If a diet/exercise dont work, change them!

Question
Hi Tanya,
I am 23 years old, 5'3'' and currently weigh in at 130. My brother owns a gym, I worked in gyms for 5 years, was an athlete from grade school through college and studied food marketing and nutrition in college. With this experience I consider myself pretty knowledgeable on weight loss and dieting. I have done an all-out diet before a trip to jamaica two years ago where I consumed roughly 1500 calories a day, lifted 4-5 times a week and did some type of cardio 2-4 times a week. In just 2 short months I went from 126 to 118.

Since then I have gone through spurts of working out and not working out as much. For the most part, though, I worked out at least once or twice a week. I have gradually seen a weight gain and now that I got up to 130 I wanted to start working out again. I am following the same regiment, however, I am only consuming 1000-1200 calories a day instead of 1500 like the last time. I spread this across 5-6 meals a day every 2.5-3 hours. I'm drinking plenty of water and consuming a 2:3 ratio of carbs to protein and limiting my fat intake as much as possible.

I have been doing this for a month now and have lost no weight nor have I seen any difference in the way my clothes fit. Could there be another reason that I am not losing the weight? would you recommend something like hydroxycut to get my metabolism back up or do you believe it could be something different?

Any information would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!  

Answer
Dear Laura,

Wouldn't it be logical to do exactly the same thing that worked for you before including exactly 1500 Cal. a day? Too little calories might mean "conservation mode" for your body and your body cheats saving some power when you work out. Also, many routine everyday movements are being performed at a lower power, also in order to save you the calories. Research showed that the most of your energy expenditure goes on not in gyms but around the house, office, etc.

Another thing is, where your calories are coming from. If it's low-fat "healthy" stuff, you might want to reconsider the very idea of healthy food. Also, there's no solid evidence that many tiny "meals" a day do any good in the long run. Instead, just opposite idea emerges, based on longevity research, called intermittent fasting.

Bottom line:

1.You might want either copy your successful method precisely
2. Or, change it radically.

Read more

Every other day diet
http://tinyurl.com/24-fasting

Eat-stop-eat
http://tinyurl.com/weekly-fasts

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