Ok, fine, whatever, I give up

"Luna" wrote in message

Well, I _thought_ I'd broken my stall, but I went for my last
weigh-in at Curves today, and I was down a half pound. Which is back
to what I was in January. I go from 156 to 156.5 and back to 156,
with likewise minute fluctuations in measurements that are probably
due to different people measuring me in slightly different ways.

I've been working out 5 - 6 days a week, weight lifting 3x a week,
cardio as a warm up on weight days, and more cardio on non-weight
days. I'm pushing myself as hard as I can on the working out. I've
been averaging around 1200 calories a day, about 30g of carbs a day.
snip

You said you were tracking what you ate in Fitday.......what % fats,
protein, and carbs are you eating? Even if you keep carbs low, eating too
much protein can stall you.

I'd try cutting the amount of protein you eat in half and replacing it with
fats for a week or two and see what happens.

DJ Delorie wrote:

Ok, for females this may be close to the "lean" area, as I've read
that "ideal" for females is 22%. I'm at about 19-20% (vs ideal of
15%) which is about where you are, relatively speaking.

Not to be a downer, but for women acceptable is 25-31%, fit is below
24% and lean/athletic is 20% and below -- with over 32% being obese.
Some groups report the US national average for women is around 26%,
some say 22% -- I would suspect 26% is closer to the real answer.



--
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"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!"
-Emiliano Zapata

Check out the a.s.d.l-c FAQ at: http://www.grossweb.com/asdlc/faq.htm

Luna wrote:

I've been working out 5 - 6 days a week, weight lifting 3x a week,
cardio
as a warm up on weight days, and more cardio on non-weight days. I'm
pushing myself as hard as I can on the working out. I've been averaging
around 1200 calories a day, about 30g of carbs a day.

Tell us exactly what you've been doing: lifts, weight, sets, reps,
and some equally exact numbers for your cardio work.


--
Rudy - Remove the Z from my address to respond.

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!"
-Emiliano Zapata

Check out the a.s.d.l-c FAQ at: http://www.grossweb.com/asdlc/faq.htm

RRzVRR writes:
Not to be a downer, but for women acceptable is 25-31%, fit is below
24% and lean/athletic is 20% and below

That would put 22% in the middle of the "lean" range, yes?

Some groups report the US national average for women is around 26%,
some say 22% -- I would suspect 26% is closer to the real answer.

Average != ideal though.

RRzVRR writes:
Not to be a downer, but for women acceptable is 25-31%, fit is below
24% and lean/athletic is 20% and below

That would put 22% in the middle of the "lean" range, yes?

Sorry, I meant middle of the "fit" range :-P

"Penelope Baker" writes:
One thing about the carb up is that they tend to be more effective if you
keep the fats VERY low and the kcal VERY high.

Yeah, and the prep work (weight training) is important too, because it
sets up your muscles to suck up all those carbs (and get rid of them
afterwards). Otherwise, you just get bloated.

DJ Delorie wrote:

RRzVRR writes:

Not to be a downer, but for women acceptable is 25-31%, fit is below
24% and lean/athletic is 20% and below

That would put 22% in the middle of the "lean" range, yes?


Luna wrote:

Height: 5'4", weight, 156, BF% 27.5. Morning temp? I have no idea, never
heard of checking it as part of a weight loss plan. Blood pressure was
normal last I had it checked, in November.

So I was saying that she's considered around average/acceptable --
which is so much better than overweight or obese, but there is room
for improvement.

To me fit doesn't mean lean. For the people I measure (and myself)
lean for women is 20% and under. Women in the 20-24% range look
healthy but don't that much muscle definition.

FYI for men the levels a essential 2-4%, athletes 6-13%, fit
14-17%, acceptable 18-25% and obese 26%+. I think the national
average for men is around 20%.

So for women 22% is fit, 22% for men is acceptable.


Some groups report the US national average for women is around 26%,
some say 22% -- I would suspect 26% is closer to the real answer.


Average != ideal though.

--
Rudy - Remove the Z from my address to respond.

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!"
-Emiliano Zapata

Check out the a.s.d.l-c FAQ at: http://www.grossweb.com/asdlc/faq.htm

"DJ Delorie" wrote in message
...

"Penelope Baker" writes:
One thing about the carb up is that they tend to be more effective if you
keep the fats VERY low and the kcal VERY high.

Yeah, and the prep work (weight training) is important too, because it
sets up your muscles to suck up all those carbs (and get rid of them
afterwards). Otherwise, you just get bloated.

Well since the purpose of the carb up isn't solely to feed muscle glycogen,
but also to stimulate the leptin/thyroid situation, bloated isn't *all* bad,
just uncomfortable.

--
Peace,
Pen
--
Pawbreakers - The Candy for Cats!
http://www.pawbreakers.com

Luna wrote:

In article , DJ Delorie
wrote:

Ok, where are you now then? Height, weight, %bf, goal? Have you
checked your morning temp recently (before you get up and move around
is best)? Blood pressure?


Height: 5'4", weight, 156, BF% 27.5. Morning temp? I have no idea, never
heard of checking it as part of a weight loss plan. Blood pressure was
normal last I had it checked, in November.

I'm at the point where I eat 1200 kcals/day AND do 500 kcals of cardio
a day AND only lose a pound or so a week. Some folks just have a hard
time at this point, you may be one of them. There are things you can
do to get past this point, but you have to try a few things to find
out what they are.


I would be thrilled with 1 pound lost a week. Or one pound a month! I
haven't lost at all since January.

The first step, assuming you're willing to try something new, is to
find your maintenance level and "normalize" your diet. Higher carbs
(isocaloric if you can) at maintenance cals (14-16x lbm) for two
weeks. This should reset any diet-related metabolic stuff.

Well, at 1200 cals a day, I've been eating around 8x body weight. But when
I was at 2000 a day, I wasn't losing or gaining then either.

Luna, I gotta say that you are one of the people in the group that
makes me seriously call into doubt the whole exercise more, eat less
answer-to-everything. You don't say your frame size but I'ld guess you
were 20-40 lbs overweight, you're doing all this exercise, you're
eating *VERY* little and not loosing weight. Something has to be wrong
there. I've seen people basically answer stalls with starve yourself
more. That has always seemed like such an insane answer. What healthy
person constantly starves their body? Only dieters think this is
normal behavior.

If you could eat 2000 and maintain and now you are eating 1200, I
would think you are starving your body and simply making it desperate
to survive the hard famine it is currently experiencing. THis is were
calorie-in-calorie-out really doesn't f***ing matter. Your body is
capable of conserving energy so much so that your non-exercising life
(including breathing, eathing, pumping blody) now only requires 700
calories a day. (1200-500 of cardio) Sound severe enough yet?

I think you have to introduce more food into your diet and let your
body work under more normal circumstances.

Next, "a change is as good as a vacation." Something like a CKD or
UD2 carb-up, or a high-calorie fat "fast", or even just a "food-up",
might kick-start your metabolism again. Some folks have to carb-up
regularly to keep their metabolism going, others just need to food-up.

I'm wary of "carbing up" since the more carbs I eat, the hungrier I get.

That's why you have to spend months on just introducing carbs. To
build up your menu with safe items that have proven safe. People fool
themselves into being ultra-low is best but it means they have no idea
how to eat to maintain when they are done. I count calories so I can
watch for bad carbs. But I still have to be wary. I've gotten used to
having something low-carb & chocolatey now. It is not the best thing
for me to do even though I am not overeating at all. BUt I do look for
something chocolatey late in the day now... which would be bad if no
low-carb chocolate is around. But chocolate has always been a
weakness.

Honestly, I feel like I've been eating less than I should. Or maybe just
less often than I should. I delay eating until I'm _really_ hungry, to try
to make sure it's not just boredom, and then I end up eating too much, and
then I skip dinner because I ate so much at lunch, ya know? So then I wake
up starving and have too big a breakfast, and then I skip lunch because
breakfast was so huge, then I overeat at dinner and start the whole stupid
cycle over again. No wonder it's not working. I look at it written down
now and it looks so stupid. I keep oscillating between being afraid to
eat, and being too hungry to care if I eat too much.

Bad habits. But I think typical among frustrated dieters. I'd like to
believe we can all eat reasonably and maintain a reasonably healthy
weight. We just have to figure out what is preventing us from being
that way. Be it carbs, food obsessions, emotional issues, disease,
etc.

So here's what I'll
do. Sorry I got so negative before, I'm gonna blame it on the unusually
severe neck pain I've had today. Anyway, I'm going back to eating small,
frequent meals throughout the day, bollucks to calorie counting, and I'll
see what happens.


Another option is to just wait. Eat at maintenance, worrying only
about not gaining, and let your body rest at its current weight for a
month or so. Then resume dieting and see what happens.

Yeah, that's what I was doing, just waiting at first. Now, it's been 3
months with no change.

DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email)
350/302/Apr-299/200
Atkins since Jan 12, 2004
OWL-50 carbs/day (CCLL=?)

RRzVRR writes:
So I was saying that she's considered around average/acceptable --
which is so much better than overweight or obese, but there is room
for improvement.

I agree, and judging from her photos, she's more than just
"acceptable" :-)

My only point was, she's now lean enough that there are other factors
coming in to play that make it difficult to continue losing at her
previous rate.