Please help!! I'm stuck!!

hadley1998

I need some help!! I'm starting to get discouraged. I have been stuck at 198 for about 3 weeks now. I work out at least 1hour to 2 hours daily, I eat my allotted calories and some of the calories I burn when excercising. Don't know what's going on!! I need some sort of boost!! Please help, any advice?

kaypat09

What is your daily calorie goal?

kenazfehu

You might want to open your diary for awhile so that people can make specific suggestions.

If your diet is high in sodium, you could be retaining water and that is why the scales isn't moving. If that is the case, drink more water and cut the sodium.

In general, you have to be patient. It's a lot of adjustment for your body to shift over from fat storing to fat burning. Some bodies are very efficient at this, others not so much.

Also keep in mind that the calorie range given to you and the calories burned during exercise are estimates only. The calories given for your diet might be too many for you, also you might not be burning as many calories as you think. Try eating back only half of them.

Nana_Booboo

look up the benefits of coconut oil.

chuckdduncan

Hi,

I've been successfully and consistently losing weight. Let me see, I'm down 60 pounds so far and more to go.

Okay, I workout about an hour or so a day about 6 days a week so we are similar there.
I also balance what I eat pretty closely to the Zone.

But there's one thing special I do that is NOT what Weight Watchers or the other programs recommend. THEY tell you to eat some low carb something whenever you get hungry.

WRONG! Let me tell you why and THEN let me tell you how to stop hunger the right way.

(Sorry for the long winded reply):
When your blood sugar drops below a certain level, your body shift gears quite naturally and starts extracting glucose (blood sugar) from the stored form (glycogen) in the liver. This is essential since the brain and neurological system requires 6 grams per hour day and night no matter how active you are. At the same time two more things happen: 1) the liver orchestrates converting FAT to fatty acids, which muscles (most all cells actually) will metabolize rather than the glucose. THIS IS WHERE YOU LOSE WEIGHT. BUT 2) You start to feel hungry. At that point you should be skipping around whistling zippity do dah since thats where you want to be.

BUT That's hard when you feel hungry. There's two ways to stop hunger WITHOUT stopping the consumption of fat. The first goes back to the flight-or-fight days when our ancesters were running from a Sabre toothed tiger. Not one of them (or at least not one of them that lived) while being chased stopped to nibble blueberries off a bush. Somehow hunger wasn't important; But the fact is: when the adrenaline went up, the hunger just went away. Soooo.... two ways to make your adrenaline go up: 1) be chased by a Sabre toothed tiger (or go exercise - same thing), or 2) the easier way: have a cup of coffee WITH caffeine. Don't overdo it. You don't want to Spaz out, just enough to stop the hunger.

That gets me through to my next scheduled meal.

I DO eat LESS than my target, but not by much because I need the muscles to get all those carbs so I can survive the gym without going facedown on the mat.

This works for me. I hope it helps.

Oh, and I stay away from things that metabolize quickly: (raw sugar like chocolate frosted donuts LOL, but even bread goes in quite fast.) BTW, Frank Zane (World class body builder once told me he never eats grains; he gets all his carbs from fruits and veggies. I do better when I go that direction mself.

Good luck.

KSJ75

Hi - you haven't said what your daily workout consists of but you also need to be aware that muscle is heavier than fat due to it being denser, so you maybe burning fat but gaining muscle?!?

chuckdduncan

I meant to reply specifically to you, but it ended up as a general post. See my post: ChuckDuncan

chuckdduncan

Excellent point. The only way to know for sure is to get a % body fat reading. Now comes the hitch. Most of the devices that will do this are very inaccurate. The one (very expensive) procedure is a total immersion reading considered to be the absolute gospel. BUT if you look around, you can find places that will do a BodPod reading. (look on the web). I know there is one near me at a university and they only charge $35 to do a reading.

You sit in this thing that looks like an egg with your head sticking out. Somehow it does the reading and it is considered comparable to the immersion method.

But as the previous person mentioned: if you are exercising and noticing that you are getting stronger, walking farther/longer, or whatever then you must certainly be putting on muscle. That process can go on for a long time. It did for me and then one day I noticed my clothes were much bigger (or I was much smaller in them).

LOL