Am I on the right track?

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Kimba1974
Kimba1974 Posts: 11
edited February 2015 in Fitness and Exercise
I have been exercising and reducing my calorie intake since November. I have so far lost 23 pounds. I have not dropped sizes yet in clothes however. I am loosing about 7 pounds a month. I went from 39.3 BMI to 35.3. I am 193 now and need to get to 130 since i am 5'2. Though I think I really want to be 120. I been eating 5 servings of vegetables and 3 servings of fruit a day. I tend to eat smoothes to get raw vegetables in. I use water so there isn't a lot of calories in them. I eat about 1200 to 1300 calories a day. Basically I am trying to eat more vegetables since I read its good for you. I been exercising about 3 hours a week. I been using you tube and exercising to videos like fit bender and Jessica Smith. I have been doing cardio and what i think is strength training. I have read you want to do strength training as well as do cardio to loose fat. I am confuse on what is classified as strength training though. Some of the videos incorporate dumbbells and these are light but we do a lot of reps and they really make me tired doing these. I have a really hard time finishing the moves even though the dumbbells are 5 pounds. I guess I hear lean mass=heavy reps light weights and bigger muscles= heavy reps with lighter reps. I read you need to do both to loose fat. I read a lot of post here that says you can't do both that to build muscles you have to eat more. So now i am really more confuse than I was. Terms I been reading about is lean muscle versus big muscle or slow fibers vs fast fibers. I just want to loose fat and get my metabolism higher and i read to do that is through strength training. I read with strength training you are able to loose fat even just resting. I am slowly buying dumbbells and the highest ones i have is the 5 pound ones. I really doubt I can lift much higher than 10 anyhow. I am going to get 10 pounds eventually.
About two weeks ago I starting walking about 10 min on my two breaks and lunch at work So now i am walking fast about 30 min 5 times a day in addition to the exercise videos and using dumbbells. I just am not sure if I am doing enough. I know that 7 pounds in a month isn't to bad but I know someone who is loosing 11 pounds a month. I think I am not doing something right with my exercise/strength regiments. Am I building lean mass by using 5 pound weights with higher reps and is this the same thing as building muscle or at least am I burning fat in rest mode by doing this? Thanks for answering. I am a female btw so that might make a difference on how my body reacts while loosing weight/fat. Thanks again!!!

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  • Kimba1974
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    Am I on the right track?
  • jasoncollins79
    jasoncollins79 Posts: 44 Member
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    Your making progress and that's good. However 1200 calories at your weight seems low. Are you tired a lot? A good,rule of thumb is you should eat the same amount of calories until you stop losing weight for a 10 day period. Add me and shoot me a message I'll help with what I can.
  • hangnail666
    hangnail666 Posts: 7 Member
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    Bahhhhh looks like someone's just asking to develop neuroendocrine-immune dysfunction/ adrenal fatigue/ I'm gonna be tired all the time/ chronic fatigue. #1 you obviously have more or less ducked up your metabolism. You should be eating around 2000 calories a day not 1300, jebus! and when you got down to 130 pounds what did you think you'd be eating like 300 calories a day or something#2 I'm sure you don't want a bunch of loose skin so try to lose around 2 pounds per week so you're ok at 7 pounds a month.
    I would advise you to see your doctor and talk to him/her about this and not some internet gurus
  • Kimba1974
    Kimba1974 Posts: 11
    edited February 2015
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    I am right now 193 pounds. so to maintain that weight i would need to eat 1930. I need to have a negative calorie reduction to loose weight right? I am not tired. Since I started exercising i seem to have more energy and am not tired. Going on a 1200 calorie diet is what my fitness chose. I do keep that on a grain of salt and sometimes i go over it. I am not starving either. I am not eating out as much which is probably why i am overweight to begin with.
  • VeryKatie
    VeryKatie Posts: 5,952 Member
    edited February 2015
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    Hello! You definitely don't need to be creating any more than a 500 calorie deficit per day. I would suggest eating about 1500 calories NET a day. To do this, I would also recommend eating back only 50% of your calorie burns from exercise. You'll want to make sure you're logging accurately:

    Use a food scale to weigh any food you have to portion out yourself (meat, grain, pasta, veggies, fruit, cookies from a box, etc.) at the bare minimum. You could very well weigh everything you eat (including prepackaged foods like granola bars or yogurt, since these items can have 10%ish more in the package than they say they do).

    Whenever you lose 5 lbs, recalculate your TDEE (so 1930 will reduce as you lose weight).

    Now to address the muscle. Basically... low weights with high rep is a form of muscle endurance exercise. It helps your muscles be able to withstand exercising for longer. It's pretty much a cardio exercise, though you would maybe feel like it does more. Heavier weights (I recommend compound exercises, take a look at Starting Strength, Stronglifts 5x5, New Rules of Weight Lifting for Women, Strong Curves) will help you grow your strength and your muscles (note that strength and muscle growth aren't exactly the same thing. This is a concept I'm still learning about so I can't fully explain it). If you don't have access to heavy weights, I would recommend looking into calisthenics such as You Are Your Own Gym: Body By You. You're looking for a program that progressively gets harder and harder, it's the only way to build muscle. If you keep doing what you already can do, then your body will stay the same.

    Since you are losing weight, you can't technically build muscles at the same time (your body doesn't have any extra calories to work with to grow). However! You would be SURPRISED with how much muscle you have that you don't actually know you have. Which is why, as you're losing fat, you'll want to retain as much muscle as possible.

    When we eat at a deficit, our bodies naturally burn both fat and muscle to lose weight (not at equal ratios). If you lift weights during this time as well as eating lot of protein (start with 0.75 times your body weight if you can, you can research this and change it later based on your findings), you'll minimize how much muscle your body will lose. This means, once your fat is reduced, you'll have these lovely muscles that can show through.

    At that point, you can choose to eat at a slight surplus and grow muscles (and, yes, gain a bit of fat back) while lifting heavy, or perhaps try a recomp - eating at maintenance while lifting heavy (which I've heard is a slow, slow process).

    I hoped that helped!

    PS: Please don't compare your weight loss rate to someone elses. We all have different sizes, heights, hormone balances, activity levels that we just can't compare. So comparing weight loss rate also doesn't make sense. You're doing great already :)

  • Kimba1974
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    Thanks.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    If you lost seven pounds in one month you are doing a lot of things right. Keep that in mind. Do your best not to compare yourself with someone else; you are not living in their skin.
  • PurplePogoPunk
    PurplePogoPunk Posts: 14 Member
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    At 5'2 1200 calories is fine, I'm the same height with 50+ lbs to lose and 1200 calories only equates to a loss of 1.2lb a week .

    7 lbs in a month is great. Us shorties can't eat as much as other people so, as the previous poster said, don't worry about comparing yourself to anyone else. Well done on your loss so far.
  • sofaking6
    sofaking6 Posts: 4,589 Member
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    I just asked this question the other day! Here's what I learned: you cannot make bigger muscles while losing weight BUT you can make the ones you have work better. Basically for all the time we don't use our muscles (or don't use them hard), the brain is not actively forming neural connections to them. So you might have (totally making these numbers up) two neurons going to your bicep. Then you start doing curls, you brain says 'oh I guess we need this muscle, better interact with it a little more' and then new neurons connect to the muscle so it is better, quicker and more efficient at contracting when you want it to. And that makes you stronger! And being stronger feels great. I just got my first 10 lb dumbbells and it feels great (sore but great).

    I suspect that 'lean mass' and 'lean muscle' and 'lean muscle mass' are all the same thing ie the kind of tissue that you'd rather not lose instead of fat.

    I think you're doing great, maybe just make sure you're getting all of your macros covered - Fruits and veg have no protein and no fat, and both are necessary to feel well and function at your best. A standard ratio is 40% protein, 30% carbs and 30% fat in your diet.
    -
    But you'll see, keep up with what you're doing and the same exercises that are super tough now will get easier and easier and then you'll be out buying heavier weights :) You're gonna do great!!
  • Kimba1974
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    Oh yea purple i did mention my height. 1200 would be low for someone much taller, If I get down to 120, that would be 1200 calories a day to maintain it. 130 is a 23.8 BMI and 137 is 25 bmi which is consider overweight so yea i need to get down to 130 or even lower. I don't want to be borderline which is what 130 would be for me. Being my height you understand the need to loose weight. Do you keep your weight on top like I do? (belly) I can't wait to loose more weight and feel better. oh yea my fitness says for me being on 1200 i will only loose a pound a half a week.

    Thanks sofaking6. I am trying to save up for more dumbbells. I want to get a 10 lbs eventually. I do feel better and have more endurance to last longer since starting in November. My blood pressure has also dropped lower too.
  • hdrenollet
    hdrenollet Posts: 147 Member
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    It definitely sounds like you're on the right track. 7 lbs. per month is amazing! Great Job!! Try not to compare yourself to others. Everyone's body is different.