At a loss...

bcurrey
bcurrey Posts: 7
edited September 20 in Health and Weight Loss
Over the last 6 months or so I’ve DRASTICALLY changed my eating habit. It’s embarrassing and scary to even guess at how many calories I was eating a year ago this time. I was eating horrible and relatively no exercise. I ate fast food, fatty foods, late night sweets, COKES, and all other types of crap.

At my peak, I weighed 217lbs. (BTW, I’m a guy – for some reason folks assume I’m a lady on here. =) Initially, I cut back to 1500 calories a day, and lost 10 pounds in about 3 weeks. I know now that 1500 calories was far too low. I adjusted my intake back up to around 2000 (plus exercise calories).

Though I’m far from perfect now, I rarely drink cokes. In fact, we don’t even buy them for our house any more. I never eat late night sweets, because we don’t buy any of those either. I keep up with my food intake. For the past month, I’ve been exercising at the gym 3x’s a week. I do about 15-20 minutes of cardio, and then 45 minutes of lifting weights. I drink 40-60 ounces of water each day. I eat what I feel like is moderately healthy. I try to eat low fat foods, etc.

I weighed today……215.6. HOW??? Six months of drastically changing my diet & exercising and I’ve gained weight. I know the easy response is to measure, but after 6 months, I should have seen some type of change on the scales. If nothing else, I should have lost weight just because of the exercise, lack of cokes, and lack of late night sweets. My clothes fit no differently than they use to. I feel better, but that’s about the only physical change.

What am I doing wrong? What do I need to change? I know I need to drink more water, and more veggies, but again, I should have lost something just from the drastic changes I’ve already made. It makes no sense to me. Below are a few normal scenarios of what I might eat during the day….


Breakfast (1 of these)
• Shredded wheat cereal with no sugar & 2% milk & 1 scoop protein shake
• 2 rice cakes with 2 tbspoons of reduced fat peanut butter and a banana.

Morning snack (1 of these)
• Granola bar
• Protein bar
• ¼ cup of cashews
• ¼ cup of almonds

Lunch (1 of these)
• Grilled Chicken sandwich from Chic-Fil-A (280 calories 3g fat)
• 6” Black Ham sandwich from Subway ( abt 300 calories and less than 5g of fat)
• Oscar Meyer Flatbread thingy (less than 325 calories, don’t recall fat but not bad)
• A sandwich from home

Afternoon snack (1 of these)
• Granola bar
• Protein bar
• ¼ cup of cashews
• ¼ cup of almonds

Dinner (1 of these)
• Grilled chicken breast
• Lean steak
• Chicken and brown rice

Dinner (1 or 2 of these)
• Corn
• Green beans
• Sweet potatoe

Post Workout
• 2 scoops of protein shake – this usually offsets my exercise burn

Replies

  • shanerylee
    shanerylee Posts: 298 Member
    seems like healthy foods for sure, but a lot of carbs. Thats the problem I am having. Cut out some carbs, add more veg and fruit and add some protein, see what happens. The body is a confusing thing isnt it
  • Anansis_Intricacy
    Anansis_Intricacy Posts: 22
    Is the weight possibly muscle now, since you're doing 45 minutes of weight lifting each time? Or maybe you're taking in too many calories? I would try changing up either the exercise routine or the amount of calories and see if that makes a difference. Maybe your body just hit a plateau and needs a bit of an extra push.

    Also, in response to the other poster, be careful how low you go on carbs. Your body needs at least 130 grams of carbs a day. That's why low carb diets are bad :)
  • Barneystinson
    Barneystinson Posts: 1,357 Member
    That's a lot of carbs there...
  • Pariah
    Pariah Posts: 97 Member
    i agree that it may just be muscle. check your measurements instead and body fat and see if you see a difference there.
  • dclarsh1
    dclarsh1 Posts: 83
    My guess is that you haven't lost a lot of pounds because you're only doing 15-20 minutes of cardio followed by 45 minutes of weight training. Over the course of 6 months, you've probably gained a lot of muscle. My bet is that you've gained enough muscle to almost completely offset your loss of fat. Do you look different? That should tell you if your hard work has paid off. And if you want to drop some more pounds, I'd recommend increasing your cardio time, and keeping your weight training time the same.
  • Anansis_Intricacy
    Anansis_Intricacy Posts: 22
    That's a lot of carbs there...

    Too many simple carbs in the bread and stuff. Try adding some veggies; they have complex carbs which make you feel full longer because they take longer to digest. Also you'll get more nutrients this way :)
  • lilchino4af
    lilchino4af Posts: 1,292 Member
    chicken and ham have lots of sodium so your 60 ounces of water isn't enough. The general rule of thumb is 64 ounces a day, but really it should be half your body weight in ounces; more when you workout and definitely more when you go over on sodium to help flush it out (sodium causes you to retain water, as does weight lifting because your body uses it to repair the muscles). For your weight, you should be drinking at least 100 ounces a day (215/2 = 107.5). Try upping your water, watching your sodium and lowering your carbs to the MFP recommended amount for a week or so and see what results you get.
  • cmb272
    cmb272 Posts: 2
    what are you doing at the gym??? im sure you already know muscle weighs more than fat so if you are doing too much weight while strength training you may see a gain on the scale...try doing lower weights higher reps...this will help tone and not build muscle!!!
  • bcurrey
    bcurrey Posts: 7
    Thanks for all the responses. How many grams of carbs am should I have? MFP and another site I've checked both have me at about 300g per day and i'm usually well under that.
  • gnme4243
    gnme4243 Posts: 120
    That's a lot of carbs there...

    Too many simple carbs in the bread and stuff. Try adding some veggies; they have complex carbs which make you feel full longer because they take longer to digest. Also you'll get more nutrients this way :)

    I agree with both- I would say too much breads/rice etc.. Definitely agree on the adding veggies- not just cooked, snack on raw veggies too. Also, I would (if you don't already) set MFP for tracking your sodium levels in your food diary. Some of those "regular" foods sound like pretty high sodium. Not everyone needs the same amount of sodium each day. For me the standard 2,000 or 2,500 each day was WAY too high and I was really slow losing the weight.
    Now I have my goal set to 1,500 and I average between 1,400 to 1,600 a day in sodium and I feel better and the weight is coming off better.
    Also- the weight work is awesome for you (you're probably building lots of good muscle), but maybe try for a week or two adding more cardio, and switch around what you do (walk, run, jog, treadmill, exercise vids, bicycle, stationary bike, swim).

    I slow down with the weight loss when I stop switching up my exercise. I just try to keep my body guessing.

    Last, try cutting back your calories per day by only a couple hundred a couple times a week, see if that pokes your metabolism into a different mindset, lol.

    Good luck!! You sound to me like you are on the right track!

    PS. Bag the sodas altogether- you so don't need those. :flowerforyou:
  • krosebaker
    krosebaker Posts: 2
    There is a lot of good advice here already: increase water consumption, increase cardio, muscle vs. fat weight.

    I'd like to add that carbs aren't always bad. Check out the glycemic index of the carbs you are taking in. The higher the glycemic index, the lower the quality of the carbs for your body. (Sugar is high on the index, low on the quality. Whole grains and veggies are low on the index and high on quality.) I just recently learned that shredded wheat actually has a high glycemic index due to the amount of processing that the wheat undergoes.

    Foods with a high glycemic index create a fat storing response in our bodies by increasing our blood glucose levels. For long term weight loss it is recommended to eat carb sources that are low on the glycemic index. There are a lot of websites out there with great information. Here's one: http://www.glycemicindex.com/

    Good luck moving past your temporary plateau!
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