Am I on the right track to weight loss?

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!