Thread: Do I need more Cardio?

What calories are you running and are you dropping weight at this level?

Meals go as follows:

Breakfast(6am) - all bran cereal,glass of water,coffee, multivitamins, fish oil caps

9:30am - fruit, mainly pineapple.

12:30pm - Chicken sandwich on wholemeal bread

3pm - tuna sandwich on wholemeal bread, sometimes just out of the tin depending how much time I have as im in work. I might have fruit instead sometimes.

5:30pm - wholewheat pasta with tuna mixed in or grated cheese.

Not sure on the calories, and you may slate my diet but its cheap. I am dropping weight but I guess I want add more cardio to see faster results.

I actually don't care what you eat. I just want the grams of protein, carb and fat, and the total calories. There is no WAY I will do this for you.

grams cals %total
Total: 738
Fat: 12 106 15%

Carbs: 83 307 43%

Protein: 76 303 42%


The above is my average calorie intake,on lifting days I do take in more calories from carbs.

Seven hundred and thirty EIGHT calories per day?

What are you, a hamster?

That's what the stats on fitday says! Yeah its low i'll admit that but thats just one day, when I lift I eat more carbs, but the whole point of me eating like I am is to drop body fat. Every time I eat it satisfies me and I dont ever feel hungry.

Total cals are 1278, I forgot to alter the amount on fitday! My bad!

Originally Posted by Built

Seven hundred and thirty EIGHT calories per day?

What are you, a hamster?

1) what do you mean you noticed some nice changes? Are you using some objective measurements to know you are improving and moving in the right direction?

2) you say you notcied nice changes, but you want to increase your cardio activity. maybe i am missing something here, but it sounds like you are happy with results thus far. you need to be more patient.

3) at that level of calories (which is grossly low) and that much activity, you should be dropping butt load of weight (serioulsy....738 calories?). If you aren't then you are either (a) lying about your caloric intake, (b) totally inconsistent with your caloric intake from day to day (which it sounds like you are going from 738 to over 1200 calories between different days...not good) or (c) have some sort of serious hormal imbalance.

my guess would be (a) or (b) though.

you need more consistency.

By nice changes, I mean in the mirror I look better, jeans are loose which I take it means Im getting slimmer and regarding my calories I noted that I made a mistake and posted it.

In a nut shell, I do two HIIT sessions a week. By adding a third session would it benefit it me or would it be too much?

Take a picture of your hair so you remember what it looked like. 738 calories is malnutrition levels (even 1200 is low), unless you're a dwarf.

My 9 year old eats 3-4x more than that and he's a rake.

What's your starting weight and height?

yeah thats really helpful! I thought I would get some advice from these forums and yeah 1200 cals is low, I really dont see the need to slate me like this!

Gordo i was 101kg in Jan this year im now 79kg my height is 5.11

Okay you're right, it wasn't entirely fair, but what you are doing is a starvation diet (I wasn't joking about the hair falling out... it was common with war prisoners who were starved). It's a bad choice and honestly with all the information out there today, you should know better than that, or you should have done more research before deciding to just drop cals to some arbitrary number. Starvation diets are a bad choice because it will come with many problems (many metabolic and hormonal ) especially if you do it too long. There can also be a bad rebound once you end a starvation diet. At least you're training so that will help insulate you from the effects of changing your diet. 79kg ain't a bad weight for your height (assuming you're a dude). So ease off, on the cal restriction and start eating again.

Make sure your weight training is including progression (the weights are going up).

So as you start eating again, start lifting a whole lot heavier.

Eat clean and regularly to stabilize blood sugar. You have a real meal at 6am but nothing again till 6 and half hours later. Fruit isn't a meal. It works best when you have meals. There's no pre-requisite to have 5 or 6 meals if your schedule doesn't allow it, but if it does, it's an effective way to keep your blood sugar stable.

Here:

The Athlete's Kitchen ~ Copyright: Nancy Clark, MS, RD 2/00

"My body must have a metabolic defect-I'm always hungry."
"I don't know if I need to see a nutritionist or a psychologist. I often devour a box of crackers in the blink of an eye. I feel like I'm binge-eating...and that scares me."
"I try not to keep cookies in the house, because when they're there, I eat them--too many of them."

For many active people, food is a feared enemy. Runners, skaters, and rowers alike try to stay away from it. They endure hunger all day. When they do succomb to food, their eating tends to be a fast and furious frenzy that's seemingly out-of-control. Some of these clients have a full-blown eating disorder, but the majority are simply hungry. Too hungry.
Being hungry all the time is not a personality quirk. Rather, hunger is the body's request for fuel. Hunger is a very powerful physiological force that creates a strong desire to eat. Unfortuantely, in our thin-is-in society, many active people fail to honor this simple request because they fear food as being fattening. The thought of eating elicits a sense of panic: "Oh no, if I eat, I'll get fat."
Not the case. Most athletes eat without getting fat! Food, after all, is fuel. But problems do arise when food is denied and deprived (as happens with a strict reducing diet), when hunger becomes the norm. The result is an abnormal physiological state that is known as starvation.
Starvation has been inflicted upon many people, including third world natives suffering from famines, poverty-stricken people at the end of the month when no food money is left, and victims of the World War II concentration camps. Starvation is also common among athletes who are intent on losing weight. These include wrestlers, light-weight rowers, jockeys and others who participate in sports with weight limits, as well as the athletes who simply believe thinner is better and diet themselves to (supposed) perfection.
The question arises: What's the cost of starvation? What happens to the body and the mind when food is restricted and body weight is abnormally low? In 1950, Ancel Keys and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota studied the physiology of starvation. They carefully monitored 36 young, healthy, psychologically normal men who for 6 months were allowed to eat only half their normal intake (similar to a strict reducing diet or anorectic eating). For 3 months prior to this semi-starvation diet, the researchers carefully studied each man's behaviors, personality, and eating patterns. The men were then observed for three to nine months of refeeding.
As their body weight fell to 25% below baseline, the researchers learned that many of the symptoms that might have been thought to be specific to anorexia or bulimia were actually the result of starvation. The most striking change was a dramatic increase with food preoccupation. The subjects, similar to people with anorexia, thought about food all the time. They talked about it, read about it, dreamed about it, and even collected recipes. They dramatically increased their consumption of coffee and tea, and chewed gum excessively. They became depressed, had severe mood swings, experienced irritability, anger and anxiety. They became withdrawn, had little sexual interest, and lost their sense of humor. They had cold hands and feet, felt weak and dizzy, and their hair fell out. Their basal metabolic rate (the amount of food needed to exist) dropped by 40% as the body adapted to conserve energy. (Do these changes sound familiar to anyone you know?)
During the study, some of the men were unable to maintain control over food; they would binge eat if the opportunity presented itself. During the refeeding period, many of the men ate continuously--big meals followed by snacking. Several ate until they were uncomfortably full, became nauseous, and then vomited. These abnormal eating behaviors lasted for about 5 months; by 8 months, most of them regained their standard eating behaviors. On average, they initially regained 10% more than their original weight, but then gradually lost that excess and returned close to their baseline weight.

So what can we learn from this starvation study?
1. Preoccupation with food is a sign your body is too hungry. Hunger creates a very strong physiological drive to eat.
2. Binge eating stems from starvation. If you worry about being unable to stop eating once you start, you have likely gotten too hungry.
3. Weight is more than a matter of will power. That is, if you lose weight, your body will fight to return to a genetically normal level.
4. Dieters who restrict to the point of semi-starvation are likely to regain the weight they lost--plus more. Hence, if you want to permanently lose weight, you simply need to push yourself away from the dinner table when you are content but not stuffed, when you can say to yourself, "I've had enough to eat. I could have more but I'd rather not because I'd rather be a little leaner."

You might find it helpful to know how many calories you are supposed to eat to maintain or to lose weight. To do this, simply--
· Take your weight and multiply it by 10. This gives your resting metabolic rate (RMR, the amount of energy you need to simply exist, pump blood, breathe, etc.). If you weigh 140 pounds, your RMR is about 1,400 calories--the amount you'd burn if you were to run for 14 miles!
· Add to your RMR about half that number for activities of daily living. For example, if you weigh 140 lbs. and are moderately active (without your purposeful exercise) you need about 700 calories to come and go.
· Next, add calories for purposeful exercise. For example, a 140 pound person would need about 1,400 calories (RMR) + 700 (daily activity) + 300 (for 30 minutes of aerobic activity) = 2,400 calories to maintain weight. To lose weight, deduct 20%--to about 1,900. This translates into 600 calories for breakfast/snack, 700 for lunch/snack, and 600 for dinner/snack--and that's the reducing diet!
The next time you get into an eating frenzy and wonder if you are borderline bulimic, calculate your day's intake. You'll likely see a huge discrepancy between what you have eaten and what your body deserves. Recognize hunger's power--and stop getting too hungry!

Nancy Clark, MS, RD is nutrition counselor at Boston-area's SportsMedicine Brookline and author of Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook, 2nd Edition. To order this best-selling book, send $20 to Sports Nutrition Materials, 830 Boylston, St #205, Brookline MA 02467 or visit Sports Nutritionist & Author - About Nancy.

Not fun stuff. So, it's to draw attention to the fact that while aesthetically, you may like the results....you're doing unnecessary harm to yourself that in ways will go unnoticed until you're past the point of no return. So while it was harsh, it was extreme in your best interest. Don't mess yourself up.

Interesting study but I don't agree that food preoccupation is necessarily a result of starvation. It may well be a symptom, which you'd expect as anyone starving is obviously going to be thinking about food but other things can trigger it too.

Being a chef for example

The guy's already said he screwed up on calories and he's actually on around 1200. That's still very low, pretty much the lower limit for normal height women rather than a man doing a heavy exercise regime.

I'd say an extra cardio session is fine if feeling up to it - but not on those calories. Then again if doing the cardio to burn fat, why bother if you need to eat more fuel in order to burn it?

3x weights, 2x cardio is pretty much the baseline of my own Biggly Body Plan; I've seen many people get great results with it. As such I suspect you're just suffering from "hey this works, let's do more of it!?" but no, like P Funk said, just be more patient.

You may have 48 hours of enthusiasm but there's only 24 hours in a day and your body needs time to recover and rebuild. So short answer, yes you could, yes it would burn fat off even faster but no, don't do it. You'd need to either eat more or would stop any lean gains and even risk going backwards. Not to mention your enthusiasm would plunge...

Just try to get into the easy routine habit of what you're already doing, ie build on your foundation. Once you have virtually the body you want, then maybe tweak, if only to get past flat spots etc. You already have the Holy Grail that most don't find without careful monitoring and mentoring, ie a regime that works for you, is getting results and you're happy doing. Appreciate what you have and look after it; don't risk it for a minor speed increase that could crash you completely at this stage.



B.

Thanks for the advice guys, It may not be the smartest move to make I will admit that I guess I just needed to hear it from someone else. When I lift I always try to go heavier, a few years back all i did was lift and I did no cardio at all.
My aim is to get lean and toned, I will take what you all said on board!

Thanks again and yeah I am a dude

Originally Posted by Shaw26

grams cals %total
Total: 738
Fat: 12 106 15%

Carbs: 83 307 43%

Protein: 76 303 42%


The above is my average calorie intake,on lifting days I do take in more calories from carbs.

Haha omg try something like this:
(07:00h) Milk 0,5l (0,9%); Oatmeal 200g - 800kCal
(09:00h) Tuna in water 250g; Chicken bust 100g - 435kCal
(11:30h) Fresh cheese 250g m - 225kCal
(14:00h) Chicken bust 200g; Banana; Oatmeal 200g - 1010kCal
(16:00h) Tuna in water 250g; Protein shake - 680kCal
(20:00h) Chicken bust 200g; Oatmeal 100g - 650kCal
(22:00h) Fresh cheese 250g, Whey prot. 15g - 300kCal

Originally Posted by Montoya Raif

Haha omg try something like this:
(07:00h) Milk 0,5l (0,9%); Oatmeal 200g - 800kCal
(09:00h) Tuna in water 250g; Chicken bust 100g - 435kCal
(11:30h) Fresh cheese 250g m - 225kCal
(14:00h) Chicken bust 200g; Banana; Oatmeal 200g - 1010kCal
(16:00h) Tuna in water 250g; Protein shake - 680kCal
(20:00h) Chicken bust 200g; Oatmeal 100g - 650kCal
(22:00h) Fresh cheese 250g, Whey prot. 15g - 300kCal

I would NOT suggest this diet.

He is trying to lose weight, and you give him a 4,100 calorie diet program? I hope you are kidding.

Originally Posted by KentDog

I would NOT suggest this diet.

She is trying to lose weight, and you give her a 4,100 calorie diet program? I hope you are kidding.

Omg yes, i toght se is trying to gain weight. I shoul read more carefuly. Sorry

Shaw, you are 5'11" and 79kg (175 pounds)? How much more weight are you looking to lose?

And are you measuring your food, or are you just estimating?