Weight Loss Problem Need Advice

LindaM · Post by **LindaM** » January 18th, 2005, 8:43 am

Wow, it sounds like you're doing everything right to me. Are you getting those calories from a balanced diet of complex carbohydrates - like green and orange vegetables, whole fruit, beans and pulses, lean protein, and healthy fats - no butter, use olive oil, canola oil, omega3 fish - like salmon? If so, and it were me, I'd add in some more vegetables. Be sure you are eating healthy snacks between meals too (almonds, dried fruit, celery with low fat cheese or peanut butter). Keep your blood sugar constant, so you are not starving by the time you get to your next meal. I'm only 5'1" and I lost weight on this diet eating 1700 - 1900 calories a day (workouts were 60 - 80 minutes, at U1-U2 pace).

[old] neilb · Post by **[old] neilb** » January 18th, 2005, 11:09 am

Ken, I wish I had your discipline and approach. You have gone about this in a very good way; sensible control of calories, good exercise, making sure you top up for the calories used in exercise and providing the food is good quality as Linda asks (I suspect with your approach it will be) the results will continue. Do you realise who much 4" off your waist actually is! I suspect that you will have also lost body fat elsewhere too so that muscles stat to show more. (Good muscle tone - not the body builder type - is a combination of exercise and lower level of body fat covering them. Remember everyone has a six pack just that some of us chose to cover it with a thick layer of fat!) A woman at my gym was mightly impressed with the benefits of rowing. She did not reduce her weight but fat loss meant she dropped two dress sizes and had great muscle tone. Now I am not suggesting you may want to get into a smaller dress but it helps illustrate that proper dieting is about small changes that over time reduce body fat. You have the added benefit of more muscle and much better fitness. Stop worrying and stick with it. In fact you could probably increase your calorie intake a bit providing it is good quality stuff; this may help with giving more energy. The key thing is that providing you can cut out the crap that is bad for you (hang on I need to fetch another chocolate biscuit) and arrive at a healthy eating plan that is something you can continue with as part of a lifestyle change it will make a massive difference. Please do not be tempted to reduce the intake any further; it will be counter productive. Listen to your body and if you are feeling tired at all try increasing the intake of complex carbs to give you more fuel (perhaps the day before a tough session). Also try the weight training; as you lose the fat and the muscles start to show new found respect for you body can be big motivator. Finally keep rowing, you are doing well. Neil.

[old] jav1 · Post by **[old] jav1** » January 18th, 2005, 11:49 am

Ken, I don't have answers for you but I do share your concerns relative to wieght trends that are counter to our goals. I have also been on a reduced calorie diet and working out fairly aggresively (but nowhere near your level). I have found that since I started rowing, my weight loss has slowed. Before the rower, I was doing the treadmill while dieting. I lost 12 pounds in 4 weeks. I then started rowing and to my mind, working harder. Yet in the 4 weeks that I've been rowing, I have only lost 3 pounds. I'm 5'11 and currently weigh 201. According to my doc, I'm still about 25 pounds overweight. At your height and weight, I'm pretty sure your in a similar situation. I'd like to believe that heavier lean muscle is displacing lighter bulk fat but I'm struggling with the thought that this is wishful thinking... (while getting way from at least one of my goals, wieght loss). I'd be very interested to learn if there is any scientific data to support the premise that rapid muscle development could completely offset (and exceed) weight loss from fat alone (especially on a reduced calorie diet). I agree that what we are doing is more positive than not but, I'm sure if I go back to my doc having gained 10 pounds, I will be hard pressed to convince him that I lost 5 pounds of fat and gained 15 pounds of lean muscle. But thats exactly the kind of ratio thats being suggested... if you gained 7 pounds since November, and have presumeably lost some fat, that means your muscle mass had to increase by something more than 7 pounds in approximatly 3 months. That seems like allot to me... but I'm not an expert. I don't mean to be a gloomy Gus, but I would like to understand and beleive that we are in fact heading in the right direction, and not just digging a deeper hole.

[old] michaelb · Post by **[old] michaelb** » January 18th, 2005, 12:17 pm

I don't have an explanation either, since it seems like you are doing everything right. We can call this the Ken Sumner weight loss paradox for now. Like everyone else, I think this will turn around and you are making progress. I assume that you are sure about what you weighed before you started this plan, and that you had measured that over time and on enough different days to know what your starting weight really was for sure? It seems unlikely that you have gained so much muscle to account for the weight gains. Since I can't see how you could have gained fat, the only other thing I can think of is water. My weight can vary by a few pounds each day just due to water (and maybe food). I don't want to cause panic, since I am completely guessing here, but if this continues I would consider talking to your doc about it. That is probably a good idea any time you start such a major change in your diet/activity. But I wonder if there is some way that either the dietary changes or exercise is contributing to extra water retention. I would want to make sure your electrolytes are in balance, and/or that there isn't some endocrine/liver/kidney function that is out of whack for some reason.

[old] ksumner · Post by **[old] ksumner** » January 19th, 2005, 4:57 am

Uhmm water I didn't think about. interesting from two points. One am I holding water, or two am I finally hydrated. I used to drink only a cup of coffee and a coke or two during the day. Now I drink ten 12 oz glasses of water and gatorade, I drink more gatorade according to my weight loss during a ride. And a few diet cokes during the day. That is a lot more liquid that I ever had previously. In fact I probably ran around dehydrated before I changed my habits. But I will stay at this level of fluid intake and diet for the next three months and in the spring, if no weight is lost I will visit doctors and a nutritionist because obviously I will be doing something wrong or have some problem. But for now I can be acedemic about it and just try to do better and study the issues. I have the right tools to do the job. I am going to hit 1,000,000 meters very soon now. Not bad in just under three months.

[old] Rocket Roy · Post by **[old] Rocket Roy** » January 19th, 2005, 6:03 am

Ken, I'd stick to water only, cut out the diet coke and Gatorade. Have a gatorade once a week as a reward. I'd also cut back a bit on the food intake. Your 1600 cals a day plus what you are working out, should equate to about 1lb a week in weight loss I think. I've cut my calorie intake down to about 2000 a day, I'm not too sure really may be less. And upped my workload in the gym. In 7 weeks I've gone from 92.5 to 79.6 kilos or 28lbs. I'm trying to make 75 by Boston. I think it could be water retention you do drink a lot a day, I drink about 4 pints a day. Stick with it tho you are doing Great!

[old] michaelb · Post by **[old] michaelb** » January 19th, 2005, 10:11 am

The drop in resting heart rate is another clue. I believe that one sign of dehydration is an elevated heart rate. As you have increased your blood volume, you have increased your HR efficiency, thus the drop from 65 to 53. 6 extra pounds of water/blood is still less than a gallon, and you are a big guy.

[old] ksumner · Post by **[old] ksumner** » January 23rd, 2005, 5:33 pm

Interesting side note to my drop in heart rate. As mentioned above my heart rate dropped from mid 60's to low 50's and a possible reason was hydration. I did some checking and found in a training handbook that a lowered heart rate is also a symptom of overtraining. Generally overtraining causes an increase in heartrate. But supposedly a reduced heartrate can happen with endurance overtraining also . It states that some athletes depress activity in their adrenal systems and a symptom of this is a reduced heart rate. I had never studied overtraining before. But I may have been doing myself more damage than good this last month. I was not exercising at all three months ago and now I am going up to two and a half hours a day. And every training session was actually a paced race against my latest or fastest row. Damn Rowpro is addictive. I decided to test this and continued to drink loads of water and take two days off. Sure enough my heart rate is back up in the 60's. I can also say that over the last few days the numbers on my scale went south. Waiting with baited breath to see if that weight loss sticks and keeps tracking south. Has anyone else read of experienced this in their training? Am I misinformed? Can weight loss be depressed by stress from overtraining (as well as with reduced calorie diets)? I have a heart rate monitor and decided to do a standing test before training and to not push so hard to hit the million meter mark. I don't think the amount of time I trained was the problem. But I think I kept my heart in the red zone too long. I checked my rows for January and they show me where I think my error is Typical 1/2 marathon since the beginning of January was as follows: start 123-142 bpm only 5 min middle 143-173 bpm approximately 55 min Then a huge kick from 174-203 bpm lasting around 29 min heartrate average around 167 to 172. I will use the HR during exercise in the future to throttle down my training. As always I appreciate any advice or comments. Ken

[old] cityeast · Post by **[old] cityeast** » January 23rd, 2005, 6:06 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(ksumner @ Jan 23 2005, 04:33 PM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'> Then a huge kick from 174-203 bpm lasting around 29 min heartrate average around 167 to 172. Ken </td></tr></table> OMG!! 203!! Man, thats bouncing off the rev limiter if I have ever seen it. And if you are holding that for any great length of time. In the last 10min of a 60min row I usually end up in the 175-185 bracket, and even I feel that might be pushing it a bit far. I am still losing about a kilo a week. There is a very good chance you are overtraining. If you want to train at that intensity, try to do 3x30min throughout the day. I think you are on the right track if you back drop back from "8th notch" and cruise for a week or two, see if it has any effect.

[old] ksumner · Post by **[old] ksumner** » January 23rd, 2005, 6:51 pm

In the last 30 min I would go from low 170's to maybe 181 and the last 7 or 8 min I was kicking from 180 to 200 or so. I cannot hold anything over 183 for any length of time. I know my Max heart rate is 203 at least at what feels like death. I have never been over 203. I believe my lactate threshold is around 181 to 183. I think I developed this bad training habit because when I started rowing. Anything I did would place my heart rate into the stratosphere. So I trained at what I could do and stayed there. I guess what I was saying was that I was quickly pass my lower hear rate ranges and then pushing until I hit close to my max heart rate almost every row. And that is not the most constructive way to loose weight or to train for any length of time.

[old] Rvav8r · Post by **[old] Rvav8r** » January 29th, 2005, 12:37 pm

I purchased my C2 back in August 2004, obstensibly for my wife to use, after all I was walking and using a cross country ski machine. In Sept. I finally decided to try out rowing. Now I'm hooked. I sporadically used it for the first couple of months and when I started to row faithfully I started my online logbook. I wish that I'd done that at first back in September. Since starting on 10 DEc I've rowed 210K! In September I weighed 222# (5-10) and this morning I weighed 205. Yes, I cut down on my calorie intake by no longer having seconds and limiting desert to once per week. I typically row 30 min or so and have increased my distance in that time by over 2K. Once a week I do a 45-60 min row. I lift moderate weights three days a week and do 100 pushups and 150 crunches/situps per day. I'm pleased to report that this regimine has dropped 5 inches from my waist and 3 from my chest. I encourage all of you who are using the erg for weight control to keep at it. If I can do it then so can you. Ray Murphy M 55 Bandon, Oregon

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