Am I on the right track to weight loss?

Sounds like you're doing a good job and that seems like a reasonable to great amount of weight to lose in 3 weeks. Good luck!

You're going to get 101 opinions on this. :bigsmile:

A 6+ kg drop in three weeks is a great effort, but you won't be able to sustain in the long run.

At 1.81m, depending on your general body-frame you ought to be around 80kg. (that's only a rough guide that doesn't take into account all the personal factors.)

If you're doing both cardio and strength training that should burn fat and tone lean muscle. Make sure you are getting enough calories in. Your sample menu seemed a bit on the light side. And you will need to up your protein if you are doing weights.

Remember, it's not a sprint... it's a marathon... slow and steady will get better, sustainable results.

Recognising you need to lose weight and get fit is the first step... doing something about it is the next .... and sustaining exercise and maintaining weightloss is the third, final and toughest step.

Well done!

Luke,

Congrats on your weight loss so far and just following on from my last post; based on you being an 18 year old male, with the age/weight/height stats you provided, you have a Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) of approx 1865 cals per day.

Your BMR is the amount of calories you would need each day to survive if you were totally sedentary. Now when you throw in different activities you obviously increase the amount of calories your body needs to eat to account for the additional movement; this then gives you your Actual Metabolic Rate or AMR.

To lose or gain weight you either reduce or increase the amount of calories you eat in relation to the calories you burn. Simples! That's why this site is great for providing an overview of cals in vs. cals out.

Now here is some food for thought (pun not intended).

Doing tons of cardio, whilst restricting calories, will result in the body not only stripping fat for energy but also lean muscle by breaking down the protein contained within the muscle. This in turn will slow down your metabolic rate, meaning that you actually need to restrict even more calories to see continued weight loss, and the result can lead to what people refer to as skinny fat.

Taking things to the extreme, or worst case scenarios, another couple of things for you to consider are:

a) as the weight loss slows this may potentially cause an obsessive compulsive desire to control the calories even more (I can only eat XX if I undertake XX minutes of cardio/workout etc), or even feeling guilty/worried about eating and this eventually leads to an eating disorder
b) the heart is a muscle, made of protein, and by restricting calories too much, as mentioned earlier, the body strips protein from muscles; including the heart potentially leading to heart issues
c) diets that are low in calories/nutrients also lead to problems with reduction of bone density

By throwing a weight training program into the mix, eating the correct balance of calories, you still lose the fat but you help your body to retain more lean muscle mass. Also:

a) retaining/increasing lean muscle mass will speed up your metabolic rate
b) strengthen your skeletal frame

Remember that losing weight/gaining muscle is more of an art than a science and I find that the following steps have always helped me in the past.

1: Define what your ultimate goal is. Mine is to get my weight back down to around 195 lbs at approx 12-15% body fat and to complete a mile in under 5 minutes (once I achieve this I will then regroup and set new long term goals)
2: Define objectives that you need to achieve to help you get to your goal. Mine include:

a) lose 1 lb of fat per week whilst retaining as much muscle mass as poss. I have put together xls spreadsheets that track what my journey should look like
b) scheduled weekly weigh ins
c) 3 X weight training sessions per week (upper/lower body split) and keep a journal
d) a minimum of 2 fasted cardio sessions per week
e) restrict my calorie intake by between 500 - 750 cals per day below my AMR
f) use a 50% carbs, 30% protein and 20% fat ratio
g) try to get most of fat requirements from good fat sources whilst reducing my saturated fat intake
h) no alcohol for the next two weeks and then after that I will only have one or two glasses on my cheat day
i) Saturday evening will be when I have cheat meal; however whilst I wont be counting the calories I will be taking into consideration portion sizes

Hope all that makes sense!

What you are trying to do is to make simple changes to your current lifestyle that result not in a short term diet but are steps to a healthier long term lifestyle change.

One of the best things you can do is to educate yourself. There is plenty of information out there so do your research, question what you are told and watch, track, record how your body reacts to what you are doing.

Good luck mate!

Woh! Alot of info there! :P But thanks for the feedback. Well, I am doing some weight training, but I'm only lifting 2.5kg dumbbells (It's all I have at home) 3 - 4 times per week. Is that sufficient weight training? Also, based on the example diet I provided, am I getting sufficient protein? The App says I'm getting slightly more than enough, but personal opinions would be beneficial.

Also, you said my BMR is roughly 1800 calories. Add the calories burned during exercise (roughly 350 - 400), that brings it up to around 2200 calories. What kind of deficit should I then create to sufficiently lose weight? (I've read that it's around 500 calories to create the 3500 calorie deficit = 1 pound of fat). It's all relatively new to me, sorry!

You can still sort out a pretty good workout with just dumbbells. However I would question whether or not 2.5kgs would provide enough of a challenge?

If you are limited for equipment you might want to check out something like Crossfit (crossfit.com) or body weight workouts.

As for protein what I have done in the past depends on what phase of training I'm in; lose weight, maintain or gain. Your diet/nutrient ratio should really reflect your goals; as should your training regime.

As for the total amount of calories there are three factors to consider:

1: Your BMR - the total amount of cals you need if you were to stay in bed all day (some people might fussy and call that your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) but the difference is negligible)
2: Your daily activity cals - the total amount of cals you need to have the energy to do your normal daily routine (walking, working, driving, sitting watching tv etc).
3: Your training cals - the amount of cals you expend when training.

So for instance if your:

BMR = 1800
Activity cals = 400 (just a guesstimate)
Training cals = 600 (approx 1 hour of good solid weight training)

Your daily calorie requirement = 2800 cals; obviously on a non training day this would drop to 2200.

You must remember that sites like this, as well as other programs that determine your calorie requirements/usage are really just a guestimate and you need to track your progress and adjust accordingly. I do this on a weekly basis.

If you take for instance the 2800 / 2200 cal requirements on workout/non workout days you would initially drop 500 cals per day from each total. This means that your cal targets would 2300 / 1700 cals respectively. At the end of the week you would then weigh yourself and adjust your diet the following week depending on the results.

However rather than just relying on scales to measure my progress I prefer to use body fat percentages. If you don't have access to a trained person that can measure you, using callipers, I find that this site is ok to use as a yardstick: http://www.linear-software.com/online.html

I do need stress again that all of this is more of an art than a science and in theory a weekly loss of 3500 cals should equate to a lb loss; it isn't a guarantee that it will be a fat loss. So track what you what you eat and track your body compisition and (repeating myself here lol!) adjust your diet etc, the following week, based on your weekly weigh in.

At the end of the day you need to do works for you and understand how your body reacts in a given situation.