What I learned so far, what actually works for me!

Bogditzy

So let me share with you what I have learned about weight loss and what actually works for me and what I did wrong in the beginning. FYI, I have started all this weight loss thing a month and two weeks ago.

- first important thing is knowing your TDEE - how many calories your body needs per day in order to maintain weight ; This value needs to be re-calculated after some time - I usually do it after 2 KG going down

- eat around 20% less calories from the TDEE amount

- I measure and log everything I eat

- If I do running/cardio/ HIIT, eat back 80% - 90% of the calories consumed (I use a HRM to track the calories burned, which is pretty accurate)

- I eat in a 8 hours interval all my calories (eg. 1PM - 9PM) - also known as Intermittent Fasting

- Sleep each night 7 hours (from what I know it's good to sleep between 7 and 8 hours. More or less is bad for you..)

- Lifting weights 3-4 times a week. What I did wrong in the first 2 weeks is to use my HRM also for weightlifting. I was burning around 400-500 calories and eating them back. What I found after 2 weeks is that my weight wasn't moving a lot (usually maintaining my weight) even though I was doing all the above. After researching, I found out that HRM is not accurate for weightlifting because it's an anaerobic activity and HRM monitors don't work for it correctly. I don't eat my calories back from weightlifting now!

- I divided my macros according to the information in here (http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=156380183) - based on bodybuilding recommendation. That brings it to about 40% fat, 35% protein and 25% carbs. I try to hit these values but not always which is fine. You can calculate based on the general recommended level which I think places carbs on the first position after which fat and protein. I need protein to prevent my lean muscle loss.

- try to eat more healthy - avocado, nuts etc; also drink a lot of water each day (around 3L-4L ). I recommend getting a BPA free water bottle and keep drinking out of it. I find it very easy to do that. Before I wasn't drinking a lot of water. This way, you will loose a lot of retained water as well.

- Keep sodium low

- Measure your body fat every month to see progress. I tend to use the Jackson/Pollock 7 Caliper Method (http://www.linear-software.com/online.html) . I went from ~30.5% body fat to ~25.7% in a month and 2 weeks.

- Lost 4.5 KG so far - measured myself yesterday and two days ago, will update weight tomorrow morning. - That is around 800g-900g per week. I still have 11 KG to go. I also have multiple small goals to achieve (eg : 2KG intervals). I feel that I achieve more this way.

- I have also an Jawbone Up24 to track my steps each day.

- This week didn't go to gym because of a back pain - still lost almost 850g-900 so far

So yeah, this is pretty much it. Works for me so hopefully might work for you. That's all I can think of right now. Might update this if I remember anything else.

Let me know what works for you or if you do something similar as me?!

Cheers,
Bogdi