Can't seem to tone that tummy

nodolan

Hi everyone and thanks in advance for any help you can give.

So, my stats:

Aged 42
Just shy of 5'9"
Just shy of 67Kg

Went from a 34" waist to a 30" waist in ten months while losing 6-7Kg.

I walk everywhere. I do 50 sit-ups a day (on the floor with a sit-up bar attached to a door) and 30 chin-ups (chinning bar in the doorway) as well as use my Slendertone Flex Max (stop laughing) for 40 mins a day.

I'm doing my best to get rid of that drooping tummy below my belly button but can't seem to tighten it up. My handlebars are toned and above my belly button is starting to look good but I'm let down by the rest.

Any advice?

Diet:

Breakfast (around 7am): Cup of tea with skimmed milk and natural sweetener (Stevia) followed by fruit juice and fat free yoghurt smoothie sometimes with a banana (I make it myself - the smoothie not the banana).

Lunch (around 1pm): Some fish or some organic oatmeal cookies with sugar free peanut butter. Coffee with two brown sugars.

Dinner (around 6-7pm): M&S 'Count On Us' low fat ready meals (I always go by the 10/100 rule of no more than 10g of fat for every 100g of food).

Evening snack (after 8pm): Rare but maybe a couple of handfuls of cashews washed down with, at most, two glasses of white wine.

And that's it. No white bread, no full fat anything, no beer, no butter etc.

Thanks again for any advice.

Armin_Tamzarian

For a start I'd suggest alot of cardio.

Jogging, cycling or swimming.

You need to exercise with your heart rate in the right zone for burning off fat.
Say for a 42 year old you'd proably be talking about 130-140 BPM.

If you're really serious about it join a gym and one of the instructors there
will be able to give you some professional advice.

nodolan

Hi The_Coon and thanks for the reply,

I'm a postgrad in UCC so could use their gym and have done but they were telling me to keep my heart rate down and to do slow exercises like rolling on the ball (like I was an OAP or something) so I gave that up. I was thinking of doing some running/jogging as I live on a decent bit of road in Cork city where I could run/jog around 2-3 miles without hills etc. do you think that would be good? I could jog to the Millenium Park and then run up and down that a few times (at the moment I'm good for about a 250m sprint before I need to slow down).

Armin_Tamzarian

nodolan wrote: »

Hi The_Coon and thanks for the reply,

I'm a postgrad in UCC so could use their gym and have done but they were telling me to keep my heart rate down and to do slow exercises like rolling on the ball (like I was an OAP or something) so I gave that up. I was thinking of doing some running/jogging as I live on a decent bit of road in Cork city where I could run/jog around 2-3 miles without hills etc. do you think that would be good? I could jog to the Millenium Park and then run up and down that a few times (at the moment I'm good for about a 250m sprint before I need to slow down).

That jog sounds like a good place to start.
I'd gradually make it longer and longer as you progress and build up your stamina.

There is a specific target heart rate range for burning off fat and for cardio.
It's something like 60-70% of your estimated max heart rate.

Obviously there are good gym instructors and bad.
Try to get chatting to one of the enthusiastic ones.
They'll give you some really useful advice.
Alternatively try having a chat with one of the sports coaches,
i.e. GAA, athletics or whatever.

Whatever you do make sure you don't put your heart under undue stress.
If you're concerned consult your GP.
As far as I know, lower intensity training, such as jogging is the best for fat burn.

Like I say, I'd start off with the 3 mile jog and make it longer when you feel it's within your capabilities.
With the nice weather coming in it's much nicer to be out jogging outside
than stuck in the gym on a boring treadmill.

From your stats and your diet it looks like your already doing really well.
Don't lose heart, the stomach fat is really hard to shift and is the last fat to go.

-Best of luck.

nodolan

You've given me the encouragement that I needed and I'll start tomorrow TC. I go to my doctor for a check-up every 3 months or so and he says that my cholesterol and BP are good but I know not to put my heart under 'undue stress' as you said.

gnolan

nodolan wrote: »

Hi everyone and thanks in advance for any help you can give.

So, my stats:

Aged 42
Just shy of 5'9"
Just shy of 67Kg

Went from a 34" waist to a 30" waist in ten months while losing 6-7Kg.

I walk everywhere. I do 50 sit-ups a day (on the floor with a sit-up bar attached to a door) and 30 chin-ups (chinning bar in the doorway) as well as use my Slendertone Flex Max (stop laughing) for 40 mins a day.

I'm doing my best to get rid of that drooping tummy below my belly button but can't seem to tighten it up. My handlebars are toned and above my belly button is starting to look good but I'm let down by the rest.

Any advice?

Diet:

Breakfast (around 7am): Cup of tea with skimmed milk and natural sweetener (Stevia) followed by fruit juice and fat free yoghurt smoothie sometimes with a banana (I make it myself - the smoothie not the banana).

Lunch (around 1pm): Some fish or some organic oatmeal cookies with sugar free peanut butter. Coffee with two brown sugars.

Dinner (around 6-7pm): M&S 'Count On Us' low fat ready meals (I always go by the 10/100 rule of no more than 10g of fat for every 100g of food).

Evening snack (after 8pm): Rare but maybe a couple of handfuls of cashews washed down with, at most, two glasses of white wine.

And that's it. No white bread, no full fat anything, no beer, no butter etc.

Thanks again for any advice.

As far as i'm concerned you can probably get rid of the belly without going hell for leather on the cardio.

Sit-ups will do nothing if you've got a layer of fat, but perhaps not bad if you're preparing for the futre; there are better exercises though - leg raises on your chin-up bar and planks.

Slendertone Flex Max? Really?

M & S ready-meals, maybe 'low-fat' but probably full of shiite. Try meat/fish with plenty of green veg.

Your 10/100 rule seems like a ridiculous one. Nuts are pretty much 50% fat but are very good for you, not to mention fish oils, olive oil, coconut oil etc. You should be more concerned with the type of fat you're consuming.

As for the glasses of wine, if you're really looking to drop the last few pounds cut the wine out for a few weeks. Its easier to cut calories than burn them. It depends how serious/determined you are, cos i'd say cut out the brown sugars aswell. Have 5/6 meals a day, with the in-between meals composed of nuts and fruit.

It all comes down to calories, if calories in < calories out thats good for you. You can work out your 'calories in' at fitday.com or dailyplate.com and your 'calories out' by calculating your BMR (google: bmr calculator) and adding on the average calories you burn through exercise each day.

MagicMarker

Breakfast: Smoothie
Lunch: Oatmeal cookies & PB
Dinner: Ready meal

C'mon man, a six pack is made in the kitchen. Your diet sucks. Throw out the slendertone, seriously, I'd feel embarrassed wearing one of those things.

nodolan

Hey gnolan!

I was thinking of buying some equipment for my spare room so is there anything you'd recommend? I'll try the leg raises, what are planks?

The M&S meals are actually totally free of all artificial ingredients including trans fats - the ingredients of my M&S meal today came to 360kcal: 20g of protein, 64g of carbs (of which sugars 2.4g), 1.6g of fat (of which saturates 0.4g - this is the type my doctor told me to be concerned about), fibre 7.2g and sodium .7g.

And it adds up to 5 points on the Weight Watchers program.

"Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the amount of energy expended while at rest in a neutrally temperate environment" - I'll look into that, thanks.

MagicMarker if you have nothing positive to contribute then...:rolleyes:

Why don't you give me a diet that you recommend MagicMarker?

The smoothie is made of fat free yoghurt and fresh juice with a banana (as already stated). Some days I have a bowl of porridge made from organic oatmeal with skimmed organic milk on top.

And some exercise routines while you're at it?

Thanks again for the constructive feedback everyone else.

Armin_Tamzarian

Planks are an ab exercise that involves lying on the floor,
supported on your forearms.
Hold the position with your back straight for as long as you can.
They're really effective.
Check out this web-site.

http://exercise.about.com/od/abs/ss/abexercises_10.htm

nodolan

The_Coon wrote: »

Planks are an ab exercise that involves lying on the floor,
supported on your forearms.
Hold the position with your back straight for as long as you can.
They're really effective.
Check out this web-site.

http://exercise.about.com/od/abs/ss/abexercises_10.htm

Thanks again TC. The guy in the UCC gym had me doing those and I did notice that they were hitting the right area but I had forgotten about them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHQmRINu4jU

gnolan

Plank is as above. Leg raises can be done by hanging off your chin-up bar and trying to raise your legs to parallel with the floor. Begin with knees bent first, and then legs straight. After this you can try to get your feet higher and higher towards your hands.

My point, however, is no matter how much of these you do you won't see 'em if you've got a bit of a belly. I'll take your word for it on the M & S thing, but you need to look closely at the ingredients - and you'd definitely be better of with the meat/fish + veg and some brown rice.

Work out your calories in and out, and sort your diet so that you've a calorie defecit of 300-500 cal/day. If you stick to it its just maths, belly gone :pac:

nodolan

I'll definitely start taking a more mathematical look at this gnolan and start counting the calories. I'll start the jogging as TC says, try the plank and the leg raises and take another look at my diet (to be fair to me it was an awful lot worse a year ago). Here's the label from my M&S meal (I just now noticed the rapeseed oil which I don't like so I won't be eating that one again). Since I live just 20mins walk from the English Market in Cork I really don't have any excuse not to eat fresh fish and veg.

gnolan

I wouldn't be overly concerned with the rapeseed oil. To be fair, it doesn't look to bad at all; only concerns would be the added sugar and salt.

floggg

MagicMarker wrote: »

Breakfast: Smoothie
Lunch: Oatmeal cookies & PB
Dinner: Ready meal

C'mon man, a six pack is made in the kitchen. Your diet sucks. Throw out the slendertone, seriously, I'd feel embarrassed wearing one of those things.

I don't think MagicMarker was trying to get in a dig or anything - just to point out that your diet is actually oretty bad for you!

You're not eating enough - you're putting your body into starvation mode, so you're going to find it hard to lose weight, any weight you do lose will be as much muscle as anything else, and you'll find it hard to keep it off once you come off that diet.

Also, you would find it hard to do any serious cardio eating that little.

You should be eatinf 5 - 6 small meals a day, with lots of protein, fresh veg and fruit. Some carbd are fine, but eat them early in the day, so you're body will burn them off during the day. A good breakfast is important - something like porridge, or scrambled eggs and whole grain toast.

Doing this will raise you're metabolism and help you to burn off fat. And the weight you lose should be mainly fat. Maybe think about adding in some weight training as well. Adding muscle will also boost the metabolism, and will also help you burn more calories when resting, as you're body will use the eneregy to fuel and repair you're muscles.

nodolan

floggg wrote:

I don't think MagicMarker was trying to get in a dig or anything - just to point out that your diet is actually oretty bad for you!

I don't think he was contributing anything useful to the thread floggg - unlike you and the other people who replied. Thanks for the reply and the advice - I am taking it all in. I have some cash for equipment so I'll think about getting a bench and some weights. I'm serious about my weight and my physique so I will listen to helpful advice.

itsallaboutheL

nodolan wrote: »

Hi The_Coon and thanks for the reply,

I'm a postgrad in UCC so could use their gym and have done but they were telling me to keep my heart rate down and to do slow exercises like rolling on the ball (like I was an OAP or something) so I gave that up. I was thinking of doing some running/jogging as I live on a decent bit of road in Cork city where I could run/jog around 2-3 miles without hills etc. do you think that would be good? I could jog to the Millenium Park and then run up and down that a few times (at the moment I'm good for about a 250m sprint before I need to slow down).

You don't actually have to do what they say!!

nodolan

itsallaboutheL wrote: »

You don't actually have to do what they say!!

LOL I know, but I was determined to get fit and lose some weight and thought I'd listen to an 'expert'. In the end I changed my diet and exercised at home and dropped from 34 to 30 waist and lost nearly 7Kg.

itsallaboutheL

nodolan wrote: »

I don't think he was contributing anything useful to the thread floggg - unlike you and the other people who replied. Thanks for the reply and the advice - I am taking it all in. I have some cash for equipment so I'll think about getting a bench and some weights. I'm serious about my weight and my physique so I will listen to helpful advice.

It would be an awful shame not to use a great resourse like the UCC gym

itsallaboutheL

nodolan wrote: »

LOL I know, but I was determined to get fit and lose some weight and thought I'd listen to an 'expert'. In the end I changed my diet and exercised at home and dropped from 34 to 30 waist and lost nearly 7Kg.

They're are not necessarily experts they just have a piece of paper that says they are unlikely to kill anyone!!

nodolan

TBH I'm not really a gym person. I don't like being indoors exercising and I'd much prefer to run down the road to a park (in the good weather) and/or buy some equipment of my own. I have a spare room and I just picked up the Argos catalogue so a new stereo and some weights and a bench will be installed there soon