hello, any advice?

[Canovian]

hi all

have been losing weight for about a year now and it has came off slowly which is fine, have lost about 45lbs.

i am 5' 5" in my bare feet and have always felt I am the right weight just about a foot too short...!

I am trying to lose about another 15lbs and have started training several times a week, currently swimming and jogging, I swim up to 4kms a week and run maybe 10 to 12 miles a week at the moment, also cycle on occasion.

I have started to track more closely what i eat as i seem to have plateaued around the 165 to 168lbs mark, I think I am not eating enough at present, so my body is storing.

With my calorie deficit at around 1500 calories i think I need to drop this to maybe 600 to 1000 would that be correct

Trying to eat more protein as I do not want to lose muscle so maybe I am still burning fat and have gained more muscle mass with exercising more. i know it is trial and error so will keep going until i drop another 15lbs or so.

Any advice would be gratefully received

[hbrown3333]

Well first off all congratulations of 45 lbs! That is fantastic. Just a couple of questions...
"i am 5' 5" in my bare feet and have always felt I am the right weight just about a foot too short...!"...so just to be clear, are you happy with the way you look but are stuck on the number? And also, did you JUST start training or have you been doing that all along? With that said I would say two things... first, don't get stuck on the number if you are happy with your appearance. Second, if you are just now starting to train then you are going to build muscle (which is a good thing) so that will start to put a damper on the actual number going down. Muscle weighs more than fat. Congrats on your weight loss and keep up the good work!

[Canovian]

Thanks for the response

I suppose I am ok at the moment about my appearance it is more of a health thing for me I feel that losing another 15lbs will do me good I am not stuck on that number at all and would stop if I thought I didn't look or feel ok.

I have just started exercising more consistently in the past month and have only found the website in the last few weeks so have found it interesting to track more consistently what I am eating.

I have been following a diet based on "Ideal Protein" which for me has worked quite well, I did find it a little expensive but substituted their protein for whey shakes and this has been good!

I will continue to eat more healthily and exercise more, will experiment with the split between fat carbs and protein and see what works for me, maybe see a Dietician if I cannot fathom it out.

At present am eating a split of 40/40/20 with fat being the lowest amount, I am unsure as to calorie deficit which works for me so again will experiment with that as well, as long as I am not gaining I am ok!

[Kathy13118]

You could have the energy expenditure wrong in your calculations. I know that fitday assigns certain activities some caloric deficit value. However, if you ate at a level for sedentary activity, what would that level be?

Without being specific about numbers... exercise as if you ate way above your recommended level of calories, and eat as if you were sedentary.

I've been walking up and down nine flights of stairs for the past week, every day. Plus the normal, everyday activities I normally do (the reason for the stairs has to do with visiting a person on the 9th floor of a building and always using stairs, never the elevator). I am eating slightly more than my usual caloric intake. How much do you want to bet that it has made little if any difference in my weight this week? I really, really wish it did!