No improvement

laoisforliam

Hi all,

3 weeks ago I decided to change my life around, loose weight and get healthy.

I am 24, 5'10 and 92kgs

In a normal day I now eat:
Breakfast
4 Weetabix full fat milk
Lunch
Sambo ham, Cheese Salad or a tuna salad with a hardboiled egg
Dinner
Protein (Chicken, Beef Lamb or Fish) with Salad or small amount of mashed potatoes and veg

Initially I stated running 2 Km a night on the Treadmill; I am now up to 4.5km a night
I have been running 5 days a week with a round of golf on the weekend.

The problem is I have not lost any weight... I started 92kg and I am 92kgs now.

Has anyone any suggestions as to why I am not loosing any weight?
Should I begin resistance training?
What times should I eat before or after training?
Suggest any alternative methods of training?
Any advice/info would be great cause its disheartening to feel like Im working so hard with no results..

Thank You

Mellor

You are eating good food, but you are still prob eating too much. You portions are prob too big. Are you drinking anything, most drinks have a fair few calories in them too.

laoisforliam

Hi Mellor, Thanks for the Reply!!

Im drinking about 5 cups of green tea and 3 glasses of water a day.
Very rarely drink soft drinks.
I was drinking quite alot of Alcohol up ontill 3 weeks ago, but I have cut it down to about 3 Glasses of wine (with meals) and about 10 beers (going out) a week.

I have reduced my portion sizes from what I was used to. Now it would be a medium sized chicken breast (or half of a large one)/ 3 lamb cutlets / steak, with a big plate of salad. I eat bread and potatoes about twice a week each.

Once a week I eat out in a restaurant, its harder to control in this environment.

I feel that I am not getting enough out of my excercise sessions?

TommyKnocker

No expert here, but 4.5km is just under 3 miles, so maybe about 300 calories burned per run. 5 times per week equates to 1,500 calories expended over the week from exercise.

10 beers (I am guessing pints) @ about 280 calories/pint = 2,800 calories + what ever calories are in wine.

I am not saying that you have to become teatotal to reach you goals, but you need to understand how many calories you are consuming per day/week and ensure that you are expending more calories than you take in to drop weight (and by weight, the goal should be to drop body fat while maintaining lean muscle).

I don't drink and to my way of thinking when I am trying to drop body fat (usually spring/summer time), as I am on a calorie deficit, then the calories that I am allowed will pack the most nutritional value possible, and IMO alcohol does not fall into this category.

So if your goal is to drop body fat (weight) and you are taking in alcohol, you need to account for these calories by either reducing you food intake even more (possibly depriving your body of vitamins & minerals) or upping your exercise to burn more calories and help with creating a calorie deficit.

laoisforliam

Cheers Tommy,
I suppose I can cut the alchol alright, its bottles I drink though not pints so I dont think the calories would be as high?

When I run 4.5km the treadmill says aroud 430 calories burned?

Lantus

I would look up a calorie calculator to see what your daily needs are and then actually work out what you are eating. Most people have no idea how many calories they consume. Until you measure and calculate it out then you wont know how you intake balances with your expenditure.

Alchohol is a serious pain in the **** when i comes to losing weight. They are empty calories that the body doesn't really recognise and just converts mostly to fat unless they are used up straight away. 1 to 2 units a week is ok but more than that and you may find that all the hard work of running is just being countered by all those beers and wines.

Ignore the calorie measure on those machines. Interesting but not always that accurate. Aim for 20 minutes if not already working up to 30 minutes. It's the intensity that makes the difference. Keeping your heart rate going at a nice rate. 4 times a week should be suficient and try HIIT once.

Resistance training does make a great difference and I would always advocate it for anyone. 3 times a week wholebody routine is a great starting point.

Hanley

laoisforliam wrote: »

Cheers Tommy,
I suppose I can cut the alchol alright, its bottles I drink though not pints so I dont think the calories would be as high?

When I run 4.5km the treadmill says aroud 430 calories burned?

The treadmill's lying to you.

metamorphosis

Yeah those machines are out about an average of 30%. 100cals per 10min depending on your weight is closer to likely and that's at a good moderate aerobic pace.

corkcomp

I see a few problems here - lack of time, need to step up the exercise a gear (gradually though). too many calories and most likely the wrong kind of calories. Sandwiches and weetabix are not great, fruit / porridge and salad bowl with fish / chicken might be a better option. If you want to keep the beer you will probably need to compensate by exercising more and eating healthier

Hanley

metamorphosis wrote: »

Yeah those machines are out about an average of 30%. 100cals per 10min depending on your weight is closer to likely and that's at a good moderate aerobic pace.

Lyle McD always goes on about most exercise buring 5-10kcals/minute, with the higher end being more intense balls out unsustainable effort, seems like a pretty good guideline to go off.

I use about 6-8kcals/minute when estimating my kcals requirement for exercise. I've a heart rate monitor on the way too so I gues I'll see how accruate that is soon.

laoisforliam

Just after doing 5 km in 30 mins...
Il replace the weetabix with porridge and cut out bread from lunch...
Thanks for the suggestions
Realistically what level of intensity should I be looking to step it up to?
7k ? 10k ? A night?

Hanley

It really doesn't matter.

The scope for losing fat from cardio versus losing fat from your diet is ridiculous. If you haven't dialled in your diet to support fat loss, the cardio will have pretty mcuh no effect at all. You'll get fitter, but body composition won't improve much.

BadCharlie

Hanley wrote: »

Lyle McD always goes on about most exercise buring 5-10kcals/minute, with the higher end being more intense balls out unsustainable effort, seems like a pretty good guideline to go off.

I use about 6-8kcals/minute when estimating my kcals requirement for exercise. I've a heart rate monitor on the way too so I gues I'll see how accruate that is soon.

What heart rate monitor u getting ?

metamorphosis

The diet will make or break it. So much easier to cut out 300cals from a calorie dense source in your diet than to do moderate to hard cardio for 30min

Hanley

BadCharlie wrote: »

What heart rate monitor u getting ?

Polar RS100 mate. Got a good package deal on it and Joel Jamison’s Ultimate MMA Conditioning book, comes with the upgraded webbing chest band instead of the plastic one. It’s the one he has his fighters work with cos it’s cheap and simple!! Got both for like 115 quid delievered.

noworries

laoisforliam wrote: »

Hi all,

3 weeks ago I decided to change my life around.......
..
..
Any advice/info would be great cause its disheartening to feel like Im working so hard with no results..

3 weeks is not a change of life - it is 'trying something'.... a change of life
can only be measured in months, years and decades..

Read more, move more, lift more, eat and drink right. That is a change of life.

laoisforliam

noworries wrote: »

3 weeks is not a change of life - it is 'trying something'.... a change of life
can only be measured in months, years and decades..

Read more, move more, lift more, eat and drink right. That is a change of life.

Fair enough but I had to start somewhere

robjones1981

laoisforliam wrote: »

Fair enough but I had to start somewhere

Fair play Laois boy - starting is often the hardest

I know from experience that it can take a while for you to notice changes etc - but keep it up

Everyone seems to say that eating less at more frequent sittings is a help

I think that starting to eat proper breakfast as soon as awake made a big difference for me - and that in turn made me eat less throughout the day at the big meals of lunch and dinner

jt_dublin

Hi,

I use http://www.fitday.com to track my food and exercise / activities. It will split the food into carbs, protein & fat and show you the calories consumed. It will also show you the calories expended from normal daily activity plus the exercise that you take.

You might find that if you keep a food & exercise diary, you will be stricter with both. You will then see how the calories add up from those 10 beers and any other treats.

To lose 1lb of weight, you need to have a 3500 calorie deficit. So if you aim to expend 500 more calories than you take in each day, you should lose 1lb in 7 days. That's the theory... you will find in practice that you can lose nothing 1 week and then lose a few pounds the following week.

Also google HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). It might help you shift the pounds quicker. Simply put, after your warmup, you do intervals of high intensity followed by low intensity. For example, you might do a 5 minute warmup followed by intervals of say 30 seconds flat out followed by 1 minute of low or normal intensity. I do this on the rower & cross-trainer and it has really brought up my cardio levels.

Best of luck & keep it up... you will get there!

AntiVirus

This Running Calorie Calculator is quite good for working out your calories burned. The calorie burned by weight, speed, time is almost bang on the same as my Garmin + heart rate monitor.

http://www.runtheplanet.com/resources/tools/calculators/caloriecounter.asp

nice_guy80

how about...

adding a few weights to your routine to get you started along that path.
some simple dumbbell work - bench, rows, squats, shoulder press (30 mins to do that).
then hit the cardio machines hrd for 30 mins. no messing about. you need to be dripping in sweat after them.

try interval training - 30 secs hard, 30sec slow. If you're able for that then try 45secs hard, 30secs slow etc etc

your diet then - cut down on the bread - add some green salad to your diet (include eggs, tuna in salad meal).
porridge for breakie
prepare healthy dinner on mon for mon/tues/wednesday - use the freeze/fridge. then do same thursday for thursday/fri/sat
all that will save you time on food prep!!

Mellor

Hanley wrote: »

Lyle McD always goes on about most exercise buring 5-10kcals/minute, with the higher end being more intense balls out unsustainable effort, seems like a pretty good guideline to go off.

I use about 6-8kcals/minute when estimating my kcals requirement for exercise. I've a heart rate monitor on the way too so I gues I'll see how accruate that is soon.

I find it pretty hard to estimate for weights sessions, as sonstant work/rest/work/rest etc

AntiVirus wrote: »

This Running Calorie Calculator is quite good for working out your calories burned. The calorie burned by weight, speed, time is almost bang on the same as my Garmin + heart rate monitor.

http://www.runtheplanet.com/resources/tools/calculators/caloriecounter.asp

I've used similar. The calories burned don't really change a while lot with speed so even the weight/distance calc is decent enough.

When I say they don't change a lot, they do vary but it's not a case of faster = more calores. For the normal running range of most people, the cals are pretty much the same, when you go towards top level athlete they are are slightly higher. But interesting, when you slow the speed right down its higher too. Which makes sense, running at 6km/hr is bloody awkeard and obvious inefficient.