Fat Loss Stalled

[chicken]

Hi All,

I am trying to lose some body fat (5%ish) while maintaining muscle. I am 192cm, 96kg and approx. 20% fat. I started 8 weeks ago eating the following;

7:00 100g oats with 1.5% milk, and honey. 2 fish oil caps.

8:00 Mug of coffee with milk and 2 sugars.

10:00 Tuna salad (125g tuna, 20g canned mixed beans, baby spinach leaves, olive oil). Banana. Tea with milk and 1 sugar.

12:30 Cheese sandwich (2 slices "Burgen" bread, 2 slices jarlsburg, spinach leaves). Low fat/low sugar yoghurt. Apple.

15:00 Tuna salad (as above). Coffee with milk and 2 sugars.

17:30 Family meal. This varies between things like chicken breast and veg, oven baked breaded fish and salad, pasta with meat and sauce.

21:30 Whey shake made with water. 2 fish caps. Sometimes small snack, raw carrot, peanut butter or cheese.

I eat this 6 days per week, the other day I slack off a bit and have some fast food, couple of beers etc.

After 4 weeks I had lost 2.5kg in weight, 2% body fat and 2.5cm off waist. I thought I had cracked it, however after another 4 weeks I checked again and fat loss has stalled completely. Same weight, bf and waist.

So, what should I do? Would making some small changes affect anything, say if I dropped my oats to 75g, cut the banana and yoghurt? My workouts are only of moderate intensity as I am limited by knee pain (patellar femoral syndrome apparently). I workout at home, 3 times per week between 19:30 - 21:00, mainly upper body stuff with some knee re-hab excercises. Should I add some HIIT?

Cheers

[MidLifter]

I'm not sure what your total calories are, but assuming that you are eating maintenance calories, cut by 250 and maintain protein intake.

[chicken]

Thanks for the reply.

I've tried to stay away from calorie counting, don't want to get too anal about it.

Saying that, I have just worked out that 25g of oats (with milk), banana and yoghurt = 300 calories. So I'll start dropping these next week.

Oh, and I just realised the tuna salad I have has about 150g of tuna, not 125g.

Cheers

[itsbruce]

Aye, 100g of oats is a lot of carbs in the morning. How about dropping to 50g (about 1/2 a cup of oats) and adding a couple of slices of bacon? Mmm, bacon - and fewer carbs.

[atypical1]

I'd be much more strict on your weekend meals. Before you start taking away the healthy stuff like oatmeal I'd take away those fast food meals on the weekend. You would be surprised at how those could set you back in your progress.

At some point you'll have to count calories if you're keeping carbs in your diet but it's not that hard to do. Use the cunningham equation to understand how many calories you need each day. Once you've measured your intake for one day it becomes relatively easy since you're essentially eating the same stuff daily.

james

[Bman1]

Easiest way to drop some "useless" calories is drop all the sugrs you are adding to your coffee and tea. Try switching to plain, low-fat or no-fat yogurt (I prefer greek yogurt) with no additives. Use apple, banana or berries to sweeten. Also is good mixed with nuts or seeds. You could also drop a few calories mixing your tuna with less olive oil, try mustard instead. Unlike many on this site, I am not anti-carb, but it does look like you get a fair amount of your calories from either simple or complex carbs, particularly on nights when you have pasta for dinner. you may want to look at your carb/protein/fat ratio. If your carbs are much above 50% of your calories, you could definitely work on reducing them.

Finally, I think you do probably have to count calories for a bit just to get a good handle on your actual calorie intake. Use sites such as fitday or caloriecount to track calories and estimate your calorie expenditure.

[itsbruce]

The diets you don't have to count calories on, while still losing weight, are the low/slow carb ones where you cut out all the non-plant carbs, even keeping fruit to a minimum, and load up on protein and vegetables. Not for me, really. I don't mind counting calories if it means I can have porridge for breakfast once in a while. Mmmm, porridge...

[chicken]

G'day All,

Thanks for all the replies, seems I've got some counting to do. I have tried very low carb diets in the past, not good, felt like crap, really irritable (especially with the kids). I have looked at the slow carb diet, it's on here somewhere, has anyone tried it? Can you really eat as many beans, nuts etc that you like?

@Bruce, I dropped the oats to 75g this morning, I'm not sure about mixing in bacon though .

@James, yeah I'll certainly look at the weekend food more closely, I tend to have 1 day where I don't worry about what I eat, I don't go completely off the rails but may have 1 fast food meal, more bread than usual and some cake/chocolate. I've cut beer down from 12 bottles (plus a 250g baf of doritos) over a weekend to 4-5 and no chips. It is nice to have a break from tuna salad.

@Bob, it seems 5 heaped spoons of sugar = 125 cals! I will be dropping these defo, green tea without milk or sugar should be better. I agree about the evening carbs, it's tricky though as the missus cooks and I don't want to get overly fussy. At this time of day after looking after the kids she can be a bit, er, sensitive.

A quick question, what sort of time frame should I be aiming for? I was hoping to lose about 2% bf per month, does this seem reasonable? I do remember reading that fat loss is not a natural state for the body to be in and one should try and do it as quick as possible. Sort of short and sharp.

Anyway, thanks again, cunningham/fitday here I come.

Cheers

[itsbruce]

I'm going to assume you didn't really think I meant adding the bacon to the porridge bowl

As for speed, I don't think fat loss is something that you can do quickly except when you are significantly overweight, which you are not. When I was 25 kilos overweight, I was able to lose a kilo a week just by switching to a healthy diet and doing some cardio (and not very intense cardio - took me a while to get fit enough for that). By the time I was down to 7 or 8 kilos overweight, that had slowed to less than a kilo a week. One reason for this is that the fitter and leaner you become, the more efficient your metabolism and so you extract more from your food (particularly if you've cut back on your intake). This can mean that you gain more weight from junk food once you're fitter. It's one reason people with poor diet discipline have yoyo weight problems; they don't change their eating habits for good, just temporarily, and then bounce back even faster.

[chicken]

I'm going to assume you didn't really think I meant adding the bacon to the porridge bowl

Ha ha, yeah just kidding mate. I'll let you try that one first.

Thinking of mixing porridge and bacon reminds me of when I did basic training in the military. During field excercise type training when it was evening meal all the trainees used 2 mess tins; 1 for meal, 1 for desert. One of the instructors used just 1 tin, so he had something like chicken, veg and gravy topped with sponge cake and custard. He sat down, mixed it together and eat the lot , said it was quicker and less cleaning to do after.

[dylanamus]

I'd drop all the sugar you are adding to drinks and meals.

I'd drop all starchy carbs - bread/rice/pasta/potato.

I'd add up everything I'm eating for a few days and get a general idea of total calories to assist with making further adjustments.

For fat loss purposes, even on the low carb or slow carb diets, calorie intake still matters. The reason why you don't "have to" count calories on the slow carb diet is because you will be less hungry than on a traditional diet due to the slow release of energy in the low GI foods dominant in this diet and will therefore feel full or content without eating over maintenance.

On a low carb diet, you can eat until you're full using low calorie sources like VEGETABLES. If you ate kilo sized portions of meat and a few table spoons of butter with every meal on your low carb diet, you would get fatter... Calorie quantities DO matter, but you don't "have to" count on a daily basis if you already know you are eating few enough calories without counting... hence my suggestion to dedicate your time to figuring out the calories in a few typical example days.

[thefinalsql]

Check for sugar in your peanut butter. Sugar content can vary widely between brands.

[chicken]

I'd drop all the sugar you are adding to drinks and meals.

Thanks for the reply, yeah I agree, in fact I have a black coffee with no sugar in front of me right now (not toooo bad!)

I'd drop all starchy carbs - bread/rice/pasta/potato.

Rice, pasta and spud, no problem, bread will be harder though. If I was to replace my cheese sandwich with say more tuna and bean salad of same cal value would this have any effect? Or should I aim to reduce the calories by removing the bread?

I'd add up everything I'm eating for a few days and get a general idea of total calories to assist with making further adjustments.

This seems to be a common suggestion, so I will.

Thanks again

[chicken]

Check for sugar in your peanut butter. Sugar content can vary widely between brands.

Stuff I have is alleged to be 'natural' peanut butter. Ingredients says 100% peanuts, so no added sugar.

I sometimes grate a carrot and use the peanut butter as a dip.

Cheers

[MidLifter]

Beware of the stealth killer: office food. Only partake if it is for something like your B-day and you feel obligated to have a piece of cake...

Fruits and berries go a long way to help with cravings for sweets.