Concept2 Forum

I'm new to the site, and instantly found myself in this forum.

I've been rowing, almost every day, for about three years. I'm on a competitive highschool team, and we practice for about 2 hours, everyday, 6 days a week all year. (including summer rowing.) I should be in excellent shape according to this amount of practice, right?

wrong!

I have lost alot of weight since freshmen year, about 15 lbs. But I seem to have reached a point where I can't lose any more weight. I'm currently 5'5" with a weight of 155 lbs: about 10-15 pounds over the weight limit according to my doctor and other health professionals.

I eat cereal for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and healthy foods for dinner, I really do not eat poorly. I get 9 hours of sleep a night and feel healthy.

I try to cross train and add some jogging to my afterworkout workouts, but nothing seems to be going.

is anyone else having this 'stubborn weight' problem? and does anyone else have any suggestions on workouts that are slimming?

As strange as it may seem, it's very possible that you aren't eating enough. You only want to take in about 500 calories less than what you need. If you eat too little, your body will go into "starvation mode" and your metabolism will slow down.

Do you lift weights? This also effects your metabolism. Having more muscles will speed up your resting metabloism, all else being equal. If you aren't eating enough, and only doing cardio type exercises, you could be catabolizing muscles, and thus, slowing your metabolism down.

07
If you're the right shape, stop worrying: maybe the extra weight is muscle. On 2h/6days, it wouldn't be surprising.

Those docs could well be looking at your BMI only which is around 26, when ideal is said to be 21-25. Not sure if it's the same for M and F.

sevenseat07

I'm with pduck on this one. In my late twenties I lost 50 lbs. mostly by eating breakfast regularly and a smaller dinner and jogging about 10 miles a week. The saying goes, "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper."

Frank

thanks everyone.

and no I usually don't lift weights, I do over the winter when we have our indoor workouts, but i'll see if I can fit a few more of those sessions into my workouts this summer.

thank you so much!

Just for fun, Frank J's post reminded me of a variation on his advice.

" Eat breakfast by yourself, share lunch with a friend, give your dinner to an enemy."

Hopefully, you have no enemies, but it makes the point.

Like someone else said, maybe the extra weight is muscle. We have a kid on our crew team who is 5'10 and weighs 200lbs, but he's jacked, not fat. Give the weight lifting a try.

sevenseat07 wrote:I eat cereal for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and healthy foods for dinner, I really do not eat poorly. I get 9 hours of sleep a night and feel healthy.

I would say the "healthy foods for dinner" is the problem, and you're sleeping too much.

is anyone else having this 'stubborn weight' problem? and does anyone else have any suggestions on workouts that are slimming?

I've been rowing EVERY single day at least 7000 - 45 min a day for the past 3 months. I've been writting down my intake food. I'm using the web site www.sparkpeolpe.com to follow my intake calories, and belive me, I am not cheating at all. I'm on a diet of 1800 calories, some days 1500. I didn't lose a pound, and actually I gained 3.
This is frustation!!!! I'm 49 years old: 5'3" tall and weight 156ls.
I've tried all diets in the past 3 years and nothing happens.
By the way, I've had my hormones tested and it is nothing wrong.

The human body is a very efficient calorie counter: for every 3500 calorie deficit, you will lose one pound; for every 3500 calorie surplus, you will gain one. Irrespective of the type of foods you eat - calories are calories, no matter their source. Of course, it is advisable to consume mostly fresh, nutritious, unprocessed foods, rather than junk.

My personal experience (gained in more than 30 years of being a runner with many marathons behind me) is that to LOSE weight one should aim for about 10 calories per pound (of your weight) per day. So if you weigh 160, then aim for about 1600 calories per day. Of course the best thing to do is to consult a dietician.

I run about 5 to 10 miles, 4 times a week and row (average around 10,000m per day) 6 times a week. Even with all that exercise, as soon as my daily calorie intake gets to around 2000, my weight stabilizes or starts to climb.

I am 54 and I use www.fitday.com to track calories.

Bert
Houston TX

Thanks Bert. I'll reduce my calories to 1400 and try the www. fitday.com. I've notice that each program that count calories has diferent points for the same food.

I agree with Bert and think you are still eating way too many calories to lose weight.

At your height of 5' 3, I'd aim for 1000 calories a day and no more than that. Also be sure to drink plenty of water, before, during, and after your meals.

A dozen years ago I weighed the most in my life, which was 170 pounds. I was running 70 miles a week at the time. Without changing anything else, I changed my diet, and went on a 700 calories a day diet for four months. At the end of that time I weighed 133 pounds, and was averaging 135 pounds for a week. Then I stayed at 140 pounds or less for the next four years, without dieting, though I retained the same habits.

The very best book I have seen on diet is "The Rice Diet Report", by Judy Moscovitz. The book is out of print but I found a mint condition used hardback in a bookstore for 6 bucks. I am sure you can find it on the internet. The author went from 275 to 119 pounds and stayed there, from following the program in the book.

This book is about the highly successful diet program designed and administrated by Herbert Kempner for more than six decades. This diet was first developed as a cure for TB, then for improving the health of people who were greatly overweight. Mr. Kempner passed away somewhere around age 90, and his clinic is no longer in existence.

I just checked and "The Rice Diet Report" hardcover is available on Ebay for $9.99 plus $4.99 shipping.

http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Rice-Diet-Repor ... dZViewItem

Sevenseat07,

You might want to try dividing your calorie intake into more meals. A lot of dieticians reccomend eating six small meals a day.

I have always been blessed with a turbo charged metabolism and was always very lean despite eating as much as I wanted as often as I wanted. I was about 172 lbs. at 6'1" when I graduated college and stayed at that weight or lower for the next 9 years. Then when I approached 30, I started to slowly gain some weight. My eating habits did not change so I'm sure my metabolism had begun to slow as most everyone's does with age. In January of this year I reached my highest weight ever of 186 lbs. and it was not muscle. I have always been a runner and biker and I was working out as much as I always have.

I decided to give the six meal a day plan a try. I quickly found out that it was to hard for me to do 6 meals so I setlled on 5 meals a day. Usually 6:30, 9:30, 12:30, 3:30 and 5:30. I have not really changed the types of food I eat and I think my overall calorie intake is the same as before, it is just spread out more during the day.

By just making this change alone, I reached a low of 170lbs (16 lbs. lost) in 5 months and have settled at a steady weight of 172 lbs. For me, I believe the difference has been that I never feel famished at meal time so I don't binge eat at dinner and don't feel the urge for late night snacking like I use to. Don't get me wrong, I still finish my entire dinner when we go out to eat Friday night but I no longer can eat my entire dinner, my two sons left over chicken strips and the half of a hamburger that my wife could not finish I think my stomach has shrunk.

Eating this way is supposed to keep your metabolism reved all through the day. Sorry for the long rambling response.

Rich