your expert advice please......

L

lisajacobs

New member
I am a 42 year old female, have been overweight for most of my adult life. I weigh 74kg and I am 155cm in height.
In order to lose weight at a healthy pace (i'm not in any hurry) what would you say my daily calorific need would be.
I love brown bread and rice, do these slow weight loss?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance guys....
 
I often see the rule of thumb around this forum that goes:
most people lose weight on between 8 and 12 times their weight in pounds,
try 12 times at first and see how that goes for a few weeks, if no luck move down....

An awful lot of people lose weight on 12 times weight and then there is scope to adjust things if weight loss dwindles or grinds to a halt. It also means that you dont feel too deprived...

So basically I would give 74 * 2.2 * 12 = 1953 a go and see how that works for you. Obviously you need to recalculate it as you lose weight.

There is a proper calculation which you can do which is based on your BMR and the amount of calories that your exercise burns. I must admit that I just go by the above rule of thumb and then up my exercise if I want to improve things...

If you plot your calories in and log your food and exercise - it works out your calorie balance for you so that you can see how much deficit you have built each day in a nice graph.
 
Hi Lisa. I'd start off by reading the stickies in the forums ... most of them will answer your basic questions.

There are a couple of ways to calculate your calories needs. The one I use is to multiply your current weight by 14 and then subtract 20% from that. It's pretty similar to Omega's method, above.

It gives you a starting point to work from.
 
Thank you so much Omega and Karacooks.
I will definately take your advice. I was just wondering if my polar f6 heart rate monitor was correct....It gives me a colorie burn of between 3300 and 3700 cal per day on a non exercise day. It just seems very high to me.
I have joined a gym and will be going at least 3-4 times a week.
Another question does cardio burn more than weights? although I will be doing both, just wondering if I should concentrate more on one or the other?
Thanks again.
 
do both.

at an intermediate to advanced level weights will be able to burn more. The amount of energy required to do heavy lifting and recover is off the chart.

But at a beginner level I find that most people are unable and unwilling to be able to reach that intensity level. Do you ever forsee yourself loading up an olympic bar with your body weight in plates, putting it on your shoulders, and squatting it? probably not. yet this is around the level of intensity you would really need to hit in order to truely turn your body into a calorie burning furnace from hell from resistance training.

weights have their place. do them for sure. preserving muscle mass is very important and will reshape your body to look more fit rather than just a smaller version of an out of shape look you would get from cardio alone. and even at beginner levels you can push yourself to get a really good workout from resistance training and burn a ton of calories from it as well. cardio also has a ton of benefits that can't be ignored. and when first starting out, can be extremely effective at jump starting your body into blasting off the fat.
 
Both is a very good idea.

My main form of exercise was walking and that worked really well for me. It is something that can be done slowly - no equipment or expertise needed. You just go out and walk - and it does have a really good effect. You dont even need to do it briskly at first but you naturally speed up as you get fitter. I started off at a snail's pace (which I found exhausting) and now do my daily walk at over 4mph.

After I started to see some results I got more interested in how to improve things and started doing some other bits. I found that I didnt need an expensive gym membership - just a set of wrist weights and a friend who showed me a few exercises.

After a few months I started going to keep fit classes and other exercise classes at my local adult education centre. Some terms I was doing 3 classes so getting advice from three different qualified teachers which I felt was a great benefit.

It is perfectly possible to gain a lot of the average person's benefits from weights without that expensive gym membership (they cost a fortune round here!!!).
 
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