Exercise, Nutrition, WLS, and Cooking Q&A - 1/22/2014

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I have never had a normal bmi. Now I am about 5lbs from normal and my weight loss has slowed tremendously. What do you do to kick start it again?

Btw... my protein is 80 gms, carbs 40 gms, and Cal 800

I am struggling with that myself right now. Your numbers look good. I would say switch it up. If it has just slowed but not stopped, just be patient. The problem is that when we get close to normal our resting metabolic rate slows quite a bit too. At 800 cals you are probably still in a deficit of 500-800 calories per day. What kind of exercise are you doing? You could try carb cycling or intermittent fasting or usually those two go pretty well together. As for exercises, I would suggest doing some HIIT cardio and/or straight sprints if you are a runner or hills if you are a biker. If you just do cardio but are not doing weight**** the weights you will see things pick back up for sure.

Keith -

What HIIT exercises do you do?  I was just looking one up and saw one that included the following:

10 min brisk walk

5 sets of 10-30 second intervals (all out, everything you’ve got) and 1-4 minutes of rest in between intervals

10 min brisk walk

How does this sound?  I would like to give this one a try, what do you think?

Yes that's looks pretty good. Here is the one I started out with and now I just do variations of this when I workout on my own and my Orange Theory classes are all HIIT.

This is a 20 min HIIT run:

Start with a 5 min walk to warm up start out at a normal pace and work up to a brisk pace. Then do:

30 second sprint

3 minute jog

30 second sprint

1 minute walk

Repeat 3 times (or more if you got anything left)

 

On an elliptical machine because your heart rate reacts so differently, in a 30 min set I will start with a 5 min warm up building up to a brisk pace. I will check my heart rate reading and make sure I am solidly in the fat burning zone. Then I will go as fast as I can for 30 seconds (sometimes I will go a min if I am feeling particularly rested), then I will slow down to that brisk pace until my heart rate returns to the reading I took before my first all out. Once I hit that I will go as fast as I can again and continue that pattern until my 30 mins is up. I don't do a lot of cool down time, but I will go and stretch after my workouts.

I have been doing light exercise: squats, leg raises, crunches, burpees, dancing, walking, etc. Before surgery I would do Cardio Mixed Martial Arts and Taekwondo. I plan on starting the 2nd degree black belt program in February (waiting on my tax $).

Well, I would say it is time to up the intensity on your workouts for sure by maybe incorporating some HIIT cardio.