Diet

The documentary "King Corn" is one of the more profound one's I've seen (plus it is fun and entertaining) that helped me truly understand the food situation we face today. I highly recommend it. The book "The Omnivores Dilemma" is pretty good too. Kind of scary when you realize that most foods are industrial products.

1000 calories is way way way too little intake! making a few assumptions (and sooo sorry if i'm way off on them :) )- that you're a 45 YO male who is 6ft tall and weighs 220lbs, you need in the neighborhood of 2000 calories just to keep your body going (this is called your basal metabolic rate). by consistantly only eating 1000 calories, you're essentially tricking your body into thinking it's starving, so no matter how hard you tried to lose the weight, your body will be working against you. and now that you've added in swimming, you definitely need to add calories. i'll leave your other questions to folks who are more versed in the nutritional aspects, rather than the physical aspects :) Close: 48, 5' 8" I should say that the 1,000 cal number is more of a target than a scientific fact. I would not be surprised if I am consuming 3000+ cal per day on the weekends. This isn't hard to do when you consider that most meals at restaurants are in the 1000+ calorie range by themselves. After about six months of eating with care I haven't really lost a lot of weight. If the basal metabolic intake calculation is correct, then, I must have been consuming an average of 2000 calories per day. Otherwise I should be thin as a toothpick right now. Now that I am working out maybe I should make a concerted effort to actually keep real numbers on my intake and see where I am. Data is always a good thing. I guess the more general question might be: Do I stay at the basal metabolic intake of around 2,000 cal per day in order to push weight loss right now or do I up my intake to some number below what I should be consuming due to my workouts and accept a longer slim-down phase? What's a good way to estimate calories burned during my workouts? Using various calculators on the 'net I estimate that I might be in the 750 to 1000 calorie range right now. My workouts are 1.5 hours but right now I am probably resting 20 to 30 minutes of that time.

I should say that the 1,000 cal number is more of a target than a scientific fact. I would not be surprised if I am consuming 3000+ cal per day on the weekends. This isn't hard to do when you consider that most meals at restaurants are in the 1000+ calorie range by themselves. If it's stupid/impossible to eat 1,000 kcal per day (which it is) then why would you try to do it? You need to be about 1,000 times smarter about this, every day.

I got bored after an injury last year that took me out of the pool and prevented me from lifting, so I decided to loose some weight. My diet, six days a week, consisted of all the green vegetables I could eat, boneless skinless chicken, protein bars and egg whites. One day a week, I ate about 3-4k calories of pizza, cookies, alcohol, whatever. For exercise I road a stationary bike averaging about an hour a day, but that was an average. One day I did 3 hours taking a short 10 minute break to refill water and have some coffee. My injury prevented me from doing ANYTHING that involved the upper body, so even riding a real bike was out. IIRC I lost 24.x lbs in 6 weeks, 190ish to mid 170s, ~15% bf% to upper single digits. I lost a ton of muscle mass during this time, but there wasn't any way to maintain it either. If you limit yourself to protein and green vegetables, I really don't think you need to starve yourself. The unlimited green vegetable and protein diet with lots of exercise is certainly effective, but if you have 50 lbs to loose, the most effective diet and exercise program is going to be the one you can stick with.

I really need to eat lunch. I never had lunch when I worked full time, I would go out & run on lunch time. 40 years of doing this is a hard habit to break!

Counting calories never worked for me. What worked was changing my diet, permanently, rather than dieting. Read up on insulin response and the glycemic index. Cut your carbs. No White at Night (get the book). I lost just under 100 pounds about 7-8 years ago by following these precepts and have kept it off since. In the past year I quit eating wheat and my body composition, though not my weight, changed remarkably (the change was noticeable after only two weeks, and no, I'm not celiac). I'm a lot more muscular and have far less flab around my middle than I used to. Sure, I'd still like to lose another 10-15 pounds, but I'm not sure that's going to be possible (my BMI is now within "normal," just). What I do know is that I'm healthier than I have been in decades, an opinion my doctor and a raft of sophisticated lipid tests confirm. A good place to start is www.marksdailyapple.com/ Don't miss the success stories, which are incredibly motivating.

I don't worry about diet or counting calories...I just work out and eat when I'm hungry. Like tonight, I just spent 3+ hours yanking out a large pine tree stump from my front yard (this is called dryland training), and then near the end I called up Pizza Hut to fill up on calories!!! I'll probably get a 44oz. Mountain Dew later too to rehydrate. The good part of it all, is that I really won't increase my bodyweight any. :banana:

Counting calories never worked for me. What worked was changing my diet, permanently, rather than dieting. Not discounting what you're saying, and calorie monitoring is not for everyone, but counting calories, done right, is not the same as dieting -- it's a proven way of figuring out the best way to eat. After a while, eating the right amount becomes habit.

Caloric intake is by far the most important thing in weight loss.. Since you are exercising a lot I would suggest low calories + high protein as you initially did. I think ~1500/day for the first couple weeks while your body still won't have time to adjust it's metabolism and if you see good results up the calories some. IF you barely had results (which is highly unlikely at 1500) it means your metabolism is really quite slow and you may need to cut even more calories. Try to maintain high protein to preserve muscle if you can. Also, cheat days are not bad like once a week after a few weeks of steady diet maybe, but remember calorie intake is what matters so still count what you do on those cheat days so you know how much you 'gained' on them. They will help prevent your metabolism from slowing down though. lastly, count ALL your calories. I've seen way too many people not count that pretzel or potato chip here and there or the pack of gum etc. etc. It ALL COUNTS.

Hi martin - I am not the sleekest cat in the pool, but I do counsel people on weight loss a lot - In our office we recommend the South Beach or Dukan Diet, because they are sensible diets that include carbohydrate & fat reduction, and are physiologically friendly. They are actually probably ADA type diets. I have tried myself to go totally protein, and let me tell you, those carbs come in handy when you want to do a hard set. Do NOT eliminate them entirely! Simply by returning to the swimming world, if you will work out & write down every morsel of food that goes into your mouth (the idea being that you may not want to write down that you ate an entire box of Oreos, and so you don't eat them) you will naturally lose weight. It may seem at first as if you are toning your body more than losing weight at first, but both will happen. Someone here said that you didn't put the weight on over night, so don't expect it to come off over night either. Cross Training, or mixing it up is also helpful. Someone once suggested you change the activity you cross train with every six weeks for maximum weight loss. Swimming is not the activity of choice for weight loss, unfortunately. Running is - but of course, it's not necessarily as much fun!! Buena Suerte!!:D