Training & Nutrition - Am I not eating ENOUGH??!!

I've been dieting for about a month now trying to drop some pounds before the season starts up. I'm consistently on about an 1100-1200 calorie a day diet. I pretty much eat the same thing every day and breaking down the calorie count, that's what it comes up to. I don't snack, I don't eat late at night and I do 60-90 minutes of cardio a day, at least 5 days a week, varying the intensity from day to day. Most of the cardio is lower intensity (avg heart rate 135ish) to try to promote fat burning but I do throw in a hard day (avg heart rate 160ish) about once a week just to keep my cardio system honest.

Problem is, I'm not really losing any weight. I lost a pretty decent amount in the first 10 days then nothing. In fact, I've actually gained back a couple of pounds, which is mind boggling to me considering what I'm eating.. or not eating I guess I should say.

Here's my typical diet. I might venture off this maybe once a week and eat something different but even then, it's something reasonable like some kind of grilled meat and a vegetable.

Breakfast - Clif bar & some kind of 0 calorie drink

Lunch - 1 sandwich, wheat bread (50 calories a slice) and some deli turkey

Dinner - 3 sandwiches, wheat bread (Same 50 calories a slice) and again, deli turkey

I just switched to a different bread thats 40 calories a slice and actually tastes better than the 50 calorie stuff I've been eating but I've only been eating that a couple of days.

No mayo, etc. Bread, meat, that's it. Sometimes I'll eat sliced chicken instead and occasionally maybe sliced ham but it's always some kind of deli meat. Sometimes Ill add in a slice of fat free cheese and sometimes I'll eat a small salad, no dressing, croutons or anything. A lot of people say to write down what you eat to keep track of it and I'm a big fan of doing that myself. What I've listed above, that's it.

As you can see, pretty minimalistic. Add in the 60-90 minutes of cardio I'm doing and I'm kind of at a loss as to why I'm not seeing a drop on the scales. I'm hoping maybe my body just hasn't "thrown the switch" yet for it to start losing weight and a couple more weeks will see some results.

If calories in - calories out = weight loss, I should be WAY ahead of the game and I'm just not seeing it.

I'm not really starving eating like this but it's kind of boring to eat this way with no reward on the scales :)

So, anyone got any ideas of variations I could try to work in or should I just keep doing what Im doing and give it some more time?

Sounds like you're not eating nearly enough. Depending on how much you weigh, you can calculate the base calories your body needs to sustain your weight. Then from that, you can cut back your calories, and factor in the calories you're burning during exercise to come up with the difference.

But if you're only taking in 1100 calories and exercising on top of it, your body probably thinks it's starving, so has slowed its metabolism to hold onto whatever you're giving it. I'm sure others can explain more eloquently and scientifically what the numbers should be.

Also, you're not eating a very balanced diet. Do you ever get fruits and veggies, aside from an occasional side salad? What about dairy - milk, yogurt, cheese, etc? You're missing out on good nutrients that your body needs. I would try to eat a more substantial breakfast which should include protein (like egg whites, whole wheat toast and juice, or protein shake, banana and yogurt, or peanut butter on toast with milk - just a few examples), and then eat every few hours during the day, mixing carb/protein at each meal. Don't forget to include healthy fats as well - try some almonds or pistachios as a snack.

how tall are you? and how much do you currently weigh?

1200 calories is something a short 100-125 woman needs to eat.... men need way more calories than that!

if you eat too little... your body goes into starvation mode and clings to the fat as if you were starving... self-preservation...

you need SOME fat in your diet... so feel free to put a SMALL amount of mayo on your sandwich (low fat is better).... add some low fat diary (milk or cheese)

sounds like you are getting way too many carbs... .granted you say it's whole wheat bread... but try eating extra meat/protein and drop some of the bread!

a cliff bar for breakfast isn't very good... try some eggs or oatmeal or yogurt... cottage cheese with fruit or yogurt added to it.... there are so many things you can eat! even a healthy cereal (kashi brand) is better than a cliff bar for brekky!)

and the biggest thing.... you need to eat more often! it's best to eat 6 times a day:

breakfast
snack
lunch
snack
dinner
snack

at the very least... 5 times a day leaving out the evening snack if you buy into the not eating at night (i don't buy into that... i eat SIX time a day!)

i see summie mentioned nuts.... pistachios or dry roasted peanuts are AWESOME snacks... just be sure to measure out a serving! it's way to easy (at least for me) to just keep eating... so i measure out my portion when i'm having nuts as a snack...

if you eat peanut butter... don't get jiff or skippy... get he all natural that is JUST peanuts and salt!

it's OK to have dressing... just pick the low fat or no fat kind... there are some out there that taste really yummy and have little to no fat in them!

where are your veggies? drop a sandwhich and add a serving or two of veggies... brocolli... green beans.... squash.... carrots... VEGGIES! veggies are the one food you don't have to worry about serving size... EAT EAT EAT! you can eat a bagof frozen green beans and it's only gonna be 100 calories give or taks.... but they are GOOD for you! so EAT VEGGIES and lay off the bread! (if you need more food.... pile more meat onto 2 slices of bread... but if you are eating 6 slices at a meal... YIKES!)

speaking of beans.... beans are an EXCELLENT source of protein! and they are filling.... make some healthy chili! use ground turkey and put in some kidney and black beans.... here's a recipe that good for you....

Chili

1 pound lean ground meat (1/2 pound ground turkey and 1/2 pound ground beef)
1 cup chopped onion
3/4 cup chopped red peppers
1 16-ounce can (2 cups) tomatoes, broken up
1 16-ounce can (2 cups) dark red kidney beans
1 16-ounce can (2 cups) black beans
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon chili powder (more or less to taste)
Cook meat until almost cooked, drain. Add onions and red peppers, cook til tender. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and cook for 1 hour.

Makes 4 servings.

one more thing.... what you are doing isn't going nto work in the long run....

eating needs to be a WAY OF LIFE..... not a diet.... you need to be re-teaching yourself how to eat healthy.... you've already said you are bored with what you are eating (no duh.... sandiwiches all day long!)

learn to eat healthy and well-balanced.... remember the food pyramid (or whatever it's called now)

once you stop eating your "forced diet" you're just going to gain the weight back... cuz you haven't relearned how to eat properly and healthy....

Yuck…

Well you are eating near the low end of the appropriate weight loss range, but it’s still a sufficient amount to be considered safe (>1000kcal/day). Your will power must be incredible to handle eating that meal plan for a whole month.

Ways to improve:

- If that bread is not whole grain, switch to it.

-You eat no fruits or vegetables at all. You can add lettuce, tomato and cucumber to those sandwiches to make them more nutritious while only adding a few calories. Mustard is also a condiment you can use that is essentially calorie free.

- Try to increase your protein intake; cottage cheese is a great low-cal way to add some protein.

-Variety, 4 identical sandwiches and a cliff bar everyday is a sure way to develop nutritional deficiencies.

Plug your diet into Fitday.com and see for yourself.

as an athlete and 200 pounds, I often eat upwards of 4000 on training days, so yes, you're WAY undereating!

Post your weekly workout-log as well. It's a myth that lower-intensity burns more fat. While it may burn a higher fat-percentage, like 50% vs. 35%, in terms of total fat-calories/hr, a 60-75% of MHR pace will burn more fat/hr and more importantly, more total calories/hr than lower intensities. This allows you to create a much larger calorie/deficit per day given any amount of training time.

I would suggest eating a little more and exercising more with more intensity. High-intensity training (intervals) will increase your metabolism for hours after the workout; something that doesn't occur with purely aerobic exercise.

Your body adapts, you have to continually escalate the loads imposed to improve. That's why in the beginning you lost weight, then the body gets stronger, more efficient and does more with what you've eaten. In order to continue the weight-loss, you have to keep on increasing the loads above what your body can do. So initially if you ride 200-miles/week, to keep up the weight loss, you have to ride 250-miles/wk the next month. Then 300-miles/week the month after that, then 350-miles/week the month after that. Same with intensity. You might have started out with one interval/week, but you'll have ot increase that to 20-30/wk to keep up the weight-loss rate.

just curious on how you came up with this diet?

I'm constipated from just reading his diet....

+1 to the fruits and veggies. Some low-cal salad dressing won't kill you, either.

as an athlete and 200 pounds, I often eat upwards of 4000 on training days, so yes, you're WAY undereating!

+1

I weight about 209. If I burn 1000 calories through exercise on a given day (which isn't that difficult), I can eat about 2500 calories and still have a nice caloric deficit at day's end.

I ran into the same thing as a gossamer tall guy at around 145 or so. (I'm 6'1".) I'd have snacks of a package of four crackers and eat two apples and a can of tuna for dinner and still not lose weight. I was down to 800 calories at one point during the end of the off-season.

The truth for me was that I was way underweight.

Fact is that I'm way faster now than I was then and I'm 198 pounds. I'm even a stronger climber, meaning my strength to weight ratio is better now at 198 than it was at 143.

If you want to look cooler, buy better clothes, get a tan and work out your biceps. Don't worry about your gut or chest if you're serious about cycling. If you put in the miles, your bread basket is your fuel tank.

My wife once saw Lance Armstrong without a shirt on and screamed,"Oh my God, he's a little girl! If you ever look like that I couldn't have sex with you!"

Some good info in this post.. I probably should have given some backstory to go along with it but anyways.... here goes.

I used to weigh about 370#s. I lost over 150#s doing a hardcore low carb diet. Took me about a year and a half to do it but for about a year and a half I was not eating over 10 carbs a day. I started the diet before Atkins became the craze and when all the low carb stuff started coming out, it made it much easier to stay on that diet. Now the low carb craze has passed and most of the better low carb foods have vanished and that's one of the reasons I didn't go back to low carb.

I've mostly maintained for about the past 18 months, give or take about 20#s. I'm about 240ish right now but I don't really look 240. I can wear 36 inch waist jeans (Theyre a little tight, Im working on it :) ) and the majority of my weight I think is in my thighs. My legs are huge from years of speed skating when I was younger and I went back to inline skating several years ago before cycling so I've always done things that really work your legs. Doing 30 miles on inlines is way harder than doing 30 miles on a bike.

Someone mentioned my workouts.. before this year I had the mentality of "go into the gym and work out as hard as you can and when you cant work out any more, leave" and I lived by that for years. Problem is, Im 40 years old and I dont recover like I used to. So talking to my coach/trainer/bike mechanic when we were talking about a training program, he told me I should work at a lower heart rate than I have in previous years to help recovery and aid in weight loss. That being said, I decided to try to keep the cardio at a lower level than I have in years past. Here's a typical workout for me. I try to keep my target heart rate at 135, which could still be too high given my age but I'm hoping my fitness level bumps the threshold up. Normally I'll start my workouts on the eliptical machine and do 40 minutes at 135hr. Then I'll move over to the stair machine and do 30 minutes, again, keeping hr at 135. Then I'll ride the stationary bike for 20-30 minutes and again, try to stay at 135 hr. Some days I mix it up.. Ill run (Ran 3 miles yesterday instead of doing the eliptical) or do jump rope intervals. I don't really do much weight lifting any more mainly because A) I dont need any more bulk and B) I dont really enjoy lifting weights. I did weights religiously for a couple of years and my body just doesnt recover from it like it used to. Like I said before, I do throw in a hard day here and there just to not get into a rut like I ran yesterday for about 45 minutes, did the stair machine for a while and then rode the stationary bike for a total of about an hour and 25 minutes.

I guess I need to look for ways to work more food back into my diet. I did think I was at the low end of calorie consumption but I didnt think I was too low. After the first week, it hasnt been very hard to maintain the diet. Strength, power and endurance have not been a problem for me in cycling.. I'm just carrying too much weight.. I was hoping to get rid of some of it without sacrificing power and endurance.

ok...... 240 pounds.... 1200.... WAAAAAAAAAY too few calories!!!!!

i weight.... hmmmmmm nevermind! lol! i don't tell my weight on an internet forum! but i'm a gurl, 5'3" and that's MY base calories with NO exercise! you need to eat more.... but you need to pick better foods!

low carb is icky! you need to eat GOOD carbs! (i can't stand that whole atkins thing.... no carbs but you can eat a slab of bacon.... that's a heart attack waiting to happen!)

you need to mix it up... you need to lay off the bread bread and cliff bars....

did i read that correctly.... you're doing 90 minutes or more of aerobics a day? and on 1200 calories????????

jay....... EAT! (i was gonna say "eat a sandwich".... but i've already "yelled" at you for the bread! lol!)

you sound like you've plateaued.... you need to change something.... so either your diet (reduce some of the carbs and defnitely only eat GOOD whole grain/brown foods!!!!)

weights.... ok.... so don't use heavy weights... instead of lifting 8 reps with super heavy... use a smaller weight and lift for 16 or more.... you need do do SOME weights!

add the lettuce, tomatoes, etc to your sandwiched if you HAVE to eat them.... i'd like to see you eat other stuff though.... there's so much more out there!!!!

you've done good to lose 150 pounds..... CONGRATS! now, if you truly need to lose more and you're not at your "real" weight... lets get some more off you but in a healthy manner!!!!!!!

I'm going downstairs right now to make some chili!

lemme know how the chili turns out and i might make some too - it sounds good :)

you can even add a bit of low or no fat cheddar cheese to it when you eat it!

i love this recipie! i use more than 1 tablespoon of chili powder... but can't remember how much (have it written down at home!) (also... you can use green peppers... but i like the red or yellow ones... usually use a mixture of the two!)

if you want to be REALLY good... use a whole pound of ground turkey... but i prefer the 1/2 and 1/2 for all my recipes!!!!

ok... here's my mostest favorite meatloaf... it's another of my healthy recipies!!!!

Meatloaf with a Bite

1 pound lean ground meat (1/2 pound ground turkey and 1/2 pound lean ground beef)
1 1/2 cups medium salsa (i use pace)
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup shredded monterey jack cheese (or mexican mix pre-shredded)
1 egg
1 cup oatmeal (the full 10 minute cook kind not quick 1 minute oats!)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Spray a 9 X 5 inch loaf pan with cooking spray.

2. In a large bowl, mix together ground meat, salsa, cheese, egg, and oatmeal. Form into a loaf and place in prepared pan. (I just dumped it in the pan and smoothed it out.)

3. Bake for approximately 1 hour, or until done. (Internal temp should measure at least 160 degrees F (70 degrees C), the meat should be browned through, and the juices clear.

(i cover the top with a bit more salsa and cook an additional 10 minutes)

YUM!!!! serve with veggies!

Someone mentioned my workouts.. before this year I had the mentality of "go into the gym and work out as hard as you can and when you cant work out any more, leave" and I lived by that for years. Problem is, Im 40 years old and I dont recover like I used to. So talking to my coach/trainer/bike mechanic when we were talking about a training program, he told me I should work at a lower heart rate than I have in previous years to help recovery and aid in weight loss. That being said, I decided to try to keep the cardio at a lower level than I have in years past. Here's a typical workout for me. I try to keep my target heart rate at 135, which could still be too high given my age but I'm hoping my fitness level bumps the threshold up. Normally I'll start my workouts on the eliptical machine and do 40 minutes at 135hr. Then I'll move over to the stair machine and do 30 minutes, again, keeping hr at 135. Then I'll ride the stationary bike for 20-30 minutes and again, try to stay at 135 hr. Some days I mix it up.. Ill run (Ran 3 miles yesterday instead of doing the eliptical) or do jump rope intervals. I don't really do much weight lifting any more mainly because A) I dont need any more bulk and B) I dont really enjoy lifting weights. I did weights religiously for a couple of years and my body just doesnt recover from it like it used to. Like I said before, I do throw in a hard day here and there just to not get into a rut like I ran yesterday for about 45 minutes, did the stair machine for a while and then rode the stationary bike for a total of about an hour and 25 minutes.So how many hours a week are you working out? Yeah, you don't need weight-training as you've built up sufficient strength already and carrrying all that body-mass around has given you strong legs.

What you want to do is periodization in training and mix it up between different days. But each day should have only one specific workout. What you want to incorporate is higher intensity AND longer duration, just not on the same day. So try this for a sample week:


MON: rest & recovery, 60-minutes at 110-130bpm

TUE: sprints, 60-90 minute, 30-minute warm-up, then 5-7 ALL OUT 100% effort screaming bloody-murder sprints to max-HR and legs burning on fire (about 35-45 seconds), recovery fully 2-4 minutes and repeat

WED: intervals, 60-90 minutes, 30-minute warm-up, then 1-minute at 95% effort to max-HR, recover for 2-4 minutes, repeat. Intervals can also be 2, 3, 5 minutes. Pyramid sets are good 1-2-3-5-3-2-1 when you get stronger. This builds up leg power and allows you to generate more power (go faster) at LT and burn off more calories/hr.

THUR: hillclimb or tempo, 60-90 minutes, after warm-up, do 15-20 minute hillclimb at LT or 10-15 tempo at 10% below to LT (160-170bpm). Rest on downhill or 5 minutes and do it again 3-4 sets and go home

FRI: rest & recovery, 60-minutes at 110-130bpm

SAT and/or SUN: endurance ride 2-3 hours, this is where the fat really burns off as you burn through as many calories on a single ride as the entire previous week combined. Ride at steady LSD pace of 20-10% below LT (145-160bpm). Try to minimize variations in HR and start/stop cycles. Bring food and start eating at 1.5 hours, and about 3-4 bottles of water. It's the 2nd-3rd hour of this ride that burns off a tonne of fat, about 5x as much as the 1st hour. Two of these rides a week and you'll be at the maximum safe weight-loss of 1.5 lb/wk.

TOTAL-TIME = 8-10 hours/wk for 1.5 lb/wk weight-loss rate


Notice that these workout themselves will burn off 800-2000 calories each. On top of your basal metabolic rate, you'll need to be eating 2000-4000 calories a day and you'll STILL be losing 1-1.5 lbs/wk. The high-intensity stresses your body and makes it improve and strengthen to keep up with the stress; this burns up a lot of calories. Part of the issue right now is that your workouts are so easy, that your body's not very stressed and it doesn't burn up a whole lot of calories. It had to improve a little in the beginning, but that was it. You'll have to continually raise the bar & stress-level.

Yeah, and add a tonne more fruits & veggies to your diet; at least one serving of each at every meal.

My metabolism shuts down if I have less than 2000 a day. Eat more, poop more.

I'd start in on the tuna, peanut butter, and honey sandwiches.

PS: TPBH sandwiches are the greatest recovery food ever.

My metabolism shuts down if I have less than 2000 a day. Eat more, poop more.

I'd start in on the tuna, peanut butter, and honey sandwiches.

PS: TPBH sandwiches are the greatest recovery food ever.


Id lose lots of weight from eating that. Id be throwing up whatever I managed to choke down. 0 calories! You should patent that!

uuggghhh! well, the pb & honey is really good, it's just the addition of tuna that grosses me out! i'm with jay on this one - i would lose weight cuz it'd be coming back up!

Just to echo what other people are saying, eat more, you'll be leaner and meaner in the end.

Someone mentioned no-fat cheese. Let me tell you, it's not worth it, nor is it cheese as far as I can tell. Melts badly and tastes strangely like rubber.

Heh, heh... then make two sandwiches. One PB&H and one tuna. :)

Boy Am I lucky. I was just going to post about the same subject!! I started using fitday to track my calories and boy was I suprised at the results I've been getting. I'm around the 1500-1900 a day mark. I to was heavy before and dropped a bunch of wieght. I have been trying to lose about 10 more to get where I would like to be. I also workout 5 times a week cardio and wieght's. I have been stuck at my current weight since the summer(I was riding about150-200 miles a week eating the same amount of food) now i know why I'm stuck my body is holding on to everything it can. I work in the grounds maintence at the local school dist so i'm not what ya call sitting on my butt all day. Fit day says my daily cals should be at 4385. Thanks for the post Jay your the MAN!!!!

Some good info in this post.. I probably should have given some backstory to go along with it but anyways.... here goes.

I used to weigh about 370#s. I lost over 150#s doing a hardcore low carb diet. Took me about a year and a half to do it but for about a year and a half I was not eating over 10 carbs a day. I started the diet before Atkins became the craze and when all the low carb stuff started coming out, it made it much easier to stay on that diet. Now the low carb craze has passed and most of the better low carb foods have vanished and that's one of the reasons I didn't go back to low carb.

I've mostly maintained for about the past 18 months, give or take about 20#s. I'm about 240ish right now but I don't really look 240. I can wear 36 inch waist jeans (Theyre a little tight, Im working on it :) ) and the majority of my weight I think is in my thighs. My legs are huge from years of speed skating when I was younger and I went back to inline skating several years ago before cycling so I've always done things that really work your legs. Doing 30 miles on inlines is way harder than doing 30 miles on a bike.

Someone mentioned my workouts.. before this year I had the mentality of "go into the gym and work out as hard as you can and when you cant work out any more, leave" and I lived by that for years. Problem is, Im 40 years old and I dont recover like I used to. So talking to my coach/trainer/bike mechanic when we were talking about a training program, he told me I should work at a lower heart rate than I have in previous years to help recovery and aid in weight loss. That being said, I decided to try to keep the cardio at a lower level than I have in years past. Here's a typical workout for me. I try to keep my target heart rate at 135, which could still be too high given my age but I'm hoping my fitness level bumps the threshold up. Normally I'll start my workouts on the eliptical machine and do 40 minutes at 135hr. Then I'll move over to the stair machine and do 30 minutes, again, keeping hr at 135. Then I'll ride the stationary bike for 20-30 minutes and again, try to stay at 135 hr. Some days I mix it up.. Ill run (Ran 3 miles yesterday instead of doing the eliptical) or do jump rope intervals. I don't really do much weight lifting any more mainly because A) I dont need any more bulk and B) I dont really enjoy lifting weights. I did weights religiously for a couple of years and my body just doesnt recover from it like it used to. Like I said before, I do throw in a hard day here and there just to not get into a rut like I ran yesterday for about 45 minutes, did the stair machine for a while and then rode the stationary bike for a total of about an hour and 25 minutes.

I guess I need to look for ways to work more food back into my diet. I did think I was at the low end of calorie consumption but I didnt think I was too low. After the first week, it hasnt been very hard to maintain the diet. Strength, power and endurance have not been a problem for me in cycling.. I'm just carrying too much weight.. I was hoping to get rid of some of it without sacrificing power and endurance.

I pretty much agree with Danno on this.

You need to work out fewer days, take some recovery days (at least a couple of days every week), and toss in a few longer workouts once a week or so.

Your diet is pretty bad. Not only are you eating too little (I'm surprised that you are able to work out that much), you are missing a lot of essential nutrients. Lots of fruits and vegatables will help a bunch, as will other whole grains. Something other than luncheon meat.

You might take a look at the south beach diet. It's a "right carb" diet rather than a "low carb" one, and will get you eating better

Good luck.

You have the starvation response in play, your metabolism has slowed down. You will lose muscle as your body eats itself to stay alive at that calorie level. Do you happen to know your body fat percentage? If so you want to separate your total weight into fat and lean muscle weight to get your lean body mass (muscle, bone, & other non fat tissues). If you weigh 240 and your body fat is 20% then you have 48 pounds of fat, or LBM of 192. From there you can figure what you will want to weigh at a certain body fat percentage, say 15%=221, water will add about 2-3%. This page will help you determine the calories you should be eating: http://www.bodybuildbid.com/articles/weightloss/calorie-calculator.html . Congrats on losing what you have already, a little more knowledge and the rest will be gone in no time!

Just to echo what other people are saying, eat more, you'll be leaner and meaner in the end.

Someone mentioned no-fat cheese. Let me tell you, it's not worth it, nor is it cheese as far as I can tell. Melts badly and tastes strangely like rubber.

i use no fat cheese in my chili.... but otherwise... it's the low/reduced fat or 2% kind! that stuff is good!

You might take a look at the south beach diet. It's a "right carb" diet rather than a "low carb" one, and will get you eating better



+1

Jay,

Some good advice elsewhere in the thread. If you're interested in reading a book that I think fits the bill well for your goals, go buy "The Paleo Diet for Athletes". Following some general guidelines from this book will have you eating less processed foods (like the deli meat), less grains, more veggies, and more lean meat.

I'm trying to eat this way, and aside from occasional slip-ups (like eating 36 oatmeal cookies in 3 days!) it is helping. I am down 50 pounds from 3 years ago and as lean as I've ever been.