A Metabolic Misunderstanding?

[rlog]

Hey all, I'm new, and unsurprisingly, looking for a little advice. Without too much detail, I'm male, 20 years old, 5 foot 11.5 inches, and weigh, as of right now, 220 pounds. A year and a half ago I was at 268. I got to 230 by early May of this year. The weight I'd lost to that point came off due to diet, not exercise, and often times I employed ketogenic diets (no carbs as far as can be helped for those not in the know) in short bursts (about a week), sometimes with success, sometimes not. In May I decided to do one last ketogenic diet before starting The Beachbody P90 program (the one with Tony Horton, but please note, not the P90X program). I lost a respectable amount of weight in about a week of ketogenic dieting, something like 5 pounds, it's hard to say exactly, because as anyone whose done a ketogenic diet knows, a lot of the weight you lose is water weight (at least at first). So then I began to do P90, while eating about 2100 calories a day. peanut butter on a kaiser roll for breakfast/lunch (I was getting up quite late - between 11 am and 1 pm), something for a snack (cliff bar or the like), a very reasonable dinner (small portion of grilled chicken, or the like, a salad), and then I would blow it, sort of, with some sort of super high calorie thing in the evening, like bubble tea with tapioca in it. And sometimes I would go out for dinner and get some 1000 calorie meal.

But four to five weeks ago I got more into the workouts, started doing them everyday, and since I wasn't seeing the results I wanted (I was around 223.5-224), I cut back my calories. A cliff bar when I woke up, another one a few hours later. A dinner of the same type as before. A yogurt. And sometimes another cliff bar, or an apple or something. My calorie intake on a normal day is somewhere around 1300, on a "bad" day it's around 1700. Two weeks ago I added the cardio session of P90 to the end of my lifting sessions, and a week ago I added a second cardio session on top of my cardio days. But I'm just hovering around 220-221.

Now I know that I've gained some lean mass, I just don't think it's been all THAT MUCH. And I know that some people would be pleased with the results I'm getting, but they just seem really off to me. My BMR (according to online calculators, so who really knows) should be around 2200 a day. That's my BMR! But back when I was at college (and not exercising) if I ate 2500 calories a day I gained weight. I live a sedentary lifestyle, not counting when I'm exercising, but I'm just confused by these numbers. It seems to me that even if I burn nothing but my BMR - given that I should be burning at least 400-500 in my daily exercise routine (save Sunday) and I'm only eating 1300 calories most days - I should have a caloric deficit of about 1350 a day (save Sunday - which would be more like 900). That would be a 9000 calorie deficit weekly, or 2.6 pounds. And the fact is I MUST be burning more than 2200 calories a day. But over the past two weeks I've seen maybe a pound of weight loss. I know all these numbers get confusing (at least for me), but I just DON'T GET IT. It's driving me nuts! Am I eating too little? Could it be the meds I take? Is my metabolism totally messed up? What's going on? I've dealt with weight issues my whole life, and I was down to 200 before I ballooned to 268 - I feel like I'm in it to win it this time, but I'm finding this really frustrating.

A thousand thanks for anyone who takes the time to respond.

 

[Harold14370]

Two weeks is not enough time to decide that a diet is not working. You will not necessarily lose the weight in a nice smooth linear fashion. That said, I think your diet is crap. You are not getting the right nutrition. I do believe you have messed with your metabolism by not getting a decent number of calories. Your body will adapt to some extent by slowing down.

If you don't know how to make a reasonable meal plan, download one from the internet. What you are doing is kind of ridiculous.

 

[Kayshiz]

First off, you shouldn't be eating Cliff bars in place of actual meals

Is a CLIF BAR a meal replacement?

No, they do not have enough calories in them to replace a whole meal by themselves.

That is off their own website! Even they know that bar is not enough nutrition or energy as a meal.

At least do what the actual company recommends and it eat along side fruit, yogurt, and other nutritious filling foods.

Second, like Harold said, you don't necessarily see weight loss the day or even weeks after eating less and burning more calories. Kara has an awesome article about weight loss "whooshes" (sp?) but I can't seam to find it. There are however literally hundreds of stickies and user post exactly like this one with tons of information on them if you read around the site.

3rd, if you continue on this trend (for longer then just a couple of weeks) you probably need to reexamine what you are eating and how you are counting calories.

If everything you said was correct you are not feeding your body for the exercise you are doing, not only is this silly, it is definitely not going to help your weight loss. Once you do start to show a weight loss it probably isn't going to be a "fat loss".

 

[KaraCooks]

What Harold and Kay said.

P90X is a pretty intense workout. If you're not providing enough nutrition to your body to support that kind of exercise, then your'e going to cause problems with the weight loss in the long run.