Not losing weight or inches

What are your carbs and sugars looking like? Are you staying under those?

With only 8 lbs to lose, you should definitely eat more than your 1200. Actually, did that include eating back exercise calories, or do you eat more than 1200 and just net 1200?

If you are weight lifting, the best muscle results are with as little a deficit as you can possibly stand, lol. Since you have so little to lose, eat more towards weight lifting goals, yeah.

I saw changes by 8 weeks, definitely, and my deficit was low.

The kind of strength training matters, too. Do you 'lift heavy' or are we talking high-rep, low weights type stuff? That is more for endurance and you might not see the muscle changes (tighter feeling) very much compared to heavier weights.

As for why you haven't lost any weight, that seems odd at 1200 at your height and weight. Something is up there since it's been 2 months. Chances are you've been eating higher and you are retaining water in your muscles from all the exercise. I'd still up my calories, but just make sure you are super accurate and average in any 'over' days to see how it affects the math for the week.

Hey Kimberly,

looking at your diary and the amount of weight you want to loose:

With all the lifting and cardio exercises, you're in a heavy cal deficit. Looking at your age and that you are a woman could mean that your metabolism is very slow (eg. you're starving, altough you don't feel like it). You eat too much carbs, fat and too little protein.

I would change to a 'ripping' diet, with a 60% protein, 30% carb and 10% fat distribution while matching your calorie goal on exercise days. On rest days, I would keep the calorie intake in a deficit, just 150-200 calories short of your daily goal.

Also, I do not know your eating habits, but I would eat 6-7 times a day and I would eat very clean:

Your main courses should be:

- Raw vegs (bell peppers, lettuca variants, cabbage, etc). Nothing with sugar in it, like tomatoes for example. No dressings, apart from olive oil and vinegars.
- Cooked or fried chicken and turkey breast. Without seasoning and dressings, apart from olive oil. Chicken is better. You should measure them while raw.
- Cooked rice. The best is brown rice. If you don't like it, get long grain rice.
- Oatmeal.
- Protein shake

For fat:
- Boiled or fried eggs
- Nuts (cashews, almond are the better, peanuts and hazelnuts are not so good). Nuts are awesome, because their carb, fat and protein distribution is almost equal, they have very low GI index, full of fatty acids and monosaturated fat.
- Olives
- Cottage cheese, yogurt

Bonus:

- Flaxseed oil for energy at the gym
- Dietary fiber (psyllium husks) for a good behaving bowel and no constipation.

Anything else, it's a no. Absolutely no sugar, absolutely no bad carbs, no fat. Absolutely no sodas and no processed foods - if possible - at all. No alchohol.

Prepare your food beforehand, measure and portion it, so you don't have to scramble when you get hungry. When you feel the first stroke of hunger, you'll have to eat. If it happens 10 times a day, you eat 10 times. You eat all day, small. You eat on the evenings. If you stay up late and you get hungry, you eat

You should eat most of your carbs and fat in the first half of your day and eat the protein and fiber later on. You can eat some nuts if you get hungry. Immediately before going to sleep, eat a serving of cottage chese or take casein supplement, so your metabolism can keep up while you are sleeping.

If it's exercise day, eat a full meal 2+ hours before your exercise. Immediately before the exercise you can take amino acid supplements, l-carnitine, a fast absorption carb shake, etc.

After your exercise, immediately drink a protein shake with carbs and take glutamine, if you use supplements. Eat a full meal of rice / chicken breast / salad within 1 hour of your exercise.

All the while, drink water constantly. Not too much at once, take a few gulps every 5-10 minutes while you're awake. Drink water between your series in the gym, too. If you consume around 1.5l of water during your exercise, you're good to go.

You diet is extremely, extremely important. Losing weight is 90% diet and 10% exercise. The exercise is primarily for toning your body, building your endurance, your strength, your confidence and speeding up your metabolism.

Now onto exercise:

I would say that 6 days / week is way too much, you don't really give time your body to regen and to do it's work.

Cardio is pointless for you, as it is mainly endurance training and your body will just put itself into an energy conservation mode, which you do not want

4 days a week seems cool, start with weight training, do full body workouts, you want your biggest muscles to work (quadriceps, your back, biceps, etc.). Use heavy weights, 4-5 series of 8-12 reps will be perfect. Don't cheat, use weights that give you a real challenge: you can barely complete the series, but you do complete them properly.

Do not 'kill' a muscle group, 2 exercises per muscle group is fine. Rotate the type of exercise per muscle group from time to time, so you'll don't get accustomed to it.

You should be able to finish in 60 minutes, then it's time for the HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). This is what you should do instead of the cardio. Basically this is for shooting your metabolic rate through the roof for the next 24-32 hours (until your next exercise day).

A HIIT training can be anything: treadmill, stationary bike, ellipsis, what you like. A typical HIIT training goes like this:

Warmup:
- 5 minutes , slow pace

HIIT:
- 1 min normal pace
- 30 sec all-out pace (what you can do without collapsing, really, push it like your life depended on it

- Repeat 8 times (1 min normal, 30 sec all out)

Cooldown:
- 5 minutes, slow pace

You can complete this in 22 mins and it will help you a lot more than cardio. You must change your HIIT cycle durations by each 2 weeks, like the following:

Week 1-2: 1 min easy, 30 sec all out, 8 reps
Week 3-4: 20 sec easy, 10 sec all out, 24 reps
Week 5-6: 2 min easy, 2 min all out, 5 reps

This is also for avoiding your body getting accustomed to a specific type of training.

So, I hope this helps. Remember, diet is everything, everything else is secondary in loosing weight. I just joined MyFitnessPal, but in the last 9 months, I lost close to 60 lbs once getting fed up with myself. Then I researched everything in minute detail, from diet, to exercise to anatomy to ... everything that's connected and set up a plan for myself and it worked, though it was very hard to maintain, it's not for the faint hearted.

You must not be this hardcore, though If you keep your diet right (as explained above) and your exercises, you'll have the results you want. Nothing is set in stone, don't be afraid to experiment with amounts, exercises, etc. Read up on stuff, search, etc, find what works for you, but the above should be a good starting point.

Best,
Andras

The cardio is not pointless for you. Keep it up. As long as you are stretching then why not add to your caloric deficit?

Thank you so much for all the great advice! I had a feeling I was still eating the wrong kind of foods and too little calories. I will definitely take all your advice and do my very best to modify my eating habits and change my exercise and weight training. Good luck on your journey and keep up the great work!

The type of foods you eat has nothing to do with weight loss.

Also, if you are not losing weight, you are not eating too few calories, you are eating too much. You increase calories to fuel our workouts while staying within your calorie limit, you do not increase them to lose weight. That's just not the way ti works.

See my advice above.

how much water are you drinking? make sure your getting enough so your not holding water weight!

Here's the thing. If you're not losing weight, I can pretty much guarantee you that it's not because you're eating too FEW calories. That's not how the math works. What you have is either a math error, or a calorie goal that's too high. If you were eating too few calories, your weight loss would be too rapid and you'd have side effects. So find those hidden calories that you're eating or drinking, and get rid of them. Exercise is nice and all, but it's not going to help you lose weight unless your calorie equation is actually in a deficit. If you're not losing or gaining, you're at maintenance, that's all.