chicken, ham, beef, fish). Water

Snack

Sometimes will have coffee and maybe biscuit

Have water during day also

At weekend it would vary and may have bag of crisps and choc bar. Dinner would be stirfry or steak with veg and potatoes.

Am I going wrong somewhere with my daily diet?

Any advise gratefully appeciated!!

corkcomp

mohenley wrote: »

Hi

I have been trying to lose weight and tone up. I am generally pretty active but I have joined gym to try and up my exercise (previous walking and running). I go to the gym 3 times a week for about 1hr 20 (moving to 4). I do about 45 minutes cardio (on machines or spinning/circuits), 30 minutes weight and ab work. I have been doing this for over 4 weeks and have not lost any weight!! I work out in the mornings

I am 5ft 5, weight 61KG, BMI 21 and Body fat 29. I want to come down to 57KG and drop Body fat to 24%.

My typical diet would be:

Breakfast
Cereal with semi skimmed milk - some days I mix cereal with grapefruit. Tea

Snack
Fruit and Tea

Lunch
Brown bread sandwich with salad (no butter), and some protein (either chicken, ham or salmon/tuna). No mayo

Snack
Fruit and tea

Dinner
Normally 3 potatoes with some meat and veg (either chicken, ham, beef, fish). Water

Snack

Sometimes will have coffee and maybe biscuit

Have water during day also

At weekend it would vary and may have bag of crisps and choc bar. Dinner would be stirfry or steak with veg and potatoes.

Am I going wrong somewhere with my daily diet?

Any advise gratefully appeciated!!

the diet doesnt look too bad overall .. Maybe drop potatoes to one and up the green veg intake ... Also if you want fast results maybe drop the biscuit / crisps etc ..
Are you sure you really need to loose any weight though? It looks like a perfectly healthy weight already

mohenley

Thanks.

Just to note that I do vary diet during week so will only tend to have potatoes maybe twice a week and other nights will have stirfry, salad or pasta. I also tend to go for walk most evenings (weather allowing).

My weight is in the 'ok' range but I would love to shift a few kilo - my main area of concern being to lose weight of the waist and tone up. I also really want to drop the body fat % as this I feel is too high at 29%.

neuro-praxis

In order to drop weight, you will need to calculate how many calories your body burns at rest. Next, subtract 10-15% from this, and aim to eat that many calories every day.

www.fitday.com is a great website for working this out.

Then plan your meals around this.

Remember, there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat, so you will need to have a minimum daily deficit of 500 calories if you wish to lose 1lb of fat in a week.

Good luck!

mags16

You might get the toned up result with exercise alone. You are pretty light to start with. Do you have a small frame?

My only comment on your diet is that you don't eat very much veg.

mohenley

Hi, I would say my frame is small-medium.

I eat veg with my dinner (2 portions) and have salad in my sandwich at lunch (lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, onion). Do you think I need to eat more?

I guess I will just need to give it some more time to see if I can see any noticable change in weight or in body.

Thanks

olaola

Hey Mohenley, I'm very similar to you in weight/height and diet.

If I want to lose weight I do a good bit of weights in the gym, and I up my cardio - usually by running at home in the evenings.
The MAIN key to weightloss for me is A: not eating out in restaurants and B: giving up the booze. And tbh I have no interest in either!

At the moment my diet, which is fairly decent when I'm eating at home - but we eat out in restaurants at least twice a week and then there is the drinking too, keeps on an even keel with the amount of exercise I'm doing. I'm happy enough with 60kg - as I'm carrying a bit of muscle, so my jeans are a 28" waist.

Have you lost any inches or are you just looking at the scales?

mohenley

I have not measured myself but did get assessment done at the gym and will wait couple of weeks till I recheck. I do a good bit of cardio, this morning I did circuits and also weights and cross trainer. I used to run in the evenings but after 8 months my joints were hurting too much so I stopped.

I just seem to be one of those people that seem to struggle to lose weight!! Like yourself if I go out for meal (very rare) I will eat what I like but am fortunate in that I don't really like greasy or creamy food so that helps!!

olaola

Hmmm... I would say up the weights (more muscle = burning more calories), forget the scales and focus on inches. Use your fave pair of jeans as a measuring stick, when they start to get baggy, you know you're on the right path!

mohenley

Thanks, have upped the weights a bit and have added another spinning class to the mix. No change so far but it is early days, I wil get another assessment in couple of weeks.

mohenley

Hi

Well I have just had my reassessment and the new is not good. My bodyfat has increased from 29.9% to 32.5%, I have dropped 7cm of my waist and lost a couple fo pounds but I am very frustrated!! I have a new trainer and she reckons that my reason for increase in body fat is due to not using enough weight and water intake??

My new programme now is 25 min cardio (was 45 min). Weights - 7 sets (legs and upper body) (as only 3 weights before) and 4 types of ab work (sets of 4 x20 for each).

I really hope that this will help as I had less body fat before I started the gym?!!!

Any advise greatly appreciated.

jdivision

How are they measuring your bodyfat? Some of the calipers can be unreliable. you may be putting on muscle which weighs more than fat so that may be why you're not seeing it on the scales. 7cm off your waist is great, it's nearly 3 inches!

mohenley

They use that electronic machine where you hold on to it in front of you. 32.5% is classed as obese on some websites and I am 5ft 6ins and 133 pounds!!

All measurements stayed the same apart from waist loss and think I gained cm on hips which they say is normal initially.

I do the full gym workout twice a week and do 1 hour spinning once a week and circuits once a week. On the days I do the classes I will also fit in some weights or stomach work depending on the class. So I don't think I can do much more. I am also learning to swim!!