BMI OF 42 - work out 6 times per week - gaining weight!!!
I'm almost 40. 2 months ago I decided to start working out Again. It hurt badly for the first few weeks. BUT, today I was able to run 2 miles without stopping! I typically do spinning, weights, running, and a step class here and there.
Wanna know my progress in two months?? I've gained about 6 pounds. I don't get it. I don't understand it. Am I eating well? No, not really. But Jesus... At my weight I should be burning 4500 calories a day at this intensity level but I'm not - I'm gaining weight. I swear guys - it feels literally impossible. I feel like I am faced with 2 choices.
1. Quit working out and focus on diet only. Becoming bored out of my mind and not feeling good after a workout like I do now
2. Upkeep,working out and see where it ends up. Maybe if I keep working out I can hit 300 by summer...
I'm just so frustrated. I'm 5'9 and weigh 286 pounds. 9 years ago I weighed 175. I've seen all the movies and read all the books.
Sommersize, Atkins, the zone, wheat belly, fed up, forks over knives, overeaters anonymous, Paleo, South Beach, fast metabolism diet and nothing nothing nothing has worked.
I honestly don't know why I even keep monitoring my weight.
If you like working out.. then work out. Really it is benefiting your health even if you aren't losing, but ultimately you're going to decide whether it's worth it on it's own for you or not. Weight loss, at least for most people, is largely about diet. You said you haven't been eating well.. what is a typical meal day like for you?
I'm not trying to be mean here, but there is no way you're burning 4500 calories a day, I'm sorry.. Even at your weight an hour straight of high intensity for some of the highest calorie burning exercises is only 500-700 calories. The calorie counters on exercise equipment are often very, very wrong. So if you're eating thinking you're burning that much in a day, that very well could be why you're gaining.
You're right. I don't mean I'm burning 4500 calories during the workout. I meant to maintain my weight at my activity level the total number of calories per day I use is around 4500. I learned that for moderate activity people to take your body weight and multiply it by 15. Sedentary 10 and high activity level 20. That's just to maintain weight.
Typical day is bacon and eggs in am, salad with chili at lunch, Qudoba (or something similar) at night, and a small desert.
I guess what I'm looking for is a time machine back to when as long as I worked out I could drink / eat anything I wanted and not gain...
Last edited by addicted golfer; 12-02-2014 at 01:45 AM.
You should be noticing some benefits of exercising. If you're pushing yourself too hard then it's no wonder you're losing interest. Exercise is really important to a healthy body and mind so please find a way to continue doing it, it doesn't have to be at an extreme level.
And sunarie said it right, weight loss comes from addressing your diet. You can't exercise away a bad diet. You mentioned the fact that you've watched all these movies, did you put some of those practices into place? Some of the movies you mentioned I find to have scaremonger agendas. I don't feel it's necessary to scare people in order to motivate them, fear is not motivating.
As you know, there are many diets out there. If followed and continued they all work. The trick is to finding a way of eating that you can stick to. It takes most of us years to build up good habits, and every diet that I have tried and failed has at least taught me something. In the end I found that eating less and moving more has worked for me by incorporating an intuitive eating approach.
When you say you're not eating really well, what does that mean? A couple of days a week of not eating well can lead to no weight loss. How many calories are you eating in a day and how many on the not eating well days?
Most weight is loss strictly with diet, with exercise as a way to become healthy. Note that becoming healthy, which is sounds like you are, is not necessarily the same thing as losing weight. And trust me, many people vastly underestimate the amount of calories burned by exercise.
I am thinking from what you said, it's time to really look closely at your diet.
You're right. I don't mean I'm burning 4500 calories during the workout. I meant to maintain my weight at my activity level the total number of calories per day I use is around 4500. I learned that for moderate activity people to take your body weight and multiply it by 15. Sedentary 10 and high activity level 20. That's just to maintain weight.
Typical day is bacon and eggs in am, salad with chili at lunch, Qudoba (or something similar) at night, and a small desert.
I guess what I'm looking for is a time machine back to when as long as I worked out I could drink / eat anything I wanted and not gain...
4500 is still a lot.. I'm not all that far off from your weight, and I actually started at around 260 before joining these forums. Even with 40 minutes to an hour of Zumba (which is considered high intensity for me), to lose 1 pound a week I need to keep under around 2800 calories because aside from the workout, my life is pretty sedentary. At the weight I'm currently at, it's close to 1800 calories per day, plus whatever I burn through exercise.
The day of food you described doesn't really sound bad, but if you're eating multiple servings in your portions it can quickly add up. I would really suggest using something like MyFitnessPal and tracking for a few days just to see how many calories you're really taking in versus what you're burning. Even if you don't lose it long term, it'll help to get an idea of where the problem is. I found out when I started that serving sizes were a lot smaller than I thought they'd be.. me eyeballing a cup of something doesn't work, and there are a lot more calories in some of my old favorites than I would have guessed.
I also get the idea that you really, really don't want to diet, restrict, or count calories. Intuitive eating may be a plan to look into for you. It doesn't involve tracking anything, and more involves getting to know your body and what it needs again so that you can rely on it's signals instead of having to count all the things. Wannabeskinny could definitely give you more information on it, and there's a thread in one of the other sub forums about it too.
With the food thing it does seem to be all about finding the plan that works for you. I've done most of the diets you've read about over the past decade, and failed at all of them, plus gained more than what I lost when I failed. Not a single one of them lasted over a month. This go around I've been doing Weight Watchers, or at least using online tools I found for it for free. The plan meshes well with my lifestyle and is finally something I can do long term, which is important for maintenance later. Nothing is off limits but it does steer you towards healthier choices, and helps you learn portion control. It's not for everyone, but it works for me.. you just have to find the one that works for you, and that tends to take a lot of trial and error.
Count calories. An hour of running at your height/weight would burn around 600-700 calories and I do mean running. It sounds like you are greatly overestimating your calorie burn.
I guess what I'm looking for is a time machine back to when as long as I worked out I could drink / eat anything I wanted and not gain...
Thanks sunarie for the shout out. This statement to me also screams for an unwillingness to restrict/control/diet. I can certainly understand the sentiment because I want that to. Not because I'm lazy and not willing to do any work, but because the process of dieting and restricting causes me to relapse and binge and that has caused weight gain of its own.
For many of us we can look back in our lives and think of a time where we didn't care about our weight, we didn't care about being skinny, and YET we remember eating whatever we wanted and being thinner. We might chalk that up to youth and a fast metabolism but that's hardly why we were thinner in those days. What was really going on is that we didn't have a preoccupation with getting thinner, and our bodies weren't feeling deprived all the time, nor were they being punished by our own guilt. People underestimate the negative effect that guilt and deprivation have on us, it's the reason why one day we can willpower through a day of dieting and the next crumble into a huge binge. Intuitive eating talks about this a lot if you're interested.
I think it is just as likely that when we look back on a past when we "ate what we wanted and worked out and seemed to maintain a better body weight", it turns out that back then we weren't eating the portion sizes and/or foods we are eating now.
When I ate less I weighed less. When I ate more, I wanted to weigh what I weighed when I ate less -- alas, it didn't work that way... for me.
I had to chuckle at one of my students yesterday, who NEEDS to eat something in order to maintain behavior through the afternoon...and when told to sit down and eat, whined in the LOUDEST whiniest voice "but i'm not hungryyyyyyyyyyyyy" despite his behavior saying otherwise
and I just had to chuckle to myself because when was the last time I didn't eat because I wasn't hungry....???...ugh I always struggle with eating because it's there, or i'm tired, or i'm bored, or it looks good, etc etc etc
I can relate to this because when I started I was under the impression that if I exercised quite a bit I could not worry so much about my diet and after a month I had lost exactly zero lbs. (No gain though!)
Bottom line is you cannot out exercise a poor diet unless you're a full time athlete and even then it might not be possible. There is no reason to stop working out but you have to get a handle on your diet because ultimately if you don't establish good dietary habits you will never be able to maintain any loss.
I suggest you count calories at least for a little while and see how much you're consuming. From there you can determine if you want to continue counting calories or if you want to go to a low carb type of diet such as Paleo.
This is why I struggled to lose weight for 2 decades. It's what you eat that matters for weight loss and nobody taught me that. Exercise can help, and does other great things, but weight loss is made in the kitchen. Muscles are made in the kitchen and the gym.
Time to ditch the bacon, the chili, the quodoba and the dessert. Get some lean protein in you: eggs (anyway you like them), fish (broiled, canned), chicken (not fried).
Give it seven days and report back. You'd probably see results after one day.
How do you figure 4500 calories? Assuming you're male your BMR is 2421. You really believe you burn over 2000 calories in activities? Seriously? How? You need to reference a better calculator.
Your basal metabolic rate -- if you're male -- (meaning, if you do NOTHING but lie in bed, all day, you burn 2421 calories just living and digesting whatever you eat). Most people who have a normally active day can add about 500 calories to their BMR and still lose weight. Personally I think most people over estimate how much activity they get versus how much food they consume, which is where scales come in. Weighing, logging and calculating how much food you've really eaten keeps you honest.
So, long story short, you're eating/drinking too much. You need to start logging your food and being honest with yourself. You shouldn't be eating more than 2900 calories a day on active days and about 25 to 30% of those calories should be coming from protein, the rest divided equally between carbs and fats.
Buy a food scale, find a food diary you like, learn to measure portions and take care of your body (seriously, it's not about exercise, it's about what you shovel into your pie hole) ... or not and deal with the health/life consequences of obesity. Your choice.
I'll echo pretty much everyone else...it's time to change your diet.
I had a similar mindset as you when I began trying to lose weight. I joined the gym in January 2013 and assumed I could continue eating how I ate (which I thought was healthy and properly proportioned). It wasn't until that August, when I had seen very little movement in the scale, that I finally made changes to my diet. It was tough to admit, and it's still been slow going ever since, but I wouldn't have gotten here if I didn't make some serious changes to what and how much I ate.
I wish you luck in your journey. There's lots to be learned here, and I know seeing the harsh truth can hurt, but take it with a grain of salt, evaluate yourself honestly, and go from there.
BMI OF 42 - work out 6 times per week - gaining weight!!!
