Please Help! Confused on calories and weight loss

M

melzer23

New member
Hi!

I'm 5'3" female and exercise everyday. I play soccer and have been an athlete all my life.

A year ago I was in the best shape of my life and weighed 137. I got hurt and couldn't exercise for a couple of months. I gained some weight and went up to 150. Now I go to college and weigh 165! I want to get back to my old body but I'm having so much trouble losing the weight. I run 4 miles everyday and do some crunches, lunges, bicep curls, and push up exercises also. I've been watching my eating and cutting calories around 1500 but I haven't seen any results especially on the scale! I'm not sure on how many calories I should be consuming. I've been reading online about calories and I think I should increase but I'm so afraid to because I feel like I won't lose weight then. I'm also confused about the "starvation mode". Is that why I'm not losing weight? Also at night before bed I get so hungry but I usually just go to sleep, is that bad? Also what foods are good to eat for weight loss? It's so hard for me to find healthy foods besides fruits and vegetables because I'm at college. I hope someone can help me! I will answer any other questions you have for me!


Thanks :D
 
The best thing to do is to use an online calorie calculator to work out exactly what your weight loss calorie intake should be. Then work out a menu plan where you eat 5-8 small meals a day, which include lean protein, complex carbs and vegetables. Protein is a real key as it helps you keep full longer and also takes a lot more calories to digest than carbohydrates. Eating little and often will increase your metabolism, which means you will be able to burn more fat.


The starvation mode thing is definitely real. If you eat too little for the amount of energy you are burning your metabolism will automatically slow down in order to preserve energy. This will make it virtually impossible to lose fat. The slower your metabolism the more weight you will put on if you do eat more.

If you find it hard to eat the right thing at college, then perhaps you should stock up on some low carb protein bars as snacks. You could also buy some low calorie protein powder and have shakes when you are at home. This will make sure you are getting enough protein to promote lean muscle growth, which will boost your metabolism.


In terms of exercise, I would definitely add in some weight training. You won't bulk up because women don't have enough testosterone to do that. Muscle actually takes up less space than fat, so if you lose fat and gain muscle you will lose inches! If you don't have any weights, you can google body weight strength training to get some ideas of what you can include.


Hope that helps. Good luck:)
 
Thanks so much for the advice! I have adjusted my calories and have been watching what I eat more. I've actually already lost a couple pounds! I will definitely try adding more protein and weight training.


Thanks again!
 
I agree with everything workoutdvdfreak said. Just to add a little more - the starvation mode really is bad practice because your metabolism does slow down. In simple terms, this is what happens - your body will start breaking down muscles because muscles require a lot of energy (calories) to keep going and your body will be trying to conserve energy (it thinks food is scarce). And here's the worst part, whilst it starts breaking down muscle to conserve energy, it also protects its fat stores.


So if you want to lose bodyfat you should look to improve your diet (which you are doing) but also boost your metabolism by increasing your muscle mass.


I'm not really big on counting calories (who really wants to spend the rest of their life doing that). I stick to a pretty simple philosophy. Eat 5-6 meals per day, always base the meal around protein and fresh produce, and for the most part I cut out as much processed foods as possible. BUT and this is a really big but. I always have a blow out day once a week and eat whatever I like (usually pizza and chocolate cake). It's a way of making sure I know I'm not missing out but it also plays around with the hormones in your body (but I won't get too technical about that), this is all about keeping it simple.


Last thing I should point out, I do mention training is important. Your choice of training also makes a difference. I love running, I'm a cardio queen (or at least I used to be), but to lose weight and get toned, I dropped a lot of the cardio and upped the bodyweight and freeweight exercises and boy did it produce results.


I wish you all the best. Let me know if I can help you anymore.


x Nikki
 
You must be tracking your calorie intake wrong I think. Exercising so much as you and eating 1500 calories would defenitly lead to noticable weight loss, but you saying you not loosing really anything. if it's not happening maybe you are not tracking your calories accuratly. I would suggest to use some free weight loss software. I am using this one and it helps me to loose bodyweight easy by tracking very accurtly calorie intake. http://uploading.com/files/ba2f8369/FEDiarySetup.exe
 
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