BrandNEWWW

[shanelle]

Okay, I honestly know very little about excersizing. but I need help!

I am 20 yrs old, while in highschool i weighed about 140lbs, I ended up losing 20 lbs in about 4 months, when i started working full time and attending highschool. I stopped eating breakfast and lunch quite frequently.. i walked around everywhere because i had no car. All this worked fine for me initially. BUT.
by the end of highschool I started gaining weight I got up to 135 lbs without changing my diet or ANYTHING. So i did an isagenix cleanse about one year ago.. lost 5 lbs initially.. but soon after i started steadily gaining weight. I gained until i was 170lbs then someone in my family died in march and now i expanded to 190 lbs. What happened? I usually only eat dinner, and snack. I drink one cup of tea or coffee during the day.. i did survivor bootcamp and actually GAINED more inches and weight. I think some
how i Broke something because i eat the same as i did when i was 130 lbs. The only difference is that I drive now and dont walk.
For dinner i usually eat chicken or fish, brown or white rice cauliflower/brocoli
or i eat a vegetable soups or stirfry with noodles. I have always considered my eating habits fairly healthy. My boyfriend who is in very good shape says i dont eat enough. What should i change? What should I be eating to lose the weight and which excersizes should i be doing?

 

[KaraCooks]

Hi Shanelle. Welcome to the forum!

It sounds to me like you've done everything except learn how to eat healthily. You've starved yourself, you've "cleansed" yourself, you've skipped meals, but you haven't actually learned how to eat the proper foods in the proper amounts.

The first thing I'd suggest is that you register for a free account at a site like fitday.com or thedailyplate.com and start logging the food you eat. That will allow you to see exactly how many calories you're eating and what kind of nutrition you're getting. Many people *think* they eat healthily until they actually start writing down everything they eat and then they realize that they're eating a lot of unhealthy food or that they're eatin unhealthy amounts of food.

You want to make sure you're eating a reasonable amount of calories - for you at 170, about 1600-1700 calories a day would help you lose weight at a safe and healthy rate. You also want to make sure that you're eating at least 120g of protein per day and making sure that the carbs you're eating are complex carbs - whole grains, oats, that kind of thing, rather than white flour and sugars.

Next thing I'd suggest is reading the sticky posts in the various forums. Anything written by Steve in the exercise area is going to give you a lot of good information on how your body works and how you need to be exercising.

If you want to lose FAT and keep your lean muscle, you really should add weight lifting and/or body resistance work to your program. Ideally you should be lifting weights 2x - 3x a week and then doing cardio in your off days. You only really need 30-45 mins of solid exercise each day in order to see progress.

I hope this gives you a place to start.