Hey im currently 6'1 255 i was at 290 about 4 months ago but im currently stuck at 255 and i have been for almost a whole month. I do 2 hours of cardio a day diet and sit in the sauna before and after i work out i also do light weight training. I talked to a trainer at the gym i go to he said that my body is just evening out between body fat and muscle. Which kinda makes sense since im feeling better but on the scale theres no result and my chest isnt completely flat yet any help is apreciated.

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~Ricky

No offense bro, but your trainer sound like a bit of a.... anyway that doesn't matter.

Contrary to popular belief, weight loss is not a tempremental and mysterious thing it all comes down to pure maths:

If calories in > calories out then you will gain weight.
If calories in < calories out you will lose weight.
If calories in = calories out your weight will be maintained.

The precise number of calories you are burning per day is tricky to obtain, but can be effectively estimated using a BMR and an appropriate activity modifier. This website should help:

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calcu ... -equation/

So it comes, logically there are two ways to get your weight loss back on track:

1) Decrease calories in (through effective diet).
2) Increase calories out (through increased cardio/ higher intensity).

You should decide which one best suits your wants and needs.

There are a couple of issue in your post that I feel the need to address.

Muscle/Fat evening out: This is not impossible but I would say it is unlikely. Genrally an athlete can either gain muscle or lose fat at one time, not both (without the use of *ahem* performance enhancers). This is because (by definition) to gain muscle your body must have a calorie surplus (ie: calories in exceeds calories out as mentioned above) and to lose fat your body must have a calorie defecit. There are 2 exceptions to this: 1) You are on steroids or 2) You are a Novice athlete (by which I mean training less than 10 weeks). Based on your already impressive weight loss I would theroise that it is unlikely you are a complete novice, and even if you are the amount of muscle bulk you can gain while cutting is small (that is not to say you won't gain strength or conditioning, just not sheer mass).

I'm not saying this to bust yours or your trainer's balls, just giving you the cold hard facts.

One other thing I feel that I should address is the fact that you mentioned that you spend time in the sauna before and after your workout. This will in no way whatsoever assist you in the weight loss process - when you in the sauna the weight you are losing is water through the process of sweat and evaporation. This will dehydrate you prior to trianing and cause you to give a sub-excellent performance. If you are spending this much time in the sauna because you think it will help you with weight loss, STOP. If on the other hand you spend time in the sauna because you enjoy it, go right ahead. I only mention it because the context of your post made me think that you may believe the sauna is helping you lose weight.

In general aside from eat less than your maintence level of calories per day and exercise there is little you can do to assist weight loss, however there are a few pointers that are commonly cited by effective diet and training programs:

- Drink LOTS of water. 6 glasses a day should be a minimum.
- Take a multi-vitamin to ensure that your body is functioning as close to 100% as possible.
- Eat smaller, more regular meals rather than large infrequent meals.
- Keep the protien content high and the fat content low.
- Drink green tea and eat chilli. Both have some evidence to show that they assist in raising your BMR.

Good luck and feel free to ask for clarification on any of the issues discussed above.

The_Enforcer

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Regards,

The Enforcer.

The game is easy to start, the referee blows the whistle. It's where you go from there that matters.

awesome post enforcer really gave me a new look at how i should be working out and doing my work out in general. As far as the sauna is concerned i dont do it to lose weight i stretch in the sauna before and after my workout kinda been a routine ever since i pulled a muscle a year back cause i never thought it would happen lol but it really does happen if you dont stretch. Anyways great post got some good insight im gonna try to stricken my diet more or maybe start going twice a day to teh gym.

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~Ricky

Great I an glad you feel as though it helped. Stretching in the sauna is great - really helps you feel loose and good. Another great time to stretch is first thing in the morning while you are still in bed - you muscles are relaxed and supple from the time your body has spent in shut-down and more receptive to stretching than later in the day.

Diet is definately the easiest way to control your weight, the key is to consume a consistant amount of calories every day, that way you can get a solid feel for which direction your weight is moving in and why.

If you are going to try and go to the gym twice daily there are a few things to bear in mind:

- Keep your total number of resistance training sessions to 4-5 per week. Many people say 3 should be the maximum but I don't entirely subscribe to this theory.

-If you are going twice a day split your sessions between cardio and resistance. Don't try to do everything at every session.

- Make sure you have at least 2 full days off from exercise per week. For muscle growth and recovery the time you spend resting is as important as the time you spend working. Value your rest and make sure you listen to your body, if you begin to feel burnt out don't be afraid to have a week off. You would be amazed how often a week off will make all the difference.

Good luck with your health and fitness goals.

_________________
Regards,

The Enforcer.

The game is easy to start, the referee blows the whistle. It's where you go from there that matters.

The human body is made to adapt but if you dont take the calories in the first place you wont have to do the cardio which is probably causing your metabolisim to slow. How many calories did you take in today? How many calories do you need to maintain your current weight? Dont know thats the problem!

Ditto to what the Enforcer said. I have also lost considerable weight and also bulked up muscle mass through weight lifting @ the gym. Trainers are not doctors and some will tell you anything to keep you on their calendar. I'd be very wary of anything a fitness trainer told me about nutrition or health. Their only area of expertise is in body mechanics (muscles, bones & connective tissue) and endurance. If you need assistance with diet, talk to a doctor or nutritionist, not to a trainer.

The body will plateau at certain places in a weight loss regimen. The best way to overcome this is to change up your diet and exercise. If you're pretty consistent with your exercise, change it up. Cut back on the cardio and do a little more strength training. Building muscle mass increases your basal caloric rate at the time of the exercise, immediately after, and has better long term effects down the road. Also change up your cardio too. Switch from treadmill to biking, or biking to swimming, or something that uses different muscle groups. But I will tell you now - weight loss is much more about eating than it is about exercise. The trainers and people at the gym and authors of exercise books are all going to tell you that exercise is king, but it's not. My doctor warned me about the dangers of overtraining and how it can be counterproductive for weight-loss.

The key is to keep your calorie intake just below your equilibrium point so you are always losing a tiny bit. Small changes are essential for lasting weight loss. When you get to a plateau point, try a fasting day.

My doctor told me it was perfectly healthy and normal to just skip a day of eating (fasting) during weight loss to give the body a little fat burning boost to get over plateaus. I asked him why and he said in cave man times food was not guaranteed and our ancestors would regularly go a day or two without eating. That's why there is body fat to begin with - they ate everything they found or else it would spoil or animals would get it. When times were good they put on a little body fat. When times were not so good they lost a little body fat. He said the starvation response (where the body basically takes any input and stores it as fat, and also starts converting muscle mass to energy) doesn't kick in until day 4-5 of starvation or very restricted calorie intake depending on body composition, so if you are overweight, skipping a day of eating every so often is no problem as long as your diet is otherwise balanced and calibrated to be slightly under your caloric equlibrium rate.

If you don't eat for one day every two weeks, that's 1.15 pounds of fat that will come off per month, on top of your normal calorie restriction assuming your equilibrium is 2000 calories. (1 lb of fat is roughly equal to about 3500 calories). When you do start eating again, just don't binge or "reward" yourself with a high calorie meal. Eat your normal diet and pretend like the day of fasting didn't happen. I am still a few pounds over my goal weight and I do this still. Except for unusual circumstances, I don't eat much on Sundays except my normal yogurt/granola breakfast, and some Sundays I don't eat anything at all. That first meal of the new week is always very tasty and I seem to always have noticeable results like I can see my belly looks trimmer or my muscle tone in my face looks better or whatever.

What a novel thought eat less lose weight.

OP, do you have a cheat meal at least once every week or two? This could be really beneficial to keeping your body in fat burning mode. I would NOT take the advice to fast.

Smartbomb, while you are good with your intentions, you are giving poor advice. It is NEVER good to simply not eat when dieting. Your body receives a much higher metabolic response when eating multiple times per day (smaller calorie meals) and bc the body is very adaptable, lipolysis actually halts when starving yourself. Your doctor is seriously an idiot and is prob out of shape. When fasting, your metabolism crashes in order to NOT burn calories, as your body is not sure when its next meal will be. This can actually lead to greater fat storage.

Frankly, I'd take my doctor's advice over some quack fitness chode. Doc suggested reasonable meals and if I wasn't hungry for a day, fuck it - don't eat. I've been following his advice and I've gone from 205 to 180 with no loss in energy.

If doc says put down the damn fork, I'm going to do it... lol

Its clear that you are not well versed in a number of areas, including nutrition, medical training and biology. I'd also be willing to bet that you are skinny fat (or approaching that composition) at best.

Why exactly should you trust your doctor for NUTRITIONAL advice? Let me tell you a little secret, a lot of med schools (at least in the US, cant speak for overseas) DO NOT have mandatory nutritional courses if they even have a nutritional curriculum at all. And of the schools where it is mandatory, nutrition/fitness takes up only 5-10% of their overall studies with generally outdated information (food pyramid, lol). There is absolutely no reason to believe what your doctor says on this matter just because he/she has MD after their last name.

If you want to starve yourself some days to lose weight, then go ahead, because you will lose WEIGHT. But isn't the goal to lose FAT? They are not the same thing, do some research and think about it...

google that ish. many people have the same problems.