My advice would be to stop the soda. When I gave up my coke, it was amazing how much easier it was for me to lose weight. I still have one every now and then, but it's a treat. I have a soda stream that I use now. I just mix in some fruit juice with the fizzy water and boom. Soda without the sodium. Especially with fresh orange juice and spoonful of honey. Yum! It's still high in sugar, but it's a much better option. I would also maybe add a bit more cardio into you routine if you're doing 30DS. I'm doing Body Revolution right now and while I love Jillian's workouts, a lot of it is strength based. I definitely feel that the calorie counter on this site is great and very accurate. You just have to be honest about how much of something you're eating. As far as eating back your exercise calories, there's so much out there saying yes or no or only a portion, so I would do a board search and read as much as you can. There's some great in depth information out there. Oh, and as far as eating sweets, check out the blog Chocolate Covered Katie. It's a healthy sweets blog with a ton of recipes on how to make healthy treats. And lastly, be patient. You're only on day 4, and most people can't do all the exercises until a minimum of a week in. So just keep at it and know that with any new program, ups and downs will probably happen. Especially, I've noticed, with Jillian's programs. Don't forget to take measurements too. That is where my encouragement comes. The tape measure likes me a lot more than the scale.

Hi everyone! I have tried to join some groups on here at MFP but none really triggered my motivation nerve. What i liked about this group is that it has a set goal that provides a picture of what kind of success I should be in in a few months. I like that every member is to weigh in every week and get challenged and at the same time motivated by seeing other people's successes. But i have to be blunt and say that I don't see myself reaching this goal simply because it has been a long time since i have seen good results from all my efforts to lose weight. I feel like im at a point where my body just refuses to change for the better. So my questions are, 1) what efforts should i double up on to make sure that I see results at the same time that you guys would? More cardio? More strength? Lessen what I eat more? 2) What exercises have you found to be effective? 3) What kind of food do you avoid now? 4) Os the cal counter we have here really efficient in giving the right amt of cals per food? And how do you effectively count calories?

Here are some facts about me:
1) I am in Day 4 of the 30 Day shred. Not yet able to complete all exercises there. No other form of workout.
2) I am at 1200 cals/day
3) I sometimes eat back my exercise cals
4) I still drink diet soda, eat sweets
5) fast food once in a while like once a week
6) Last I checked, I weigh around 212lbs

Your advice will greatly help. Thank you!

Keep in mind that I'm not an expert, but here's my take on things -
You're doing a program that is focused on cardio as well as strength. The way that you do the exercise and increase the weights will determine if it's more cardio or more strength training. With the number of reps it has, many would argue that it's more cardio, but if you're increasing the weights to where you're struggling to get those last reps in and you're feeling the burn, it can be called strength. Are you taking a rest day in between the 30 day shred?

Do you have a heart rate monitor? It's kind of hard to log the number of calories burned when using MFP because for me I find that the ones that are already set are vastly different from what I get on my heart rate monitor. Knowing the exact amount of calories you're burning will help. I don't think there's much of a problem eating back exercise calories (I think it's more of a personal preference, some do some don't) but if you don't know how many calories you're burning exactly and MFP calculates it as higher than what you did, there could be a problem.

How did you get 1200 cals/day? Is that what MFP put you at?
To me that sounds horribly low, BUT everyone is different. I actually added 400 calories to my limit and started heavy lifting and am seeing more progress than when I was only doing cardio (started about 1500 limit, now at 1984 cals). My calorie limit comes from the program that I'm doing, but if you consider adding to your cal limit then I suggest this calculator: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/#projectedweightloss and read up on BMR and TDEE. At 1500 calories I was often still hungry and dissatisfied and felt that it set me up for failure because after a while of being hungry it can trigger an urge to binge.

What is your goal? Do you just want to see the number on your scale drop, or do you want to gain muscle and burn fat? Doing strictly cardio and eating at a deficit will make you lose fat, sure, but it'll also make you lose lean body mass. That is why some who do only cardio can end up skinny fat. It also seems that those that only do cardio eat fewer calories than those that lift and do cardio. If you lift and do cardio the goal is to replace fat with muscle and lower body fat %. Eating in an extreme deficit while lifting is counterproductive and could actually result in injury. You also may not see as much progress scalewise but it's also important to look at inches lost when the scale's not moving.

As far as fast food goes, it's not necessarily that it's bad that you eat out, especially at once a week, it should be more about the choices you make when you eat out. I did eat out this morning at Subway and kept it under 500 cals, so that wasn't bad. I do still feel that you can eat more food for that amount of calories at home (I only had a 6inch sub). When you're limiting yourself to 1200 whether or not you eat back calories it can be hard to plan out the rest of the day then if you've eaten almost half your allowed calories in one meal. I've started to think to myself about what's causing me to want to eat out and have also started making healthier versions of food that I order out, which i think has helped. When eating at home I also am sure to use a kitchen scale now so I know exactly how much I'm eating to get more accurate calorie counts. For the diet soda - how much of it do you drink in a day? I don't see as much problem with drinking it once a day as I do if you drink it all day. Diet soda has a lot of sodium in it (as well as other stuff that isn't particularly healthy for you anyway...) and can make you retain water. You're going to want to drink a lot of water. Dehydrating yourself will lead to feeling hungry when you're not actually hungry and it can put you in a bad mood and add stress, and it can also hinder exercise.

Do you have a gym membership? What did you do before the 30 Day Shred? There's a lot of factors to all of this.

Really my biggest advice would be to drop the soda and the fast food all together. i know I hate to say it but really when I first started losing weight, I had to quit everything cold turkey. Your body is in desperate need of a good "detoxing". Drink A LOT of water. Someone once told me that the more water you drink, the more water your body will release which will help get rid of extra waste products that may be causing you to hold on to weight.

Hey guys, thank you very much for all your input, really appreciate it. I'm really trying to train myself to become more patient with myself, I guess that's one of the setbacks that keep me from being successful with my fitness goals. So, first on my list is to give myself the right mindset that is realistic and forgiving.

Also, I kind of figured that the 1200 cals/day was a bit too low for me so I changed it, while still sticking to the recommended program provided by MFP, but made my pounds to lose per week a bit lower so now my recommended calorie intake per day is at 1350. Achievable for me, I think.

Thanks so much for the links that you guys sent for me to try, I did check them out and I think they'll help me a great deal.

As for eating back my exercise calories, I did read some posts on here, some were a bit more controversial than others, lol, but I think it really boils down to preference. So I'll just play that by ear.

I really do not intend to go on a diet per se, I have learned the hard way that I simply cannot deprive myself of food and that's a major part of what I have to work on. I'll just have to make better choices and be creative with the alternatives so that I don't bore myself with "clean" eating. I'll have to get over drinking soda and eating pastries. *oh man*. One week at a time, lol.

I don't have a gym membership simply because I do not like the effort of having to look good only to look like a fried tomato afterwards, lol, so I prefer to exercise at home. I'm on Day 5 of the 30 Day Shred, I'm really pushing myself to finish this one even if I don't get to do it in 30 consecutive days. I also plan to do the Tracy Anderson method as well as the P90X and Insanity once I feel like I am stronger. I want to be thinner and have some tone in my body, not really the skinny fat kind, but with just the right amount of curves but with definition, Not sure if that makes sense. I guess I just know that I won't be able to get a body like that of Cameron Diaz's but more like Sophia Vergara's or Kim Karadashian's. Hey it's free to dream, no? Lol

So yeah, I'll really make this one work. Thanks again guys for giving me the time of the day, can't wait to see all our results. Happy hump day, by the way.