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Lastnight i did my first real workout, and i must say i now know i have ab muscles...whoooo

Exercise lastngiht: 8x 1min boxing, 80 situps, 80 squats, 15min elliptical. Edited i had 70 of each but actually did 80

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Day 2

Today i will do my 1 mile dvd walk and my weight session Ray has devised for me. Not sure how i'm going to go with 20 situps, tummy wont know what hit it! Slept better lastngiht than the night before, woke up at 3.50am and set out for work by about ten past four. Got to work this morning only to find that the new lady that started yesterday quit today, so looks like i'll be alone on my side of the school tomorrow.

Breakfast this morning:

                                                                                             Cals  Fat   Prot.  Carb.  Fibre

2 slice, thin (30g) of Bread: Wholemeal		136	1.8	6	23.4	3.9
160 g of Vegetables, fresh: Tomato, ripe, raw		29	0.3	1.6	6.2	1.9
2 egg, large (53g) of Eggs: Chicken Egg, whole, scrambled		175	14.3	11.1	0.4	-
1/2 teaspoon (5g) of Meadow Lea: Margarines: Spread, Extra Light		7	0.8	0	0	0
Meal Total		347	17.2g	18.7g	30.1g	5.8g

 

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cw 104.2kg - taken clothed at WW 26/8/08 sw: 124.6kg Weight lost so far: 20.4kgs

Lunch:

                                                                         Cals  Fat   Prot.  Carb.  Fibre

40 g of Coon: Cheese: Cheddar, Extra Light		105	6	12.4	0.2	-
108 g of Fruit, fresh: Apple, Granny Smith, raw		46	0	0.5	11.9	2.2
440 g of Fruit, fresh: Melon, Watermelon, raw, peeled		101	0	2.2	22	2.2
88 g of Vegetables, fresh: Celery, Raw		11	0	0.4	1.8	1.8
10 g of Nuts: Peanuts, roasted		59	5	2.4	2.2	0.8
Meal Total		322	11g	18g	38g	6.9g

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cw 104.2kg - taken clothed at WW 26/8/08 sw: 124.6kg Weight lost so far: 20.4kgs

Hi Lana, I am not a dietician and I hope you dont mind my comments, but you have a pretty high carb diet, you might want to cut down the fruit with your lunch and perhaps replace it with more veggies and chicken or tuna, wrapped up in a wrap (like the subway ones) or as a substantial salad, you will feel a lot fuller and have more energy.   Perhaps replace the peanuts with almonds.  With the breakfast if you cut out the bread and made a nice veggie omelette (spray on oil of course) you will find that you feel fuller for longer.

With my diet I am not currently counting calories, I am eating smaller meals with lots of veggies and good proteins.  I know everyone is different but i find i can exist pretty well on less carbs and drop the weight fairly quickly.

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Cheers Wendy. I'm going by what i have been set by calorie king - Fat 54g, Protein 114g and Carbs 217g per day. After all my meals and snacks i'm still under the daily allowances. Have tried the low carb diet before but didn't last long, wasn't feeling at all full. Today i had alot of fruit and will have salad for dinner. Basically i'm just concentrating on maintaining my calorie intake each day  and not stressing over the fat or carb content, not yet anyways. I'm on 1200cals a day, but eat about 1300/1400 which gets taken down by about 400cals after exercise leaving me a net of 1000 or below. It's all very confusing to me at the moment and am still getting to know everything.

Thank you for the advice though, advice is one way to learn new ways or things.

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cw 104.2kg - taken clothed at WW 26/8/08 sw: 124.6kg Weight lost so far: 20.4kgs

Dinner:

                                                                                                                                 Cals  Fat  Prot. Carb.  Fibre

1 serving, 1/6 package (62.5g) of I & J: Fish, frozen: Light & Crispy Extra, Lemon Crumbed Fillets		98	3.8	7.7	7.9	-
1 large whole (199g) of Vegetables, fresh: Tomato, ripe, raw		36	0.4	2	7.8	2.4
1 medium (100g) of Vegetables, fresh: Cucumber, Lebanese, raw, unpeeled		11	0	0.5	2	1
2 serving, 3 leaves (30g) of Vegetables, fresh: Lettuce, Common, raw		9	0.1	0.5	1.8	0.7
1 small (100g) of Vegetables, fresh: Carrots, raw		41	0.2	1	9.6	2.8
30 g of Coon: Cheese: Cheddar, Extra Light		79	4.5	9.3	0.2	-
Meal Total		273	9g	21g	29.2g	6.9g

 

Snacks:

                                                                                                   Cals  Fat  Prot.  Carb.  Fibre

20 g of Uncle Toby's: Bars: Muesli, Crunchy, Choc Chip		90	3.3	1.6	12.6	1.4
1 27g of Paradise, Lites Wholemeal crispbreads		102	0.8	2.9	20	1.8
30 g of John West: Sandwich Spreads: Spreadable Tuna, w. Mixed Herbs		29	0.8	4.7	0.8	-
1 slice (20.5g) of Kraft Cheese: Singles Free		32	0.5	4.8	2	-
1 cone (3.4g) of Signature Range: Cones: Party Cup		14	0.2	0.4	2.7	-
2 scoop (100mL) of Peters (WA): Ice Cream: Light Chocolate		152	4.6	4.8	22.4	-
Meal Total		419	10.2g	19.1g	60.4g	3.2g

Day Total

1360

47.4g

76.8g

157.7g

22.8g

8 Glasses of fluid - water and one glass of diet coke.

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cw 104.2kg - taken clothed at WW 26/8/08 sw: 124.6kg Weight lost so far: 20.4kgs

If you are doing low carb then you need to up your protein, I personally find that eating carbs doesnt fill me much as eating protein, that is why I suggested a chicken/tuna and veggie sandwich/roll/wrap thing.  But of course you may be different

 

Just read your dinner...you go girl, you like cheese by the looks of it.........mmmmmmmmm I LOVE cheese!

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Oh god you are going to be sick of me, I just read your totals there.  If you drop your fat to around 30g per day (which is recommended) and try and get your carbs to around 100g you will find  your calorie intake will drop a bit too.  I wouldnt recommend using your exercise as an offset to your calories as you will find that you will end up treating yourself a bit too much to the extra calories and find that the weight doesnt shift as well as you would like.

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Yes today i have a craving for cheese for some reason...strange body...lmao

Actually i'm glad you mentioned chicken, might have some for lunch tomorrow in my soup i made...mmm, yum.

 

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cw 104.2kg - taken clothed at WW 26/8/08 sw: 124.6kg Weight lost so far: 20.4kgs

Hmm this is all so confusing, i have been using calorie king to follow my lifestyle change and they use your exercise as an offset i think well they have counters that do. I'm so greatful your bringing all this up, i would hate to be going the wrong way around everything. By the end of the day i would of eaten 1360 cals i wonder if i should be eating less or more, hmm will have to look more into it all i thinkies

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cw 104.2kg - taken clothed at WW 26/8/08 sw: 124.6kg Weight lost so far: 20.4kgs

I am only speaking from experience Lana, I used exercise to offset my calories and I ended up eating more calories and sometimes the wrong calories too and if you dont exercise you still want to eat the more calories, that really set me up for failure.  Look at around 1200 cal keep up the momentum with your exercise, if you cant or dont exercise one day you can still enjoy your 1200 cal and not have to make any concessions because of lack of exercise.  You dont need to eat less to drop your calories, just make your choices a little more carefully.  Look at how many cals some of your snacks are, have a more filling lunch and/or brekkie you might find you dont need the snacks or change them to raw veggies and low fat salsa

I guess I am speaking as someone who hates calorie counting and refuses to do it now, I have a pretty good idea of what I am eating now after many years of label reading and am really putting it into practise.  I also find using a small plate for meals helps greatly too

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I really enjoy counting cals as it seems to be the only way for me. I have been going along the lines of not to deny myself of some things as i know that if i did i would blow out or fail. I like being able to still have the occasional red rooster and what not aslong as i have the calories for it. I thought my day today was pretty good but maybe it wasn't, i find it all overwhelming trying to keep within certain carb, fat or even protein limits so thats why i dont count them. Being that i'm on only 1200cals a day i didn't think it would really affect that much. Lunch and brekkie today were quite filling for me, usually i would have a bowl of cereal for brekkie and find thats not filling enough even with a piece of fruit. I would find myself hungry not long after.

On calorie king it seems everyone is re-looking at everything today but right now i'm just focusing on getting into a routine, so far everything has been going really well for me losing on average 500g per week which i'm really happy with. I dont want to lose weight to fast as i know i wont keep it off.

I really thank you for all the great advice and will sit down over the weekend and look at everything again.

Edit made:

I think i need to increase my calories, i have set myself 1200 and then exercise so that would take it down very low. Maybe even putting my body in starvation mode I will have to go through and check everything over the next few days and see how much i should be on just incase.

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cw 104.2kg - taken clothed at WW 26/8/08 sw: 124.6kg Weight lost so far: 20.4kgs

I wouldnt increase your calories by too much, spread them out over the day so your body doesnt think you are starving, perhaps aim for 6 small meals per day instead of 3 and make sure the carbs and protein that you are eating are good quality they will make you feel fuller for longer, an example is having a couple of weetbix for brekkie instead of something like cornflakes, you have less sugar and  better quality carbs 20g of carbs with 1g of sugar is heaps better than 20g of carbs with 10g sugar

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Hi Guys,

I'm no dietician either (although I did study nutrition was part of my course at uni) but 1400 isn't too bad for starters. You don't want to drop your calorie intake too fast, so start there and as you get used to it drop it down toward 1200.

I know some people will have success on the low protein format but in my experience, most unfit, obese people will not get enough energy from it. If you don't get efficient energy stores you just won't have good workouts. I do agree that a moderate carb diet would work well though. Carbs can be quite filling when it's fruit you're eating. They're quite high in fibre and fibre is gooood!

As Wendy said, you really should drop that fat level to around 30g/day.

That being said, it is very confusing and I think you're doing very well!

Keep it up.

Ray

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Visit us at The New Me Weight Loss Retreat

I dont understand what you mean by spread my calories over the day, i thought thats what i was doing now. I have breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner. And it totals to 1360 for the entire day - isn't that low. Once i have done exercise i would then be down to 900cals a day and wouldn't that be putting my body in starvation mode.

The place i am getting my daily figures and what not is information provided from a dietician.

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cw 104.2kg - taken clothed at WW 26/8/08 sw: 124.6kg Weight lost so far: 20.4kgs

Firstly, I must declare a vested interest here.  I am Lana's husband and hate to see her being confused by the opinions of people who, by their own admission, have little or no formal training in nutrition.  That said I too have an opinion based on a lot of research that I have done over the past ten years in an effort to bulk up (i.e. add muscle.)  Here goes....

Calories count when it comes to weight loss, nothing else matters.  Simple as this, burn more than you eat and you lose weight burn more and you gain it.  It's maths and nothing else.  What sort of weight you gain or lose is determined by other factors in isolation (i.e. irrelevant of the macronutrients in the food you use to get your calories)  One calorie of fat is one calorie, one calorie of protein is one calorie, one calorie of carbohydrates is a calorie of carbohydrates.  Which is heavier, a kilo of bricks or a kilo of feathers?  Same thing, just more grams to 100 calories of protein and carbs than 100 calories of fat.  If you are interested there are 4 calories to each gram of protein or carbs, 9 calories to a gram of fat.

The worst thing you can do, and the reason there are so many "yo-yo" dieters out there, is to lose muscle as you lose weight.  You'd agree with this I'm sure Ray.  If you eat too few calories your body thinks it is in starvation, this is not the same as being hungry.  Regardless of whether you eat celery non-stop to try and trick your body, your body is too smart and just knows it isn't getting enough energy.  We have risen to the top (so called) of the evolutionary chain because our bodies can adapt to different conditions better than any other animal.  When your body considers itself to be starving it will start to look to save calories.  It can't shut down your organs without hurting or killing you and the next biggest burner of calories is maintaining your muscle fuel, so it cuts this and you begin to lose muscle.  You can slow this down by doing resitance type exercise but your body eventually wins....your body always wins.  As you lose muscle your basal metabolic rate (the minimum number of calories your body burns if you do absolutely nothing, like in a coma) drops, therefore you burn fewer calories.  So now the body has excess calories....yipee.  So it starts building muscle again, right?  Wrong.

After a period of clinical starvation your body will prepare for the next one by storing energy ready for the next time.  And your body's best energy store is, you know it, FAT.  So it builds the fat stores and leaves the muscle off, keeping your calorie burn low.  So after you've added a few kilos of fat and decide that "Damn it, I'll try again"  you need to take in even fewer calories to lose weight and the cycle starts again.

How do you prevent this from happening?  Well there is a way, or research would indicate so.  You can't decrease your calorie intake dramatically, anything lower than your basal metabolic rate is bad, really bad.  So if we can't change the "Calories in" side of our maths problem but we still want to burn more than we eat, then there is only one solution and I'm afraid it's exercise.  The good thing is, exercise maintains muscle.  If you are taking in enough calories it even builds more.  More muscle = higher metabolic rate = more calories burned.  Unfortunately it is impossible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, anyone that says they have done it have not tracked their body fat and lean muscle mass closely enough.  The only way it happens is gain a little muscle then lose a little fat then gain a little more muscle, etc.

Unfortunately the only real way to know if you are doing it right is by knowing your body fat percentage, and nobody has the tools to check this every day.  Bio-impedence meters (body fat scales) are not nearly accurate enough and neither are skinfold tests, other methods are generally very expensive if they are available at all.  Your best bet is really just to have a rough guess.  Find your basal metabolic rate (there are many calculators on the net for this, perhaps try a few and average if you are unsure of their accuracy) and set a level slightly higher than this.  As long as your net calories (calories in - calories out) is more than this you won't lose too much muscle.  If you do weight bearing exercise or resistance training it's even better.  It's a win/win situation really, you lose fat but get to eat more calories because you are exercising.  Chocolate here we come!

Some people even put on weight and lose fat (remember the gain a little, lose a little scenario mentioned before) which is a really good thing.  Sometimes it is better to up your calories in order to lose fat if it means you will gain a little muscle, as much is this goes against everything you currently think.

Anyway, enough of my rant.  I'm no nutritionist as I said but this is the facts as modern scientific research shows it.  There are no miracle foods or diets or potions or tablets or anything.  Energy in minus energy out equals weight gain or loss, what you lose or gain is up to you depending on how you do it.

Also, remember that no calculation is perfect.  At his peak Arnold Schwarzenegger was 188cm and 235 pounds (106.8kg) so he had a BMI of 30.  Arnold was, according to his BMI clinically obese.  God I'd love to be as obese as he was.

If it's too hard you won't be able to do it for long.  Have fun in your efforts and keep it simple.  Fat loss ain't rocket science, it's just primary school maths.

Trav

(If you've read this far then you should be rewarded for your patience....the chocolate is calling you.)