Goal to loose more weight but becomming less effective

aristotle25

Hi,

Wondering if anyone can advise what I should do next. My goal is to get to 15.5 stone by March 2018. I'm 6.2 in height and currently 16 stone, 12 lbs.

I started doing cardio in the gym last april and have lost 48 pounds having started at 20 stone and 4 pounds.

But I am finding it harder and harder to loose more weight. I generally go to the gym 4 days per week, sometimes 5 days.

In there I do:

1) 4km - 5km run in 20-25 mins
2) 10-15 min on cross trainer
3) 5-10 min cycle
4) 30-40 reps of chest presses with 40lbs

So my body is probably getting too used to it. In the first 3-4 months I lost 7-9lbs per month and now probably only loosing 3lbs per month if that at all.

So do I need to be stricter on my diet or start doing weights or different cardio?

Thanks

Dempsey

Your metabolism has reduced as you have lost weight and you are more comfortable in your training.

What is your diet in terms of calories and macro ratios and how many 'cheat days' do you have in a month and how many calories does that involve?

tevey08

Hi OP, Similar height to you but had weighed way more. Weighed close to 18 stone. What I found brilliant for me to lose weight was running and diet. I restrict myself to 3 meals a day with fruit as snacks. I eat cereal for breakfast, have 1 sandwich with numerous fillings for lunch and have roasted chicken and veg for dinner. With apples and grapes and so on in between.

I got down to 13ish stone. Running was the key for me, prob 5-7km 4 nights a week, and keeping active with day to day things, walking to places instead of driving and only drinking water. Weight fell off of me and i still had my takeaway and few drinks 1 night a week

aristotle25

Hmm, I don't know really. I haven't tracked calories but I have very few cheat days in that I literally haven't had any sweets\choc etc since April.

One a week I might have 3 beers. But I know I let myself down with late night eating, usually have two bowls of cereal with full milk after the kids get to bed. So that needs to change.

Start the say fairly well with porridge, generally no bread day to day and nearly no meat as I have totally gone off it.

So I need to get my act together a bit more on the diet and being more formulaic on it?

bladespin

Track you calories, use MFP or similar, you'll never outrun a poor diet.

Congrats btw, that's a huge achievement in itself but to progress you'll have to get more scientific (and pedantic) in your approach, clean eating is excellent but there can still be hidden calories etc.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Rough rule I use is that for every pound I lose I expect my basic metabolic rate to fall by about 15 calories. It's not exact but I reckon it's not bad.

OP you lost 40lbs. Congratulations. You now get to eat 720 less calories a day if you want to return to rate of loss you had in the beginning.

Alf Veedersane

As has been pointed out, your body needs less fuel the lighter it is. If your diet is the same as it was when you started losing weight, what was a 'big' deficit is now a 'small' deficit.

To increase the rate you lose weight at, you'll primarily need to increase that deficit, i.e. eat less.

And well done on the big weight loss!

aristotle25

Thanks all, makes sense, I'll focus on the diet and I installed the MyfitnessPal app earlier today. Hope to keep the motivation from here on.

aristotle25

Yeah so the focus on the calorie intake is working, I am down 5.5 pounds over the last 3 weeks.

Also, looking at intake of protein\fat\carbs and getting that right is probably helping too, I think I was too high on carbs and too low on protein before this.

CastielJ

try to use isaliving complex, it will speed up your metabolism

bucketybuck

aristotle25 wrote: »

Hmm, I don't know really. I haven't tracked calories but I have very few cheat days in that I literally haven't had any sweets\choc etc since April.

One a week I might have 3 beers. But I know I let myself down with late night eating, usually have two bowls of cereal with full milk after the kids get to bed.

Tell me this, do you know how many calories you consumed in those two bowls of cereal? Can you put a number on it?

Macy0161

You need to start tracking, or at least adjusting down your food even if you don't want to get into tracking.

My approach was to use myfitnesspal, and the calculator that is in the sticky here somewhere. I just set it up as spreadsheet and then adjusted my calorie target each week. Started at a similar weight too.

As you get lighter, and fitter, you'll burn less with the cardio too. In my experience, whilst starting out you may out train a bad diet to some degree, to do so gets much harder as you get further into it.

Definitely check the portion sizes - as you mentioned cereal, my old bowl of cornflakes turned out to be over 3 times the stated portion on the side of the box. Personally, I always treated a calorie as a calorie, so if you fancy the cereal just make sure you're properly measuring it. My diet has evolved as the calories got lower and the choices got harder, but I believe (hope!?) this has made it more sustainable rather than it being "a diet".

Speedwell

I assume you have no reason to believe that your blood sugar levels need extra attention... not that you're actually diabetic or anything, but some of us run a bit high due to some amount of insulin resistance. Probably everyone can cut back on the high-glycemic foods for a little while. Something that doesn't get a lot of play for some reason is the role of stress and anxiety on cortisol levels, considering that cortisol has a huge role in glucose metabolism. Practice good mental hygiene as much as you can, drink your water instead of energy drinks, choose berries instead of grapes and high-fibre instead of low-fibre grain products... that alone might get rid of the last bit of weight.

aristotle25

Last blood tests were 12 months ago and results were all fine but I intend to get them done again soon anyways.

I never drink energy drinks either and I think the main thing is tracking calories which will be determined by portion size anyways. It is easier to loose weight at the start and then later I can see you need to focus carefully on diet to sustain the loss.

aristotle25

bucketybuck wrote: »

Tell me this, do you know how many calories you consumed in those two bowls of cereal? Can you put a number on it?

Looking it up there on the web its would be about 130 calories per bowel not counting the full fat milk.

bladespin

aristotle25 wrote: »

Looking it up there on the web its would be about 130 calories per bowel not counting the full fat milk.

Are you sure about that? Sounds incredibly low for any cereal unless you're using a egg cup instead of a bowl.

aristotle25

bladespin wrote: »

Are you sure about that? Sounds incredibly low for any cereal unless you're using a egg cup instead of a bowl.

Yeah, its per cup. Not sure what size cup that is but probably easy to add 1.5 - 2 cups into a bowl I suppose. So could be 200 calories in a medium size bowl.

Rodin

Not enough cardio.
5-10mins on a bike is pointless. I go for 45mins at a time.
Got sick of gymbikes so bought my own.
Perfect for netflix and bike.

Mellor

CastielJ wrote: »

try to use isaliving complex, it will speed up your metabolism

:pac:

bucketybuck

aristotle25 wrote: »

Looking it up there on the web its would be about 130 calories per bowel not counting the full fat milk.

aristotle25 wrote: »

Yeah, its per cup. Not sure what size cup that is but probably easy to add 1.5 - 2 cups into a bowl I suppose. So could be 200 calories in a medium size bowl.

Try 500/600 calories per bowl.

Seriously. The average bowl in any house I've ever been will hold 75-80g of cereal without being full, and the added milk is about 350ml. 75g of plain cornflakes and 350ml of full fat milk equals around 520 calories. Any sugar or honey is extra. Take two bowls and you just had 1040 calories. Thats basically a pizza, or 4 mars bars.

Don't think you are taking 75g of cereal? Go weigh it, I bet you are.

The reason I asked is because you seemed far too casual about how many calories you were taking in when in fact those calories are far, far more important than any exercise you might do. And I bet you would be shocked if you actually knew the calorie content of some of different things you were eating. Cereal has 3/4 times more calories than you thought, do you think that is going to be the only example?

Take 2 weeks, record every single thing you put into your mouth and then go and check on Myfitness pal what they actually cost you, you might have your eyes opened by some of them!

bladespin

The body is a wonderful and mysterious thing, for the past 5-6 weeks or so I've been cutting back so I can 'bulk' over Christmas, gradually snipping 100 or so cals off each week to lean out, then you have a very busy weekend where you forget to prep, end up ordering in (basically rubbish) for 3 days in a row, check the scale and you're DOWN 3.5lbs and drop 1% (not v accurate) off, like WTF, mince pie for brekkie and taco chips for dins help you loose weight lol.

aristotle25 average size breakfast bowl of porridge is 200, processed cereals would be significantly more, stuff like granola/muesli nearer 400.

Dempsey

Invest in a weighing scales and measure those carbs, i.e. cereal, pasta, rice. Its an eye opener

Muesli is a nightmare, i always have to weigh it. 50g looks so teeny in the bowl

Transform

bluewolf wrote: »

Muesli is a nightmare, i always have to weigh it. 50g looks so teeny in the bowl

this so much ^^^

hey ill add in nuts + seeds (even special seeds from some far off land with magical properties) to my cereal instead of sugar or honey because well you know i need to eat myself beautiful, sugar is bad because emmmm i dont know INSULIN plus good fats and all that

= boom 200cals extra easily vs the 16cals from the teaspoon of sugar and honey

Macy0161

bluewolf wrote: »

Muesli is a nightmare, i always have to weigh it. 50g looks so teeny in the bowl

And Granola is even worse!

bladespin

Macy0161 wrote: »

And Granola is even worse!

But it's so niiiiiicccccccceeeeee

yeah i seriously love muesli as a snack
an occasional, weighed snack

ThinkProgress

People worry too much about calories when losing weight... the focus should be more on eating very clean healthy foods.

If you are eating very clean, nutritious food, and using the energy you get from that food consistently through good exercise habits, then the weight will come down over time. But it's a long waiting game.

A big bowl of oatmeal with low fat milk, is great for you... and it will be a great help for losing weight. Just eat it straight, with nothing added. I would consider muesli to be an inferior choice, because it quite often contains dried fruit and nuts... neither of which are really much help to you when losing weight. (low sugar and low fat, is what you require when shedding weight)

Vegetables / protein / whole grains - that's your holy trinity of weight loss. Keep the fat low, keep the sugar low, and be careful how much fruit you eat too! Fruit is great for you, but vegetables are the superior option when trying to lose weight. I've seen plenty of people sabotage their weight loss efforts, just simply by not eating enough veg, and eating too much fruit.... the typical advice is to "eat more fruit and veg"... but IMHO that piece of advice really should be flipped around the other way - "eat more veg and fruit"...

Anyway, hopefully that helps you OP!