Fat loss - I've tried everything! Please, someone!

The Forums Ask Us.
1

Hey guys,

I’ve finally just broken down and I don’t know where to look for help. I’ve been trying to lose bodyfat for ages but it just doesn’t want to come off and I don’t know why. It’s like my bodies saying, “No Dave…no”. My diets pretty clean, I’m at boarding school so it’s kinda tough (I’m a senior), but it’s as follows on a regular day:

Breakfast: Hard Boiled eggs if they have them, if not 2-3 glasses of milk / bacon, Greens+ Daily Detox, Multivitamin
Lunch: 2 plates of pasta, 2-3 glasses of milk
Pre-Rugby Practice: 2 scoop protein shake (48g whey)
Post Rugby Practice (dinner): 2 plates of pasta, rice, 2-3 glasses of milk
Before bed: protein shake

That’s about as good as it gets at school. I’d be willing to purchase food to put in a minifridge in my room if there’s other stuff I should be having. My rugby practices are anywhere form 1.5-2 hours, monday tuesday wednesday friday, and I even started to do HIIt cardio 3x a week at night on Monday, Wednesday, Friday which seemed to be working for a while but then stopped. I’m around 11-12% body fat right now at 175-180lbs, I still have all my old strength (I havnt been weightlifting that much since before christmas and I deadlifted 300lbs 3x4 last week)…what am I doing wrong???

2

I would say you’re taking on too many starchy carbs. However, I struggle to lose fat also. Try replacing the pasta for some lean meat/fish and maybe vegetables??

3

I agree with maris. Most of your calories seem to be coming from milk and pasta, neither of which are particularly amazing when it comes to losing fat. I would switch to a more zone like approach of mostly meats/fish, veggies, and fruits. I don’t see any fruits in your diet and not many veggies either. Just speaking for your general health, it would go a long way for you to replace the starchy carbs w/ some more nutritious options.

4

Do you think that by eating less starchy carbs and more fiberous ones that I’ll be reducing my energy levels? I feel like I wouldn’t be getting near enough calories with just salad, carrots, corn, etc…

5

Carrots have huge amounts of sugar in them. In fact, I would steer more towards dark greens and the like (spinach, broccoli, etc.).

Your energy levels should be fine if you are getting lots of fruits and vegetables. I don’t know anybody who has had a problem unless they just stop eating basically. For health purposes alone, it shouldn’t even be a question about whether or not you should be adding fruits and veggies.

6

As was mentioned above, can you add some meat in there?

7

How can there possibly be huge amouts of sugar in carrots??? A carrot 1" in dia. and 6" long has about 5 gr of carbs = 20 cal.

TNT

8

Relative to how many carrots people eat and other vegetables, there is a lot of sugar in them. Go get a bag of baby carrots and you’ll see what I mean. There is also more nutritional value in other veggies.

9

R3N3GAD3,

You’re probably not gonna get many useful responses in this forum. Most people here are not in your situation and can eat whatever they want while they train. Although there is alot of nutritional knowledge here, not very many people are experienced at losing fat on this board. Correct me if I’m wrong board members…

Maybe try bodybuilding.com

10

I figured that the people on this forum are doing a lot of the same training that I am (both in and out of practice), so there nutrition could give me some insight into where I’m going wrong. I actually read bodybuilding.com a lot though, there’s just way too much conflicting information too get through.

Since my school has a food provider there’s not much option, however I try to eat a lot of ham at lunch time. The best I can do for protein is milk, ham, whey and if I’m lucky chicken at dinner or hard boiled eggs in the morning. I’ve been thinking lately that perhaps I may be undereating for how much activity I’m doing, do you think this could be the case and my body is in starvation mode?

11

A baby carrot has about 5 cal and 1 gr. of sugar. So, if you ate 40 baby carrots you will have consumed about 200 cal. Now really, how many people eat 40 baby carrots a day. Your jaw muscles would cramp up before you reached 40 carrots… By comparison, a banana also has 200 cal.

TNT

12

Milk is Insulinogenic ie it causes a big rise in insulin, hence why baby cows grow so fast.

13

I know plenty of people that, when they eat baby carrots, will eat 40 or so. I am sure you’ve sat there with a bag before and just started eating them and then they’re gone. Again, I’m not trying to start an argument about whether or not to eat them–the fact is that they have a lot more sugar than most vegetables and don’t provide a ton of nutritional value save some vitamin A. I’d rather have somebody eat carrots than lots of pasta, but I would definitely prefer dark greens and the like over carrots.

14

I have problems loosing fat, but not because I don’t know how to do it, but rather bacuse I live in student campus and feed at bakery store, without the space in my room to cook the things for myself… :slight_smile:

The problem of loosing fat in team sports is that altought you can lose fat, you may also lose glycoen (energy store) and perform awfull at practices. We have one athlete who was on fast for a time, lost some weight but start to overtrain, lack in motivation, bad temper etc. Fortunally, I found what he was doing and he is ok now.
At his other club they took him a 2,000eu for every kg of extra weight (5kg). Thus he is fanatically looking to reduce BW, altought he don’t have too much fat at all. The coach that did this is a motherfcking asshle!
I tryed to explain him that he needs energy and to eat a lot of ‘sugar’ food right after the training sessions and to keep his low card diet during the other meals. It seems it work, but I gotta check with him.

Thus, the solution is to eat carbohydrate rich meals 2h after training sessions, and eat only veggies and meat during the other meals with limited startch consuption and simple sugars. If you want to eact candy, eat it right after the training along with having some PWO shake.
If you have two trainings a day… well this is an real issue… the error can cause overtraining and low performance. Guess that the solution is to eat a lot of small meals, with CHO meals right after the trainign sessions to refill glycogen stores.

Others?

15

Thank you everyone, Duxx especially that was very insightful!
I have a couple other questions but I have rugby right now, haha, so I’ll post later but for right now thank you everyone :slight_smile:

16

The Glycemic Index of carrots is 47. The Glycemic Load of 80 grams of carrots is 2.
A Glycemic Index below 55 is considered LOW.
A Glycemic Load below 10 is considered LOW.
So, 400 gr. (almost a lb.) of carrots would still have a LOW Glycemic Load of 10.

http://www.mendosa.com/glists.htm

TNT

17

Problems with diet:
Too much pasta (starchy carbs)
Bacon
Not enough fiber + veggies

Consider eating the following foods throughout the day: Chicken, rice, oatmeal, whole grain cereal, vegetables, plain yogurt, nuts, egg beaters(or anything of similar nature), and even those frozen lean cuisines or healthy choice meals are good.

Also, each time you drink a glass of milk that can be 100-300 calories, depending on the fat% and size of glass. Pasta is full of carbs…faster digesting than you would think too. Avoid it.

I’d aim for 300-400 calories per meal. And eat every 2-3 hours. I’m doing something of this nature and am already down a couple pounds.

18

If you want to loose Fat, your not going to do it on that food.
Milk has to be cut. Too much suger, fat and drinking calories is too easy to have to many calories for the day.
Get rid of the bacon, or at the very least cut all white bits of fat off and lay it on some paper towel to soak up the oil that its cooked on. Full of calories.
Eggs, up it up to 3-4 but dont eat the yellow, again the yellow is jam packed full of calories.
Keep up the protein shake, just have it with water, no milk.
Can you swap the pasta with maybe Brown rice. White rice size for size is too many basic calories compared to brown. plus brown has many vit / min also. Or swap the pasta for multigrain roll with ham/turkey and salad. In other words, avoid pasta.
Avoid sausages for your meat, but you can eat plenty of meat without the fat, just make sure you eat plenty of greens with it. 1/3rd meat, 2/3rds salad.

Do that, and within a month the fat will be coming off. Together with increased tempo work.

Bad foods for weight losse = egg yellow, pasta, Fat on meat, milk.

Also, only 2xprotein shakes for the day is all you need. Thats heaps.

19

Do you think that provided I get my diet sorted out, I could drop 3-4% bf in the next 4 weeks?

20

"“Even an experienced scientist with a detailed knowledge of a food’s chemical composition finds it difficult to predict a foods glycemic index value,” the authors acknowledge.

To determine GI value, the amount of food containing a standard amount of carbohydrate (usually 25 or 50 grams) must be fed to real people, blood drawn over 2 or 3 hours, and the glucose measured in the laboratory.

Surprises – and confusion – are not unusual.

For example, early press reports said that table sugar is given a value of 100 and used as the reference point, because it’s pure glucose and rapidly absorbed. That was a logical assumption, but it’s wrong. The authors explain that sugar (sucrose) is actually half glucose and half fructose. After being absorbed, fructose is taken directly to the liver for immediate oxidation (burning for energy); its GI value is actually very low, at 19. The GI rating of table sugar is, therefore, the average of glucose and fructose, or 60. Glucose is, in fact, the standard, with a GI of 100.

I remember being surprised and actually questioning the GI value of carrots, originally reported to be 92. People were excluding carrots from their diet, because of the high GI score. Turns out, that was a mistake. Only five people were used in the first study and, according to Brand-Miller and her co-authors, the variation among them was “huge.” “When carrots were assessed more recently,” the authors write, “ten people were included, the reference food was tested twice, and a mean value of 32 was obtained with narrow variation.”

The variation must not have been too narrow, because the comprehensive tables in the back of the book – the “largest, most reliable list of GI values in the world” – give four different values for carrots (one each from Romania and Canada, and two from Australia), ranging from 16 to 92. The condensed tables give a value of 49 for peeled, boiled carrots. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?"

http://www.cbass.com/GlycemicIndex.htm