Seeking help with weight-loss

[girlchocolate]

Heya guys and girls.

I'm 18, turning 19 in may, and am ~5'10" and 150 lbs w/ around 15% body fat.
Around christmas time I decided to buy a scale and seriously work towards losing weight.

I used to weigh around 165 throughout highschool due to eating fast food and drinking soft drinks wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too much (atleast one fast food meal a day).

I skateboard anywhere from 2-6 hours a day, and not just messing around skating where I don't get any exercise.

I'm looking to get down to as little body fat as possible...I still have a small gut I'd like to work off before the swimming weather arrives, and my butt is probably the most fatty part on my body that I'd like to really get rid of.

My diet consists of:
Breakfast: whole wheat bagel with weight watchers cream cheese or 2x quaker chewy granola bars & water
Lunch: 6" Blimpies turkey sub sandwich on wheat w/ no condiments and a nice amount of vegetables & water and ALWAYS an energy drink (is this bad? I get the sugar free or diet ones. such as the lo-card monsters or the sugar free rockstars). I seriously need to drink these or I don't have enough energy to skate for very long.
Dinner:Cheerios or Special K or a salad or another 6" sandwich.

I eat way too much candy I think....and I'm not sure what type of affect this is having on my body. I only drink water besides the energy drinks, and I sometimes drink 1 soda every other week. What effect is the candy having on me?

I just thought I'd introduce myself and let yall know I will be asking questions as I keep trying to lose/keep off weight. So far I've bought new pants and I feel a lote more confident in how I look. If you have any tips, please feel free to give them to me. I am not at all interested in weight-lifting, as I want to remain very thin as far as upper body goes.

My questions thus far are:
-Is there a way to work off butt fat that doesn't require going to the gym? Will it eventually go away if I just keep dieting/exercising?
-How can I get more energy? I love skateboarding and have skated for 7+ years, but I'm starting to get tired after a few hours. The energy drinks really help, and if i don't drink one I get tired within 1 hour.
-I used to lose weight very consistently over the past few months, but now I can't see to get below 148. How can I get back into the groove?
-Summarize metabolism and how it changes if I were to eat unhealthy food for 1 meal on occasion.
-What is the difference between carbs and calories?

Thanks and sorry it is so long

 

[TecHNooB]

If you can drop softdrinks and candy, that'll be a start. The first 2 weeks will be the hardest because all you'll get is cravings and no visible results. If you don't want to lift, then you have to run, although some moderate lifting will be very good for you. I'd cut out cereal and milk as well. Dairy is good at sustaining fat from my experience.

 

[KoolDrew]

Dairy is good at sustaining fat from my experience.

Not true at all. Actually, the opposite is true. Dairy foods have been shown to increase fat loss while dieting.

Lyle McDonald has an article discussing this very topic:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.c.../lylemcdonald-con.html

 

[girlchocolate]

Oh yeah...I don't eat my cereal with milk. It's just dry cereal. But I do eat low fat yogurt/pudding when I am hungry and it's not time for a meal. And why do I have to run if I already skate?

 

[TecHNooB]

Originally posted by: girlchocolate
Oh yeah...I don't eat my cereal with milk. It's just dry cereal. But I do eat low fat yogurt/pudding when I am hungry and it's not time for a meal. And why do I have to run if I already skate?

If your only goal is to be skinny, then excessive running will either get you faster results or let you eat a little more on your diet~

Originally posted by: KoolDrew

Dairy is good at sustaining fat from my experience.

Not true at all. Actually, the opposite is true. Dairy foods have been shown to increase fat loss while dieting.

Lyle McDonald has an article discussing this very topic:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.c.../lylemcdonald-con.html

Yea.. i'm going back to milk and cereal. This lifting business is too lenient sometimes Nice article.

 

[lucasorion]

I eat at least one large bowl of cereal with skim/soy milk every day, mostly special k or raisin bran. I also throw in a scoop of whey protein powder.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

Originally posted by: girlchocolate

My questions thus far are:
-Is there a way to work off butt fat that doesn't require going to the gym? Will it eventually go away if I just keep dieting/exercising?
-How can I get more energy? I love skateboarding and have skated for 7+ years, but I'm starting to get tired after a few hours. The energy drinks really help, and if i don't drink one I get tired within 1 hour.
-I used to lose weight very consistently over the past few months, but now I can't see to get below 148. How can I get back into the groove?
-Summarize metabolism and how it changes if I were to eat unhealthy food for 1 meal on occasion.
-What is the difference between carbs and calories?

Thanks and sorry it is so long

Alright, I'm here to answer your questions as best I can.

1) No, there is no way to, what we call, spot-reduce. You cannot just hone in on one part of your body to remove fat. Your body doesn't work like that. Also, skateboarding is not intense enough exercise for you to really lose much fat. I can understand why it would work in the beginning, but I can also see why you've hit a rut. You need to start heading to the gym and lifting and doing some other types of cardio. Also, are you male or female? Seems like you're female from your forum name, etc, but if you were at 15% body fat, you'd be a very in-shape girl - 15% body fat on a woman.

2) Hard, focused exercise will give you more energy, especially if you do it early in the day. The released hormones/endorphines will make you feel more aware, awake, and healthy. You need to cut out the energy drinks because they aren't part of a healthy diet. Exercise early instead.

3) I believe you stopped losing weight because your body needs a more intense exercise at this point. I'll use the analogy how obese people start to lose a ton of weight as they just start walking for exercise. After a while, they'll hit a plateau. When they start more intense cardio, such as jogging, biking, etc, the weight loss will start again. You need to find a more intense way of working your body other than skateboarding. Also, you need to keep a journal of your diet and make sure it's spot-on. You can use websites like fitday.com or sparkpeople.com, which allow you input everything carefully. Also, you sound like you're not getting ANY fat in your diet. Fat is not a bad thing. You just need to not overeat fat and you need to eat the right fats.

4) Metabolism is "the sum of the physical and chemical processes in an organism by which its material substance is produced, maintained, and destroyed, and by which energy is made available." I can't define and summarize the process of your metabolism in response to every kind of bad food, but I'll point out your body's response to the candy you eat. When you take in sugar (any type of sugar - lactose, glucose, dextrose, sucrose, fructose, etc), your body spikes your insulin level to bring the level of sugars in your bloodstream down. In doing so, it brings the sugars into the cells for use, but insulin also causes your liver to store glucose as glycogen. This means that once your liver is "full" of glycogen, it must convert and store those extra sugars to to fat cells. This is obviously something you don't want, so you really need to cut out the candy if you really want this.

5) Finally, this is where I'm going to tell you to research any of your other questions online. A simple search would tell you that carbs ARE calories. Calories can come from fat, carbs, protein, and alcohol. Carbs are the most readily accessible for conversion to glucose and immediate use, but if you take in too many carbs and you don't use them, the same thing as I mentioned above happens. And just to make clear, it's not just candy that will spike your insulin levels - it's high glycemic index foods (white bread, flour, cereals, pretzels, bagels - although wheat bread bagels should spike it less).

If you really have some serious questions, I think that you should learn to find some answers yourself for your future use. You need to really get into this or it's not gonna work. Sorry to be a downer, but I want to be realistic with you. If you have any other questions that are vague when you look for their answers, I'll try to come back and answer those as well, but at least make an attempt to find them online. Good luck.

 

[girlchocolate]

You answered it perfectly. Thanks for all of that. I'm willing to take what you say into consideration and have already cut candy out and started eating fruit instead. I'm actually a guy, my name comes from a popular skateboarding company, and I also disagree that skateboarding isn't "hard focused" exercise. In skateboarding there are "runs", where you consistently land tricks in a row. In between each trick you push hard, and each trick can be thought of as jumping up and down (like a jumping jack). Skateboarding in the hot texas heat for any longer than 2 hours really is extreme exercise and wears you out hardcore. Most people not familiar with skateboarding really don't know what it's like. Sorry so much of this post is dedicated to setting the record straight, and I seriously appreciate everything you wrote. Also are the energy drinks /really/ that bad if they have 20 calories, 0 sugar, and like 6g of carbs? They are like essential to me now I am losing weight again, just not as quickly as I was at first. I got down to 146.6 or somewhere aroudn there this weekend. Thanks again and I'm gonna keep working at it.

 

[gramboh]

The problem is energy drinks, even without sugar, contain artificial sweetners which may have a similar effect on the body (spiking insulin levels). On a high level, just read the contents, it's all chemicals which probably aren't good for you. I am guilty of drinking Red Bulls once in a while myself since I hate coffee, but I know it's horrible stuff.

Re: skating, I used to skate, and I appreciate that it can give you a decent cardio workout, but running is superior in terms of fat burning because of how consistent it is (for your heart rate for example). Skating you will have bursts of activity followed by rest periods. A few hours of this is good, but I bet if you ran at a constant pace or did intervals for 45min-1hour you would burn a lot more calories than in 2 hours of skating.