Eating 1200kcals and exercising everyday for 1 month...no we

I drink abround 3 litres of water a day, my daily diet is below:

Breakfast: Bran flakes or Fruit and Fibre with skimmed milk

Lunch: Heinz big soup (chicken and veg) or tuna and cucumber wholewheat pasta or chicken salad sandwich on wholemeal bread with pack of salt and vinegar french fries

Dinner: 2 poached eggs on 2 wholemeal toast or salmon salad with new potatoes or chicken stirfry

snacks: bananass, apples, mixed fruit and nuts (2 off the list)

I want to lose 50lb which will take me into the ideal weight range, im 5ft 8

Thanks for your reply

That is A LOT of carbs and like no protein!!

if you're exercising that much every day, you should be eating more than 1200 calories a day. Your metabolism is going to get jacked up if you keep going like that. Give it a few days of eating your exercise-gained calories back, in addition to your baseline 1200 calories a day, and see if you don't start dropping some.

this is absolutely correct! You never want to go below 1200 calories. Eat 1200 plus your excercise calories. Your body is in starvation mode and holding onto everything. You need to eat.

Try this for a week, no more than 70 of fat, 95 of protien and 40 of carbs daily within your 1200 cals.... gram measurements. this should help kickstart it.... let me know if it works. after a week of this go back to whatever numbers you are hitting at 1200 calories a day.

You are putting your body into shock. If you go from not doing alot of exercise and dieting to boom tons. It takes the body time to adjust. It thinks you are using your food faster than normal and it is in the mode where it wants to hold onto it untill it figures out what is going on. To be honest loosing weight is about what you eat and if you are eating 1200 and you work outa nd loose 300 cal then you are functionaing on 900 cals a day. Meaning YOU ARE STARVING yourself. I know this because is did the same thing and felt the same way as you. Start to eat around 1400 cals a day and work out about an hour a day and do it 4-5 days a week. do that for a few months and you will start to see it come off gradually... the faster you loose it the faster y ou will gain it back. Good luck and you can do this just dont be speedy gonzales about it.

I know how frustrating is. I screwed up for a week and gained almost 5 lbs. But it's my own fault for eating out! I would monitor your inches also. A trainer once told me that Jillian Michaels weighs 190 lbs, but it's all muscle. So don't focus too much on your weight per se. If you're strength training and toning it could just be muscle. Keep it up!

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I would say alot of carbs you need more veggies.

You probably are not eating enough and if you have been on and off diets a lot it takes your body longer to get the message that you are not starving yourself. If you are working out a lot you need to eat more calories than 1200

I had a friend trying to lose weight who was doing really well with her eating and excerise, but could not drop the pounds. Turns out she was chugging a liter of gatorade a day plus various fruit juices and sodas. Are you counting your liquid calories, too? It seems obvious, but sometimes people forget.

Get your micronutrients tested!!!

I have a very long weight gain story that I won't go into here. The relevant part of the story is that I gained 80 pounds and was continuing to gain and no-one could figure out what was going on. It looked like a thyroid disorder but my thyroid tests were normal. I kept exercising and was eating 1200 per day and still I slowly kept gaining.

Finally my MD ran a blood test for all of the micro-nutrients. It turned out my Vitamin D levels were almost nonexistent. When I began supplements I lost 30 pounds in less than two months. It turns out that thyroid hormone need's D to work. Now I'm having to work to get off the remaining 50 but at least diet and exercising are working.

Don't take D without first learning if you need it because it can be toxic if you don't need it. However, it would be a good thing to look into

if you eat about the same (LOW) number of calories each day, your body will adjust your metabolism. Consider varying the number of daily calories by up to 500 calories. Also don't go below the 1200 calories that you have been consuming.

I am 5'8" and want to loose 50lbs as well. Here is what my trainer told me.

1) I am a "Sauce o'holic"! Don't use any sauces to compliment your dishes. Accept salad dressing...use vinegar and oil. And only about 21.5 ounces (that's half a personal package which is about 43ounces for a vinigrette dressing).

2) Workout in the morning. Do about a 15 to 20 calisthenic workout. I usually do a combo of situps, pushup, squats, etc. i increase the amount I do every week. Do this in addition to your a regular cardio workout. I choose a different machine every day.

2) Make sure you eat breakfast before you leave the house. Bread is not a good choice..but if you have to have it...eat wheat, and try to use only 1 slice.

3) I find that dairy products are not the best for various reasons...but mostly because of the hormones they are injected with. I use almond milk as an alternative. You can also purchase organic fat free milk if you have to have it.

4) Pastas, Breads, Rice, potatoes....don't help your weight loss goals at all. I would say try to cut them out. However, if you like Rice...I suggest purchasing Brown Rice instead of White Rice. Try to steam cook it and do not add any butter or salt. I like to add rice vinegar.

5) Cut out Banana's...eat more berries. Also, grazing on about 27 berries throughout the day can help build your matabolism.

6) Boild eggs are better..but don't eat the yokes.

7) Drink about 100 oz of water per day.

8) Purchase womens' one a day vitamins w/ matabolism boost. Also...B 12 vitamins will help control your brain and nervous systems...which could possibly help to control your hormones and contribute to your weight loss goals.

I have been loosing about 1.5 to 2 lbs per week. I hope this helps you.

Thank you for posting this. It is all well said and I think it is all great advice...except for maybe not eating the yolks...you'd get your B12 without a supplement.

muscle weighs more than fat so if you started exercising from day one, you are probably putting on muscle weight. also, you may need to increase your calories depending on how many you are burning. when i plateau, i've found that bumping up to 1400 cals for a week then going back down helps jump start me.

I can see a couple of things that are off here - but I think most of the diet stuff has been covered so I'll focus on the exercise.

Lots of people seem to think that more cardio = more weight lost. THIS IS A HUGE LIE. The truth is that bodies are not made in the gym they are made in BED while you are sleeping. Exercising does two major things - it damages muscle fibres and it stimulates the central nervous system (increased heart rate, change of metabolic hormone levels to supply energy etc).

Mildly stimulating the CNS is good because it helps you build a stronger heart, releases hormones required for burning fat and building muscle etc - however hit it too hard and it does the opposite - it shuts down and stops giving you the energy to continue and you make no more gains in terms of fitness.

Damaging muscle fibres triggers the body to break down incoming protein and build up stronger muscle fibres than previously - just after a workout you are actually WEAKER than you were before, time is required for the body to make it self stronger.

The problem you are facing (besides eating wrong) is that you aren't giving your body time to either reset the CNS or build new muscle fibres. After a strenuous workout you should eat some quickly absorbed protein so your body can get to building new muscle ASAP and you should REST. You need a good 7-8hrs sleep every night and a FULL day off between hard workouts (cardio or weights) when you are starting a training regime and are out of shape. Over time the body will adapt and eventually 3-4 days a week will not be enough to keep shocking the CNS or damage enough muscle fibres - THEN you can think about training 5 days a week and how to cycle your exercise and rest to maximise your gains.

This is a mistake I see being made by both beginners and PT's giving advice over and over again. Less = more in terms of exercise at the beginning because basically anything will put stress on an unfit and fat body.

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