New to trying to be healthy, so pardon my ignorance.

R

RichardKennison

New member
So ive finally reached the point that im just fed up with my current weight. Im a 16 year old male who is 6'3 and 245-250 pounds. Ive been taking small strides in what I believed to be the right direction, including drinking water, cutting out soft drinks entirely, and since I cant really excersize as much as I want (I know, I know, sounds like im being lazy, but im actually swamped with school work, since im currently making up highschool credits at home on the computer, and im actually taking out of my sleep time to write this). I cut my calorie intake back. What concerns me is Ive looked up several tools to show me about how many calories a day im burning, and how much I should take in to lose weight. The tools on this site said I burn about 2500 a day, which sounds really high to me, and I should take in about 1900 to lose 2 pounds a week. Which also sounds like alot to me, seeing as I would classify myself as somewhere between sedentary and lightly active , because I dont regularly do much work. When the urge to go take a walk overwhelms the urge to finish my schooling, i take a walk, but this is rarely. I do weight train somewhat intensely, but im not entirely sure if it burns a significant amount of calories, since it is weight training, but its usually heavy weights/body weight, which makes me breath hard and gets my heart rate up pretty well, which is confusing.


Im not entirely sure why im posting this, I guess im looking for reassurance that im not going to explosively gain weight putting on 1900-2400 calories, since my current calorie intake is more around 1000. And no, I dont starve myself, I eat when im hungry.


If i do have to eat 1900-2400, Im going to really have to adjust. Ive found that after eating such small amounts, i get full halfway through what the rest of my family considers a normal meal.


Thanks for all that answer, means alot to me.
 
Congratulations! You're on the right track. Don't be too hard on yourself. If you use more calories than you consume you will lose weight. Enjoyable exercise is important-you don't have to do it all in one session. As long as you warm up each time you can divide it into several smaller sessions during the day. Exercising before a meal is best as it increases the metabolic rate to burn fat rather than using the meal. Several small healthy meals during each day is best because it evens out blood sugar & insulin production. This reduces insulin 'spikes' which would otherwise cause you to store fat. Building muscle with weights etc. is good because muscle burns fat. I found an excellent book on all this - Releasing Fat by Dr. Ray Strand which I bought at www.besthealthbestnutrition.com from the weight loss page. Hope this helps.

All the best with your studies!
 
1000 calories a day is far too low, particularly at your age (teenagers need more calories than adults to accommodate growth). get your calories up to 1800-2000. (use healthy calorie dense things like nuts if larger portions are a problem.) you might expect a little weight gain if you've been restricting your calories for a while but it should level out quickly enough.


Weight lifting isn't much of a calorie burner in of itself, but it does boost your metabolism for a fairly long time which results in more calories burned.


Tourny
 
Originally Posted by Tourny


1000 calories a day is far too low, particularly at your age (teenagers need more calories than adults to accommodate growth). get your calories up to 1800-2000. (use healthy calorie dense things like nuts if larger portions are a problem.) you might expect a little weight gain if you've been restricting your calories for a while but it should level out quickly enough.



Weight lifting isn't much of a calorie burner in of itself, but it does boost your metabolism for a fairly long time which results in more calories burned.



Tourny
Click to expand...

Yea. Im going to try eating more. With all the article and tools saying I should be eating around twice as much as I am now, Im kind of shocked that someone my size is getting away with such a low number. But one thing you did say caught my attention, which im still pretty confused about. You said I restricted, but In no way I can remember have I actually told myself not to eat, because Ive already reached my limit, Ive always eaten when I had the urge to eat, and sometimes just a craving, it just happens to all add out to around 1000 a day. Ill try to look for more higher calorie foods like nuts next time im out. I wouldnt say I eat too small, I have two meals at around 400 each (usually) and some snacks in between. Sometimes Ill hit 1500, sometimes slightly less. I guess my stomach is just used to not eating much..
 
Your body adapts to the amount of calories it's receiving by adjusting metabolism. Appetite seems to follow suit after a while.


Tourny
 
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