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I Need Help!

Old 03-12-2010, 02:14 PM
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Default I Need Help!

Hey everyone, I need some advice on what you do to burn more calories in everyday activities. I'm having trouble with my caloric burn, I feel like I should be doing more because I'm not losing any weight...I could also use help with what to eat...it's hard for me to try and lose weight and I keep getting discouraged due to not losing weight...any suggestions? I could really use them.
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Old 03-13-2010, 04:57 PM
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Well what/how much do you eat a day?....how many calories should you be eating and how many are you eating?

Outside of everyday normal life, what else are you doing? walking around the block? riding a bike? swimming? gym?

you need about 500 calories less a day (3500/week) to lose a pound of weight
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Old 03-13-2010, 07:10 PM
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Well, I eat about 2000 calories per day, I exercise some days I burn 3000 calories, other days 2250, some days its somewhere inbetween. Sorry, but I walk/run 6 days per week, alternating days, plus a couple of times a week I do pushups, sit-ups, and side crunches. I haven't lost ANY weight though and I can't seem to figure out why...it's highly disappointing and even more discouraging. I was wondering if I should join a gym and get some more working out in or something, or if I should just wait and see what happens...
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Old 03-13-2010, 08:54 PM
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If you're willing to join a gym, I would HIGHLY suggest doing some weight training. Weight training helps to improve your overall health, it helps to increase your metabolism and thus will help you lose weight. More importantly, it will help you replace the fat with lean muscle, which is definately what you want.

Look into interval training, where you jump your heart rate up and down during a workout. Be sure that you're not over training as that can have an adverse effect on your overall goal as well.

For nutrition you want to focus on having 30% fat, 30% protein and 40% carbs. The more fruits, veggies, whole foods and lean protein the better.
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Old 03-14-2010, 07:05 AM
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Weight training? Really? I always thought of that as something guys did to build muscle. I've never really thought about doing it myself, but could it really help me that much? Oh jeez now I'm all confused again...
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Old 03-14-2010, 08:04 AM
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Default For weight training info...

Check out New Rules of Lifting for Women by Lou Schuler for an explanation of why this isn't just for men.

His program is pretty aggressive and involves taking in more calories than most eating plans call for; my recommendation is that you take what you want from his information and ignore the rest.

It's all about finding what works for you.
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Old 03-14-2010, 11:40 AM
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When I started doing this I went a couple of weeks where I didn't really lose any weight, but I'd gone from working out 1-2 times a week to everyday. So I think in the beginning I wasn't seeing my efforts on the scale because even though I was losing some fat I was gaining muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat by the way.

I don't know about that caloric intake either, although it's hard to say since I don't know how much you weigh or how tall you are. On 2000 calories/day I would probably be gaining weight unless I spent 2-3 hours at the gym. You might want to drop that down a little for a couple of days and see if that moves the dial on the scale.
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Old 03-14-2010, 11:52 AM
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Sorry but this is a pet peeve of mine...muscle does not "weigh more" than fat. A pound of fat weighs a pound. A pound of muscle weighs a pound. However, the pound of muscle takes up less space than the pound of fat because the muscle is more dense. So you could weigh the same but be smaller and more fit. (Actually, the phrase that really gets to me is "a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat"). I suppose if you wanted to be very precise you could say that the same number of cubic inches of muscle tissue weighs more than the same number of cubic inches of fat tissue, but who wants to go into that?

But I digress.

Have you considered measuring with a tape measure (Fitday has a Body tab to enter these results) instead of judging progress by the scale?

I have found this calorie estimator to be the most accurate (for me, anyway, others' mileage may vary). If you feel you are at a standstill, click on the 7-day calorie cycle tab and read that info; it can help you prevent or break out of plateaus.

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

Last edited by cjohnson728; 03-14-2010 at 01:19 PM.
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Old 03-15-2010, 02:00 AM
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Originally Posted by cjohnson728
Sorry but this is a pet peeve of mine...muscle does not "weigh more" than fat. A pound of fat weighs a pound. A pound of muscle weighs a pound. However, the pound of muscle takes up less space than the pound of fat because the muscle is more dense. So you could weigh the same but be smaller and more fit. (Actually, the phrase that really gets to me is "a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat"). I suppose if you wanted to be very precise you could say that the same number of cubic inches of muscle tissue weighs more than the same number of cubic inches of fat tissue, but who wants to go into that?
very true.
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Old 03-15-2010, 06:41 AM
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Sorry I'm an architect I think in terms of volume and mass. A cubic inch of muscle weighs more than a cubic inch of fat. Happy now? I was just trying to point out that when I first started working out everyday I built up the weight of my muscles almost faster than I lost fat, so it kept the scale at the same place for a while. And it seems like the original poster might actually be having the same problem and needed a bit of a pep talk to keep it going.
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