Best way to lose body fat?

So you're either miscalculating or counting wrong.

If you ate 1500 calories everyday, you would be losing weight.

Not true. I am 5'9" 250 and eat under 1500 everyday. I workout daily, cardio and strength alternating.. and I am not losing. Some bodies are stubborn.

No, they are not. I'm sorry but if you're truly eating 1500 calories everyday at 250 lbs and work out that much - you have a medical condition.

Nope. Just got back from the Dr. My blood work is exactly where it is supposed to be. I even did a fasting blood sugar. No health problems at all. Just stubborn.

Just saw this (this thread is moving fast :laugh: ) Best thing I can say is do a google search, not sure what your diet is like but for some folks it can be as simple as cutting back on certain macros, vs the actual calorie count.

ETA: fasting blood sugar is the last to break down. More telling is a BG taken after a high or regular carb meal at 1 hour post and 2 hour post intervals to see if the spike is high and or how long it takes to come down. This is why I say google because only you can know if you recognize your situation in other's anecdotal experiences.

So you're either miscalculating or counting wrong.

If you ate 1500 calories everyday, you would be losing weight.

Not true. I am 5'9" 250 and eat under 1500 everyday. I workout daily, cardio and strength alternating.. and I am not losing. Some bodies are stubborn.

No, they are not. I'm sorry but if you're truly eating 1500 calories everyday at 250 lbs and work out that much - you have a medical condition.

Nope. Just got back from the Dr. My blood work is exactly where it is supposed to be. I even did a fasting blood sugar. No health problems at all. Just stubborn.

Just saw this (this thread is moving fast :laugh: ) Best thing I can say is do a google search, not sure what your diet is like but for some folks it can be as simple as cutting back on certain macros, vs the actual calorie count.

No. If your tdee is very low due to a medical condition, you need to change the macros so you get your nutrition in (carbs are not an essential nutrient). But just changing your macros around is not going to have a noticeable effect on body composition, assuming you are getting enough brotein and fat.

what worked for me is lifting weights & heavier ones.. not 25reps with a 5lb dumbells, I'm talking about maxing out your muscles to the point of fatigue for less reps. Building more muscle on my body killed my body fat all on its own, with a good diet too of course. I only do cardio a couple x a week, and thats the way I like it.

So you're either miscalculating or counting wrong.

If you ate 1500 calories everyday, you would be losing weight.

Not true. I am 5'9" 250 and eat under 1500 everyday. I workout daily, cardio and strength alternating.. and I am not losing. Some bodies are stubborn.

No, they are not. I'm sorry but if you're truly eating 1500 calories everyday at 250 lbs and work out that much - you have a medical condition.

Nope. Just got back from the Dr. My blood work is exactly where it is supposed to be. I even did a fasting blood sugar. No health problems at all. Just stubborn.

Just saw this (this thread is moving fast :laugh: ) Best thing I can say is do a google search, not sure what your diet is like but for some folks it can be as simple as cutting back on certain macros, vs the actual calorie count.

No. If your tdee is very low due to a medical condition, you need to change the macros so you get your nutrition in (carbs are not an essential nutrient). But just changing your macros around is not going to have a noticeable effect on body composition, assuming you are getting enough brotein and fat.

In my experience, this can be subjective. One can't prove what their TDEE is without a doubt in the absence of a DEXA scan (from what I can figure) it's just an estimate, so I won't comment on that. However, in my case, increasing fat & keeping protein the same (sometimes even less) as well as eliminating sugars & starches was what made the difference for me.

I can only relay my experience in hopes that it can help someone else who struggles & is trying to work out why.

You can infer your tdee to a pretty high degree of precision by simply eating a set number of cals and applying the laws of physics to the results. It's slow but extremely reliable. The only problem is the number is actually in flux all the time, so y have to keep measuring. Losing too fast? Eat more. Losing too slow? Eat less. Done. And objective, not subjective, sorry. I can objectively tell you by measuring your mass if you've been eating more or less than your tdee, as long as I'm able to collect enough data. Might be slow in your book, but it's absolutely correct.

Big assumption: the laws of physics. I guess that's a leap I'm willing to make.

Okay so I'm trying to cut back on body fat but I honestly can't tell if it's working or not. I've been doing an hour of cardio (now an hour and a half) a day for 6 days a week. I've been told that its excessive and maybe that's my problem. I've made changes in my diet in the sense that I no longer eat at work (I work at a fast food restaurant and I now go home to eat). I also no longer consume anything other then water/milk - I used to drink 3-4 energy drinks a day due to lack of energy (but I feel like I have more energy now that I've started working out again). I'm just looking for advice as to why I'm not losing weight or at least tips on how to properly measure myself to figure out my BF%. I change up cardio routines too, I try not to do the same thing all the time.

Best results I've had with losing the fat has been since implementing the information in this topic: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/974888-in-place-of-a-road-map-2k13

Links to tools and step by step instructions on calculating your BMR and TDEE, then taking a 12-20% cut from TDEE for a daily goal. I'm a 45 year old, 5'8" woman and I achieved great fat loss, lost inches, and finally hit goal weight while eating 1800+ calories a day. Workouts were (and still are) three days of weights (dumbbells, all I've got at the moment) for 30 minutes followed by 20 minutes of kickboxing, and three days of running 3-5 miles. Workouts are usually an hour or less per day.

You're taller, younger, heavier and a guy - you should be eating more than 1500 cals a day (and to another poster in this topic who is taller than me and eating 1500 - you could probably stand to eat a bit more as well!). And no need to go gonzo on the cardio to lose fat - as someone else mentioned, weight lifting will help reshape your body, and helps retain that lean body mass while you're losing fat. But it's mostly diet anyway - everything I've read lately, and from my own experience, a small calorie deficit is best for fat loss. Eat too little over time, especially with heaps of exercise, and you're giving it a reason to store fat rather than burn it.

Check out that thread - great info there, and it has been the key for many many people here at MFP.

Eat well, drink water, exercise, get good rest, and have patience.

Start strength training 3x a week. If you have access to weights check out a program like Stronglifts or Starting Strength. If not take a look at something like You Are Your Own Gym, a bodyweight only strength program.

Cardio is great for overall health but it isn't going to be enough.

Good luck.

So you're either miscalculating or counting wrong.

If you ate 1500 calories everyday, you would be losing weight.

Not true. I am 5'9" 250 and eat under 1500 everyday. I workout daily, cardio and strength alternating.. and I am not losing. Some bodies are stubborn.

No, they are not. I'm sorry but if you're truly eating 1500 calories everyday at 250 lbs and work out that much - you have a medical condition.

Nope. Just got back from the Dr. My blood work is exactly where it is supposed to be. I even did a fasting blood sugar. No health problems at all. Just stubborn.

Just saw this (this thread is moving fast :laugh: ) Best thing I can say is do a google search, not sure what your diet is like but for some folks it can be as simple as cutting back on certain macros, vs the actual calorie count.

No. If your tdee is very low due to a medical condition, you need to change the macros so you get your nutrition in (carbs are not an essential nutrient). But just changing your macros around is not going to have a noticeable effect on body composition, assuming you are getting enough brotein and fat.

In my experience, this can be subjective. One can't prove what their TDEE is without a doubt in the absence of a DEXA scan (from what I can figure) it's just an estimate, so I won't comment on that. However, in my case, increasing fat & keeping protein the same (sometimes even less) as well as eliminating sugars & starches was what made the difference for me.

I can only relay my experience in hopes that it can help someone else who struggles & is trying to work out why.

You can infer your tdee to a pretty high degree of precision by simply eating a set number of cals and applying the laws of physics to the results. It's slow but extremely reliable. The only problem is the number is actually in flux all the time, so y have to keep measuring. Losing too fast? Eat more. Losing too slow? Eat less. Done. And objective, not subjective, sorry. I can objectively tell you by measuring your mass if you've been eating more or less than your tdee, as long as I'm able to collect enough data. Might be slow in your book, but it's absolutely correct.

Big assumption: the laws of physics. I guess that's a leap I'm willing to make.

While all that's well and good, it didn't work for me.

It's my belief that there's art as well as science involved in weight loss and can it be quite individualistic.
Again, this has been my experience, clearly your experience has been different. I never said anything about my experience being absolute.

Well if you lost weight without a calorie deficit, you might be a saint or something. Have you contacted the Catholic Church?

The "art" part of it is managing your willpower and thus your ability to stay on a deficit, your energy levels, sense of well being, muscle loss, etc... There is no art in reducing the mass of your body by taking out more carbon than you put in. It's not subjective, sorry. What do you figure the scale is measuring? Magic? Or actual gain or loss of material?

I say again....your experience is not mine. Just because my experience does not match up with your own doesn't mean it's not valid. ::shrug::

Not really sure why my experience means anything to you or why I would contact a catholic church :indifferent:

Just repeating the same thing over and over again is not the same as supporting what you say.


How is your experience "different" from anyone else's? You are saying that you are a singularity?


AKA a special snowflake. Sorry, but no. And please don't spread around garbage misinformation. We are not "all different". The reason for this whole forum, and the very basis for us helping one another, is the WE ARE ALL REMARKABLY SIMILAR.



Now I ask again, do you really believe you lost weight while taking in more calories than you expended? So you have worked a miracle? Call the church then. Miracles and magic are their province, not mine.

Again, not sure why you insist on hassling me. It's my experience and this is a public forum.
Go chase someone else.
Click.

So you're either miscalculating or counting wrong.

If you ate 1500 calories everyday, you would be losing weight.

Not true. I am 5'9" 250 and eat under 1500 everyday. I workout daily, cardio and strength alternating.. and I am not losing. Some bodies are stubborn.

No, they are not. I'm sorry but if you're truly eating 1500 calories everyday at 250 lbs and work out that much - you have a medical condition.

Nope. Just got back from the Dr. My blood work is exactly where it is supposed to be. I even did a fasting blood sugar. No health problems at all. Just stubborn.

Just saw this (this thread is moving fast :laugh: ) Best thing I can say is do a google search, not sure what your diet is like but for some folks it can be as simple as cutting back on certain macros, vs the actual calorie count.

No. If your tdee is very low due to a medical condition, you need to change the macros so you get your nutrition in (carbs are not an essential nutrient). But just changing your macros around is not going to have a noticeable effect on body composition, assuming you are getting enough brotein and fat.

In my experience, this can be subjective. One can't prove what their TDEE is without a doubt in the absence of a DEXA scan (from what I can figure) it's just an estimate, so I won't comment on that. However, in my case, increasing fat & keeping protein the same (sometimes even less) as well as eliminating sugars & starches was what made the difference for me.

I can only relay my experience in hopes that it can help someone else who struggles & is trying to work out why.

You can infer your tdee to a pretty high degree of precision by simply eating a set number of cals and applying the laws of physics to the results. It's slow but extremely reliable. The only problem is the number is actually in flux all the time, so y have to keep measuring. Losing too fast? Eat more. Losing too slow? Eat less. Done. And objective, not subjective, sorry. I can objectively tell you by measuring your mass if you've been eating more or less than your tdee, as long as I'm able to collect enough data. Might be slow in your book, but it's absolutely correct.

Big assumption: the laws of physics. I guess that's a leap I'm willing to make.

While all that's well and good, it didn't work for me.

It's my belief that there's art as well as science involved in weight loss and can it be quite individualistic.
Again, this has been my experience, clearly your experience has been different. I never said anything about my experience being absolute.

Well if you lost weight without a calorie deficit, you might be a saint or something. Have you contacted the Catholic Church?

The "art" part of it is managing your willpower and thus your ability to stay on a deficit, your energy levels, sense of well being, muscle loss, etc... There is no art in reducing the mass of your body by taking out more carbon than you put in. It's not subjective, sorry. What do you figure the scale is measuring? Magic? Or actual gain or loss of material?

I say again....your experience is not mine. Just because my experience does not match up with your own doesn't mean it's not valid. ::shrug::

Not really sure why my experience means anything to you or why I would contact a catholic church :indifferent:

Just repeating the same thing over and over again is not the same as supporting what you say.


How is your experience "different" from anyone else's? You are saying that you are a singularity?


AKA a special snowflake. Sorry, but no. And please don't spread around garbage misinformation. We are not "all different". The reason for this whole forum, and the very basis for us helping one another, is the WE ARE ALL REMARKABLY SIMILAR.



Now I ask again, do you really believe you lost weight while taking in more calories than you expended? So you have worked a miracle? Call the church then. Miracles and magic are their province, not mine.

Again, not sure why you insist on hassling me. It's my experience and this is a public forum.
Go chase someone else.
Click.

When reason fails, dismissal is always an option, with a good dose of narcissism.

When I click on "my topics", I see this oneat the top of the list. You could always out bad info into a topic not frequented by me and my silly beef in science.

So you're either miscalculating or counting wrong.

If you ate 1500 calories everyday, you would be losing weight.

This isn't always true. Large calorie deficits can cause hormonal issues that will prevent weight loss. And as a man 1500 calories is way too little calories. I can tell you I personally have experienced this in my weight loss journey. Below is a good article on high calorie deficits. But for a very active man, 1500 calories is a famine diet. Increasing consumption to adequate levels will improve weight loss.

I can assure you that I have lost more weight at 2500 calories than I did at 1800 calories and I did not change my way of measuring.


http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html

OP, you will probably do a lot better at 2500 calories, than your current 1500 as we are about the same stats. Also, drop the cardio and concentrate on weight training to get some recomposition.

So you're either miscalculating or counting wrong.

If you ate 1500 calories everyday, you would be losing weight.

This isn't always true. Large calorie deficits can cause hormonal issues that will prevent weight loss. And as a man 1500 calories is way too little calories. I can tell you I personally have experienced this in my weight loss journey. Below is a good article on high calorie deficits. But for a very active man, 1500 calories is a famine diet. Increasing consumption to adequate levels will improve weight loss.


http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html

1) The person I was replying to is a female, not a male

2) At 1,500 calories regardless of metabolic slow down, fat loss would still occur and never completely stall for months.

I change up cardio routines too, I try not to do the same thing all the time.

in my opinion, boring works. changing things up is basically an attempt to throw a lot of things at a wall, and hope something sticks.

only doing cardio is not the best way to lose body fat. a lot of people (myself included) start of just doing tons and tons of cardio to drop weight and tell themselves they'll build muscle later. if i could go back to when i started, i'd tell myself to do both at the same time.

dropping weight is 80-90% diet. then it's up to you what your goals are as far as the body you want. in my opinion, a little bit of cardio isn't bad. Jim Wendler designed his lifting program to go hand-in-hand with cardio, because he could dead lift 500 lbs, but he'd get winded going up a flight of stairs. so his program is designed to lift 3-4 days a week, and do some cardio 1-2 days a week.

if you want a good level of fitness, i suggest that you do some cardio 2-3 days a week, and strength train 3 days a week.

Oh, one more thing. Beware the common mistakes! If you don't make any, you aren't human. I had a three week plateau once where I was logging pork loin according to a bad entry that had 20% too few calories! Another time, I was mistranslating the name for a cut of pork in Germany. Before that, it was logging cooked meat under the figures for raw.

This can be pretty huge, especially for people who eat the same foods frequently. Can measure to the gram, but if the entry is wrong, the day is f'd. Over and over and over. Similar to the exercise calories. Inaccurate entries can be off by the entire daily deficit.

So you're either miscalculating or counting wrong.

If you ate 1500 calories everyday, you would be losing weight.

This isn't always true. Large calorie deficits can cause hormonal issues that will prevent weight loss. And as a man 1500 calories is way too little calories. I can tell you I personally have experienced this in my weight loss journey. Below is a good article on high calorie deficits. But for a very active man, 1500 calories is a famine diet. Increasing consumption to adequate levels will improve weight loss.


http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html

1) The person I was replying to is a female, not a male

2) At 1,500 calories regardless of metabolic slow down, fat loss would still occur and never completely stall for months.

1. The post I quoted was your third post. At that time, it was only between you and the OP. So I quoted the response between you and the OP. The OP is a 21 year old male, who if you look at their diary is eating 1500 calories. Which I suspect is the larger issue, pending he is actually tracking calories correctly (yes, it's an assumption that people actually know how to track).

Pretty sure when the person had posted this thread, there was no logging of food in a 4-5 day span, so that's maybe why

I have read the thread here and for my two cents.. Cardio burns much more calories than lifting weights. Second you need to look at what you are eating. A lot of things that are considered health have sugar in them and help you add to fat content. If you cut out the major carbs, go to a stricter veggie and chicken or fish diet you will drop. My weight and BMI have both dropped in the past month. By eating low carb I have taken over 35 lbs off in 30 days and 6% body fat. Also I have lost 7 inches around my waist. Yes I eat better and I do Cardio. I walk daily. I run 10K 4 times a week, So trust me it is about what you eat and what you do with it in your work out.

You can say I am doing something wrong all you like. I KNOW the effort being put in. And I know the lack of result.

Obviously you aren't trying hard enough....I looked at your diary and it's loaded with crap. Try eating some salads, sides of fresh veggies, totally less sodium etc