I figured I'd sign up and see what this place was all about. I noticed traffic flowing through to an article I had written from a thread on this forum. Looks like a pretty active community.
A little about me...
I'm 30 years old... 31 in June. More notably in June, I'm expecting my second child, which I cannot wait for. I'm happily married with a little girl who's going on 2. We live outside of Philadelphia.
On the fitness front, I'm currently working my way back from a pretty nasty concussion that I sustained in February from a mountain bike crash. Had to take a lot of time off from strength training and subsequently lost a good deal of strength.
My goals now and before the crash all revolve around performance. I'm not big on tracking my weight or anything like that. In my view, form follows function, so if I'm constantly striving to increase "function" and pairing that with a sensible diet, "form" will follow suit.
Not that it matters, but I'm a fitness consultant, for lack of a better term. I'm very passionate about exercise and diet information, so naturally I enjoy spending time on forums such as this.
So thanks for having me and I look forward to familiarizing myself with the community.
Glad to meet you.
Since you are a fitness consultant a question for you.
My trainer tells me to do 1 day back, 1 day legs and 1 day shoulder weight training. Core exercise every day. Since I am 60 years old, I should allow 48 hours rest for each muscle group.
But, I like to exercise every day and I start my exercise with interval cardio for 15 min. Followed by strength training for 20 min. Followed by yoga for 20 min.
I eat all perfectly healthy food. I lost around 22 lbs and now it has stopped for nearly 7 months. My dress size has been dropping though.
Can you tell me what could be wrong?
Glad to meet you.
Since you are a fitness consultant a question for you.
My trainer tells me to do 1 day back, 1 day legs and 1 day shoulder weight training. Core exercise every day. Since I am 60 years old, I should allow 48 hours rest for each muscle group.
But, I like to exercise every day and I start my exercise with interval cardio for 15 min. Followed by strength training for 20 min. Followed by yoga for 20 min.
I eat all perfectly healthy food. I lost around 22 lbs and now it has stopped for nearly 7 months. My dress size has been dropping though.
Can you tell me what could be wrong?
Frankly, there isn't one set way of going about things - 60 or not. It's pretty much folklore that you need 48 hours between bouts in order to recover. Granted, most trainers base their advice on hearsay.
Now quite honestly, the "rule" of resting 48 hrs between bouts isn't necessarily detrimental. In fact, in more cases than not, it's likely optimal. At the end of the day though, programming needs to be tailored to the individual. The process of tailoring should factor in things like individual recovery ability, training experience, strength levels, schedule, etc.
As an example though, I have clients your age who resistance train 6 days per week successfully. Something a lot of people forget about is the fact that our bodies adapt to a stress (such as progressive resistance training) on a variety of levels. Everyone is well aware that one of those adaptations is increased strength/muscle. But people tend to forget about things like an adaptation to recovery ability and the ability to handle training frequency.
Sorry for the diatribe... hopefully the above opens your eyes to the fact that there are no hard-fast rules like the ones you see many trainers espouse. Well there are some... but they're very simplistic and often overlooked.
Specific to what you're doing, if you were my client, I'd likely try spreading out the types of exercise you're doing. It's great that your schedule permits as much exercise as it does. But lumping everything together, at times, can have a dilutive effect. For instance, depending on your goals, you might only need 2-4 days of resistance training. So dedicate those days to that and insert conditioning work on the other days.
In regards to the resistance training, I hardly ever setup programs where you're training one body part per session and each body part once per week. For a variety of reasons, you should be hitting each major muscle group multiple times per week... which is where stuff like full body training comes into play, which I can get into if you've not heard of it before.
Based on your question, it sounds like your goal is continued fat loss. Most notably you mentioned that your dress sizes continue to drop. Don't fall into the trap of letting the scale dictate success or failure. Simultaneous body composition changes (fat down, muscle up) can certainly happen.
If you do find that you hit a wall on the scale and in terms of body comp, I'd turn to your nutrition first and foremost before looking at your exercise. It's very rare where the culprit behind a plateau is the actual exercise program. Much more often than not it's something nutritionally or it's a mismanagement of expectations/patience or it's messed up "math" pertaining to calorie needs/metabolism.
I've already rambled away for far too long and I'm sure you have more questions than answers. So let them fly if you're still interested in what I have to say and I'll do my best to help.
Thank you very much. I follow 17 day diet program from June11. It consists of 3 cycles of 17 days.
1 st cycle.
2 fruits, 2 yogurlow fat, 3 green teas
Proteins and lots of veges.
2 nd cycle
2 fruits, 2 low fat yogurt, 3 green teas
2 complex carbs, limited proteins, lots of veges on odd days
Proteins and lots of veges on even days
3 rd cycle
2 fruits, 2 low fat yogurt, 3 green teas
2 complex carbs, limited proteins, lots of veges all 17 days.
This diet worked for me.
Then my trainer changed it to 1500- 1700 diet
With protin shakes and more complexcarbs but nothing changed in 5 weeks.
So, i reverted back to 17DD.
This is my history. I always cook from scratch, use extra vergin. Olive oil,
Eat brown rice whenever allowed.
I'm not a big fan of special food combining strategies. Not that they can't work... it's just that they're promoted as something special. When in fact if they work, they work in spite of the special combinations of foods. And why they work in spite of the special rules is because it keeps you in a consistent calorie deficit.
In addition, I don't ever see a reason to go through low protein stages for the healthy, normal person.
Granted, there's a lot more to reaching goals than controlling calories. But caloric control is the foundation of a pyramid, meaning it's the most important.
And I can't tell if your calorie intake is in an appropriate ballpark unless I know what your current weight is along with what your highest weight was. Also, please let me know if there are any health complications or meds that would interfere with metabolic rate as well as your age.
Thanks
Last edited by Steve Troutman; 03-28-2012 at 09:27 PM.
I do not take any medicines, I am perfectly healthy. My heighest weight was 184 lb in Dec 10. Current weight is between 158 - 160lb.
I have started replacing some of animal proteins (chicken breast skinless fatless, salman and tilapia) by white beans and aduki beans and lentils.
My weight is stagnant at 158-160 from Oct 11.
Thank you for taking so much interest in my condition.
Hi,
Thank you for taking interest in my condition.
I was 184 lb in Dec 10 and 160 in Oct 11.
Now 158- 160.
I do not take any medicine, my all medical readings are good according to my doctor.
Mostly I eat skinless, fatless chicken breast, salman and tilapia.
Recently, I have started replacing some of the meat by white beans, red beans and lentils.
I am good cook. I cook from scratch.
Use extra vergin olive oil and canola for cooking, do not use butter.
Cook all colored veges in a week. each meal consists of lots of veges.
like carrots, tomatoes, egg plants, cabbge -green and violet, cauli flower, broccoli, beans- flat and long, greens of all kinds, some times beets,mashrooms
very rarely potatoes boiled. etc.
From what I can tell, you're saying you consume roughly 1700 calories per day. Is that right?
If so, how accurate would you say that estimation is? Are you using a food scale to verify? Are you consistent... I mean really consistent? I find a lot of people tend to remember the good days and forget the bad. Not saying that's the case with you. Just saying.
Regardless of how "good" you are, the bottom line is, the vast majority of times a plateau arises, the catalyst is erroneous calorie intake and expenditure estimations. The research that supports this is nearly endless. Heck, I can show you research where dietitians were pretty horrible at tracking calorie intake accurately.
Got you!!
I should count calories using scale, so far I have been avoiding that. I should again start writing food log and calories in it.
Can I skip counting calories of green, yellow and red veges?
Thanks for everything.
While fibrous veggies have very low energy densities, they still provide (energy) calories. They count. So it really depends on how much of them you're eating and how precise you want to be.
Today I counted every little piece I ate and the calories were 1326
I am sure I do not eat 1700 calories ever.
It is 9. P.m. i am feeling full, I have to drink 1 cup of 1%milk with 55 cal protein powder, which is going to be difficult.
Including milk and protein powder cal will be 1326
Hmm!!
Wherever calories mentioned, like yogurt, 1 cup milk, protein powder
I added the calories.
In case of veges like zucchini, cooked veges and cooked chicken I weighed.
Then I looked up table of nutritional facts of the food item and calculated calories of the item.
Then I added all the calories.
Eg
Breakfast
1 egg 74
2 egg white 50
1 tsp olive oil 40
1 cup green tea 2
1/2 c straberries 40
Snack
Dannon's yogurt 70
Lunch
Cooked zucchini and yallow squash 1 cup 30
Cooked cabbage 1/2 cup 30
1/3 cup plain yogurt lowfat 35
Chicken skinless, fatless cooked 2 oz 70
Olive oil 1 tsp. 40
Snacks
Dole's mixed fruit gel 60
Apple 2oz 29
Dark chocolate 1/2 piece 30
Tea with 1/2 cup 1% milk 55
Cheese single. 65
Rusk. 70
1/4 cup honey bunches of oats 43
Dinner
Chicken 4 oz. 140
1/2 c cooked cabbage 30
1 cup zucchini cooked. 30
Homemade mango salsa 1 cup. 100
1 tsp. Olive oil. 40
Post dinner
1 c 1% milk. 102
1 scoop protein powder. 140
Total calories whole day. 1414
I had to eat all that snack today to come near 1400 calories, I do not eat
All that snack in afternoon.
Hello
