What Am I Doing Wrong?

[stildawn]

Hi All

So I'll try and keep my long story short, basically I'm a 30yrs male roughly 6ft tall from New Zealand.

At the start of 2015 I was roughly 108kgs, and well needed to lose it etc.

So after Christmas I started cutting back on food etc and was going great, slowly over the year till about October I got down to 90kgs which was great and I was happy.

My target weight is around 85kgs, as BMI thingy said I need to be 75 but that is insane I think. I remember being 85 ish in my early twenties and that was a good time body wise.

Anyway in Oct 2015 I keep trying with my cutting back, dieting etc but I couldn't seem to crack 90kgs, I sometimes got down to 89kg, but it wasn't consistent.

So I got demoralized and sort of gave up over the Christmas period and what not... I stopped actively thinking about cutting back dieting etc but I think I didn't return to all my old excessive habits.

Fast forward to a month ago.

I thought to myself I have to get back into it, so I started dieting again for one week (roughly 1500 calories a day) and then weight myself 98kgs....

Dieted for one more week again 1500 calories ish a day. And the next friday (20/05) was down to 96kgs, awesome I thought.

At this point my wife and I got a free standing boxing bag since its hard to use pads with each other since I have to hold back with her (at this point she was more into the kick boxing thing that I was, I only helped her sometimes really).

So the next week, I kept to my 1500 calories diet, but I also did kick boxing on the bag for 15 minutes a day (Monday through Saturday), according to S Health, 15 minutes is about 335 calories burned.

However the next friday 27/05 I weighed in at 96.3kg??? I went up (I know slightly) but I was expecting to go down like not only was I cutting back on food etc, but I was also doing intense cardio (which honestly leaves me pretty wreaked after the boxing sessions).

I thought oh well maybe a weird week or something, so I stuck to it, again eating roughly 1500 calories a day, and 15 mins kick boxing daily (except for a small rest day of Sunday)... But I weighed myself again this morning (Friday 3/06) and 96.1kgs... No change?

I not feeling that great about it to be honest, what is happening? I did some googling and everything I read said that kick boxing was cardio and not muscle building, so what's happening? Am I gaining muscle? What is stopping the weight loss?

Like I don't expect to lose 2kg a week like the first week (with no boxing mind you), but something at least surely?

Getting pretty demoralized, any ideas???

Thanks

 

[Marawan Amer]

Hi,

So there are a number of things that could be going on here...

1. How, when and how often do you weigh yourself?
2. Are you tracking your calories correctly?
3. Are you eating foods that you typically don´t eat (more salty etc.)?

It´s important to know that weight can stall sometimes for many weeks (don´t ask me how I know ) due to
hormonal changes or more likely fluctuations in the body's water balance (given you are doing everything correctly).
If you consume more salt during the week, then it can happen that the body is holding onto water.
It pays off to be patient in that case and allow the body to regulate that by itself.

I am also interested to know what calculator you used that tells you to consume 1500 calories per day?
I am not saying its too little but at your weight class, a few more calories per day isn´t a bad thing.

On the boxing calorie expenditure topic: I know that if I go intense (use a lot of effort) on the cross trainer, I burn about 900 calories per hour.
In your case, if you are burning 335 calories in 15 minutes, then you would be burning approx. 1300 calories per hour, which is A LOT!
That is a number close to what sprinters or short distance runners exert during their exercise.

So I think it´s safer to assume that you burn somewhere close to 100 - 150 calories in a 15 min session!


Hope the information helped!