GOD HELP ME!!!!!!

First of all, welcome and congratulations on really kicking the exercise up a notch! But I agree that getting the food intake under control is vital. It is virtually impossible to exercise enough to make up for mindless, out of control eating. I've been there and it is just WAY too easy to eat an entire marathon's worth of calories expended with just one order of pizza and cheesecake! I highly recommend at least starting to log everything you eat without even worrying about the calories for a couple of days. You will likely see why you are still gaining weight and it is probably a simple case of eating more than you are expending, even with the 90 mins of exercise 4x/week. Once you have a good idea of how much you are eating, the next step is, as you said, planning and bringing your own food so that you can be less tempted by the food you are surrounded with. You will find a lot of support here. Best of luck!

I hear ya...every time I start running I end up gaining weight...like you, I'm told it's muscle....so hard!

Hi.......... Everyone has given great advice. I have a sit down job, so I know how hard it can be to shed unwanted lbs. What seems to work for me is to most definately take the personal survey, which probably already have when you signed up, and track, track and track your meals on the "FOOD" tab, at the end of the day look at see how much you exceeded your caloric intake by and then look through your list of foods and see which ones are the biggest contributors to your excess calories. Obviously you have figured that the more cardio you do, the better. If you are trying to shed lbs, here are a few tips

lets lay out a plan for you:
- Eat a sensable breakfast, sensable means 500 calories or less (breakfast by the way is a must, you have to eat breakfast to loose weight, other wise your body, being smarter than you are, will store weight). Here is the importance of break-fast, see breaking the fast is what breakfast does. If you eat breakfast no need to read the next sentence. here is the deal, lets say you eat dinner at what ever time, lets use 6pm, and then you do not eat anything tangible until, lets say lunch. that is 18 hours that your body has been without food, your body has modes of operation, one of them being "STARVATION MODE", starvation mode is bad. Just eat breakfast.

- Snack, eat a snack about 2 hrs after breakfast. (I eat things like yogurt, string cheese, fruit, nuts, 100 cal. snack packs, or some times a slimfast). You also need to eat a snack between lunch and dinner. these snacks are in place to keep your body energized and to keep you from being overly hungry when it is lunch/dinner time. It is almost like saying that you need to eat to loose weight.

- lunch/dinner, look at luch this way, if you eat a high cal lunch you will need to eat a low cal dinner, if you eat a low cal lunch, you will be in control and on your way to winning.

- Do not do strength training, like you have heard, it could build muscle which means no weight loss and that will discourage you. Stick with cardio, cardio, and more cardio, aerobic excercises. You can circuit train on weight machines by doing fast paced low weight high repitition type excercise with four simple activities. Example, 25 (or less) 4 count flutter kicks, (take no break between any of these), leg extension machine, reasonable but low weight 20 repitions (faced pace), add 1 or 2 more of things that you like to do, after you complete the 3/4 excersise, take a few seconds to walk to the water fountain, get a drink of water then hit it again, and repeat until you have done these excercises all 3 times each, and then maybe work up to doing them 4 times each. the idea is to get your heart rate up and hold there for the duration of the excercises.

- Good old brisk walking or biking for 30 minutes or more. I go to a gym, so I get on the elyptical for 10 min., bike for 10 (level 5 or better 100 rpms or 16 to 20 mphs) and treadmill for 10 (4 mph or better).

Since you have increased your working out, don't just focus on the scale, you can loose inches and not weight, which is good. Hang in there. Try to meet your calorie goals for the day, you CAN DO THIS, I have become addicted to MFP, I enter everything I eat into it, and every cardio excercise I do. If I am going to walk a substancial distance more than 5 minutes, I walk it fast sand I log it. As a matter of fact I log 18 minutes during lunch every day, I go out side and walk at a brisk pace for 9 minutes before and 9 minutes after lunch and I log it. I invite you to look at my diary if you know how, I do not know how or I would tell you, and see what I am eating. Good luck to you, and hang in there, once you get your metabolism into gear, you will see results.

here is the deal, lets say you eat dinner at what ever time, lets use 6pm, and then you do not eat anything tangible until, lets say lunch. that is 18 hours that your body has been without food, your body has modes of operation, one of them being "STARVATION MODE", starvation mode is bad. Just eat breakfast.


- Do not do strength training, like you have heard, it could build muscle which means no weight loss and that will discourage you.

The poster here said 2 things I do not agree with, but SOME of their advice was sound.

I agree with eating breakfast every day, it really IS crucial. But NOT eating breakfast has nothing to do with "starvation mode". That phrase is tossed around WAY too easily on these discussion boards. That is a serious condition that takes a long time of eating way too little DAILY. You don't enter starvation mode by lunch because you skipped breakfast.
But breakfast really does wake up your metabolism and get you burning fat sooner once you get it going.

And secondly, I would never advise someone to just do "cardio cardio cardio" and "do not do strength training".
Unless you want to be scrawny and flabby. Strength training is important to tighten up as you lose the pounds.

Seconded!

I think it is important to eat breakfast and not skip meals in general, if possible, but I also don't think that missing one meal is going to spiral you into starvation mode. What skipping a meal MIGHT do, however, is make you feel irritable, light headed, and ready to eat any sugary treats that come your way. (That's what seems to happen to me, at least!)

And I CERTAINLY wouldn't recommend that you skip resistance training unless you want to end up "skinny fat"! There are a lot of people I see who get down to their goal weight and still end up feeling unhappy about how they look naked. Often this is because they have neglected to strengthen and build their muscles while they were losing the fat. While it is true that when you initially start weight training, you might see a small weight gain, that gain is likely coming from both water retention in the muscles as they are healing (i.e. becoming leaner and stronger) and because muscle is more dense than fat, so even though you may be smaller, if you have added some lean muscle mass, it might add a small amount of weight. That muscle is going to ramp up your metabolism, though and only help you lose weight in the long run.

Keeping in mind, that many people that do not see results will get discouraged and give up on weight loss because it can be difficult need to see results. The plan I laid out WILL give results and nothing that I offerered was harmful or would outlandish.

I agree. I don't think you said anything harmful. I just wanted to chime in that, while I think it is a good idea to eat at regular intervals, I didn't want to have the OP panic about "starvation mode". I've seen too many people stressing themselves out to get in calories when they aren't hungry just so they don't commit what they feel is the ultimate sin of skipping a meal.

And, well, I just outright disagreed with the notion of not doing strength training. Doing only cardio won't kill someone and you are right in that it might lead to somewhat slower results on the scale (at first), a well-balanced workout regime is going to be the best way to get satisfying, long-term fitness and health.

Sorry if my response came off as anything other than offering a different view.

It's all good, I looked at your diary, how do you live, you eat like a bird.

That's funny because I am eating constantly and I am frequently telling those with 1200 calorie/day goals to eat more! I eat at least 1400 every day, but I'm also female, 5'3 and 127 lbs. I'm guessing your stats are a bit different. I'm glad you aren't trying to survive on what would be really low calories for a man of almost any height/weight because that would be rough.