help

hey, ive really cut down my calories i have 1600 a day but try to stay under 1400, i do zumba once a week in a class a couple of times a week on the wii, ive lost 4 pounds in 11 days... it was pure cutting out the rubbish, i do know what you mean though!! i havent noticed a difference and didnt think i had lost anything but when i weighed myself i'd lost 4 pounds. hope this helps.

You probably dont eat enough or have the right macro balance for fat loss.

What has been helping me is to remember to spread out your calories. My diabetes Dietitian says you should have atleast 2 hours between "meals" and not more than 4 to keep metabolisim going. Now when I say meal I dont mean like dinner out every 3 hours
i have been listening to everything I can find on nurition to find out how to eat right. Here is what I have come up with, and seems to be working for me, use what helps you!

1. figure out what work for your scedule, when you can plan consistant meals, remember breakfast really is the most important meal of the day and eat within an hour of waking up. For me meal times work out to be ... 6am, 9-10 am, 1-2 pm and 4-5pm with a snack around 8pm It takes some planning to work out what is best for you, but maybe you have 3 meas and 1 snack.

2. I have found the more consistantly you spread out your calories the better, so my 4 meals I have been trying to make between 300-400 calories and my night snack 100-200. Here why it is important, when you eat to many calories at one time your body can not use it all and stores it as fat, when you dont eat enough your metabloism slows and trys to conserve what it uses and burns less fat. So by spreading out things as much as you can you keep your metabolism going.

3. if you cant get in a mini meal .. then make sure you atleast have a snack. come up with easy go to snacks... some of my go to snacks are cottage cheese and strawberries, protien bar and apple, yougurt and carrots, or protien shake !
The thing I love about the protien shake is you can find tons of recipies to add sugar free pudding , coffee or extracts... my favorite flavors right now is vanilla mint or grashopper, and mocha! One trap I fell into was only haveing one thing, when I started to add a fruit so my snack was atleast 1 protien and a fruit/veg it seemed to really make a difference!

4. My friends Dietitian says they make a simple rule about eating and that is every plate has to have 1 serving protien, one fruit, and one carb. It makes sense to me that the quick carb / fruit reves up metabolism, the protien maintains / builds musscle and the slow carb (Veggies are best) takes longer to digest keeping your metabolism going for as long as possible.

I was for a long time avoiding "bad" carbs (pasta rice potatoes) but since I have started looking at them as quick carbs, they can be in place of fruit and used to speed up metabolisim. It makes sense to me also if you have a big bowl of mac-n-cheese as a meal .. its all quick carbs which give a little boost and leave you feeling drained shorly after, but if you have it as a side dish with lots of veggies and some ham cubed in to it, now it is part of a balanced meal. Of course ham is not your best protien, but it is still a protien ... lol

So for the last two weeks I have been making sure my meals are balanced, that they have 1 slow carb (Veggies) , 1 Protein (meat or dairy) and 1 quick carb (fruit or rice), and I lost 1 lb last week, and 2 lbs this week. Oh yea .. I also broke my toe on valentiens day so my exercise has been out the window. For 3 weeks before that I was stuck at the same weight, and struggling even with exercise.

So I hope this helps!!