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Didn't do much exercise today, just 35 minutes top-intensity on the elliptical. Felt sore from previous days workouts, slept in a bit (needed it), went easy on the calories. I planned to do weights, but got stuck doing 2 hours in the back garden getting all the irrigation for the pumpkin plants in (some exercise in & off itself).

Snacked throughout the day w/200-275 calories snacks. Had sushi dinner to the estimated tune of about 1,300 calories. All in all, I'm confident it was a reasonably deficit day. Tmrw weights for sure!
 
Blahhhh.....

1.5 hours weights, some light cardio, kept calories light. I can see some toning & thinning here and there, think I'm making progress by eating more before and just after workouts...and going leaner into the evening with protein & vege's.
 
Glad to see you are finally figuring out you have to eat more to lose weight! I understand your frustration with this, I used to eat about 1200 cal and burn 400 in exercise and gained 5 pounds! lol Once I started to eat more the weight came off quickly. I hope you continue to see progress.
 
Steve, good luck with your goals. I am totally confused about this starvation mode stuff as it pertains to healthy adults, so I'm gonna get inside Chillen's head to learn more about this.

Chillen, thanks for posting this starvation mode stuff.
 
BikeSwimLaugh said:
Didn't do much exercise today, just 35 minutes top-intensity on the elliptical. Felt sore from previous days workouts, slept in a bit (needed it), went easy on the calories. I planned to do weights, but got stuck doing 2 hours in the back garden getting all the irrigation for the pumpkin plants in (some exercise in & off itself).

Snacked throughout the day w/200-275 calories snacks. Had sushi dinner to the estimated tune of about 1,300 calories. All in all, I'm confident it was a reasonably deficit day. Tmrw weights for sure!
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Better start counting all your calories to a T if you want to make sure you lose weight.. ;)

Got a food scale? They are like 10 bux..
 
g8r80 said:
Steve, good luck with your goals. I am totally confused about this starvation mode stuff as it pertains to healthy adults, so I'm gonna get inside Chillen's head to learn more about this.

Chillen, thanks for posting this starvation mode stuff.
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You are welcome Richard.


Best wishes to you


Chillen
 
sorridere said:
I used to eat about 1200 cal and burn 400 in exercise and gained 5 pounds! lol Once I started to eat more the weight came off quickly.
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You're about the 5th person to tell me how they personally experienced weight loss after incorporating more calories into their diet!

It's baffling. My "expert" nutritionist still absolutely maintains that eating more will not result in your body losing weight. He says it's still calories in vs. calories out and the only way eating more will help, is if it gives you more energy to execute your workouts with greater stamina, endurance and overall causes you to burn even more calories then what you've consumed in the way of additional calories.

Ya know what...I respect him, but I don't enitrely buy it. I've now heard from way too many people that attest to their personally having experienced otherwise.

From what I gather, the body will have an optimal rate of loss somewhere around 15-25% deficit....greater %'s will EVENTUALLY lead (over a duration) to the body slowing things down and finding ways to cope with what it perceives as "starvation".

FWIW, the true sense of "starvation" is when the body is turning to it's own parts as a means to survive. In our context, it would be more appropriate to refer to it as a diminished metabolic rate aimed at conserving energy and making the most of what it has to work with. Hardly a true "starvation"....but still, a suppressed metabolism.

What I'm doing is trying to pre-load calories for exercise by eating more for breakfast & lunch, before & just after working-out...I'm really trying to run lean into the evening. I know we've touche on nutrient timing and maybe it doesn't matter when the calories come in in the overall caloric intake, but I'm hoping that timing things may make a difference in terms of how it works with exercise & metabolism. I'm gonna need at least a few weeks to see if this works....

g8r80 said:
I am totally confused about this starvation mode stuff as it pertains to healthy adults, so I'm gonna get inside Chillen's head to learn more about this.
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Careful there.....you may have survived heart-surgery, but once you get into Chillen's head; there ain't no coming back! Arrrghhh matey! :D
 
Yeah I remember reading something from Lyle Mcdonald that said there was a threshold for a defecit, a bottom line where if you go below it you won't be helping yourself any but only hurting yourself, if I remember correctly hurting yourself due to metabolism lowering.
 
Here is an excerpt from an interview with Lyle Macdonald:

Q. Some claim that that your body will go into 'starvation mode' if you eat too few calories, preventing you from losing weight and that trying to lose weight by eating fewer calories doesn't work. What do you think?

A. Well there is no doubt that the body slows metabolic rate when you reduce calories or lose weight/fat. There are at least two mechanisms for this.

One is simply the loss in body mass. A smaller body burns fewer calories at rest and during activity. There's not much you can do about that except maybe wear a weighted vest to offset the weight loss, this would help you burn more calories during activity.

However, there's an additional effect sometimes referred to as the adaptive component of metabolic rate. Roughly, that means that your metabolic rate has dropped more than predicted by the change in weight.

So if the change in body mass predicts a drop in metabolic rate of 100 calories and the measured drop is 150 calories, the extra 50 is the adaptive component. The mechanisms behind the drop are complex involving changes in leptin, thyroid, insulin and nervous system output (this system is discussed to some degree in all of my books except my first one).

In general, it's true that metabolic rate tends to drop more with more excessive caloric deficits (and this is true whether the effect is from eating less or exercising more); as well, people vary in how hard or fast their bodies shut down. Women's bodies tend to shut down harder and faster.

But here's the thing: in no study I've ever seen has the drop in metabolic rate been sufficient to completely offset the caloric deficit. That is, say that cutting your calories by 50% per day leads to a reduction in the metabolic rate of 10%. Starvation mode you say. Well, yes. But you still have a 40% daily deficit.

In one of the all-time classic studies (the Minnesota semi-starvation study), men were put on 50% of their maintenance calories for 6 months. It measured the largest reduction in metabolic rate I've ever seen, something like 40% below baseline. Yet at no point did the men stop losing fat until they hit 5% body fat at the end of the study.

Other studies, where people are put on strictly controlled diets have never, to my knowledge, failed to acknowledge weight or fat loss.

This goes back to the under-reporting intake issue mentioned above. I suspect that the people who say, "I'm eating 800 calories per day and not losing weight; it must be a starvation response" are actually eating far more than that and misreporting or underestimating it. Because no controlled study that I'm aware of has ever found such an occurrence.

So I think the starvation response (a drop in metabolic rate) is certainly real but somewhat overblown. At the same time, I have often seen things like re-feeds or even taking a week off a diet do some interesting things when people are stalled. One big problem is that, quite often, weekly weight or fat loss is simply obscured by the error margin in our measurements.

Losing between 0.5 and 1 pound of fat per week won't show up on the scale or calipers unless someone is very lean, and changes in water weight, etc. can easily obscure that. Women are far more sensitive to this. Their weight can swing drastically across a month's span depending on their menstrual cycle.

Thing is this, at the end of the day, to lose weight or fat, you have to create a caloric deficit, there's no magical way to make it happen without affecting energy balance. You either have to reduce food intake, increase activity, or a combination of both.

Since my Rapid Fat Loss Handbook actually uses an extremely large deficit, I discuss the issue of metabolic slowdown (and what to do about it) fairly extensively.
 
Wow....that's some pretty good info!!! So what he's saying is that yes, the metabolism will slow down, but not enough that it'll offset the calorie deficit and/or result in not losing weight.

The thing that bothers me is that I've now had about 4-5 people give me first-hand personal accounts of how they were plateaued and not making progress...and then they ate 300 more calories per day and suddenly weight-loss resumed! I believe these people...these were their experiences!

At the same time, we have the info mentioned above and my own expert nutritionist insisting that it's still calories in vs. calories out. It still goes back to underestimating calories and maybe my body becoming very efficient at doing all this exercise?

Just the same, today was 2 spin-classes back to back and about 30 laps (back & forth = 1 lap) in the pool. I'm sure I got some good exercise out of it, probably about 2k calories burned. I didn't have my HR-monitor, but I know what 3.25 hours of cardio will do....and I really put it out in spin today! Took in some good breakfast and drank during class...gave me energy to lay it down!

As for diet, I'm eating differently, but still falling back into a large deficit. The good news is that I really feel & think my body is now responding...taking that week+ off from both training & dieting has seemingly reset things. I dunno, I'm feeling lean, my clothes are getting looser and I'm making progress. I always think of it as motion: I'm on the gain, or on the lean....right now I'm headed in the lean direction. The thing I have to keep in mind is that I lost over 40 pounds solid fat and still was able to look in the mirrror and wonder when I'd finally see a difference...based on that, I have no right whatsoever to look in the mirror each day and expect to see the same dramatic difference as you see when you, per se, get a haircut.

So...I can't count on my perspective in the mirror, I shouldn't look at the scale, the body-fat calipers are obvious off (cause I ain't no 12%) and that pretty much leaves me with NOTHING to guage my progress! :D

I'm cool. I'm on it, at it and sticking with the game plan..... :beerchug:
 
Yes, some of the information in that article is contradicting what others have said. However, I still think you should try eating a little more. You are putting a huge demand on your body with all that exercise you do. But regardless of what I say, everyone else says, Lyle MacDonald says etc. do what you feel is working. Like you said you are starting to feel leaner and making progress which is what is important. Good luck!
 
Greenhorn Gal said:
Steve--do you drink alcohol?? If so, how much?
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No....I rarely ever drink. I follow that saying "Don't drink your calories". Most of what I drink is pure water, home-made unsweetened ice-tea and a protein shake here and there....but no alcohol.

amp89 said:
I still think you should try eating a little more. You are putting a huge demand on your body with all that exercise you do.
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I know I "should" be trying to eat more.....but honestly, I'm just not quite getting there. I know I'm feeling leaner and even today I went to an event where friends did the "OMG, you look great"....but I'm still looking in the mirror and not happy. I'm starting to wonder if the absence of bulging fat is leaving my skin a bit loose/soggy and perhaps while I'm getting thinner I'm visually seeing the loose flab-like stuff.

Doesn't matter...I'm gonna stay the course, I think we need at least 2-3 weeks to see how things pan-out.

Last night I had dinner with some friends (they all ate 2-3x more then me and they all tried to get me to eat more)....and the discussion came up about the Blood-type diet. One of the guys, an accomplished athlete, was saying how his blood-type dictated he avoid protein and go heave on carbs. So he was saying how if he eats carbs, he thins-down like mad....but when he eats protein it makes him fat. I know, it makes you roll your eyes in disgust....but this IS his experience and I've known him for a few years now. He knows his body and he insist carbs are clean/pure fuel and it runs through you and doesn't get stored as fat. I know, I know....makes ya sick to hear it, but I've read about this, a diet book called the T-factor diet. He also avoids dairy and limits his protein to 8 ounces per day max. He swears by the Blood-type diet!

I did a search on this forum for blood-type diet, didn't find anything. Anyone know anything about it?
 
One of the guys, an accomplished athlete, was saying how his blood-type dictated he avoid protein and go heave on carbs. So he was saying how if he eats carbs, he thins-down like mad....but when he eats protein it makes him fat
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Is he running type athletic or muscular athletic?
 
Phate89 said:
Is he running type athletic or muscular athletic?
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He's a big-time baseball player....often wins MVP and plays in a men's 50+ league. He's in all-around very good shape. He went riding with me one day....did 14.5 miles no problem (said he was a bit sore the next day...but not much). He weight-trains, does tread/elliptical, etc.

realworksuks said:
He must be a pretty small dude then. 8 oz would mean 40g of protein per day maximum then?
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Nope..he's about 6' 1" and in good shape. He openly admits he's supposed to shoot for 8 ounces, but he loves "protein" and as such eats far more then that when it comes to meat. He just says his ideal diet is supposed to consist of limited amounts of prtoein....and heavy amounts of carbs. When I asked him what the problem is with protein, he said it was the fat. Go figure.

He swears that when he eats good carbs, he can eat a lot and he won't gain weight...actually says the fat just flies off him. I've seen him eat too; he's slam-down huge amounts of pasta, bread, etc. Compared to most guys, he's pretty lean.....but when he does gain weight, he blames it on eating lots of meat. He swears by the Blood-type diet and keeps telling me all my protein emphasis is what's hurting me. He too see's all the exercise & weights that I do and says if he did the same thing, he'd be ripped & thin.

His wife has a nutrional background, she strongly thinks the blood-type diet is nonsense....but she concedes he somehow seems to make it work for him.

I dunno guys...it's weird.
 
Yes, well his body type is different than yours.

He's probably meso-ecto, and you seem to be full-fledged endo.
Endo's don't mesh well with carbs.

Still don't believe anyone can have reasonable amount of muscle eating 40g of protein a day.
 
From what I hear....our protein requirements are actually dramatically smaller then we're led to beleive. The reason protein is popular as a food is because it has relatively few calories per gram and it requires a good amount of time & energy to breakdown as well: it's a very inefficeint source of energy/fuel, so if you have to eat, protein is good "stuff" to make you feel full and not give you much in the way of calories.

Believe it or not, I've heard 8 ounces of protein per day is enough. Not if you're building muscle and weight-training, but for the average person, apparently....or so the theory goes. I think it's different for different people.

I was watching LOST while reclined nicely back on the couch.....at one point, for the heck of it, I pushed my gut up & outward as if to try make it as large as possible: I still got a HUGE pot. I feel so distant from being fit & thin. Then again, most people while sitting down get some tummy roll and anyone can push it out. I think my idea of what being thin should be like is dramatically distant from what's realistic! I'm not suggesting I want to be a rail, but I just can't help but feel I should have a more dramatic sense of being lean. Whatever.

I spent the day on the phones...lots of work coming in. No weights today, no cardio...just took the day off. At the same time, I just had small meals throughout the day, lots of 200-275 calorie snacks and then a modest dinner. I'd account for about 1,800 calories at most. Okay, maybe 2,000. Perhaps 2,200...but no more then 2,500. :D
 
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