I have lost 23lbs. since June, and this past October I haven't lost any weight. I want to join the Air Force by this comeing December and I need to meet my weight hight requirments. I am 5'5" 175 lbs and need to be down to 160lbs. I have done everything form counting calories, and excersing daily...walking between 4 and 9 miles a day...please any advice would be nice

When you say you have "done everything from counting calories and exercising daily ... " what do you mean?

If you didn't lose any weight in October, it's because you ate more than you burned, which is pretty much the basics of weight loss - you have to burn more energy than you take in.

At 175 lbs, to lose weight safely, you should be eating around 1700 calories per day. To maximize fat loss and minimize muscle loss, you should aslo be getting 150g of protein per day - which means a good 1/3 of your calories or more should be coming from lean protein sources.

Can you give an example of what you eat day to day and how you count your calories - and we miht be able to give you more specific advice.

I'm 18 years old 5'5" 175lbs...On a daily basies I take in 1000 to 1500 calories, I walk 3 miles in the morning, jog/speedwalk 3 to 4 miles in the afternoon, and walk 2 to 4 miles at night...I have lost 23lbs this past summer and wasn't even trying, and this past month I have been working out so much and watching everything I eat and have lost no weight, oh and I only drink water

Sounds like you're starving yourself and your metabolism has slowed appropriately. If you're walking/running 8-14 miles a day then eating 1000-1500 calories is a ridiculously little amount of food. No wonder you're not losing weight.

First of all, at your weight and with the amount of exercise you're doing, you should consistently be eating 1800-2000 calories a day.

Also I would start adding in some weight lifting to your routines. Read the thread in the exercise area called "The Conceptual Side of Weight Liftin" by Steve. Not only is there good information about how weight lifting will help you burn fat, but there are some basic routines that can get you started.

thank you, that helps alot, also my recruiter told me not to do any weight lifting, because muscle weighs more then fat???? What if I ate 1500 to 2000 calories a day and speed walked/jogged 6 miles a day, would that be better???

Your recruiter is a moron.

Seriously. Don't listen to him because he obviously has no idea what he's talking about.

Muscle does NOT weigh more than fat. Muscle is denser than fat, so a pound of muscle is SMALLER than a pound of fat.

But even aside from that, you're not going to gain enough muscle in a month to make a difference. But you will burn more fat if you lift weights.

Read the thread I recommended and start lifting weights. It will make a difference.

thanks I will read that right away...also any other tips on how to lose 15lbs. by january or sooner???

Honestly that's really all there is to it. Eat right - not too little, not too much. Eat healthy - enough protein and balance nutrition. Exericse - a combination of weight lifting and cardio. 15 lbs by January is doable - that's 7-8 lbs a month. But you'll have to be very dedicated and committed, which is often hard during the holidays. If you cheat or make exceptions, you might not make your goal. So you need to keep that in mind.

I'm not disagreeing with the advice already given at all. I'm just saying I can understand the logic of the recruiter. After all, that's all that saying means anyway--that muscle is denser, so if you took the same SIZE chunk of muscle, eyeballing it, next to a chunk of fat (or even measuring it with a ruler or whatever--the same size cube) and weighed the two, the muscle would be heavier. That's why they say muscle "weighs more" than fat. So in other words, as stated above, in order for them to weigh the same, the muscle would have to be a smaller ?piece? of muscle than the fat. LOL! That sounds weird.

But muscle also helps BURN fat, so building muscle can help you lose weight and normally would and should be encouraged.

But I think the recruiter was afraid that you might bulk up on that dense muscle if you lifted weights, so even though you might burn more fat, be healthier overall, and look smaller, the scale might not show the fat loss as quickly because of the gained muscle weight--again, even though you would measure and look smaller and be healthier. So since your goal is getting under the weight limit as quickly as possible--in other words just getting it to show up on the scale, even if it's not as healthy--I can see why he wanted you to focus more on aerobic exercise.

However, still, I agree that lifting some smaller weights along with the aerobics would help with that, too, without bulking you up. Heck, I get out of breath working with little 5-pound dumbbells so it's like aerobics, but then again, I'm a cow! LOL!

But anyway, that was his thought behind telling you that. I've had people tell me that, too because I'm pretty thick and put on muscle easily, so they tell me I should just do aerobic exercise, but I still lift the dumbbells and alternate.

First of all, no one is going to build enough muscle in a month of working out to make up for fat lost. There's an article that Lyle McDonald wrote about how fast one can gain muscle and he lists multiple resources and multiple studies.

The upshot is that someone who is badly out of shape, who is working his ass off, who is eating perfectly, and who has the genetics for it, can gain at most 2-3 pounds of muscle a month. After about the first year of working out, that number drops by half. After the 2nd year of working out, that number drops by half again. Someone who is consistently working HARD and eating perfectly can expect to gain 40-50 lbs of muscle IN A LIFETIME.

Oh, and that's for men. Women can expect those figures to drop by about 1/2.

That's biological fact. We're simply not genetically programmed to gain more muscle than that more quickly than that. There are a *very few* human beings who might have the natural ability to gain more or gain faster, but they are few and far between. And anyone else who gains more or faster or both is taking drugs to do so.

So any recruiter (or anyone) who tells someone that they shouldn't lift weights because they'll put on too much muscle is talking out his ass and should STFU. If you'll excuse my bluntness. But I have little patience for people who spout garbage w/out knowing what they're talking about - especially people in positions of authority (or perceived positions of authority) who are misleading young people about their health and fitness.

As for the rest of it:That's because working with little 5# dumbbells *is* aerobics. Unless you're lifting enough to stress the muscle and allowing for adequate recovery time between sets, then all you're doing is cardio with some resistance. You're building endurance, you're training your heart and lungs aerobically, but you're not building muscle or strength.

If your shape tends to show your muscle more (and that's kinda genetically programmed in) the endurance work can help you maintain muscle (to a degree) and lean out ... but you're still not really "lifting weights" by playing around with what I like to call "barbie weights".

Kara, how many pounds of fat can one lose in a month? Is it based on percentage of what you already weigh? Sorry, I should probably post this question on my own thread, but since it's along the same lines of what's being discussed here, I guess it could help AFD, too. And how do you figure the calories per day to make sure you don't go below and put your body into starvation mode? I've heard some people say multiply your weight by a certain number, some say 12 or 13, which sounds really high for someone like me, but don't go below 1200. Or since I was a teenager, I've heard to multiply your weight times 10. However, since you quoted 1700 to AFD, I was wondering if that lower limit is different per person as well.

No problem - this is a good thread for it.

Yeah, it's going to be based on a percentage of your weight. Someone who has more excess fat is going to be able to shed more of it than someone who has less. IN general, the figure to shoot for is around 1% of your total bodyweight per month. That's losing both fat and muscle because you're going to lose some of each. The way to skew towards more fat and less muscle is to do some kind of strength training and make sure you're consuming enough protein. I remember reading an article that most people lose around 50/50 fat and lean mass, but people who are lifting weights and consuming sufficient protein can skew that to be closer to 75/25 (more fat than muscle). I really hate people who post "I read somewhere" so I promise I'll go find the resource for that figure ... or find the correct ones. But in the back of my mind I know that's close to what I read.

The technical numbers use the Harris Benedict equation, which takes into account your age, height, and weight to find your BMR (basal metabolic rate - or in other words the number of calories you need to survive if you did nothing but lie in bed all day and breathe. ). The actual calculations for BMR are:

Men: 66 + (13.7 x weight in kilos) + (5 x height in centimetres) - (6.8 x age in years)
Women: 655 + (9.6 X weight in kilos) + (1.8 X height in cm) - (4.7 X age in years)

Then you multiply that by an activity level multiplier based on how active you are (desk job, work out 2-3 times a week, on your feet all day, etc.).

You can get awfully close to that for 90% of everyone (except the extremely obese and the extremely underweight) by estimating 14-16 calories per pound of bodyweight to MAINTAIN current weight for someone who is moderately active (i.e. exercises 3x a week or has a reasonably active job). I've put the calculation into a spreadsheet and run upwards of 100 variations, and the 14-16 calories times bodyweight always comes out to within 5% variance of going through the HB equation. So I am very confident using those figures for most people (barring medical issues, drug use, etc.).

So if you use those numbers for maintenance, you can figure a reasonable and healthy drop in calories (one that will still cause weight loss w/out causing too much of a metabolic slow down) is about 20% to 30%.

So putting those figures into real world numbers, let's use me. I weigh 170 today.

170 * 14 = 2380 calories to maintain
2380 * 70% = 1666 calories to lose.

So if I am at a 30% deficit of calories, I should be able to lose weight at 1600-1700 calories.

Just to verify that, I can put my age, height, and weight into the HB equation (41, 5'4", 170) and come up with 2422 maintenance and 1696 at a 30% deficit.

If you want to simplify that even more, you just take the maintenance calorie figure (14) and drop 30% from that. So 70% of 14 = 10 (rounded up). So if I multiply my weight by 10, that's the number of calories I should eat to lose weight.

It's actually pretty darned easy - people want to make it harder than it is.

Now, as far as the starvation response ... well that's a whole 'nother issue. The truth is that any time you drop your calories, you're triggering a metabolic slow down. But you're never going to drop your metabolism so low that you stop losing weight. If you're eating fewer calories than you're burning, you will lose weight. But you can drop your metabolism to the point that your body stalls for a period of time as it tries to adjust, whic his where weight loss stalls come from and the whole "starvation mode" semi-myth has been blown out of proportion.

The bigger problem when you drop low enough in calories is not so much about metabolism any more - it's about your body beginning to cannibalize itself. Your body will turn towards burning your own muscle before it allows you to starve. And your heart is a muscle. Most people who die of starvation? Anorexics? Most of them die of heart failure because their body has begun to eat it's own muscle tissue for nutrition and their hearts are so damaged they can't continue to live.

I think there was a thread here recently with a news article about a bride who died because she was on a 500 calorie a day diet to try to fit into a wedding dress. That's what happened to her - she dieted herself into heart failure from electrolyte imbalances and damaged heart muscles.

Good stuff.


That's so sad about the bride.

that all was very helpful thanks to you both, but I have one more favor to ask...I am terable at math and I'm trying to figure out how many calories I need to take in, in order to lose weight...so can you please help me...I am an 18 year old femal, 5 ft. 5 inch. 175 LBS....I excersise as much as possible...I walk alot...umm maybe 2 hrs worth a day..what should I cut my intake down to??? Thanks for your time..sorry I'm just getting different numbers everytime I try it

ok I think I figured it out...a little over 1600 calories a day is what my BMR is...so in order to lose weight if I take in 1000 calories and excersie would that work???? I only need to do this tell I lose 15lbs. and can weight in then I don't care :P