17 and wondering if I'm off to a good start

F

FusionFountain

0
(posted to nutrition and weight loss and thought I may as well post here)
I'm 17 (6' tall 178 lbs) and used to be pretty overweight (ive always had a slow metabolism)
Nowadays Ive thinned out a lot and I'm actually pretty sure I'm at a healthy level but I've still got some Chubb I want to get rid of.
So mon, tues, thursday I lift weights
On these days I eat around 1500 calories with a lot of protein

Mon I have an hour of martial arts that usually intense cardio
Tues, Wed, is 2 hours of martial arts

Wed and the other days I don't weight lift I try and eat less calories. Nearer too 1000
I want to gain muscle and lose fat and I wanted to know if you guys think this is effective

(I kept this original but here's the comment- I talked it over with my mom and I'm going to switch to 2000 lifting days and more around 1500 the others
Thoughts?)
 
I think your change to 2,000/1,500 instead of 1,500/1,000 is a wise decision.
 
Burn calories instead of avoiding eating them, especially as you're still growing. Your age/weight/heigh suggests a calorie intake of 2500 to 3000 every day!!

Do more cardio, do your cardio before breakfast, make sure it's intense cardio. You want at least 40 minutes of intense cardio (say in an hour's exercise with the warming/cooling) each day, every day. Run, skip, cycle, whatever it is do it hard. You should easily clear 600 calories a day from your cardio alone. If you can, add cardio to the evenings too.

And eat. If your body isn't getting what IT thinks is enough to eat instead of burning just fat reserves it uses both fat and muscle to feed itself (which makes sense as if the body thinks it's in starvation mode it doesn't want to maintain the calories required to keep a larger muscle mass going).

So eat well... but sweat hard and sweat daily. It's amazing how an hour or two of hard cardio can kick-start even the slowest of metabolisms...
 
"Slow Metabolism" is nothing but an excuse (sorry to be blunt). Bigger people have faster metabolisms because they need more energy to move themselves.

Sorry, but the whole 'starvation mode' is a myth.
 
Hey Fusion, welcome to the forum! The calorie intake you listed in your initial post was way too low for an adolescent male of your height... there's no way I could have supported that. In my opinion, restricting your calories at this point will only work against you in your quest to gain muscle. You may lose weight, but that will not just be fat, you will be losing muscle mass as well. Training in a way that encourages your body to build muscle mass and eating appropriately will give you the best of both worlds... increased muscle mass and decreased fat mass. You will need to stick with your routine for more than a couple of months... in the first 2 months or so, most of your strength gains will be neurological. You'll need to get past that point to start seeing the increased muscle mass.

Have you tried putting your information into a daily calorie intake calculator? Here is one example: Calories Per Day - Caloric Needs -. Just to maintain your current weight, your calorie intake should be closer to 3000 calories per day. You might think that you need to lose weight, but it's more likely that you just need to start changing your body composition, and like I said before, restricting your calories too much at this point will not do what you think it will do - and it will not help you get toward your goals.

You are way too active to be considering eating so little... my suggestion would be to try to increase your calories per day and focus on training.

Here are a couple of sections that you should read:

http://training.fitness.com/young-athlete-development/young-athlete-development-program-50627.html

http://training.fitness.com/young-athlete-development/general-training-tips-teens-49032.html

http://training.fitness.com/weight-loss/training-fat-loss-51064.html

Hope that helps a bit
 
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