damnable

Hi there folks,
This is a bit of a rant but I am also after some advice. I'm currently about 98kg and in my early twenties and due to my build will probably be an Athena for life.

I have been trying to lose weight for about two years now with increasing seriousness and limited success. I've lost only about 5kg in that time. It's frustrating because I look back at what I was doing about two and a half years ago and further back where I was pretty much sedentary - the only exercise was walking to the local train station. I also ate horribly with multiple stops at fast food places throughout the week.

Now it's an average of a bit over an hour of organised activity a day - that doesn't count walking further and walking some places instead of driving. I also eat a lot better although I can identify where I can improve. The thing is, there is such a difference in my lifestyle between then and now and it's not as if I am significantly older to have a lower metabolism but I am not seeing the change in weight I am after. Don't get me wrong, I feel a lot better, being fitter and stronger and can do things I couldn't before.

I'll admit that cycling is not my main form of activity as I am quite into martial arts during this time. However, the weight is on my mind because I am getting the impression that to go harder in this and any form of activity carrying the extra weight, regardless of any increase in strength, is risking injury and lately I have started to feel a few twinges. I aimed to do the couch to 5K program and had to stop on the first session due to knee pain, even though I felt I was fit enough to start it.

So what can I do? I am thinking the biggest further change is in diet, but I am a bit confused as to exactly how much (or how little) I should be eating. I have tried using fitday but I could never seem to find the exact foods I was eating to be confident it was correct. The calories burnt for some activities didn't seem too accurate either. I also really want to avoid counting every calorie in and out like this, but perhaps it's something I really have to do.

So what should I be eating? I am aiming to lose around 10% of weight and reassess each time. So the first goal is about 90kg. Am I looking to be eating only salads and veges all the time for lunch and dinner with a bowel of cereal for breakfast. I am confused as to just how much I need to cut out or cut down. Any guidelines or rules of thumb would be great.

The people around here have already been a great inspiration for me so I'm hoping you can lend a little more help.

Thankyou in advance.

dbikingman

Once I started using fitday, I began losing weight more quickly. Yes, it is a pain to find the right food, I use custom food and enter the information from the packaging. BUT, in conjunction with this I started measuring my portions using a 1/2 cup or cup container to be exact. I started to see what a normal portion was.

While fitday may not be exact, I am not trying to cut my calories that close usually staying way below my limit. As for your riding it may come down to your intesity during the ride. I don't know what the calories burned are for martial arts. Quickly, looking at a chart online it seems close to biking at 14 -16 MPH. But, if you are starting and stopping calories burned maybe lower.

Bottom line, you need to burn more calories then consumed. Spend a week focusing on the foods you eat and really counting portion size and calories. It may be a pain, but it should paint a picture of where you are at.

As for what to eat it is in the calories. I allowed myself a piece of pizza, a burger, and french fires (not all in the same day) last week and I still lost two pounds for the week. But, for each day my calories was below my allowable limit.

Missbumble 

Here's the Bee's experience - Please note it is personal and what works for me may not work for everypne.

Everyone is different - but what has worked for me - is to eat the following:
Breakfast:

1oz oatmeal (weughed on a scale before cook it) (add water to cook)
1 apple - or 8 oz Bluebeery etc
1 c plain nonfat yogurt

Lunch - 8 oz salad, 8 oz veggies, 4-6 oz protein (chicken) and 1 TBS dressing
Dinner- 8 oz salad, 8 oz veggies, 4-6 oz protein (chicken) and 1 TBS dressing

Note - this is what i did for many years. I did not necessarily exercise - it think maybe 3-4 times a week for 40 minutes if that. So by weiughing the food I knew what I was eating. OK - that was a radical plan...and I went to a support group for Complusive eaters...


Now - I am a bit different. I have a different plan.I workout a bunch - with lots of riding, some gym or DVD workouts.

So I have 1 oz oatmeal, a nit of fruit....maybe palin yogurt...

Go on a ride - have a breakfast snack bar 100-140 calories)

Lunch - Subway Chicken 6 inch with mustard, let, tomatoe and baked chips
Snack - 140 calorie bar
Dinner - Sweet potaoe and some salmon, maybe wine or a lite beer or 2.

Lost 100 pounds on the first plan - kept it off for 10 years...Now on the 2nd plan have lost 30 pounds and am a lot happier!

So now I am eating a lot more loosely - and less of a diet mentality. It works for me. I aim to lose 1 pound a week -real slow so I do not feel too deprived.

PM me or I would be happy to chat on the phone if you like. Good Luck!

JoelS

You'll have to count calories. Get an accurate picture of how much you are eating now and cut back 15%. I started by not eating 2nd helpings. Then cut back further by counting calories. I'm currently running at a 500 calorie daily deficit.

You also need to increase your activity level. I cycle now a little over 120 miles a week and am burning 4500 calories a week doing so.

Until you know how many calories are going in, and how many calories are going out, loosing weight will be frustrating.

Richard_Rides

Damn, How much are you riding your bike currently? Are you still doing martial arts?

deraltekluge

First you should find out where you are. Find out what your calorie intake is to maintain your weight. Keep track of everything you eat for a while...a week or two maybe. Once you know how many calories you're eating, you can figure out what to do to lose weight. If you are a normally healthy person, with no metabolic disorders, and you reduce your calorie intake by 500 calories a day, you should lose an average of about a pound a week (almost half a kilogram). Don't try any crash programs or fad diets to lose faster, just go slow and steady. You'll be healthier while you're losing, and it'll be easier to maintain your new weight when you get where you want to be.

There's nothing magical about losing weight. If you take in less than you burn, your body will store the excess as fat. If you burn more than you take in, your body will burn your stored reserves. Exercise helps burn the calories, and it also convinces the body to burn the fat rather than burning the muscles.

StephenH

There have been times in my life where the sole accomplishment of my exercise was that I didn't get any fatter during that time. Comparing where you were 2 years ago and where you are now may be misleading- ideally, you'd compare where you WOULD BE now with where you are now.

CbadRider

Do your clothes fit any differently than 2 years ago? If you increase your exercise and intensity you are building muscle which weighs more than fat. If the clothes are still snug then you need to alter your eating and increase the intensity of your workouts a bit. What works for me is eating 5-7 servings of fruit/vegetables each day. You fill up on that and aren't hungry for junk.

chewybrian 

You have to count calories. Over long time periods, a few hundred calories makes the difference, and they can slip in really easy.

I found quiting sugar made it easy to stay in the calorie budget. Read all the labels, and look for 5g or less per serving. The more sugar, the quicker you feel hungry again. You might be surprised how many non-threatening foods have 15g+ of sugar. Check that cereal label (also, a 'bowel' of cereal might be too much...).

You don't have to be hungry, or eat only veggies. If you cut out the empty calories, you can eat plenty of lean meat, all the green veggies you can handle, and some complex carbs. I made a one-time, permanent lifestyle change, and drifted down 120 pounds in 2 years, and stayed there. If you count the calories, the weight will come off. good luck.

Neil_B

Goodness, I know she's everywhere these days, but in yogurt too? No wonder McCain selected her!

Neil_B

I didn't begin to lose weight until I began to track calories with Fitday. Once you do keep track, you might be surprised at how much you are consuming.

If I eat something that's not in the Fitday database, I add it by entering the data myself as best I can.

damnable

I'm only getting on the bike about once a week. I would really like to increase it because it's low impact but I'm finding it hard to get out there.
A normal week activity wise is as follows.

Mon - Martial art (MA) 2 hours
Tues - Martial art (MA) 2 hours
Wed - rest. I Have the choice of starting another 1.5 hr MA class here, but I think it will be a bit much consecutively to do regularly. Even after training for years I am still sore after every class.
Thurs - Martial art (MA) 2 hours
Fri - rest?
Sat - Gym (weights) and cardio (intervals) 1 - 1.5 hrs or cycle to the gym (only ~11 Km round trip but very hilly)
Sun - Ride. At least 30 mins

I don't think the I would spend as much energy in the martial arts class as is listed in Fitday since I just had a squiz becuase there can be a lot of stop and start going. But you are still soaked with sweat afterwards and fairly exhausted.

Oh well, it looks like I'll have to record what I eat and make sure I am honest with myself.

lil brown bat

damnable, what style of martial arts are you studying, and what's the nature of your workout. Some martial arts classes are a good workout, but some are not.

damnable

Jujutsu and Judo.
First half hour is a pretty intense warmup with about another half hour of sparring for both in each class. The remainder is variable. eg. some times we will forcus on speed (fast, high intesity) and sometimes more on technique (slower, lower intensity) and of course usually a mix of both. I wouldn't count it as exercise if I wasn't exerting myself.

It is always a good workout, some nights more than others though. I do genuinely work hard.

dbikingman

Obviously what you are doing isn't working. If you want different results you have to try a different approach. Sounds like MA is liking working out in the gym was for me, I would sweat during the workout and be slightly sore the next day. But, it wasn't a good weight loss plan.

Consider adding ridiing to Wednesday, and either eliminating one night of MA and adding a two hour ride or cutting out one hour and either walking/running/biking during that time. Set a goal to do this for 3 months. If my math conversion is correct you will need to lose a little less then 1 kg a week which is difficult but still in the safe range.

After, the 3 months you can go back to your current schedule and should then be in a maintaining weight program.
So you say you are increasingly more decidcated, can you dedicate 3 months to get the results you want?

Air

I used to use Fitday but moved over to Sparkspeople and love it. I'm setting up a C&A group for us over there as an fyi - will announce when it's ready for primetime.

The food tracking is so much better than fitday and the overall site is very supporting. You'll really have to count calories and look at the kinds of foods you eat. You may be taking in too much or not enough (so when you have an above average day your body stores the extra).

I'd also recommend setting a really small goal. First two weeks just get used to tracking everything, making sure you're taking in plenty (5-8 servings) of veggies and fruits, plenty (8-12 cups) of water, fiber, and PROTEIN. Then see if you can lose one pound by adjusting your exercise and intake. It will take you a while to find out what foods really help for appetite and which make it worse but in general stay away from simple sugars (white flour, etc...) and take in more complex carbs (whole wheat flour, brown sugar vs white, etc...).

awc380

There's your problem - and probably a source of some slight discomfort.

Air

Also, peruse my sig - have a bunch of threads in there that should be a bit comforting and tidbits of advice. In particular:

Weight Loss Issues:
https://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=337824 - Yo-Yoing weight
https://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=295222 - Plateau-ing [new 5-7-07]
https://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=377498 - Enablers

Weight Loss & Nutrition/Food:
https://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=231402 - Clyde Nutrition and Weight Loss
https://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=423146 - Artificial Sweeteners may cause weight gain

neilfein

I feel that tracking calories makes losing weight more of a chore and less of a lifestyle change. It's interesting for a few weeks, but then gets real old real quick. Here are a few things that helped me; YMMV.

Snacking after dinner: Cutting that out helped enormously. Ask yourself the question before snacking: Am I really hungry or just bored or thirsty? Tell yourself that if yous till want those Oreos you can have them in, say, half an hour. It goes without saying, keep fresh fruit in the house. Apples, grapes, melon, whatever, are awesome snacks. I find that eliminating all unhealthy foods from the house is a bad idea; I'll just go out and eat something even more unhealthy. I won't do that if there are, say, ginger snaps in the pantry.

Eat a variety of foods. If you eat the same breakfast every day, have something different. Get in the habit of giving a little thought to what you eat.

It's not a diet, it's a change in how you look at eating. (I'm not there yet, still working on that one.)

Diet soda is my downfall.

Breakfast rocks.

If you're truly craving something, eat it. (If you're doign this all the time, it's not a craving, it's food addiction.)

Air

Everyone is different but for anyone trying to lose weight especially at the beginning it's important to know what's going in. I agree it's not one of the more fun things to do but if you tend to eat similar foods it becomes pretty quick.

Wogster

Lets see, an Athena is 68kg, so your looking at 30kg, depending on your height, that may not be unreasonable, at the outside 1kg is about as much, on average, as you would like to lose in a week. 1kg is about 7 700 calories, this means to lose 1kg per week, you need to burn 7 700 calories more then you take in. This doesn't mean that you just eat rabbit food, but it does mean, that to be serious, you need to track your consumption and your burn, to make sure that burn exceeds consumption by 1 100 calories per day.

I will assume, that the martial arts is done at a fitness facility of some kind, and therefore that fitness equipment, is available.

I hate to say it but, martial arts is probably one of the worst exercises for weight loss. It's high impact, and tends to be short bursts of energy with longish gaps between bursts, this means that the primary fuel it burns is glycogen, which makes you hungry, and you replenish that by eating. So no real fat burning takes place. For fat burning you want an exercise, done at a moderate level of effort, at a steady rate, over a longer period of time. If you think bicycle, with that statement your on the right track,

Now the bicycle is a great exercise for folks where their weight exceeds what they would like it to be, this is because it's low impact, and weight adds resistance, so the heavier you are, the more you burn. However I don't think your doing it enough. I think I read further down in the thread, that your riding 30 minutes a week, at 20km/h that's about 10km, or maybe 300 calories worth of burn, more if there are hills or a prevailing wind you need to deal with. You should step that up to 30 minutes a day, or better is 1 hour every other day. A good exercise to do on ought days is swimming, something like a crawl or butterfly that is more upper body then lower, add in some weight lifting to help tone. Remember however, lifting a 1kg weight 50 times, is better then lifting a 50kg weight once. Also remember to lift slowly, hold, then put down slowly, for maximum effect. However if you do add some weight lifting, have a trainer show you how to do it properly, it's easy to get hurt otherwise, even with relatively small weights.

On days when the weather makes cycling difficult, either use a stationary bike at the fitness facility or get a trainer for home use. Also remember you now have folks from all over the world, here pulling for you, we are your weight loss support group

Oh well, it looks like the rain we were expecting this afternoon has shuffled off to Buffalo, and the Environment Canada weather radar shows no rain in the immediate vicinity, at it's 23 degrees out, so I think I will go and see if I can get in a quick 16km myself

Missbumble 

Amazing Post! Very supportive. Thanks Wogster for all the info - of coiurse this is not the Bees post - but I just loved reading it. Hmmmm maybe I will start swimming. Do Bee's swim?

deraltekluge

I think that that's true, but you probably should start by doing it, so that you really know what amount of calories you're consuming and what you have to do to cut back.

lil brown bat

That would be unusual at most dojos.

Weeeelll....I'm going to agree in part and disagree in part. I don't think that martial arts is a good exercise for weight loss for most people, but not because of the business about glycogen rather than fat getting burned. The "fat-burning zone" is a bit of a myth and a lot of a misunderstanding. It is true that in general, exercise at a higher intensity burns a higher percentage of carbohydrates than exercise at a lower intensity. What's often overlooked, however, is that you're talking about percentages, not absolute numbers -- and that what you really care about, at the end of the day, is the total number of grams of fat you burn. A higher percentage of a lower number isn't necessarily going to be greater than a lower percentage of a higher number, and could in fact be less. For more explanation about why you should be careful about structuring your exercise around the "fat-burning zone", and why there are other added benefits to vigorous exercise, see this article.

The downsides to a martial arts workout are, as I see it:

• It's hard to quantify how much of a workout you're getting. You can't wear a heart rate monitor in a martial arts class, and there's so much variance in intensity between different classes (and different activities in the same class), that it's hard to figure out if you're getting "enough" of a workout. This is particularly problematic when someone is trying to lose weight and is "stalled".
• Martial arts tend to require certain kinds of fitness more than they tend to develop it. For example, aikido, which I practice, relies heavily on core strength. It is not, however, a "core strength workout" -- by which I mean that if you wanted to develop core strength, the most effective and efficient exercises for doing that would be different from what you'd do in an aikido class (which tends to require you to already have core strength). If you can keep training and manage to avoid getting injured, you will eventually develop whatever kind of fitness your style most emphasizes -- but it's not the most efficient way to go about it.
• It's fairly easy to get injured -- not so much by a partner (this is actually relatively rare), but self-inflicted injuries are common. Sprains, strains and repetitive injuries are particularly hazardous to a newly active person, because they're less likely to recognize them, treat them properly and take steps to avoid them. More serious injuries can also happen, such as a shoulder separation caused by not rolling properly -- again, more likely to happen with someone who's been sedentary.
• There's a lot of crap out there. The average person gets his/her ideas of martial arts from the movies and isn't a terribly educated consumer (and martial arts teaching is unregulated -- anyone can hang out a shingle and claim to be a 57th degree black belt in Bull Shi Do, make up some impressive-sounding crap and ensnare the gullible). Sensible people will discount movie nonsense, but at the same time, they won't know the good stuff when they see it.

At the same time, martial arts training has some advantages as well. Perhaps the biggest of these is that it seems intrinsically more interesting than exercise for exercise's sake. A sedentary person might be more drawn to a martial art than going to a gym because they will be learning something, not simply repeating the same actions day after day. In addition, a good dojo is a supportive social environment. People will help you, mentor you, encourage you, expect you to show up and call you when you don't (and dojo parties are great...but that's another topic).

thump55

I was told once by a friend who lost a lot of weight- "I make sure I sweat every day"
It sounds silly, but he made sure that in addition to other excercise (walking for instance), that he made enough effort to sweat everyday. Counting calories will help, but in my experience, I can only "maintain" with my diet. In order to lose, I have to sweat.