HELP....Why am I not loosing weight?

[dpaschal]

Hello all.  I am a 37 year old female who weights 238 lbs and I am 5'4 inches tall.  I have lost about 20 lbs. in the last 3 months, but the weight loss has stopped.   I eat between 1200-1500 calories per day. I exercise 6 days per week. With cardio, I usually burn around 350-375 calories on 4 of those days.  The other 2 days I burn around 200 calories with my cardio and I also do so light strength training, but I'm not sure how much I burn doing that. Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?  Am I eating enough calories or am I eating too much?  Am I working out too much or not enough?   PLEASE HELP......

[danny1993]

well i dnt Know how much food the amout of cals ur eating (to look at if u get me)


but if u dnt eat as much then your bady thinks that u are strving it then all the food u eat after that is turn into fat reserves


aslo musle wieghs more that fat so u could be putting on musle

and also u need to be eating the right kid of food


:D:D

hope i helped u

[xoxLaurynxox]

Everybody needs a set amount of colories for you body to function, (that is not doing anything not even digesting food or walking around) this is called your Basal Metabolism.

If you don't give your body enough food, it goes into famine mode, in which any calories that you eat will be stored. if you eat a healthy number and raise your metabolism your body will be regular and only take the amount you need.

A good website to find the amount of colories you need is:
http://www.reply42.com/metabolism/index.php

That also tells you how many you should eat to lose weight.

hope that helped

[dpaschal]

Thanks, I'll try the website you suggested.

[stedro]

Well firstly congratulations on losing 20 lbs. But now it seems your body has stopped responding. 1200-1500 calories sounds like a good amount, but what types of foods are you eating?

I would suggest maybe lower the carbohydrates and increase the amount of protein to keep the calories the same ( both 1g of protein and carbs is about 4 Kcal). Maybe decrease your carbs by 20g and increase the protein by the same amount.

Also its a good idea to make sure you are consuming enough good fats that you can get from oily fish like salmon, and nuts.

Some supplements which might be useful if you are not getting enough from your diet would be a multi vitamin, fish oil, calcium.

Its also a good idea to eat small amounts often, say every 3 hrs. This is supposed to keep the metabolism quite high. Also your metabolism will be highest when you wake up in the morning, so you want breakfast to be your biggest meal of the day, and try to avoid eating before you go to sleep.  

Drinking enough water is also important especially if you are exercising quite frequently (10 glasses a day should be enough).

Also make sure you are sleeping enough, 8 hrs should be enough. Apprently the body produces quite a bit of hGH whilst sleeping which is quite a potent fat burner, and people who do not get enough sleep have elevated cortisol levels which helps promote fat storage, which maybe why when people are stressed they find they gain weight.

As for exercising 6 times a week, it sounds to much, but that depends on the intensity you're exercising at. It is likely you are overtraining, which could mean elevated cortisol levels. I would cut it back to 4 times a week, and make sure it is quite intense. Also as for the strength training, it would be good to stick with compound weight exercises for 10-15 reps, such as rows for your back and biceps, some bench presses for chest, shoulders and triceps, squats for your lower body, and some abdominal work. With these exercises though, your form is very important to make sure you stay injury free.

Other supplements which might be useful if you are not getting enough from diet would be a multi vitamin, fish oil, calcium.

Oh, and 1 thing a few fitness atheletes do when on a calorie restricted diet is every 5th day or so they will over eat just to try shock the bodys metabolismm into speeding up, so you could eat say 2,000 calories every 5th day.

Sorry i went on a bit :(