Thread: Trimming Down - Critique my Regimen, please!

I'd like someone to rate or critique my regimen to lose weight.

To start, my goal is to lose 10 lbs. I work long hours, so I don't have much time to apply. I'm eating the bare minimum--around 1200 calories--per day, not by choice, but by habit. I'm trying to move more of those carbs to proteins. My typical diet that I've been 'on' for a long time is:

Breakfast: 1 cup oatmeal with a tsp brown sugar, 3 egg whites, 4 oz yogurt
Lunch: Garbanzo beans over salad greens with oil-based (not creamy) dressing.
Dinner: Varies, trying to get away from having a small bowl of pasta or soup towards chicken breast & more veggies.
Snacks--either hard-boiled egg whites or 1/2 cucumber (I honestly enjoy eating these so it's no big deal to me!)

I've pretty much completely plateaued in terms of where my diet can get me for weight loss--any weight that I lose during the week just from eating less I'll gain back on the weekend from one day of eating dinner at a restaurant or going to the bar and knocking back a couple of beers. I really can't eat any less during the week days, and it wouldn't be that big of a deal to cut out the extras on the weekends, which is what I'm working toward doing anyway.

So I'm 130 lbs, but I'm trying not to focus on the weight itself because I need to gain a bit of muscle weight for sure. I'm mostly looking at my measurements. I'm 5'2" and currently 36-28-38. I am capable of an hourglass shape, and that's where I was several years ago before I started a job that involves nothing but sitting around all day. So I want to lose 2 inches from my waist and hips and I'll be happy, no matter the weight (and tone up too!).

Now, for the exercise. My biggest question is with regard to weight training and whether or not it's frequent enough and involves enough reps/sets per muscle group.

I alternate days--legs + arms on one day, then cardio and abs on the next. This is just to save time because I work!

On the first day I do:
Legs:
-Squats with 10lb dumbells (held under my chin) - 4 sets of 15
-Standing rear leg lifts (using a chair for support) - 4 sets of 20 for each leg
-Lying side leg lifts - 4 sets of 20

Arms:
-Overhead tricep extensions 5lbs - 4 sets of 15
-Bicep curls 5lbs - 4 sets of 20
-Seated deltoid flies 5lbs(each hand) - 4 sets of 8 (omg these burn!)

Day 2:
Abs:
-Weighted crunches 10lbs - 4 sets of 20
-Double straight-leg lifts - 4 sets of 20
-Weighted twists 10lbs - 4 sets of 20
-Cross crunches - 4 sets of 20

The on day 2 I have also been working on an interval routine. I'm extremely self conscious about exercising in public (I live in a city) and I own no machines, so I've been trying out burpee intervals in my living room for cardio. I've been able to do a routine where I warm up for 2 minutes, then alternate 10 consecutive burpees with 30 seconds light jogging in place for 5 cycles, then cool down for 2 minutes. It works out to be about 10 minutes total but I want to work it up to 20 minutes, because it really wipes me out! I've already noticed myself having a bit more stamina and being able to take bigger breaths (I have scoliosis which compresses my chest cavity a bit so vital capacity is something I don't have very much of to begin with).

My concern with the cardio intervals is whether or not I'm letting my heart rate fall sufficiently between the high-intensity bouts. I'm not sure if anyone here does HIIT but if you do and you can advise, I'd appreciate it.

As for the rest of it--assuming I throw in a day of rest 1x per week when I just have too much stuff to do, are my routines frequent enough? Should I be doing full body strength every day and cardio every day? I still have soreness for each group that I exercised the previous day, and so far I've taken that to mean 'it's working' from the strength training standpoint, but since I'm already fairly thin (meaning it takes more effort to lose weight), is cardio every other day sufficient? I'd like to think I can lose those inches--or about 10lbs--before the end of the summer.

What do you think?

burpees are great for home exercise. They're just great in general. 10 minutes isn't long enough to get good cardio in though. Especially since 4 of those minutes are warming up and cooling down. You can do ab exercises every day if you like. I would work them into to your burpee routine. Maybe do the warm up, burpees twice with an ab workout in between. That should be around 30 minutes. That would be a good start. 30 seconds of jogging should be enough to get your breath back between burpees. You'll find that the better shape you get in, the faster your heart rate will drop.