Disclaimer if needed: I am not looking for a doctor’s/official’s opinion, just the opinion of people who might have had similar experiences.
I’ve been trying to lose weight for a couple months now. I was losing pretty steadily, until I started going to the gym. When I go to the gym (3 times a week), I do ellipticals the entire time (ranging between 30-50 minutes per day). For some reason, my weight has hit a plateau and I don’t know why. I definitely keep my food intake in check, I’m strict about that. Could it be that I’m building muscle that I didn’t have before? Would it be of any benefit to add some variation to my regimen by switching it up with the treadmill and bike once in a while?
I don’t know if this would make any difference, but I am 5’5", currently 155 lbs :smack: , trying to get back to 130. I’m following a fairly low carbohydrate diet and try to take in up to 1200 calories per day, although it’s usually less.
I would really appreciate any advice the doper population has to offer!
Only 1200? Good god. I do well to keep my intake under 2000. Then again, I’m 250 pounds aiming to get below 200 sometime in the next 12 months.
It’s possible that your plateau is stemming from repetition of exercise, in which case you probably would do well to change up your routine. I’ve been using the treadmill for cardio and fat burn myself for the last few months, and the couple of times I attempted to use the cycle or elliptical, my legs ached so badly I couldn’t do more than 5 minutes on either one. A change in routine would probably help shake you up and force your body to work harder since it isn’t used to the different motions.
I’m only about three months into my exercise routine myself, and I’m still learning about this stuff, so take that for what it’s worth. Hopefully people with more experience can chime in as well.
Try lifting weights. Building muscle will ramp up your metabolism, helping your body burn more calories all the time (and not just when exercising). If you are a women, please don’t fear getting “manly”; it just won’t happen. The female bodybuilders in the gym with the deep voices and adam’s apples are using drugs; weight lifting didn’t make that happen. Actually, lifting weights will not just help you burn fat, it will also firm up your body.
As to your weight, my suggestion is to stop weighing yourself! Yes, as you’re building muscles (even on the bike, I’d assume your legs are getting stronger), your weight might be plateauing. But that doesn’t mean you’ve stopped changing your body (i.e. if you lost 5 pounds of fat and gained 5 pounds of muscle, your bodyweight would be constant, but your body composition would be dramatically different). Two better measures of progress, IMHO, are found by using a tape measure and polaroids. Take periodic measurements of some key areas (i.e. waist, hips, thighs, arms, chest), and periodic (monthly, perhaps) pics of you in a bathing suit. That’s the best way to measure progress, and it’ll stop the frustration that comes from looking at that stupid scale.
Thank you for your input, **Bosstone ** and Atomicktom. I definitely appreciate it.
I have been doing (light) weightlifting so far. My arms are so weak still, but I’m going to keep on it. I guess it will be a little different since I’m exercising too (as opposed to last time where I just restricted calories) so I guess I will have to try to be more patient. I liked Atomicktom’s idea of taking pictures for comparison, so I am going to do that also. I will change my workout a little bit to include the bike and treadmill for some variety, too.
One last question. This is mostly out of curiosity, as I don’t have the time to do it now but I might when Christmas vacation rolls around. If I have the time to exercise every day of the week, could I? Or should I just keep it to every other day? In the past, I did do it every single day, but again it was mostly the same thing over and over. My friend is telling me that one should rest every other day because if you exercise every day, you’re breaking down the muscle and not letting it get a chance to build up.
You certainly will benefit from doing aerobic exercise every day, and it won’t hurt you a bit. In fact, the current recommendation is that we all get 30 minutes of exercise “most” days. Your friend is right, however, when it comes to weight training. If you’re doing lifting to build muscle, you want to give your muscles a day’s rest in between workouts. If you’re in the gym every day, you can do that by concentrating on one muscle group each day.
This will seem like an odd recommendation, but if your plateau persists, you might try upping your calorie intake slightly. If you’re working out daily or almost daily, 1200 calories is not a whole lot of fuel. If you were to add a healthy 100-300 calorie snack to your intake, that might help convince your metabolism that you’re not starving.
I swear by the stairmaster-- the burn that thing leaves in my quads is spectacular. If you need a break from straight running, it works different muscles in different ways. If you do get to go to the gym every day, try breaking your lifting routine into upper body and lower body. If you concentrate on the major muscle groups for each, you only need to do 3 or 4 different exercises. You’ll still be developing the important muscles, and you won’t be wasting your time doing wrist curls to strengthen your forearms. While that’s great, and more power to you if you decide it’s what you want to do, I never had that kind of drive. My entire routine for the day took no more than 45-60 mins, which included the 5-10 min warm up aerobic exercise (this is strictly weights, obviously if you do cardio as well, it will take longer).
Note that while you want to switch upper and lower body daily, you can work your abs every day. Writing this now, I realize the only source I have for this is my wrestling coach at my college, who was also the school’s strength coach. Plus the fact that it never did me any damage. If anyone has contrary evidence I would be interested in it. Also note that if you do find yourself doing aerobic exercise 7 days a week, make sure that at least one of those days is no impact. The cross country runners used to put on life jackets, jump in the pool, and simply run as if they were on dry land. Swimming is great, although very tiring, as it works different muscles than you are used to. I’m not a fan of the elliptical, but from what I understand it is also no impact.
I don’t know how much detail you are interested in, but if you are looking for any kind of specific program drop me a PM, and I’ll outline the few basic exercises I used for upper and lower body. I’ve been pretty lazy since my wrestling days, and recently I got involved in some various martial art styles. However, since my body hasn’t taken punishment like that in some time, I ended up pulling my back (twice… bored now, waiting to recover). I realized that it’s kind of sad that I’m too out of shape to get in shape I’ll be taking things a little slower when I heal. Good luck!
It sounds like you might be gaining muscle weight from extra exercise. It can also be that your metabolism slowed down from eating too little. I would try to raise the calories a little bit (spread throughout the day of course) and see if that will work.
If that doesn’t work (and you gain fat) then nothing beats strength training if you need to burn calories.
If you are interested in learning more, you can get a lot more decent information here.
Keep in mind that you won’t look like the girls in the pictures without more than at least a year of continuous training. You won’t get huge muscles overnight, so you can always slow down your training before you ruin your figure.
I’m only repeating what’s been said already, but FWIW, my trainer’s told me that ideally, I would be doing about two sets of 20 minutes of cardio each and every day. Free time being what it is, 20-30 minutes every day is a more achievable goal. Right now my weight lifting schedule is arms on Monday and legs on Wednesday, during which my muscles get pushed to their limits and a little beyond, then I have a week to rest them. So cardio = all the time and strength training = every other day at most.
ETA: When I say cardio, I mean both that and straight fat burn, which have different routines but use the same equipment. Fat burn’s low intensity for long periods of time, cardio is low intensity interspersed with spikes of very high intensity.
For your origiginal question, I’m going to say all three. I like to mix things up at the gym, I’ve learned that our bodies get used to one type of exercise and like variety.
I’ll echo everybody’s advice so far and add this. Weight lifting will be a great addition to your workouts. Women usually will not build a great deal of muscle unless they are doing steroids. We just don’t have enough testosterone in our systems. However, weight training does tone and define our muscles and that can help us look and feel better.
Also, 1200 calories is probably a little on the low end and may be why you are not losing now, especially since you are exercising. Your body needs more food! I’d go up to at least 1500-1600 and see what happens.
Good luck and feel free to join us on the weight loss thread in MPSIMS.
[ol]
[li]You’re not not losing weight due to an increase in muscle mass. Takes a lot longer than three weeks to gain an appreciable amount of muscle.[/li][li]I think your 1200 cal diet may be holding you back. Your body may be in “conserve” mode, holding onto each calorie for dear life. Especially as you’re ramping up the metabolism with the weights. I would suggest a Clif bar (personal preference) about 1/2 hour prior to workout.[/li][li]Keep up the cardio. I prefer the elliptical and the treadmill, but AT SPEED. If you’re not sweating, it’s ain’t working. I find the stationary bikes to be fairly worthless, requiring longer times to match calorie-burn on the others.[/li][li]You’ll feel like a dweeb the first couple fo times, but I’ll recommend Squats for muscle-gain and exhaustion. Make absolutely you’re getting correct form, please.[/li][/ol]
If you ask ten different people, you’ll get ten different answers so here’s mine.
Do them all, just mix it up a lot. Your body is going to get used to you doing the same machine for the same amount of time so change it up a bit. It’ll keep you from getting bored, too. Same with your diet. A big, hearty cheat meal will spike your metabolism. It’ll also keep you sane. So splurge once or twice a week, it won’t hurt you.
And I agree with the posters about lifting weights. A little muscle will go a long way in ramping up your metabolism.
[li]Keep up the cardio. I prefer the elliptical and the treadmill, but AT SPEED. If you’re not sweating, it’s ain’t working. [/li][/QUOTE]
This is an important point. If after 50 minutes doing cardio you’re not out of breath, your heart rate hasn’t raised signigicantly, and you haven’t dripped sweat on the machine, then you may as well just did some laps at the mall with the seniors.
May I ask how how many calories over what length of time your burning on the elliptical? The women who are in the best shape at our gym usually peak out at about 14 calories/minute, with a 30 minute minimum workout which is 420 calories. Maybe your workout needs more resistance to get up to or near 500 calories per session.
For guys, I was between 20 and 21 calories/minute at my peak for 55 minutes for 1100+ calories per session, and that (the elliptical) was the best way for me to lose weight quickly without pain from impact related machines, due to my not so great knees.
I sixth or seventh the nomination of upping your calorie count in order to maintain a higher metabolism. Go to this link and sign up for the free newsletters to help explain what happens when you hit a plateau and how to keep the metabolism up.
Thanks for the input, everyone. If nothing else works, I might try upping my caloric intake like a few of you mentioned.
Before that, I’m definitely going to vary the work out schedule a bit by adding biking and running to it along with the usual weightlifting to see if that changes anything. I like the idea of two sets of 20-30 minutes for cardio. So far I’m doing squats, crunches, and weights for the arms.
I definitely make sure to get a high heart rate when I do the elliptical and get all sweaty and all that fun stuff. Of the girls I work out with, I definitely push myself the most but I can’t really compare with the other girls since I weigh significantly less. I can/feel see muscles forming in the back of my thighs, which is good. My face is definitely thinner. I just don’t like the numbers on the scale, but again I guess I’m just used to losing weight without building the muscle. Gotta remember that I need to be patient. :smack: I’m going to work out more often once Christmas break rolls around, right now the quarter is ending and we’re all struggling to finish our thesis…thesises… …so all I can manage for the time being is three times a week.
Bellrung , I was thinking about trying the stair machine once I go to the rec back home. Those things look so intimidating though!
Yeticus Rex, According to the machines, I get about 550 calories for 50 minutes…so about 10.something calories a minute, which feels like it kicks my butt. I was focusing more on length of time lately to see if it would make any difference in my exercised induced asthma but maybe I’ll start increasing the resistance gradually, too.
FYI – I’ve always heard that the calorie burn counter on the machines tend to be high - not sure if that’s still true.
I’ve spent years working out, including losing weight from my post college years (before it dawned on me my metabolism wasn’t what it used to be) and am currently trying to lose the last of the stubborn baby weight.
Not only would I recommend varying the activities, but also vary the routines that you do on them. For instance, I have to listen to music while working out - motivates me. On one song, I will increase the speed whenever the song speeds up. On the next song, I’ll ramp up the resistance in those “spurts”.
If your gym has a Spinning class (instructor led bike riding) I would highly recommend those. I do much better if being pushed to go harder, and definitely got the most bang for my buck from those classes. (You’ll see the changing up of the ride all the way through in there as well). But if you decide to give it a try, hang in there past just one class – took me about 3 classes and I was hooked.
On the food thing – to gear your metabolism up faster, it helps to eat multiple small meals in a day rather than just big ones. (With only 1200 calories a day, that doesn’t give you a lot to work with, but I would try.) Your body won’t try to hang on to existing fat because it learns to expect that it’s going to get more fuel shortly. I’m 5’1" and would consume 1800-2000 calories during weight loss mode this way.
Actually, you’re doing 11 cal/min, which is good. Just bump the resistance level up one click and see if you can maintain that level (at the same RPMs) for the whole workout; if you can’t, just scale back on the fly about half way through to your current resistance level for the rest of the workout while still maintaining the same RPMs. You’ll still be able to add a few extra burned calories to the overall workout.
If you can stay at the new level for the entire workout, keep that new level for the week. If you are able to exercise at that level without any asthmatic episodes, then try bumping it up another level the following week. Repeat the same process mentioned above. Your muscles will be stronger and be able to keep up and your breathing should be able to support your aerobic workout. When you get to 700 calories (1/5 pound o’fat!) in the 50 minute workout, you’ll be at the 14 cal/minute mark average, which is an excellent workout. It may take a month or two to get there, but your body will definitely change.
Again, take your time getting there…don’t do all of that in a week! And stretch, stretch, stretch! (Before and after.) Add more sensible calories to your diet. Your metabolism will be increased…not sure how much, but it will.
I just wanted to write and say thanks for everyone’s input again!
I did follow the suggestions of being less strict with the caloric intake, and to vary up my exercise. Now I am rotating between 30 minutes on the elliptical, bike, and treadmill; doing 2 sets of 30 minutes (Tuesday is treadmill/bike, Thursday is elliptical/treadmill, and Saturday is elliptical/bike) three times a week. After being so used to just doing the elliptical, I was really sore after Tuesday’s workout, but I’m glad! I think I’m going to like this new varied workout. I’m guessing it was the kick my body needed, as it turns out that I finally broke my three week plateau!
I’ll be taking things a little slower when I heal. Good luck!
…so all I can manage for the time being is three times a week.