Having trouble losing weight

[schubunny]

Hello, I'm new here

I have so far lost over 30lbs in the last year, by counting calories and going to the gym.

Now that I no longer wish to slave at the gym, I started doing interval training with bodyweight/weights/cardio. They are normally 12-30 minutes long, 4-5 times a week. This is along with continued calorie counting and drinking 12 cups of water a day. I am also watching sodium and carbs.

Since I started this beginning of January, I have seen no fat loss. I am a lot stronger now and feel great, but I am not losing weight as I hoped. I have been trying to find out what I am doing wrong and coming up empty.

The only change I saw was that mid-January I suddenly lost 7lbs and inches, then gained back 13lbs the next day and lost about 8lbs of it throughout the week, which brings me back to where I was in the beginning (measurements also went back up). In short, I have gone nowhere.

Can anyone help me out? I've upped calories to 1700 and had Saturday and Sunday as a re-feed day, as I am afraid metabolism might be shot from counting calories since 2010. I don't know if this will help. I'm feeling really discouraged and I'm scared I will have to go back to the gym with long workouts and boring cardio. I really love what I am doing and don't want to stop, but if I cannot get rid of this excess weight I am going to go nuts.

[Boss Man]

Have you factored in the possibility that you may have gained muscle that is replacing some fat, bearing in mind one cannot become the other and vice versa.

When you do your weighing, try to weigh first thing on an empty stomach and after a toilet trip, so you don't have leftover food and waste skewing the reading.

It's also preferable to do it once a week only, as weight can fluctuate during the day and every day too, so if you have had erratic weighing habits, this might account for some confusion on your weight readings.

Muscle building is a good way to lose weight, as 1lb of added muscle burns another 45-50 calories per day, so what you're doing might help with that as well.

What meals do you eat and what times do you eat?

[schubunny]

Hi Boss Man

I had the thought but everyone was telling me it isn't possible to gain that much muscle in a month, especially since I'm a woman.

I do weight in the morning after I use the washroom and before I do anything else. I do not weight any other time of day or more than once.

meals completely vary -fruits, veggies, some fish or chicken, normally I have something a soon as I get up, then a snack when I get to work, then supper, and if I am starving I have something a few hours before bed. calorie intake is normally in the 1300 range and doesn't go above 1800 unless I'm having a re-feed day.

[Boss Man]

That's your issue. Your calories are too low. You're creating something called a starvation mode, where the body hangs onto Fat. You will struggle if you eat 1,300 a day and exercise too.

You need 1,800 a day for sedentary living on average, being a female; men 2,000 calories a day, so add another 300-400 for general levels of exercise, not marathon training or anything like that, you'd be fine.

At least aim for 1,800 a day, then around another 200-300 more on re-feed days.

Add another couple of meals in there with around 250-300 calories in each and see how you get on.

This is not a one size fits all system, but a ballpark way of doing things, because everyone is different.

It might help to have a more rigid plan to stick to, with the only Dinner option changing each day.

This gives you better planning and tracking of food, but you always know what you're eating if Breakfast is always te same snacks always the same, then the Dinners add variety, to stop it feeling samey.

Otherwise, have 2 seperate daily plans based on the suggestion above and alternate them every other day, so you'd use each one either 3 or 4 times a week, depending on which one you used on the Sunday .

[zenphitness]

Boss man definitely knows what's what, a dietitian friend of mine recently told me a few things on this very topic as well: basically, there are neurotransmitter and hormonal pathways that send signals to the body to activate fat cells into energy, when you have a lot of fat cells those neurotransmitters and hormones are at a higher level making fat loss a much faster process when activated just because of the high levels of those specific hormones. As the number of fat cells decrease, so do the levels of those fat burning hormones, making the process of fat loss slow over time. This sounds like an aspect of what you are experiencing. It is natural and normal to have results like that, and I am sure if you take Boss Man's advice you will see more results as well. Also, kudos on the interval training, I am a fan, especially of MRT, if you are interested in getting started with MRT you can check out an article I put up on blog: http://zenphitness.blogspot.com/2012/02 ... -made.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Boss Man]

Things like Adiponectin, Ghrelin and Leptin can affect energy, they affect fat conversion into energy, or affect nutrition conversion to fat and Leptin is one that can help fat loss so I believe, but there is less of it when you're overweight as the body produces less.

[zenphitness]

Those lipid production pathways that you are talking about are the pathways that are targeted by all of the weight loss drugs you see. The reason some people will think that one is the greatest thing ever, and the next guy will get no results from the same one, is that there are so many different neurotransmitter and hormone pathways for lipid production and storage, that most people's bodies will simply reroute the signal so to speak. That is why the application of weight loss drugs is still pretty mediocre at best.

[Boss Man]

Heck yeah. Weight loss drugs are total rubbish. I don't know how any overweight people 30-40 years ago, ever got that last 30-40lbs off. They must have bene genetic freaks back then