grouchotron
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A Plethora of Questions
- Thread starter grouchotron
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Harold14370
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It depends on how fit you are in the first place. It sounds like you want to go from doing nothing to some extreme amount. There is no reason for that. The amount of weight you lose depends on the difference between the calories you eat and the calories you burn, nothing else.
I am not one who believes you can completely stall out your weight loss by eating too little. If that were the case, there would be no such thing as starving to death. However, your body will adapt by reducing your metabolism, and once again, there is no reason for it. Especially in your case where you only have a little bit you need to lose. You don't need to go on a 1200 calorie diet or "boost metabolism" by using any exotic programs. You just need to develop healthy eating and exercise habits that you can sustain for a lifetime. That's it.
Eggs have a lot of cholesterol and can cause a little bit of increase in your blood cholesterol but not as much as saturated fats cause. I believe they have gotten a bad rap. Mostly the bad reputation came from studies that said "people who eat lots of eggs are at greater risk of heart attack than people who don't eat eggs." That doesn't mean the eggs were causing the heart attacks. It could mean that people who eat lots of eggs also eat lots of bacon, sausage or other highly processed, salty, fatty meat. There is no evidence that eating an egg a day or even two eggs will hurt you. They have lots of protein and other nutrients.
It's not a contradiction. Muscle burns more calories per pound than fat. As you lose weight you should do resistance exercise, but this is mainly to retain muscle, not build new muscle. Building muscle requires a calorie surplus, generally, with the exception that obese beginners can sometimes build muscle while losing weight.
Neither. It doesn't matter when you eat, only how much you eat.
Yes, there are certainly better ways to lose weight, and you know it. Why are you "willing to skirt the levels of what is healthy?"
You can go up to 1 percent of your weight per week, so in your case, two pounds per week would be fine. Your wrestling coach had you losing water weight, not fat. If you cut your carbohydrate intake, your body starts burning glycogen and will use that up before burning fat. Glycogen has water bound to it, and so the first stage of weight loss is mostly water.
Yes. The former is true. You cannot spot reduce.
KaraCooks
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It all depends on the person.
For an average person, weight lifting 2x-3x a week is optimal. Any more than that is detrimental. Weight lifting requires recovery time.
Cardio - You need a minimum of 20-30 mins of cardio 3x a week in order to maintain good cardio-vascular health. Above and beyond that, that's pretty much up to you and your fatigue levels. Listen to your body.
See above. If you can do cardio for 40 mins 7 days a week, go for it. Eventually you will need to take a day off just to let your body recover. How often you do that? It's entirely up to you and your fatigue levels.
"Starvation mode" as the diet industry refers to it is a myth. However, if you reduce your calories too low while working out hard, you will stall your weight loss for a period of time as your body struggles to maintain some level of health. (Obviously you wont' stall it long term - if that was true, there's be no such thing as people starving to death.) But aside from that, you will fatigue easier, which will mean you can't keep up the exercise plan you've set. It's simple common sense: If you don't eat enough to sustain the level of activity you're doing, then you're going to get sick or injure yourself. It doesn't matter if you're young or old or whatever. Don't do things in a stupid way.
Start with 10x your current body weight to get your calorie level. If you're not losing weight, then drop them a bit.
More mass hysteria. Eggs are high in cholesterol? So what. Studies have shown that serum cholesterol is not affected by dietary cholesterol unless you have a genetic pre-disposition to it. For 90% of the population that's not an issue. Eggs are full of protein, lots of vitamins and minerals, and a great food to eat at all times. Make your own decision.
"Ive read that" is one the phrases I hate the most on these forums. WHERE did you read it? Who said it? What studies did they provide to substantiate their clams? Unless you can find sources - RELIABLE sources - then "I read that" might as well be "a fairy landed on my shoulder and told me".
Truth here - (and you can research it yourself as I have): Unless you're extremely overweight or a rank newbie, you cannot gain muscle while eating in a calorie deficit. It's more common sense: You can't build something out of nothing. However, weight lifting will help skew your weight loss towards burning fat by helping you to maintain the muscle you have. So in that sense, weight lifting does help increase FAT loss - as opposed to weight loss.
Neither. Both of those are horse hockey. It's calories in vs. calories out and it doesn't matter when you eat those calories.
SEriously? That was your rationale? If it tastes bad, it must be healthy? Honestly, do some research on nutrition. That's just ridiculous.
Much better. Add more calories. You cannot sustain the amount of work you're doing on 1200 calories a day.
That's an absolutely mindlessly stupid way to go about it. Seriously. Why would you want to make yourself unhealthy in the quest to be healthy.
Your wrestling coach was obviously an idiot and creating dangerous situations for his students. A healthy and reasonable rate of loss is 1% of your overall bodyweight per week. Anything faster and you're not losing fat, you're just dehydrating yourself and probably losing muscle mass as well.
Both are bogus. Fat doesn't have metabolism. You cannot target fat loss. Period. Work on your whole body rather than trying to break it into pieces. Your body is an entire entity and you have to treat it a such when you're losing weight and getting in shape.
size32someday
Active member
i can only comment on the eggs. its the yolk of the egg that has all the cholesterol. just eat the whites and its about 30 calories and 0 cholesterol. there are also poducts like good egg and egg beaters which is just the white part of real eggs and you just pour it into the pan. its pretty good
grouchotron
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KaraCooks
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Nope. If that were true, your metabolism would be on a hair trigger, changing with every bite you put in your mouth. Your metabolism doesn't adapt that fast. We're not designed that way. In fact, some studies have shown that Intermediate Fasting (also called IF) can cause a temporary spike in your metabolism, similar to a quick burst of exercise. But the whole "eat every three hours or your metabolism crashes" thing is a myth.
Then you're being foolish. You're not bothering to actually find out how many calories your body actually needs and uses, you're just pulling a random number out of thin air. What you're doing is like buying a car and not bothering to figure out how much gas it uses. So one day you're going to put 10 gallons of gas in your tank and run out of gas before you get to your destination - because YOU have decided that's all the gas you need, no matter what kind of car you're driving.
Read this thread and do the calculations: http://weight-loss.fitness.com/nutrition/40273-how-many-calories-should-i-eat.html
And if you're smart, you'll eat enough food to be healthy.
Healthy, nutritious food in the PROPER QUANTITIES will help decrease recovery time. But you don't seem to want to acknowledge that.
Losing weight and being healthy go hand in hand. Is "a couple of weeks" really worth harming your health? Really?
Why not do both at once?
Kayshiz
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You obviously want to lose weight. I'm guessing it's because you are overweight. I doubt that this is fairly new situation, you have probably been over on the poundage long term (months to years). You say being healthy is a lifetime goal, so lets say that's the next...40-80 years of your life.
So what you are saying is, and correct me if I am wrong, even though you have been overweight much longer than short term (hours to weeks) you want to push yourself past what is healthy so you can reach your goal a few weeks early, and that is worth risking serious health problems for those next 40-80 years?
Really?
grouchotron
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KaraCooks
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Look, here's the thing. Maybe you'll eat 1200 calories for 2 months and over exert yourself and never injure yourself or never feel fatigued. The problem is, you won't really know for sure until after you do injure yourself .. then where will you be.
As far as eating 1200 calories - at your weight, height, and age you SHOULD eat around 3500 just to maintain your current weight. MAINTAIN. Not lose. When you cut your body's calorie needs by almost 70%, then you're telling your body that it has to drop it's metabolism significantly in order to adapt to the limited amount of energy you're giving it. Does that mean your weight loss will stall? Maybe. Does it mean it will stop completely? No. What does it mean? It means that when you've lost all the weight you want to lose, your metabolism will have adapted over a 2 month-3 month period and when you go back to eating a reasonable and healthy amount of food, you're going to start gaining weight back until your metabolism re-adapts - another 2 or 3 months.
That puts you in a yo-yo cycle of dieting, losing weight and gaining weight, which is a huge strain on your body.
Look, we can't stop you from being stupid about this, but we're going to tell you pretty bluntly that you're being stupid.
You suffer from the same type of stupidity that all young people suffer from - the kind that says "hey I'm 22, there's no way I can really screw things up that badly". The problem is that often you don't realize how badly you've screwed things up until it's really too late to fix it.
*shrug*
Do what you're going to do. Just don't expect us to tell you that it's a good idea
As far as eating 1200 calories - at your weight, height, and age you SHOULD eat around 3500 just to maintain your current weight. MAINTAIN. Not lose. When you cut your body's calorie needs by almost 70%, then you're telling your body that it has to drop it's metabolism significantly in order to adapt to the limited amount of energy you're giving it. Does that mean your weight loss will stall? Maybe. Does it mean it will stop completely? No. What does it mean? It means that when you've lost all the weight you want to lose, your metabolism will have adapted over a 2 month-3 month period and when you go back to eating a reasonable and healthy amount of food, you're going to start gaining weight back until your metabolism re-adapts - another 2 or 3 months.
That puts you in a yo-yo cycle of dieting, losing weight and gaining weight, which is a huge strain on your body.
Look, we can't stop you from being stupid about this, but we're going to tell you pretty bluntly that you're being stupid.
You suffer from the same type of stupidity that all young people suffer from - the kind that says "hey I'm 22, there's no way I can really screw things up that badly". The problem is that often you don't realize how badly you've screwed things up until it's really too late to fix it.
*shrug*
Do what you're going to do. Just don't expect us to tell you that it's a good idea
Harold14370
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The thing is, after you've been on the forum for a while, read enough people's stories, and talked to enough people about losing weight, you start to see the pattern. It's a classic crash diet.
People get all revved up and motivated, they start exercising like crazy, cutting way back on their calories. This seldom lasts very long. They get tired of spending their life in the gym. When they have lost a lot of weight, they get ravenously hungry. They eventually cave. Then, since they have not developed sensible, long term sustainable habits, they abandon the whole thing. A couple years later the cycle repeats. It doesn't have to happen that way, but it does too often.
grouchotron
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Kayshiz
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If you have been alive for 21 years and "stupid" along with other things said on this thread and this forum are "harsh" you are gonna hate the real world.
There is a huge difference between harsh and honest. Kara was being honest.
It is a stupid idea to eat 1200 calories a day considering your age and weight. That doesn't mean your stupid.
KaraCooks
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What Kay said. When someone says "I know this is unhealthy but I'm going to do it anyway - cause I'm young and I really don't care" ... I think that's deserving of a little strongly worded discouragement. Doing something stupid - well, I think it deserves to be called out. 
Eat fewer calories than you burn. Then, after that, make sure that what you're eating is providing nutrition for your body. Other than that ... it's all myth.
You cut your calories by a reasonable amount - say 30%. See where that gets you. That goes back to eat 10x your current bodyweight. If your maintenance is between 3000-3500, then cutting back to 2100 is a reasonable amount to cut back.
The whole "convert X to fat" is another silly diet myth. No one type of food "converts" to fat. The food you eat feeds the various cells in your body. It feeds muscle cells, organ cells, nerve cells, etc. It also feeds fat cells. When you eat more than the rest of your body (muscles, organs, and all the parts that take priority) need, the excess feeds your fat cells. Nothing gets "converted".
Eat fewer calories than you burn. Then, after that, make sure that what you're eating is providing nutrition for your body. Other than that ... it's all myth.
Harold14370
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No, it doesn't make much difference where your calories come from, as long as you are getting adequate nutrition. The low fat thing is from flawed science in the eighties. They should take that "calories from fat" number off the food nutrition labels. Extreme low fat diets are a bad idea. You actually need some fat in your diet, particularly the omega-3 fats such as in fish oil.
MAR1984
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More discouragement...
IMO, people should love trying to lose weight in a healthy way, because when you really think about it, you get to be as lazy as possible when trying to lose weight. What I mean is, you want cut as few calories as possible from your diet and exercise reasonably and not excessively in order to lose weight at a healthy weight of 1% of your bodyweight per week. Most people can do this by eating 10x their body weight in calories. There is just no need to cut more than that, or exercise 3hrs a day every day. Whether or not it is healthy or unhealthy to eat under 1200 calories is actually a pretty moot point - there is no point to doing it because it won't help you each your goal any faster. Your body really just can not lose more than ~1% of your body weight of fat per week. Sure, you might lose more weight if you cut more calories, but we should not really be concerned with weight loss, we should be concerned with fat loss. I'm 366lbs. My goal is to lose 3lbs per week, because I know I can not expect to lose more fat than that a week. Could I find a way to lose 5lbs per week? sure. Is it worth it if 2 of those 5 lbs is muscle mass? no way.
I think this is where everyone has it backwards... everyone is concerned about how much they weigh, and concetrate on losing weight to get to some magic number. In reality, it is the bodyfat # we should focus on lowering. Weight is just more convenient to measure, and more tangible.
Oh, heres something else to consider. I didn't always have this mindset, but out of ignorance. I didn't know the healthy way to do it. In college, I weighed 355 and dropped to 260 on a very low calorie diet, and lots of running. I can't imagine the muscle mass I lost. I got complacent and gained weight, in fact getting over 475lbs. Almost 2 years ago now, I lost weight on another low calorie diet and lots of cardio. I got down to 320 before finding this forum, and realizing the damage I could potentially doing. I started weight lifting to turn things around, but got sidetracked by another side effect of low calorie dieting and too-rapid weight loss... Gallstones. Needed to have two surgeries to remove a stone lodged my common bial duct causing liver inflammation, and then to remove my gall bladder. There have also been some articles that state that yo-yo dieting, and very low calorie diets can be bad for your heart - your heart is a muscle just like any other, and if you're losing weight too quickly, you can actually weaken your heart. When you yo-yo, its usually a cycle of losing weight (losing muscle and fat), and then gaining weight (gaining mostly fat and little if any muscle), followed by losing weight (more muscle and some fat) so you keep putting damage on top of damage.
So do you still really think you need to eat less than 1200 calories per day, even in the short term?
IMO, people should love trying to lose weight in a healthy way, because when you really think about it, you get to be as lazy as possible when trying to lose weight. What I mean is, you want cut as few calories as possible from your diet and exercise reasonably and not excessively in order to lose weight at a healthy weight of 1% of your bodyweight per week. Most people can do this by eating 10x their body weight in calories. There is just no need to cut more than that, or exercise 3hrs a day every day. Whether or not it is healthy or unhealthy to eat under 1200 calories is actually a pretty moot point - there is no point to doing it because it won't help you each your goal any faster. Your body really just can not lose more than ~1% of your body weight of fat per week. Sure, you might lose more weight if you cut more calories, but we should not really be concerned with weight loss, we should be concerned with fat loss. I'm 366lbs. My goal is to lose 3lbs per week, because I know I can not expect to lose more fat than that a week. Could I find a way to lose 5lbs per week? sure. Is it worth it if 2 of those 5 lbs is muscle mass? no way.
I think this is where everyone has it backwards... everyone is concerned about how much they weigh, and concetrate on losing weight to get to some magic number. In reality, it is the bodyfat # we should focus on lowering. Weight is just more convenient to measure, and more tangible.
Oh, heres something else to consider. I didn't always have this mindset, but out of ignorance. I didn't know the healthy way to do it. In college, I weighed 355 and dropped to 260 on a very low calorie diet, and lots of running. I can't imagine the muscle mass I lost. I got complacent and gained weight, in fact getting over 475lbs. Almost 2 years ago now, I lost weight on another low calorie diet and lots of cardio. I got down to 320 before finding this forum, and realizing the damage I could potentially doing. I started weight lifting to turn things around, but got sidetracked by another side effect of low calorie dieting and too-rapid weight loss... Gallstones. Needed to have two surgeries to remove a stone lodged my common bial duct causing liver inflammation, and then to remove my gall bladder. There have also been some articles that state that yo-yo dieting, and very low calorie diets can be bad for your heart - your heart is a muscle just like any other, and if you're losing weight too quickly, you can actually weaken your heart. When you yo-yo, its usually a cycle of losing weight (losing muscle and fat), and then gaining weight (gaining mostly fat and little if any muscle), followed by losing weight (more muscle and some fat) so you keep putting damage on top of damage.
So do you still really think you need to eat less than 1200 calories per day, even in the short term?
EEKS! I sure hope they never do that! That part of the label is the only part that holds any truth.
Kayshiz
New member
Well the nutrition facts part of the labeling is what I meant. The ingredient list and the nutrition facts. Everything else on the package is complete and utterly bull crap. I like the calories from fat being there simply because it makes easier for me not to have to do the math in my head.
Come to think of it, even the ingredient list can be crap as well. Trade secrets and other crap protect companies from actually having to list all the ingredients that go into a product. The government protects them having to list anything that has been genetically modified.
Luckily, the majority of items in my eating plan do not have a label.
Luckily, the majority of items in my eating plan do not have a label.
