From sloth to alot of exercise... and not losing weight.

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Congrats first off by getting a good start. What most people will tell you and ask but what does your nutrition look like? I have struggled very similar like you and last year while training for a IM I still did not lose lots of weight mainly cause my nutrition was very poor. Now I am training again for IMFL and slowly losing weight but really re shaping. So first off tell us what your typicall daily calorie consumption looks like then that may draw a better picture. Again keep up the great work!

It is very typical at the beginning to not see any change in pounds because of significant muscle gain.  You say people are noticing, did you by chance take any measurements?  I've lost some weight but am seeing a lot of inches lost due to all of my training.

And, I concur, you need to look at your nutrition. I'd highly recommend journaling your food for awhile to get a grip on what you're eating.  It could be one of two cases, far too many calories or too few.  For awhile I was having issues because I was eating too few and my body thought I was starving so it wouldn't let go.  I upped my caloric intake by 100-400 calories a day and things started jumping off. 

Finally, I'd add some intensity to your workouts.   Meaning, during your walks, try jogging intermittently.  If you've been doing this for 3 months your body is ready for running.  

Edited by COSkiGirl 2008-08-05 3:52 PM

Ok. Thanks, I appreciate the advice. I have started counting calories, reducing intake, and will also increase workout intensity. That should do it.

Congratulations on getting moving and trying to get your weight down. Now, nutrition is definitely a big factor as well as the type/intensity of your exercise. A few years back, my wife got us on a modified version of the South Beach Diet. This was more for dinner than other meals but it kinda carried over once both of us lost some weight. What this meant for us was some combination of lean meat or fish, vegetables, and fruit for our dinner. No starchy or fried foods. Also, whole wheat products instead of simple grain products. Cut down on simple carbs or foods with a lot of sugar. She also uses Splenda instead of plain sugar in some recipes. In addition, during the day, you eat 5 small meals instead of 3. This helps to keep you satisfied longer and you don't have the urge to snack quite as much. Having a good breakfast will also help to jump start your metabolism in the morning. So for example, I start off sometimes with a whole wheat bagel lightly spread with low fat peanut butter and frozen raspberries. OJ for a drink. Then maybe yogurt for a mid-morning snack. I'll have some soup and an apple for lunch. Either unsalted almonds, low sugar cereal, or fruit for a mid-afternoon snack. Then whatever my wife fixes for dinner. You might consider getting that book or the Abs Diet from Men's Health. There are others you could look at that discuss similar strategies.

Looking at your exercise routine, I think you need to throw in some interval sessions here and there. So for your swim, do you just swim the same speed for your 2 miles each time? One thing you could try is where you swim 100s slow one 25 length, fast the next, slow the next, fast for the final. Rest for a bit, say maybe a minute. Whatever is comfortable at first. Then repeat for a certain number of times. Are your gym sessions just pure lifting, i.e. do a set, rest, do the next, rest, final set, and rest inbetween machines? Perhaps once a week, do your routine in a superset fashion. That is instead of doing 3 sets of one exercise with rest in between each set, do a set of one exercise and then immediately switch to a set of another without rest. Do 2-3 sets like that instead. Rest in between supersets. On the bike, try a few ad hoc sprints. Look for a landmark down the road, speed up to it and then recover for a bit after you reach it. Look for the next landmark. You can do something similar with walking and especially when you add jogging to it.

There is literature and studies where short interval sessions may actually be better for you in terms of weight loss and fitness than long same speed cardio sessions alone.

But, you also can't just spend time doing interval sessions, so you have to mix up your routine with the slow recovery days as well.

Just to let you know, I went from 178 to 162 after we changed our nutrition habits. I was already cycling a fair amount and doing weights twice a week. But it was really when we changed nutrition schemes along with the exercise that seemed to work for me.

One final thought is that I agree with the one poster is that you're probably in a toning stage wrt to your muscles. So the weight hasn't yet dropped. Adding intervals can help to stoke the fire so to speak and rev up your metabolism to help reduce the fat cells while still keeping the muscle.

Good luck and don't get discouraged! Sometimes, it takes a little while longer to see the results.

Nutrition was responsible for probably 90% of my success in dropping body fat.  I follow a diet very similar to that of Body For Life.  Check out the website.  For the first two weeks all I did was cut out all processed foods.  Basically, if you can find it on this earth in it's natural form, you can eat it.  Ezekiel Bread was the one thing that wasn't a 1 ingredient food that I would eat, but it is made of all whole foods, and you recognize everything on the ingredient list.  After the first two weeks I went to portions/calories.  I ate +/- 1% of my plan 6 days a week, and then one day a week took a free day where everything is fair game.  I had tremendous & fast success.  I plan everything out and get everything measured and into containers so there is no guess work.  Very tedious, but when you're getting results, it's worth it.  Feel free to PM me if you want to chat more.

Everyone is giving you great advice and I won't repeat what has already been said....but...if you are actually gaining muscle and toning as we all suspect (even your friends) then maybe it's time to get the tape measure out?!!

Since your weight isn't dropping it's tough to keep motivated sometimes (you don't have an actual measurement to see the gain...or loss), but if you are in fact building muscle and toning up the tape measure will give you the measureable progress you are looking for.

Belly down 1 inch...biceps up 1/2 an inch!!!

Great work so far!!!!

Oh yeah...you probably don't want to measure more then once a week either. Inches take a while to come off.

Edited by kjlee8 2008-08-12 9:17 AM