What do I do now???

[NHBFighter]

I'm logged in under a friends name but I usually come in under Boxermom! I'll be quick and to the point. Two years ago I weighed 378lbs. I decided to change my lifestyle and started to eat healthier and get ALOT of exercise. I'm 5'7" and in the beginning my body fat was approx. 42.6 and I wore a size 32W. Yes its embarrasing! Now I weigh 172lbs and my body fat is approx.19.2 and I'm down to size 14. My problem is that although I still get some form of cardio four X's a week and weight train, I'm at stalemate. I try not to weigh to often but my size does not seem to be getting any smaller. Should I get alot more cardio, lower carbs, up protien? ANY suggestions would be great!

 

[NubianBeauty]

What's your diet like? Post it here. Are you keeping a log? If not an estimate (guestimate) will suffice but try to be as accurate as possible. What's your training split?

 

[NHBFighter]

Thankyou! I take in no more 2100 calories a day based on what I need to create a 500 calorie deficet. Here is a sample:


AM
Lean Body low carb shake
sometimes a lean grilled chicken breast w/ salsa
water / fat free milk 1cup
1 cup of hot or cold cereal (Cheerios, oatmeal nothing added)
PM
Turkey and low fat swiss cheese on whole wheat bread no dressing
Baby spinach salad w / dressing 2TBS
Iced tea no sweetner
Chicken or fish grilled
Baby spinach salad w/ dressing 2TBS
couple of spoons of coolwhip lite
Water
Depending on what kind of workout I'm doing I might eat a little heavier a dinner or eat real light and drink another shake after my workout.

I kickbox and western box 3 x's a week and run 1 x a week 1.50miles at about 5mph. I keep my target heartrate during all of these workouts. The weight training is little new to me so I'm still finding my groove but it goes something like this.

M-legs and glutes Cardio
T- biceps triceps delts traps
W-Ab work and cardio
Th- Chest and back Cardio
F- Cardio Cardio Cardio
Sat- Ab work lower back (still have back problems from being so heavy
Sun- REST (diet stays the same

 

[spatts]

What are the times, and where does your training fall in the diet...at the end? What are you eating post workout, if so?

 

[NubianBeauty]

Hmmm.. that diet doesn't seem like 2100 cals to me. It also seems as if you're overtraining? You're only getting 1 rest day/wk. IMO your body needs more food or less training/cardio. I think your progress thus far has been outstanding!! You should be very proud of what you have accomplished. Congrats!! 206lb weight loss is awesome honey. Don't rush it. How long have you been at a "stalemate"?

 

[Sassy69]

Awesome accomplishments to date! Do NOT get frustrated - the quest never seems to end. Like they say about "life", it's a journey, not a destination. - even if you do hit a goal -- what do you do? You have to maintain it. And we have all experienced plateaus, which is basically your body telling you it is now "used to" the diet & training you have been giving it. Time to tweak it again.

A couple of general guidelines to help you answer some of the above questions -

- Generally smaller meals, more often over the course of the day. In "dieting" terms, this ends up being something like 5-7 meals over the course of the day, every 2-3 hours. There are all sorts of "preferred" combinations of macronutrients you can try at each of these different meals-- protein + carb only, protein + fat only , etc. These you sort of have to research & try for yourself. (But don't let me get you buried in that part yet!)

- Training -- for fat loss, cardio is a great thing. But you don't need to become a cardio queen either. One approach is to throw in 1-2 cardio sessions per week where you do high intensity interval training (HIIT) -- which is basically sprinting for a short perid of time (e.g. 30 sec - 2 min) and then slowing down for a short recovery period and then repeating the sprint at intervals. This lets you vary the type of cardio you do so you dont' get bored doing an hour of slow cardio every day or anything like that. It also lets you "shock" your body with a little bit of a jolt so it doesnt' get used to just doing the long, low type of cardio. I think the boxing you are doing addresses a similar approach.

- Cardio on leg day? Personally I'm beat by the time I finish my leg workout & cardio just ain't worth it. Better to do it on any other day than leg day. I'll do maybe a 6 min warmup cardio to get things moving, but no more. Cardio the next day helps me to keep from getting too stiff from leg day anyway.

- Abs. Any reason you are doing abs 2x per week? I basically view abs as just another muscle group to train. I generally train each muscle group 1x/week. You might consider moving some of the work you do on one of the training days to go w/ the abs day(s). Just a thought.

Post your diet - times & meal plan for a typical day and I bet we can find a couple of easy places to tweak it to get things moving for you again!

Welcome aboard!

 

[SteelWeaver]

Wow, looks like you have some decent LBM there. Congrats on the progress so far, and ... yeah, what sassy and the others said

And welcome