Weight / Fat loss

I realise this wont go down well at all, but does anyone else have trouble keeping weight on?

Unless I conciously make an effort to eat three solid meals a day I get stupidly skinny, even if I cut back on gym / cycling. I find eating takes too long and requires too much effort, especially when you're busy - is this the beginning of an eating disorder or do I just need to eat more cake and drink less espresso?

edit: I'm 6', 70kg and when last checked 3 months ago 11% bodyfat. The physician told me to gain weight back then and I was 4kg heavier.

You'd need to share your daily food averages....

Most people either dont realise how much they are eating or how little they are eating and yes, daily activites and age play a big role too.

try counting calories for a few days, it's always a surprise to see how much you're actually taking in when not thinking about it.

Cost is the worst part, as when I'm broke the easiest thing to skimp on is food. Plus missing meals means no stress / effort and plenty of time for all the other ways I waste my life :)

Why does eating cause stress ?

Really? I've always been between 68-72kg at 6foot, and have never felt excessively skinny. What reasons did the physician give?

She said my BMI was on the verge of being too low, I ignored her. The only reason I feel skinny is that when I was at university and obsessed with lifting I was 85kg and 9% bf but then I was eating six meals a day and nothing went into my mouth before it went on a set of scales.

You'd need to share your daily food averages....

I eat the same breakfast everyday which is 450 calories. The remainder of the day can vary from 600 to 2000 on top of breakfast, depending on how busy I am at work. Worst case scenario is I eat breakfast and nothing else the remainder of the day, that happens rarely though.

Why does eating cause stress ?

It's just one more additional chore and expense. When I get in from work I'd rather fall asleep than cook dinner and eat.

When I get in from work I'd rather fall asleep than cook dinner and eat.

Easy fix, grab something cheap that doesn't require cooking as your 'Plan B' even a couple of bananas or a tin of nourishment is better than feck all.

What do people reckon to leangains and intermittent fasting? The strictness of leangains seems a little mind boggling and unworkable - especially with regards to timing and dietary constraints on training and rest days.

I haven't tried it, but I can think of several diets I would prefer to try first. If I had no success with basic calorie counting, low carb, ketogenic etc diets, or with changing my activity/exercise levels, then I might give it a go.

This is partly because fasting sounds unpleasant, but also because I feel that the more radical the diet, the harder it is to transition back to a sustainable long-term eating plan without gaining weight again.

That said, I haven't tried it, so it might all be unicorns and milkshakes for all I know.

IF isn't that bad or hard.
Not sure its as effective as simple calorie counting.
Let me get back to University and a normal training regime, and I'll let you know the progress.

What's up with all of the crazy diet plans?

Make an estimate of average daily expendature, aim for 500-700 kcal less consisting of 50% carbs, 35% fat and 15% protein. Piece of piss.

Percentages going by kcal, by weight I think it's 62% carbs, and 19% of both protein and fat. But i'm tired and those numbers may not be completely accurate, but they seem right.

I cycle ~19 miles each day on my commute, then do one of the following:

• Run 10K
  
• Swim 1,500m
  
• Lift weights for an hour
  
  

The rest of the day I sit on my arse.

How many calories I am burning, Mr McCarthy?

Awesomely obsessive.

digital trowel for the fatties?

For baking

I haven't tried it, but I can think of several diets I would prefer to try first. If I had no success with basic calorie counting, low carb, ketogenic etc diets, or with changing my activity/exercise levels, then I might give it a go.

This is partly because fasting sounds unpleasant, but also because I feel that the more radical the diet, the harder it is to transition back to a sustainable long-term eating plan without gaining weight again.

That said, I haven't tried it, so it might all be unicorns and milkshakes for all I know.

Earlier in the year I did 10 weeks of keto, lost weight and was probably the leanest of my life (also climbing at my best).
Moved cities, slept on sofas, ate shite and fell off the wagon as spectacularly as possible.

I'm now back on keto but I'm not sure I can be arsed cutting carbs in such an absolute fashion as this seems unsustainable (as it was first time around). I had a brief look at tkd and ckd variations today but didn't conclude that either of these were what I was after. I then tried to get my head around leangains but there seemed to be a strictness with on/off days having pretty different diet plans - this is a problem as I often don't know if I'm going to train or not in the morning and thus planning my day's eating would be difficult. Also, I'm not sure how practical an 8 hour eating window would be. Another issue was leangains' 3x1 hour training sessions a week - at periods of excess, I've averaged 8-12 training sessions a week and even when just going steady I'm quite likely to want to train more than 3 times a week.

It also seemed to me that leangains has a bias to aesthetics rather than performance. I want to lose weight for the associated performance benefit (in climbing specifically) and "6 pack abs" while not undesirable, are sadly not my main goal and I couldn't quite pin down any empirical data about leangains and athletic performance.

Apologies because this is a rant as much as anything.

Anyway, back on the training now, should help the weightloss along and if nothing else it'll do me good!

/rant
/wall of text

In this session of "I'm a massive fatty XIV" I've been measuring my waist as well as noting my weight.

Over the course of the past week my weight has stayed static -bang on 79kg average- but I've gone from 33.5" to 32 3/4", and have less "wobble".

botox does wonders doesn't it.

how much do you weigh and how much have you lost?

I toyed with fasting on the weekend. 18 hours was enough for me, only drinking water but did have some effect. i think. dont know if that was psychological or not though.

i went from 70kg to 62kg, now im up to 68kg (6kg of muscle gain)
i dont follow this eating plan for weight loss to be honest, more a way of keeping bodyfat low while being able to eat what i want (post-training of course).

I realise this wont go down well at all, but does anyone else have trouble keeping weight on?

Unless I conciously make an effort to eat three solid meals a day I get stupidly skinny, even if I cut back on gym / cycling. I find eating takes too long and requires too much effort, especially when you're busy - is this the beginning of an eating disorder or do I just need to eat more cake and drink less espresso?

edit: I'm 6', 70kg and when last checked 3 months ago 11% bodyfat. The physician told me to gain weight back then and I was 4kg heavier.

nutella, peanut butter, dohnuts. they are all your friends for weight gain.

What do people reckon to leangains and intermittent fasting? The strictness of leangains seems a little mind boggling and unworkable - especially with regards to timing and dietary constraints on training and rest days.

IF is great, i tried the keto diet as well actually, fucking hard! i lasted 4 weeks, admittedly it does lean you out a lot, but i turned into a moody motherfucker after about 10 days. not sustainable for me.
i love carbs too much.

the alternating diet is pretty good, i eat 0.8x maintainance calories on rest days (high fat/protein, low carb as possible), and 1.2x maintainance on training days (high carb/protein, low fat.)

you're dead right though, training for aesthetics and training for performance are very different.

Half of the battle with keto is finding out good meals and snacks, once you've covered those it becomes a lot more manageable. The first week or two are terrible regardless.

I've decided just to stick with keto for now because it's working steadily - half a stone in 3 weeks (not that I can hope to maintain this rate).
Started 182lbs / 13stone / 82.5kg
Current 175lbs / 12stone 7lbs / 79.5kg
Goal 155-161lbs / 11stone 1-7lbs / 70-73kg

nice one! half a stone is good going.

what snacks do you have?? i found it borderline impossible to find anything i actually wanted to eat.

My keto was simply:

Scrambled eggs and evoo for breakfast

Chicken and green beans for lunch

Whatever dinneris minus the carbs (not inc sauces)

Cheese, meat and almonds as snacks.

It worked well while was hovering around 16st got me down to 13.5 then I had to be really strict about keeping it under 50g per day. A lot of effort for an extra stone loss.

This was Monday to Friday, the weekend was anything goes and NOT within reaso.

An important thing to note about short term low carbing, is that you will lose a heap of weight but not really fat. It takes longer for the ketosis to kick in properly.

The massive rapid weight loss will actually be the loss of the stored carbs & water. For every gram of carbs you store, there are three grams of water. If you want to increase this effect (like if you are losing weight for a weigh in or getting photos done) then you can drop salt aswell.

If you actually want to lose fat and have more persistent compositional changes, then it will take longer. You can buy ketosis test strips cheaply of ebay to check whether you have entered the state, and also find a threshold of carbs you can ingest without coming out of ketogenesis.

As always, these carbs are best consumed to fuel your sporting activities/exercise, most specifically just afterwards.

Awesomely obsessive.

Under US$15 from DX

She said my BMI was on the verge of being too low, I ignored her. The only reason I feel skinny is that when I was at university and obsessed with lifting I was 85kg and 9% bf but then I was eating six meals a day and nothing went into my mouth before it went on a set of scales.

I eat the same breakfast everyday which is 450 calories. The remainder of the day can vary from 600 to 2000 on top of breakfast, depending on how busy I am at work. Worst case scenario is I eat breakfast and nothing else the remainder of the day, that happens rarely though.

It's just one more additional chore and expense. When I get in from work I'd rather fall asleep than cook dinner and eat.

too tired because you do shift/late work or because you dont have the energy from lack of food ?

An important thing to note about short term low carbing, is that you will lose a heap of weight but not really fat. It takes longer for the ketosis to kick in properly.

The massive rapid weight loss will actually be the loss of the stored carbs & water. For every gram of carbs you store, there are three grams of water. If you want to increase this effect (like if you are losing weight for a weigh in or getting photos done) then you can drop salt aswell.

If you actually want to lose fat and have more persistent compositional changes, then it will take longer. You can buy ketosis test strips cheaply of ebay to check whether you have entered the state, and also find a threshold of carbs you can ingest without coming out of ketogenesis.

As always, these carbs are best consumed to fuel your sporting activities/exercise, most specifically just afterwards.

Well, this is the initial carb/water weight that usually goes in the first week or two. I've actually found keto to be the most effective diet I've tried for getting rid of fat but you've got to be strict and stick with it. Especially as you start to really lean up you stop really losing weight - ie the numbers on the scale don't change too much but measurements will.

My meal plan is usually something like this:

Flaxseed pancakes w/ cream cheese + black coffee for breakfast.

Don't eat lunch unless I'm working, tend to opt for a few of the following: cooked chicken/tinned fish/cheese/almonds/left over pancakes from breakfast/

Big dinner with plenty veg - usually broc, spinach, mushrooms, courgettes, cucumber and then get some protein from either eggs or meat.

Dessert/treats: 85 or 90% Dark Choc, Frozen summer fruits ice cream thing I make.

I also allow myself red wine when I do decide to drink as spirit + diet mixer is horrible.

Flaxseed pancakes are a godsend for me as they're the only no-carb equivalent that doesn't suck.
Recipe off the top of my head is:
2tsp Butter (melted)
1tsp cream
1tsp baking soda
3tbsp milled flax seed (linseed)
2-3tsp splenda or other artificial sweetener.
2 eggs.

Mix dry ingredients, add melted butter, add cream, beat in eggs, fry in pan. They come out like thick pancakes, not crepes (although I have made crepe style pancakes with ricotta before that weren't bad).

The Frozen summer fruit icecream thing is super simple, get half a cup of frozen summer fruits, add a bit of cream and some artificial sweetener then blend in a cup with a hand blender. It's pretty low carb but not super low - for a relatively low carb treat it's the fuckin' shit though. The blending seems to half whip the cream and then the frozen fruit seems to solidify it. Some use a bunch of ice to make a sort of iced smoothie but I've never tried it.

Tell me more about these flaxseed pancakes?