Workout advice and help.. PLEASE

[tabby23tech]

Okay so here we go. I finally decided that i'm fat and I have a bunch of excuses to stay that way. So I joined a gym and got a workout buddy who has been keeping me motivated!! So i'm 3 weeks into excercising 5 days a week. Cardio 5 days and weightlifting various body parts 5 days a week. Like legs and the lower half 3x a week and the upper half 2x week. Switching it out every other week. So here's my question. I'm 5'4 and 230.. How long is it going to take before I start seeing weight loss? I'm starting week 3 and havent' lossed a pound. I do eat healthy, veggies, fruit, lowfat dairy products, wheat and whole grains. Eating 5x a day small porptions, tracking what i eat on dailyplate. So I know how to eat smart. I'm drinking somewhere around 96 oz of water, some 1% milk for calcium, occasional o.j., but mainly water. Please any advice..??
ANother question, replacing electolytes.. good thing or bad thing, do I drink gatorade.. and how much daily, every other day or weekly? I've been tired cause i'm going in the morning, and I know it's a HUGE change for me, but could the reason i'm tired is bc i haven't been replacing them?
Also, any workout tips would be appreciated...

Thanks for the Help!
GO ME, I am women hear me ROAR!! I can and WILL do this!!!

[KMonte85]

I had a workout buddy that was having the SAME PROBLEM a few months back- working out diligently, eating the right foods, and no weight loss. We are blessed to work for a fitness-conscious business so she asked the on-staff nutrionist and fitness instructor what the problem could be. The nutritionist/fitness guru told her there are a number of reasons this could happen, but the three most common are:

1. If you are only a few weeks into the fitness training and healthy eating, your body could be in a kind of "shock" and is going to need time to adjust to the new lifestyle. Once your body catches up to your inner motivation, you will begin to see results.

2. You are gaining muscle and losing fat, which will keep your weight higher than what you would think it should be from all the hard work. Muscle weighs more than fat, so if you lose the fat but are gaining muscle from working out 5x's a week, you will not necessarily see significant weight loss. Scales are not always the best way to measure success. Have you tried measuring yourself - Waist, arms, thighs? Taking weekly measurements might be a better way to keep track of your progress, because even if you do not lose weight, it is quite possible that you are progressing by losing inches.

3. With the challenging workout regime you are doing, you may not be getting all the calories in your body that you need, causing your body to go into "starvation mode" and store as much fat as possible. Women need a MINIMUM of 1200 calories per day just for normal daily activity. Add in the extra strain of cardio and weight training and you will probably need over 2000 calories per day to stay healthy and still lose weight. If your body is not getting a safe amount of calories, it will hang onto every drop of sugar/carbs/fats that it gets as a way to compensate for the too-wide calorie deficit. Try a website like "Calorie Count" where you can calculate what your daily caloric intake is and what your daily caloric expenditure is and see if the gap is too large for your body to handle.



Not sure if this is it or not, but it might be the first place to look... you could also consult your doctor to see if they have any suggestions/tips/advice for you.

[Loveshoes]

You won't need over 2000 calories a day to stay healthy. Chances are that you don't burn those kind of calories with your metabolic rate. However, a good start is to have an idea of what your resting metabolic rate is. This way you are taking in the amount of calories you need. What difference does it make how much weight you lose anyway? What are you going to do with that number? Throw away your scale and stay off of it. Work off of your clothes, how do they fit? How are they feeling? How do you feel? That's what you need to be more concerned about because the weight will drop with the lean muscle gain. Keep focused and stay disciplined, your body will adjust. 5 days of training may be too much, 4 days is actually ideal and your body needs to rest. Be careful that you don't over train your muscles as this will definitely cause fatigue as well. We tell our clients to give it 6 weeks before you see changes and then we'll adjust what you need to be doing in order to see the changes and results that you want. How is your cardio? Because if you are doing cardio but you aren't working at it like you should be then it will take even longer. If you're walking along with a big smile on your face then it might be that cardio isn't hard enough to get you where you need.

Be careful of information and what you read, make sure that you do your research, there is a lot of information out there but a lot of it is misinformation. I hate to see people work harder than they have to and get no where only to find out that they heard about this great new thing and it doesn't work.

[broseph]

Gatorade will actually turn into fat if you dont burn it immediately. Look into complex carbohydrates as your carb source as opposed to simple sugars.