Question about weight loss and eating

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buli09

New member
Hey, just curious to what some of you think about eating properly.

I've been pretty active the last couple months, been going gym about 6 days a week, about 45min. of light-med weights to high reps 20-25 for 4 sets. And afterwards about 25min. of the eliptical or bike cardio machine. I also have been playing basketball about twice a week, and also have been doing juijistu twice a week as well. Granted I don't do much except that, probably walk my dog or walk the mall when needed.

But for some reason I haven't lost any weight at all. I'm a male 5'5 about 190 pounds. After about 7weeks of working out and staying this active is it odd I haven't lost any weight at all? I am thinking it may be the way I am eating? I don't have any set or organized eating, I normally just eat w/e, just in small portions. Except breakfast will always be oatmeal, or 2eggs w/ toast. I still haven't cut out alcohol, but I do intend on cutting that out for few months at a time, can this also be the culprit?

Also before the 7weeks, I wasnt doing the juijistu or as active in basketball. But I was consistently going to the gym w/ same routine for about 3months before. I just got a new job in a call center, it's why I opted to be more active now, don't want to get into that slump. My job before gave me enough exercise to not 'gain' but not enough to lose either.
 
Although size of portion is a factor in losing weight the bottom line is that you need to evaluate the calories in whatever food you are eating. You can have an enormous serving of raw veg for the same amount of calories as a shop bought tuna mayonaise sandwich if they use high cal mayo for instance.

I eat enormous portions of only very healthy stuff.

You really only know where you are with whether you deserve a weight loss if you log your food and your exercise and see what your calorie balance is. When I say food - I mean everything that goes into your mouth so that includes drinking be it alcoholic or not. It is best to measure it all carefully at first until you get the hang of what is low calorie and can be estimated and what is high calorie and therefore best to be always measured.

Get a free account on and set up the profile information. Log everything that you eat or drink - every last morsel. Also log all exercise and see what your calorie balance report says as far as whether you have a deficit.

Naturally there are other factors involved in weight - eg sodium in the diet, toilet activity etc - but the first thing is that you have to see if there is a calorie deficit.

Alcohol is certainly empty calories for the most part and something that most people are better off without - especially if they want to lose weight.

There is a great section of the forum on nutrition and you would do well to read this paying attention to the sticky threads.
 
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Yeah, what Omega said.

I lot of people say "I eat healthy" but they don't go on to elaborate what that means. I've read where people who think 3 bowls of processed cereal for breakfast is healthy (at 700 calories) because it's Raisin Bran (loaded with sugar).

Until you find out exactly how many calories you're consuming and how much carbs/protein/fats you're getting on a daily basis, you're not really going to have an answer. Because, as Omega said, it all boils down to how many calories you're getting.
 
I keep seeing a model of like 40/40/20 etc, something about carbs,fat,protein, how can I tell where I stand or should be at?? After onlya day of using the FitDay (which is cool and will continue to use), I can tell that I HAVE NOT been eating over 1800calories, and it's mostly carbs, medium protein, and fats. Can that truly hinder my progression in losing weight even w/ the amount of activity I do?

Because even though I eat w/e I want, It's always almost same stuff day in day out, like white rice w/ 4-5oz of chicken breast, or turkey sandwich w/ jack cheese only mustard, or tuna sandwiches. So even w/ a day of just seeing what I'm eating and counting I can kind of figure out an avg of what I eat. What scares me is the lack of protein, and high carbs though.

It seems that I am coming up short on protein, should I invest into a whey protein shake, if so any suggestions? Otherwise should I just try to adjust what I am eating, adding more chicken/steak into my daily eatting.
 
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The split that I've seen that seems to work best for most people is 40/30/30 - that's 40% complex carbs, 30% protein, and 30% healthy fats. If you go for 30% protein, that will usually get you close to 1 g of protein per pound of body fat (assuming you're eating enough calories).

Yes, eating a bad "balance" of nutrients can slow your weight loss, although different balances work for different people. It's possible to lose on less protein, and on less carbs, depending on the person. But if you're wanting to lose weight and become lean and maintain muscle, you really do need the 30% of protein. I aim for 35% protein and 25% fat myself and it works really well for me.

I also don't have any problems with using a protein supplement, but at 1800 calories you really should be able to get the majority of your protein from real food. I use protein powder to help me boost to that extra 5% or so of protein I want, but I can average 90-110 g of protein from food w/out even blinking, even at 1500 calories.

One thing I noticed from what you wrote is that you eat white rice and sandwiches. Are you putting your sandwiches on white bread or regular "wheat" bread? Those carbs are simple carbs and will screw with your weight loss, big time. The carbs you eat need to be complex carbs - whole grains, brown rice, oats, that kind of thing. Foods made of whole grains also have more protein in them. For example, a slice of Arnold's 12 grain bread (what I usually eat) has 5g protein. A slice of regular "wheat" bread has 2g protein. A plain flour tortilla has 3-4g protein. A whole grain tortilla has 6-8g protein. Etc.

One thing I'd suggest is to get into the habit of reading labels when you buy things. Pay attention to the calories, carbs/sugars, and protein in the food. But also read the ingredients. By law ingredients are listed from most to least and I think you'll be surprised at the number of things you buy where the first ingredients are sugar of some kind - either sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn sweetners - there are all kinds of different names for it. Avoid things that have large amounts of sugar in them. Those are purely empty calories and can really screw with your weight loss.

Hope that helps! :)
 
simple wheat and white rice =X

Think I'll try to change that to full whole wheat right? And see what i can do about changing or getting access to easy made brown rice, considering I'm phillipino, you can imagine how hard it's going to be for me to switch!

Thanks for all the info yall have given me so far!
 
i would also recommend dropping the rep ranges to 5-15 and increasing the weight. and stick to doing free weight compound movements. they should make up the bulk of your workout... like 75% of your time spent. Things like squats, deadlifts, lunges, bench, military press, rows, pull/chin ups, dips, etc etc....
 
I know what I'm eating, I just don't know if it's the right stuff to be eating before working out. If that makes sense, like today before I went to do martial arts I ate a small fuji apple w/ peanut butter, and for some reason I just felt too full to work out.

As far as that interval running, I did that a few times, it does take a lot out of me, I never knew it helped a lot w/ speeding up your metabolism, so I might try that again. Also can you do that interval training w/ say an eliptical or bike? Or is it just not effective enough? We did it running on the streets using lightpoles as the stop/go.
 
As far as the discussion on carbs goes - if you monitor using fitday.com you may be surprised as to how many carbs you get from fruit and veg. A lot of people think of just things like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes etc when they think about carbs.
 
buli09 said:
I know what I'm eating, I just don't know if it's the right stuff to be eating before working out. If that makes sense, like today before I went to do martial arts I ate a small fuji apple w/ peanut butter, and for some reason I just felt too full to work out.

As far as that interval running, I did that a few times, it does take a lot out of me, I never knew it helped a lot w/ speeding up your metabolism, so I might try that again. Also can you do that interval training w/ say an eliptical or bike? Or is it just not effective enough? We did it running on the streets using lightpoles as the stop/go.
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fats are slow digesting. peanut butter is very high fat. So it sits in your stomach and can make you feel lethargic.

instead try eating a banana before you work out. maybe a small ton of tuna as well if it's been a while since your last meal. Personally I find I workout best on a big meal 2 hours beforehand with a bananna right before i start lifting.
 
Yeah, it took me a long time to figure out what I could and couldn't eat before working out. For me anything that's high in fat (even healthy fat) or anything dairy doesn't sit well on my stomach before a workout.

My favorite before workout snack (about an hour before) is a can of low-sodium V8 and a boiled egg. It's just the right balance of carbs and protein for me.
 
KaraCooks said:
Yeah, it took me a long time to figure out what I could and couldn't eat before working out. For me anything that's high in fat (even healthy fat) or anything dairy doesn't sit well on my stomach before a workout.

My favorite before workout snack (about an hour before) is a can of low-sodium V8 and a boiled egg. It's just the right balance of carbs and protein for me.
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I do believe I'll try that, I love hard boiled eggs, not so much the V8 though, unless V8 Splashes are fine !
 
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