weight loss regime

Curry Addict

im currently on a weight loss regime comeing to the end of the 4th week and would appreciate any help or improvement tips etc.

my profile

41 yo male 5' 10" and started at 124.1kg

for the past 4 weeks i have limited calorie intake to approx 1600 a day.
ive eaten mostly low fat foods, drank, low fat milk, coffee, water.
using benecol spread and only brown bread, 3 slices a day.

ive done 2 sessions in the gym, everyday, an hour each and burn approx.
800 calories a day in the gym. otherwise i am moderately active.

im now at 120.5kg so ive lost 3.6kg or 7lbs in this 4 weeks.

i feel im putting in a huge effort. i would appreciate comments on if this,
is what i should expect and any further tips, much appreciated.

Frogdog

Hey Curry Addict! Love the username!

Well done on the weightloss so far.

My opinion:

1,600kcals daily seems a little bit low. But maybe you're right with that figure. I'm also male, and the same height as you but I'm younger. If I was looking to lose weight I'd be aiming for 1,800, which I calculated from g'em's second post on the second page of the below sticky in the Fitness Forum:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055963342&page=2

Have a read of the whole sticky, there's great information in there, and also the following sticky on this forum;

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055157091

Next thing, why are you eating low-fat products if you're looking to lose weight? Surely this is counter-productive. Having good fats in your diet helps fat metabolism. Google the benefits of fat in your diet for more reasons why you should eat healthy fats. Ditch the low-fat products, they're full of sugar and other nasties.

Could you give us more information on your diet? You've only listed brown bread. Is it sliced pan or is it the homemade stuff? List what you have for breakfast, lunch and dinner and all snacks.

You do 2 hourly sessions in the gym daily? This is mad in my opinion and could also be counter-productive. You could burn yourself out, injure yourself etc. What exactly are you doing in the gym? And how do you know you're burning 800kcals a day? I presume you're lifting heavy free weights if you want to lose fat (and not doing endless hours of steady cardio which burns muscle)?

I think you could lose more if you actually did less, to be honest.

Wonkagirl

Frogdog is right Curry- dont be afraid of fat.

Let me tell you a little story. Now, i was never overweight (10 stone and 5.7), but always wanted to get down to 9 stone, as i have a small frame. For YEARS i followed the weight watchers point mentality- ''Wow, wine gums and diet coke are only 2 points, isnt that GREAT!!''... I lost a few pounds here, gained a few there- never really got anywhere using the low fat, low calorie method.. and, I was busting my butt in the gym on the cardio machines week in week out.

Then, this time last yr I decided to change tack. Up the good fats (avocados, nuts, that kind of thing), start doing weights and high intenstity cardio (intervals etc)- I also joined a bootcamp style class (keepfit.ie) which does some metabolic conditioning type workouts- specifically body weight work, high tempo intervals and some free weights. lo and behold, i shed that stone pretty quickly.

You need a clean diet, no sugar, no bad carbs, lots of protein and good fats.
CUT out sugar if at all possible. And try to cut out carbs completely after lunch. I have carbs with breakfast and lunch, but none with dinner (apart from veg which i know strictly is carb, but when i say carbs i mean bread, pasta, rice, potatoes- that kind of thing.)

As for the 2 hours in the gym- madness IMO- you'll either injure yourself or burn out (mentally and physically..) aside from that, where in the name of jesus do you find the time!?

Someone told me that in % terms, the calories burnt doing 7 sessions a week V. 5 is neglible, and it's hard to push yourself as hard doing 2 sessions a day- doing 1 power session is much better.

Curry Addict

lol i just have to laugh it seems im doing a lot wrong ive always had trouble with weight loss. i am very strong built, so i always put it down to that.
thanks wonkagirl and frogdog your posts give me great insight


even tho i actually eat very little when not dieting i still managed to grow to this size and never could really understand why.

i decided this time i would make a huge effort all round and put in 1 month of hard work. i dont understand much of nutrition so i decided id work on the principles of eat everything in moderation and limit calories to 1600 a day while working my ass off in the gym and see how it goes for a month so i must be burning way more than im taking in and hence should lose weight at a decent rate.

a typical days food for me is
frosties 33g/coffee/brown bread/milk 386 dinner/fried plaice/spuds/milk 500 coffies 24 poached egg 60 banana 90 toastie 370 milk 100 total 1530
i primarily eat seafood, chicken, vegetarian and low fat dairy products. i dont eat any other meat. i eat the standard veg and rice. all the food i eat is top quality fresh and home prepared in a low fat way. i eat nuts and avacado once a week. for drinks i typically drink 6 glasses of low fat milk a day and about a litre of water. I eat dinner early in the day (2pm) so i can burn it off fo rthe rest of the day and less likely to snack. when i snack i snack on fruit like banannas and pears.

with regards the gym, my startegy was to build up some stamina after years of little exercise and 30 years smoking( i gave up a year ago). I also have high blood pressure and possible heart problems, im due to have a angioplasty operation. so i needed to do the gently approach. also short intensive approach may not be suitable for me. the gently approach has worked well so far and i feel great for it and can now push hard. if i drop a few stone i wont need the operation so nice motivation there.

in the gym i do 50mins on the treadmill speed 3.6 slope 6.0
20mins on the bike, level 7
4 sets of 15 reps on 6 different toning machines, pushing hard on weight tolerances to the max i can endure and regularly going up weights as i can.
im unemployed atm so i have the time and this is a focus for me.
the treadmill and bike give a calorie burn count at the end based on the settings and your weight. no idea how mush i burn on the toning machines.

now that im relatively fit is their a better approach to the gym? what should i be doing that maybe more effective?

Wonkagirl

BIG REPLY EATEN BY PC! NOT HAPPY!

will re-do shortly...

Curry Addict

ouch very annoying

rubadub

Wonkagirl wrote: »

BIG REPLY EATEN BY PC! NOT HAPPY!

will re-do shortly...

I use firefox and am amazed at what it stores, my laptop sometimes packs in like it had a powercut and when I reboot I am only missing a few words that I typed last.


Anyway on topic, sounds like your username should be Carb Addict! I found ditching carbs was great for my fat loss. If you like your curries stick to them, check out the hotter ones, many are tomato based and so are very low in calories -avoid the cream laiden kormas for calories, also avoid noodles & rice or at least limit the portions -these are where the calories & carbs kick in. I would not worry so much about fat.

To bulk things out I would use stuff like red kidney beans in a curry or chilli. I also use iceberg lettuce leaves as wraps.

pinkypinky

Curry Addict wrote: »

a typical days food for me is
frosties 33g/coffee/brown bread/milk 386 dinner/fried plaice/spuds/milk 500 coffies 24 poached egg 60 banana 90 toastie 370 milk 100 total 1530
i primarily eat seafood, chicken, vegetarian and low fat dairy products. i dont eat any other meat. i eat the standard veg and rice. all the food i eat is top quality fresh and home prepared in a low fat way. i eat nuts and avacado once a week. for drinks i typically drink 6 glasses of low fat milk a day and about a litre of water. I eat dinner early in the day (2pm) so i can burn it off fo rthe rest of the day and less likely to snack. when i snack i snack on fruit like banannas and pears.

This diet is not helping you. 6 glasses of milk a day! I would swap all but one for water! Could you bake your fish instead of frying it? Your breakfast needs work too - bin the frosties and have things like porridge or weetabix. Also how are you calculating your calories: fried plaice/spuds/milk to me would be a lot more than 500 calories.

Wonkagirl

thanks rubadub, youre not the 1st one to tell me to switch browsers, that's it now, FF from here on in!

IN summary of what i had said curry..

Frosties- eliminate immediately. FULL of sugar. Sugar is a complete impediment to weight loss, for many reasons. Most of which i had outlined but dont have the time to retype! Replace with either lizis granola, porridge with some form of protein included, or eggs of some sort. Kell

Carbs- reduce- get rid of the spuds if you can. Replace with more veg/salad.

Curry Addict

rubadub wrote: »

I use firefox and am amazed at what it stores, my laptop sometimes packs in like it had a powercut and when I reboot I am only missing a few words that I typed last.


Anyway on topic, sounds like your username should be Carb Addict! I found ditching carbs was great for my fat loss. If you like your curries stick to them, check out the hotter ones, many are tomato based and so are very low in calories -avoid the cream laiden kormas for calories, also avoid noodles & rice or at least limit the portions -these are where the calories & carbs kick in. I would not worry so much about fat.

To bulk things out I would use stuff like red kidney beans in a curry or chilli. I also use iceberg lettuce leaves as wraps.

firefox >> ie

ok i need to look at carb intake, i thought small portions would be ok but i guess not. I eat pretty much child sized dinner portions.
curries are off the menu or only in very small portions once a week. tbh the tomato based curries are as bad as the cream based for fat and calories unfortunately. i guess ill have to stop the rice also and noodles.

nice tip with the lettuce that is a great idea thanks.

Curry Addict

pinkypinky wrote: »

This diet is not helping you. 6 glasses of milk a day! I would swap all but one for water! Could you bake your fish instead of frying it? Your breakfast needs work too - bin the frosties and have things like porridge or weetabix. Also how are you calculating your calories: fried plaice/spuds/milk to me would be a lot more than 500 calories.

i would have though the 300 calories in 6 glasses of low fat milk would be ok and preferable to anything except water and considering i only take in 1600 calories a day this would get me down to 1300. ill try this but it will be tough.

the frosties are a sin but it was only 33g a day, i guess ill go for weetabix for awhile.

the 500 calories for fish/spuds/milk was based on again a very small portion and should be accurate unless my calorie counter is lieing

Wonkagirl

You shouldnt be cutting down to 1300 curry, just replace all the milk with proper snacks that will fuel your metabolism

you shoudl be having mid morning and mid afternoon snacks- oak cakes with almond butter are a popular one- or a piece of fruit and a few nuts are another..

get rid of the sugar, get rid of the bad carbs- but REPLACE them with other stuff- protein and good fats.

stop obsessing about calories, and try and eat good, clean food that will stabalise your blood sugars, and fuel your metabolism.

You coudl eat more calories, but have better results. it took me a long time to get my head around that. if you can afford it, i'd nearly recommend a session or 2 with a nutritionist.

7lbs in 4 weeks is not bad, but 10 would probably be better. The 7 will slow down as well unless you supercharge your metabolism with good fats and protein.

Moral of the story- it's not all about calories, but QUALITY of the calories.. dont cut your calories from 1600 anyway. just REPLACE the bad stuff in there.

Frogdog

+1 to the advice Wonkagirl has given you, OP.

1. Ditch the low-fat foods completely. As we've all been saying on here, with low fat foods the fats (which are healthy) are replaced by sugar (which is not healthy).
2. Moderate (not eliminate) your carb intake. Make sure the carbs you take in are the good type, not the sugary type such as Frosties etc.

Have you read through the stickies (the two links) I posted above??? Read them, then re-read them, and learn them. There's only about 3 pages in each, but they're a mine of information on exercise and nutrition. If you read them and learn the information it will stay with you for life and you will be much better informed when making future decisions. You will also be able to give advice to others.

Hope this helps.

jdivision

You really need to read what people are telling you OP. Fat is good, sugar is bad. So low fat milk contains more sugar - therefore bad. Frosties = bad. Curries with healthy fats = good.
I've been eating loads of sugar lately - stress being the main reason - and it just messes you up. High protein, high quality fat diet is way to go.

Curry Addict

ok ive read all the stickies and taken all your advise. it seems i need to reduce carb intake and increase good fats primarily, my proteins seem to be already good. i need to cut down the cardio in teh gym in favour of heavy weights. lets see how these changes affect my next month of weight loss
thanks for all the help so far!

Frogdog

Curry Addict wrote: »

ok ive read all the stickies and taken all your advise. it seems i need to reduce carb intake and increase good fats primarily, my proteins seem to be already good. i need to cut down the cardio in teh gym in favour of heavy weights. lets see how these changes affect my next month of weight loss
thanks for all the help so far!

Great stuff! And good luck!

Curry Addict

thanks! ill update how i get on.

Dotcomdolly

You should take some measurements too, other than your weight, esp as you're planning to go for it with weigh-training. I started Starting Strength 7 weeks ago and I've only lost 8oz :rolleyes: but I've lost inches off waist, hips etc. and feel great, it's such a buzz getting stronger.

Curry Addict

Dotcomdolly wrote: »

You should take some measurements too, other than your weight, esp as you're planning to go for it with weigh-training. I started Starting Strength 7 weeks ago and I've only lost 8oz :rolleyes: but I've lost inches off waist, hips etc. and feel great, it's such a buzz getting stronger.

good point, i feel this too, im fitting my old jeans again and clothes feel much better all over nice motivator ill do it! feels like im slowly turning into arnold swarchenegger!
i just had a difficult weekend with a few sins..... and not enuf gym.

i got a new program from my trainer. 120 squats and balance on toes and lower arms for 5 mins with back straight, ive to do this everyday for 3 weeks and this will apparently prepare me for high intensity weights for better weight loss.

Frogdog

Curry Addict wrote: »

good point, i feel this too, im fitting my old jeans again and clothes feel much better all over nice motivator ill do it! feels like im slowly turning into arnold swarchenegger!
i just had a difficult weekend with a few sins..... and not enuf gym.

i got a new program from my trainer. 120 squats and balance on toes and lower arms for 5 mins with back straight, ive to do this everyday for 3 weeks and this will apparently prepare me for high intensity weights for better weight loss.

I think the balancing on your toes and forearms are called planks, good exercises for your core/abs. and squats are great exercises. Have a look at the program Starting Strength that Dotcomdolly is doing, I'm doing it also and I couldn't recommend it enough. Google it for more information, there's a Wikipedia article on it that gives you a lot of detail also.

Curry Addict

lol y its planks and air squats, very tough going im very tired after it last couple of days.
u find it good for weight loss frogdog?

Mellor

Curry Addict wrote: »

lol y its planks and air squats, very tough going im very tired after it last couple of days.
u find it good for weight loss frogdog?

tbh, you should be doing weighted squats, air squats are all well and good and have a place.
but include some proper squats too.

Frogdog

Curry Addict wrote: »

lol y its planks and air squats, very tough going im very tired after it last couple of days.
u find it good for weight loss frogdog?

I'm going to echo Mellor's comments above re: air squats - they're fine but after a week or so your body will get used to them and they'll be of no benefit.

That's where weighted squats come into it. The program I'm doing means you add weight every so often, which in turn means your muscles have to adapt to keep up with the increasing weight. When your muscles get bigger you burn more calories, even when resting. Muscle is the only thing in your body that burns fat.

So yes, I find it good for weight loss!

(However, having said all that, at the moment I'm trying to increase my weight, mainly muscle but some fat too, and to do so have to eat loads and lift weight regularly. But in a few months I'll be looking to lose the fat and keep the muscle, and weights will be crucial to that goal.)

Mellor

Frogdog, if you are trying to lose weight you need to be on a calorie deficit, you won't build muscle on a calorie deficit. Weight training is good for weight loss as it in iteself burns loads of energy, not because it builds muscle so you burn more when resting. (that is true, but its not applicable for weight/fat loss situations)

Frogdog

Mellor wrote: »

Frogdog, if you are trying to lose weight you need to be on a calorie deficit, you won't build muscle on a calorie deficit. Weight training is good for weight loss as it in iteself burns loads of energy, not because it builds muscle so you burn more when resting. (that is true, but its not applicable for weight/fat loss situations)

Hi Mellor, I'm aware of your advice above, sorry I wasn't a bit clearer in my post there. I know I'll have to be on a calorie deficit, as I outlined in my very first post to the OP, and that I won't be building any muscle during that stage.

I guess what I was trying to say is that even when I'll be going through my fat loss stage on a calorie deficit, I'll still keep up lifting as heavy as I can, so as to do two things:

1. The exercise will burn calories.
2. Weight lifting while on a deficit will hopefully keep most of the muscle I've built up during the bulking phase, while losing the undesired fat.

Well, I think so anyway?!?

Sorry for the thread hi-jacking OP! :P

rubadub

Frogdog wrote: »

2. Weight lifting while on a deficit will hopefully keep most of the muscle I've built up during the bulking phase, while losing the undesired fat.

And the OP has been on a "bulking phase" for some time, overweight people will have more muscle as they are in effect weightlifting all day long so it would be a shame to lose it. Some old thread had a figure in it, I think it could have been as high as 20 or 30% of the "additional weight" as being muscle. A mate of mine is overweight and has massive calves yet does no training.

This site has many fascinating studies about the benefits of weight training.

http://www.ergo-log.com/after15minutesstrengthtraining.html

Every kilogram of lean body mass you acquire increases your daily energy expenditure by 70 kcal. But in the short term, another effect also comes into play. Strength training itself requires energy. During a training session you burn a couple of hundred kcal, but your body’s post-training recovery also costs energy....

A conservative estimate of the increase in energy expenditure as a result of the workout is a total of 300 kcal over 3 days. If you train twice a week, you’d burn more than 4 kg extra fat in a year’s time.

"The one-set resistance training protocol may provide an attractive alternative to either aerobic exercise or multiple-set resistance training programs for weight management in busy young adults, due to the minimal time commitment", the researchers conclude.

Plenty on high protein diets too.
http://www.ergo-log.com/proteindiet500kcal.html

counting calories is stressful, so the best solution would be a diet that you eat less of without thinking about it. Well, a couple of years ago nutritionists at the University of Washington described the perfect way to do this: double the amount of protein in your diet and reduce the amount of fat. You’ll eat 472 kcal less each day without even noticing it.

subjects lost about 5 kg [circles], of which 4 kg were fat. The subjects did no exercise, by the way.

"A 15% increase in energy from dietary protein at constant carbohydrate intake produces a sustained decrease in ad libitum caloric intake that results in clinically significant weight loss", the researchers conclude.

When you reduce your daily energy intake to 60 percent of what you burn, you don’t necessarily have to lose muscle mass. If you increase your protein intake your muscles will stay as they are, write sports scientists from the University of Birmingham in England.

One group of bodybuilders just reduced what they ate. As a result, their protein intake fell to 1 g protein/kg/day. The other group not only ate less, but replaced fats and carbohydrates with protein. Their diet therefore consisted of 35 percent protein and their daily protein intake rose to 2.3 g/kg. The test subjects got their extra protein from shakes.

The figure below shows that the raised protein intake almost completely blocked muscle mass breakdown. The high-protein group only lost body fat.

Curry Addict

ive had a tough week. after a couple of days doing air squats planks and a 20min high gradient tredmill every day my energy levels and muscle aches for the rest of the days were so low i was almost crawling around . maybe thats because im carrying the natural weight i went under 19st this week 119.6kg so still making progress and down 5kg from the start overall.
i took a beer night (6 beers) and a two day exercise rest which was needed.

Curry Addict

@ rubadub some great reading there it seems that sometimes less is more with regards weight training an di have to really focus on getting the protein in.