Is this diet too extreme? Too much?

[emit_remmus]

Okay I burned off 360 calories doing cardio, that was 3 miles in 20 minutes, and I lifted for pex, bicep, tricep, and back muscles today. I also took in 460 calories and 32 carbs from eating some veggie bites for breakfast with diet V8 blast tropical bled and a sugar free red bull. I had a can of light tuna for lunch with a bottle of water, and I just ate a Lean Cuisine roasted garlic chicken for dinner with a bottle of water.

 

I have some dried strawberries and bananas to snack on, that have 90 calories and 24 carbs.

 

And is a bowl of white rice okay to substitute for a meal? I work at a Chinese food restaurant and white steamed rice seems like the only viable option there? Does anyone know how many calories and carbs a bowl of steamed rice has?

 

Is this diet today too much? Is it sufficient? Or too extreme? Most importantly, if I keep up this diet will I attain a hard looking body?

 

I'm 5"2 male.

[Stinkweed]

It depends on your body type, I guess. I, for one, used to eat pretty much like that (I'm about 6'2") and worked out too, but it was doing more harm than good. I ended as I am now, all flabby and stuff... Now I'm working on building muscle and I'm eating a lot more, of course. So, yeah, eating too little is bad. Especially since you'll quickly gain the weight once you start eating like you did before... Ideally, the goal is to eat right instead of too little.

[sddeaston]

I would be less worried about how far you run, than I would be worried about the amount of time you run for. Its not about distance, it is about getting your heart rate up, and sustaining it for extended periods of time. Strengthening the heart muscle is your goal.

 

As for the diet, if you are obese I would say that the diet may be a good thing. If you are just overweight, or just want to trim up a little bit, stop counting carbs and calories. You are 19, diet is important, but the amount of what you eat is something I have found younger people to be more at battle with.

 

Portion control. Don't leave any meal filled to the rim. Leave satisfied, and not hungry. Big difference.

 

Diet IS important. Don't get me wrong. But you don't have to starve yourself, and you don't have to eat foods without taste or foods that are "boring" in order to obtain an ideal weight. Just be aware of the foods that you DO eat. By aware, I mean don't go out and eat just a little bit of greasy fast food, eat a moderate amount of something with nutritional value.

 

I found that when I did this, the fat came off just the same. Also, when you are lifting weights, be aware that muscle mass weighs more than fat. What this means is that you will see your weight go down one week, and the next it will stay the same. Don't get discouraged, what you are really worried about is the fat, not your weight.

 

I have lifted weights and done cardio for years, am in great shape, happy with my body and I don't watch calories or count carbs. I just eat things that are not loaded with fat.

[madkarma]

Check out SparkPeople at link removed

 

I cannot recommend this site enough! It's a bit tricky until you get acquainted with all of the resources it offers, but... Man, I can't even begin to describe how much it helped me with my 25lbs or so weight loss (hello, size 0!). The site also helped me a lot in learning how to maintain my weight and not lose too much or gain it all back.

 

Some of SparkPeople's great features:

• Diet planning: set your goal and how soon you'd like to achieve it, and you'll know the exact number of calories you need to consume/burn every day. Or, if you'd rather do your own thing, enter your personalized daily/weekly calorie and nutrient goals.

• Food tracker: never wonder again how many calories there are in a bowl of steamed rice. SparkPeople has a very, very extensive food database, and you can enter your foods every day to know exactly how many calories you consumed. It also has meal suggestions, if you cook for yourself (I eat at the cafeteria, zero-processed-carbs and low-fat at my doctor's suggestion, so I could not follow their meal plans). If you have no use for them, just turn them off.

• Exercise tracker -- and exercise suggestions at a level which you determine.

• Great community support, countless articles on every fitness/weight loss topic, fabulous people.

• Weight tracker. It's great to see those graphs as you're shrinking ;-)

 

Oh, I apologize if I sound like a sales person. I don't work for them (although I will try to get featured as a success story once I've maintained the weight loss for longer than a year and finally run that marathon).

 

Other than that, like a previous poster suggested, try to do cardio for a minimum of 35 minutes at a time. Only after about half an hour will your body actually begin to use your fat reserves for fuel.

 

Also, a diet of 800 calories or less takes a LOT of determination. Make sure to get all of the nutrients your body needs, regardless of how few calories you consume (yes, it is possible, but do talk to your doctor first--I did, and his advice was very valuable). This means no "fake" foods like energy drinks, sodium-loaded TV dinners (Did you check the sodium content on that Lean Cuisine meal? It's over 30% of the daily value for someone eating 2000 calories a day!) or overprocessed fat-free sugar-free yogurt cereal bars etc.

 

Anyway, SparkPeople is absolutely FREE. Go check it out!

 

PS. Also, for some great workout ideas, if you cannot afford a personal trainer, check out the Body-for-Life program at link removed

 

The purpose of that website if to sell supplements, but their workout program seems to work really well (after seeing the before/after pictures of their 12 week challenge winners, I am more than convinced that it doesn't get much better than that).

 

Here, for example, you can download a complete weight training guide: link removed

 

Good luck and keep us updated on your progress.

[smilelikeyoumeanit]

You need to take in WAY more calcium.

[caro33]

You cannot get your calorie load too low or your will in fact slow down your metabolism. This can have negative outcomes, such as weight gain when you start eating normally again.

 

Drink plenty of water, eat lots of protein. Make sure when you eat that you eat several smaller meals (say 6) over the day - it's like keeping a fire (your metabolism) burning with regular fuel.

 

Go for nutrition over empty calories. That bowl of rice doesn't do anything for you.

[emit_remmus]

You need to take in WAY more calcium.

 

Is that a short joke?

[emit_remmus]

What if I throw in a protein shake each day?

[caro33]

How many calories per day are you taking in?

[emit_remmus]

460 caro

I signed up on sparkpeople. It says:

Consume between 1310 & 1660 calories per day

Consume between 29 & 65 grams of fat per day.

Consume between 147 & 270 grams of carbohydrates per day.

Consume between 33 & 145 grams of protein per day.

Consume at least 8 cups of water per day.

[caro33]

Are you seriously saying that you ate only 460 calories worth of food in one whole day? That the lean cuisine, the tuna and veggie bite things came to that? And then you burned most of it off?

 

Err, no. Your body needs calories to just keep going, for your organs to work and keep you alive. It need probably in excess of at least 1000 calories to just do that, let alone move you around.

 

The sparkpeople number is probably closer to the truth, but if you are exercising you should be eating at the upper end of any limit. You need to be sure that you are getting at least 1200 calories net of your exercise. Given you are a guy and you are young I would say you need more than that, by the way. Far more.

[emit_remmus]

Should I order a pizza right now? Its 10:30 PM, I'm studying for an exam, and I have a physical tomorrow morning at 8AM and the exam at 12 noon.

 

A cheese pizza sounds yummy right about now, but I'm scared of getting fatter. I'm not really fat I just have this really unattractive ab set. Its like bulgy. When I sit down I can just grab it.

[easyguy]

First of all, you're going to be frustrated pretty often if you are counting each calorie you consume. Dieting should not be about precision, but about common sense and portion control. The key is to cut back some, not completely eliminate 90% of the foods that are out there.

 

At 460 calories, I would be concerned about your body developing a deficiency towards the things that you are blocking out as time progresses, or worse, an eating disorder. Have you consulted your doctor or a nutritionist about your "diet" and how suitable it is for YOU? Everyone's body is different, and depriving yourself of calories to the point of starvation in the distance is an extremely unhealthy way to lose weight. A lot of people fall victim to the media telling them how to diet, how to look. If you want a long-term diet, it is not about drastic cuts, but a lifestyle shift to where you can eat a wide variety of foods that are filled with the essential components that our body needs to function properly (carbs, fats, vitamins, minerals), so you do not feel like you have to count every calorie and fat gram that is in whatever you eat.

 

Your organ health is far more important than how hard your abs are. You have to think long-term, not short-term... otherwise there could be serious consequences later on that you didn't take seriously. It is a long process. Losing the weight isn't always quick, and keeping it off is going to be even harder if you are extremely strict about what you eat.

[emit_remmus]

Also I'm cheap, this week's groceries: consisting of just tuna, veggie bites, lean cuisines, water, red bull, dried fruit(i just ate that now) and v8 juice costed me only $36.

 

When I use to buy fruit, meat, rice, bagels, protein shakes, vegetables, salad, and energy bars it costed $80.

 

So I can save $50 if I starve myself.

 

I want to look good naked. I really do not like my bulge, right now I look like an almost skinny shaved head dude. I don't even have a 6 pack. Also I miss having long hair, but I can't grow it back because I can't go through the middle stages of my hair growth, its just a lot to maintain with thick hair.

[caro33]

You cannot spot reduce. If you lose weight, you'll lose it all over. Or maybe you're predisposed to lose it from your ankles first - in any event, you can't just lose it off your belly.

 

It will cost you much more than the $14/wk you saved in food when you collapse from organ failure. The medical bills and lifelong organ damage will be significant.

 

It doesn't have to be cheese pizzas or starvation. Each lots of eggs, chicken breast, vegetables, steak, nuts, milk (skim). Keep with the tuna and bananas.

[Grosse vache]

You cannot get your calorie load too low or your will in fact slow down your metabolism.

 

Thats just what people say when they want to try and manipulate/scare someone into eating more calories.

 

The reason that your metabolism slows down is because on a low calorie diet you lose weight and as you lose weight your metabolism naturally slows down because your body doesn't need to work as hard to move around ect. Once you put on weight again your metabolism increases naturally. That's why, as you get smaller you need to do more exercise and reduce your intake more if you want to continue losing weight.

[caro33]

Thats just what people say when they want to try and manipulate/scare someone into eating more calories.

 

I don't really have a vested interest in fattening emit up you know.

 

Your metabolism slows down in this situation as a conservation measure, it goes into starvation mode. Which means that losing weight is increasingly difficult. And when you then eat "normally" your body thinks it's in a time of boon and puts on more weight than if you had never starved yourself.

 

It's hardly like eating 400 calories a day, or even 800 calories a day, is healthy is it? Would you recommend that?

[Grosse vache]

Not true again.

 

When you're on a low calorie diet your body not only uses it's fat stores up, but it also begins to break down lean tissue and use that for energy to. So your lean muscle mass will decrease. If you start eating "normally" as you put it you then start to replace that missing lean mass with fat so you basically increase your body fat percentage.

 

As for advocating a low calorie diet....well....erm......you obviously haven't read my journal. Ha ha ha!

[caro33]

Actually after reading your first post to this thread I did go and read your journal. I found it really disturbing, for the same reasons the others have stated.

[Grosse vache]

Oh well.

...........

[spirits]

emit, it doesn't look like we can help you much. I suggest you ask people who have the same goal as you do. Keeping in good shape can be tricky; you are more aware than others about the importance of a good diet, so i suggest you ask those who know exactly what you need. Hopefully, they won't give you different answers.