General Diet & Fitness Advice?

20260622

Hi All,

Looking for some general diet & fitness advice.

Joined the gym about 2 months ago and am really enjoying it.
Seem to have come to a standstill with the weight loss though.
Was 68 kilos when I started, down to 64 now.
I’m female, 5’ 6” approx. I’m top heavy, and everything seems to go to my tummy!! I have quite big calves from years of gymnastics, horse riding and swimming when I was younger.

I go to the gym Mon-Thurs (sometimes Fri) for approx 1.5hrs.
35-45 mins – Cross Trainer
20-30 mins – Bike
5-10 mins – Rowing machine
25-35 sit ups with a weighted ball
20-30 Hanging knee raises
20-30 Leg Presses

I have a personal training session once a week for 45 mins or so. I do mainly weights during this session.

My Diet

Breakfast:
Mon – Fri:
Porridge, made with low fat milk and raisins thrown in for taste.
Occasionally I’d have a breakfast bar instead of the porridge.
Cuppa tea with low fat milk and sweetener.
I’d usually have a piece of fruit or some nuts between breakfast & lunch

Weekend:
Boiled/Fried Eggs, rashers & toast (wholemeal bread)
2 x cups of tea with low fat milk and sweetener.

Lunch:
Mon – Fri:
4 x Ryvita’s / Cruskits (can’t remember what they’re called at home anymore, Crackotts??!!) buttered.
4 slices of packet ham/chicken/turkey, tomato & cucumber topping.
Yoghurt or another piece of fruit.

Try to drink water during the day. Would probably drink 3-4 pints a day if not more.

I wouldn’t always have lunch at the weekends, if I did, maybe a hotdog or some bread & hummus.

Dinners:
Meat (Chicken, steak, lamb or pork chops) and two veg, 2 small boiled potatoes or mash.
Spaghetti bolognaise with taco shells instead of pasta (could be worse than the pasta??!!)
Chicken curry – (Home made) Boiled chicken, flour, spices and chicken stock in water to make the sauce with white rice.
Stew
Sunday roast with all the trimmings
I absolutely love beef Vindaloo and would probably have one most weekends if not every second weekend (from the local Indian) with white boiled rice.

(Use alot of chilli & cayenne pepper powder in the spag bol & curry dishes)

If I fancy something sweet after dinner, I’d have buttered crackers with strawberry jam & a cuppa.

I usually don’t drink Sunday – Thursday but I do drink quite a lot when I do drink, beer drinker too so carb overload!! I would easily drink 8-10 drinks on Fri & Sat nights. I know I need to cut down on this.

I want to loose body fat aswell as weight and also tone up.
Any diet advice and advice on exercises I should be doing to achieve the above would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks J

corkcomp

I'll probably get flamed for this but IMO there are too many treat / not so good foods in there, fair play for putting that time in the gym, it will pay off if you tweak your diet a little, maybe one treat at the weekends so dont have a fry-up, roast and take away all in the same weekend.. id also replace the crackers + jam with fresh berries or apples. it all comes down to calories in vs calories out and maybe your tipping the scales slightly in the wrong direction?

Here ya go, ideal for someone in your shoes

A lot of general diety information for you to peruse.

First things first, losing weight is a very straightforward mathematical computation.
IF Calories in < Calories Out => Weight goes down

That’s it, if you want to lose weight, just eat less than you do. It’s really that simple on the “base” level.
But most people are beyond brutal at figuring out what they’re eating, and what portions they are eating. I use an app on my phone called mynetdiary that records everything I eat, I mean everything, if I have a handful of nuts; they go in the app, if I have a glass of orange juice; they go in the app. There’s a free version that I use and its more than fine. There’s an online resource that is similar at www.fitday.com, its free, and Use it. Be brutally honest for at least 3 weeks, see what you’re putting into your body. Weigh everything, don’t take shortcuts, it took a long time to put weight on, it will take a long time to take the weight off.

Don’t be drastic, you will fail.

Trying to eat 800 Kcals when your body needs 2200 per day to survive is a bad idea. All your body tries its hardest to do is stay alive, if you are undereating, it will store all energy as fat, and you will be incredibly tired all the time. If however, you maintain a healthy calorie deficit of 400-600 kcals a day, whilst doing resistance training, your body will be forced to expend calories on growth and repair instead of production of fat stores.

Find your maintenance calories. This is what your body requires to maintain the weight it is now. Take 500 kcals away from it, and this is your budget for calories for the day. Ignore what you imagine you burn off from walking, from cycling and from lifting weights, you will overestimate them, no doubt about it. http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm will tell you what you should be aiming for.

A 500kcal deficit a day is 3.5k deficit a week, that is roughly 1lb of weight lost a week. If you do not train, you will lose muscle as well as fat. If you train, you will maintain muscle, and accelerate fat loss.

Girls are afraid of lifting weights because they think they will get muscle and look like men. They won’t. Your body does not produce testosterone, you don’t react to weight lifting as men do. Women body builders take testosterone in order to bulk up. As an aside, ask anyone who’s ever tried to put on weight how they managed it, to put on muscle, you have to eat like a small army and lift the heaviest things you can as often as you can. It is incredibly difficult to put on muscle, and almost impossible on a calorie deficit. You won’t see major strength gains unless you are on a calorie surplus, but maintaining muscle while on a “cut” is exactly all you need to be doing, and all that most girls want to do.

From today, eat “clean”, clean means that you don’t eat anything you haven’t made yourself. Throw out any bread, biscuits, crackers etc. Use the food pyramid I sent you yesterday.http://www.nymedicalnutrition.com/im...yramid_big.jpg Meals should be simple, and satiating. Protein with every meal is essential. Protein and fat will fill you up and reduce your appetite as they regulate the blood sugar levels and insulin production in your body. The first 5/6 days that you stop eating 200g of carbohydrates a day, and let your body get back in control of its energy patterns are tough. I got run down, and had no energy at all. This is normal, and lasts 2/3 days, do not cave in at this stage.

Start to understand the composition of what you are eating, fitday and any proper decent dietary counter app will be crazy beneficial for this. You want to get most of your calories from proteins and good fats, and very few if any calories from carbohydrate. Your body only needs carbohydrate to replace the glycogen in your muscles after training, that is it. So take that to heart, only eat any meals that have a decent portion of carbohydrate directly after training. There is no need to have carbs at all otherwise.

Resistance training is essential, there is no point in doing slow walks, brisk walks, a jog etc, these only tire muscle and slow growth and repair. You need to be lifting weights, and not for a long time, but do heavy enough weights that you are struggling with the exercises. Training that takes longer than 70minutes is bad for fat loss, you want to absolutely push yourself as hard as you possibly can for a short time, this will cause your body to react by trying to make you stronger, and focusing on muscle repair. There are several essential exercises that I do, that I would recommend you do, but you should not try them unless you have someone to watch you and guide you through them. They are the Squat, the Bench Press, the Deadlift, the Inverted Row, the Overhead Press. That’s 5 exercises that you can use to exercise your whole body. The important part with each of them is form. In order of importance for your body to succeed, consider this
Form >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Weight >>>>>> Reps.

If you are squatting with perfect form, and are squatting the heaviest weight that you can manage 2 reps on, that is far far far far far better for you than doing a half arsed set of 4 with a heavier weight and not completing the full range of motion. Watch the how to’s on youtube, practise them with a broomstick, and then when you’re at the gym, ask someone to make sure you’re doing them properly. Start with an empty bar for every exercise. You will struggle because they are difficult lifts, but you want them to be difficult. After you master the form, you’ll want to be lifting a tiny incremental increase with every gym session, this will prevent your body settling and neglecting repairing muscle. A lot of these exercises can be done with kettlebells, but you will find that you will reach a point where you stall with the kettlebells, because you can’t go from a 30kg bell to a 35kg bell, but if you’d been using a bar, you could’ve gone 30 – 31 – 32.5 – 34 – 35 over a few sessions instead. Stalling for a length of time means your body goes back into the mode of conserving energy, you don’t want this.

You need to start using your head about how you eat, you have a budget of each macro-nutrient that you can consume a day, so plan how you’re going to do this while getting enough calories. Look at what you have been eating on the WW diet and see how this doesn’t fit into what I’ve said above, think about this, “Why would WW want to make anyone not fat? They are returning customers, if they succeed, they don’t come back, and WW loses money”. What kind of business plan tries to get rid of customers?

lukekhealth

Ill try write this as direct as I can so its easy to take the important points from

Simplicity is the key to success with getting in shape...The calories in calories out theory is bull**** because not all calories are equal. Its all about what ingrediants you eat.Im not pulling this out of thin air...scourced from recent studies

Dont calorie count

Use full fat organic milk isntead of low fat- tesco do it cheap

Use honey instead of artificial sweetners

Make smoothies at home all you need in it is fuit,ice,water,flaxseed

Refined sugar is your enemy more so than fat, Dont be scared of fat its a nutrient you need it. Stay away from hydrogenated/trans fats!

Stay away from Glucose Fructose Syrup

Eat lamb instead of beef

Choose organic where you can

Train cardio and resistance training

Stay off the weighing scales....You should be looking at body fat percantage!! Take a photo of yourself and retake one every 6 weeks to see your progress!

If your having butter eat real irish butter not spreads like lowlow, most of them are too processed.

Get a personal trainer...It will speed everything up!

FYG

lukekhealth wrote: »

The calories in calories out theory is bull****

No, it's not?

lukekhealth

Ok so your saying 500kcals of fructose in the form of orange juice is the same as eating 500kcals of fructose through fruit? Theres other factors that have to be taken into consideration.

FYG

lukekhealth wrote: »

Ok so your saying 500kcals of fructose in the form of orange juice is the same as eating 500kcals of fructose through fruit? Theres other factors that have to be taken into consideration.

500 calories = 500 calories, yeah?

lukekhealth

The calories from the fruit will have a much different effect than the ones from the juice...the fructose from the juice will have some of the same effects on the body as ethanol(alcohol) the only difference between the two is that fructose is metabolised through the liver and ethanol is metabolised through the brain.The calories from the fruit will most likely be from low GI carbs due to the fibre and the calories from the juice will be from high GI carbs.

Orla K

lukekhealth wrote: »

Eat lamb instead of beef

I can understand were your coming from with the rest of the post except this why lamb over beef? I always thought both were raised to a good standard in this country(both grass fed for most of the year and so on)

Parsley

lukekhealth wrote: »

The calories from the fruit will have a much different effect than the ones from the juice...the fructose from the juice will have some of the same effects on the body as ethanol(alcohol) the only difference between the two is that fructose is metabolised through the liver and ethanol is metabolised through the brain.The calories from the fruit will most likely be from low GI carbs due to the fibre and the calories from the juice will be from high GI carbs.

jesus christ that has got to be the biggest pile of utter sh*te i've ever read on this forum.

500kcals of fructose from juice and 500kcals of fructose from fruit... one of them is metabolised like ethanol? so alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase will be used to metabolise FRUCTOSE?

lukekhealth

Read what I said again....the are metobised completely different but they have allot of the same affects on the body.

corkcomp

lukekhealth wrote: »

Read what I said again....the are metobised completely different but they have allot of the same affects on the body.

what is your point exactly because Im not getting it. Yes 500 cals from sugar obviously isn't as nutritious as say vegetables and meat but the original point was a calorie is a calorie in terms of weight loss, it doesn't matter what way different foods are metabolised tbh.

discus

It's official, ethanol is metabolised BY THE BRAIN

discus

FYG wrote: »

500 calories = 500 calories, yeah?

Not all calories are created equal! It's down to how calorific content is determined. You have a precise knowledge of how many calories were combusted, but applying that to diet is an inexact science.

lukekhealth

To save myself the hassle of answering all these questioms. Check out the research by Robert H Lustig and his team. Theres a video of him speaking on youtube. its called "sugar the bitter truth"

bridgemond

You are doing good so far:D. I take if from your post you drink fri and sat night?
Cut down to one night a week;).
Everyone hits a dry spot with weight lose because your body gets used to the exercise and as you lose weight your body burn less calories.
I am 5ft 10 male and was 94kg cut down to about 83kg and hit a dry spell. So I up'd the intensity of my cardio and do a bit more weight training and now am 77kg.

Get a notebook and count your calories and do not cheat, Enter EVERYTHING and weight your food out so you know what calories you are eating.
Use a online calorie calculator to find out how many cals you should eat a day. I find this one good http://fitness.scoobysworkshop.com/caloriecalculator.htm

Also you said you skip lunch some times, This is a big NO. Dont skip meals.

So change your exercises IE. Swap bike for the treadmill or something and keep pushing yourself because as you get fitter your body will burn less cals.

Keep up the good work and best of luck:D

Parsley

lukekhealth wrote: »

To save myself the hassle of answering all these questioms. Check out the research by Robert H Lustig and his team. Theres a video of him speaking on youtube. its called "sugar the bitter truth"

...the bastion of scientific authority that is YouTube.

Mellor

lukekhealth wrote: »

Use full fat organic milk isntead of low fat- tesco do it cheap

Make smoothies at home all you need in it is fuit,ice,water,flaxseed

Stay away from Glucose Fructose Syrup

Eat lamb instead of beef

Organic isn't going to amke a different to fat loss and calories.
Smoothie can be quite high in sugar.
Lamb and beef are essentially the same in regards to diet. The difference is minor and not a reason to avoid one.

lukekhealth wrote: »

Ok so your saying 500kcals of fructose in the form of orange juice is the same as eating 500kcals of fructose through fruit? Theres other factors that have to be taken into consideration.

lukekhealth wrote: »

The calories from the fruit will have a much different effect than the ones from the juice...the fructose from the juice will have some of the same effects on the body as ethanol(alcohol) the only difference between the two is that fructose is metabolised through the liver and ethanol is metabolised through the brain.The calories from the fruit will most likely be from low GI carbs due to the fibre and the calories from the juice will be from high GI carbs.

The calories from both are Hi GI carbs. Both are fructose. The fruit is a better option due to the fibre, but both are essentailly the same in terms of fat loss if he eats 500cals worth. He would be better off avoiding too much fructose.

Not all calories are perfectly equal due to how the body process it, and how efficient it does so. For example, we don't always get all the calories from our food.
But the difference is very small, so small that you can ignore it. It's wrong to call the cals in cals out theory BS. It's accurate enough to considered correct.