Relax....it's not as macro-nutrient critical as you may think. Sometimes it's not what you eat but what you don't eat. Ask yourself a simple question: how far from the farm is it? vegetables, fruit, meat....unprocessed, unrefined, no artificial ingredients, preservatives, coloring, chemicals: this is the stuff your body wants and thrives on. Beyond that, it's just about eating a healthy combination of all the food groups.

The abrasive truth of the matter is, our bodies don't need nearly as much protein as todays diets push. More often then not, protein is the promoted food only for the sake that it has a weak caloric punch...all of only 4 calories per gram, whereas fats have 9 calories per gram. Protein also digest slowly and takes more energy to digest. Many diets have you eating the protein not because you need the protein but because they just want to see you avoid the carbs/fats. Sure, if you're weight-training you need more protein to sustain the needs...but don't fall prety to all the marketing hype these protein-shake/powder companies will have you believe.

So long as you get enough protein each day, you'll be fine. Sure, having some protein before, during and after a weight-training session may ensure a micro-kick in increased performance....but your splitting hairs. When you read the labels on these protein shakes and they instruct you to have a shake in the morning, pre-workout, post-workout, for dinner, before you go to bed....it's VERY similar to hair shampoo's that tell you to wash 2-3 times; ultimately they're just trying to increase your use of their product!

There is absolutely no better source of nutrients then what real food offers. The supplement industry gives us Calcium...but guess what; we can't absorb it well without the presence of vitamin D, and we can't absorb vitamin D without some magnesium & zinc..and the chain goes on & on. If you eat a well-balance diet, you'll probably get everything you need...but for safety and fun watching translucent-yellow urine, take a multi-vitamin and maybe some fish oil.

So for breakfast, pass on the donut, pancakes, fruit loops, buttery muffin and other foods that you won't find close to the farm. Oatmeal is great and you can match it with some good protein of your choice, eggs are popular.

As for your question, after cardio you've not really worked the muscle like you do with weights. Weights are generally slow-twitch muscle and cardio is more fast-twitch. You can have your protein after cardio, but it's nothing more or less then any other food.

Nutrient timing is far over-blown...just eat the right foods and you're good to go!

Your weight will fluctuate...so what you are calling a "problem" is not a problem. I'd not suggest getting on the scale more then once per month. In the beginning you'll see a lot of movement but after a couple months things will mellow-out and the fight will begin. Your hydration level, how much food you have in your intestines and several other factors will vary.

A pound of fat is about 3,500 calories....and your body can only breakdown, metabolize and access stored fat at a certain rate. Understand that when you exercise only about 30-40% of the energy you burn comes from fat, the rest is generally from glycogen. That said, and figuring an average of 35% calories from fat, you'd need to burn 10,000 calories with exercise to see one pound of actual fat burned. Strenous exercise for a guy your size might burn about 720 calories per hour, so you'd have to exercise about for nearly 14 hours to burn one pound of fat. Think about that. Now...you lost 5 pounds in one week; that's 17,500 calories; do you really think you exercised and cut your intake that much to account for an actual FAT LOSS of 5 pounds? No, of course not....hydration and lots of other factors come into play.

As I mentioned in another thread, each gram of gylcogen requires 3 grams of water to sustain in your body. When you cut carbs, your body drops glycogen storage...for each gram of glycogen gone, so too goes 3 grams of water: this is the "water-weight" you hear about people losing.

True fat loss generally can only happen at a rate of about 1-1.5 pounds per week. And be aware: during calorie deficit & dieting, as much as 30% of your weight lost came from lean muscle! You may want to re-think where those 5 pounds came from...the number certainly sounds great, but we're not trying to lose weight, we're trying to lose fat.

Do cardio 3-4x per week, do weights 2-3x per week...alternate days. More then anything else, what you put in your mouth will dictate your results. It's very easty to eat-back the calories you burn while exercising. Remember how only 30-40% of what you burn is fat..the rest is glycogen; the body knows very well the glycogen is gone (low blood-sugar) and your body will SCREAM with hunger and inspire you to replenish those lost calories. Just so you know, I'm told that glycogen can only be replenished by consumption of food; you can't take it from fat..so it's okay to eat after exercising. It would make sense that you can eat as much as 60% of the calories burned, but I generally go with about 25-40%. Despite what were told, you don't have a mere 1-hour "window" of time to replenish your glycogen or else suffer weak performance next time. Current research says your body will divert incoming energy towards the glycogen storage before it stores it as fat...so they're like empty little fuel-tanks waiting to be filled. BUT THERE'S THE SECRET: the 65% of energy during exercise that came from glycogen will now inhibit that consumed food from becoming fat...so if you can avoid eating-back all those calories you burned, you'll have burned fat during the cardio AND your body will burn fat because your refueling glycogen and the food you ate isn't hitting your fat!

I sure hope that all makes sense, cause we're touching on some major heavy-duty psyiology stuff here. But the thing is, you don't have to understand the body to make our progress...just eat whole food, eat balanced portions, watch what you eat (count calories), get rest, take a multi-vitamin, get your cardio, do your weights, stretch and the path is inevitable.

We green or what?

wow once again. thanks for taking time out to answer so thoroughly.
i understand just about everything and im taking the whey protein to help make up for if i am losing lean muscle during my weight loss.

i feel better knowing the weight fluctuates and i had a feeling it was mostly water weight.

is there any way i kind find out how many pounds of fat i have? is that my body fat percentage? (that may sound dumb but im trying to grasp all of this)

i checked a website and it says i lose 835 calories an hour during basketball. so thats 11.9 (12) hours of basketball a week to lose an actual pound of fat. am i right?

i think im starting to grasp all of this, and im obsessed with wanting to learn about this stuff, its just i dont know much now so its kind of difficult.

also, when do u think ill be about 190-195 and healthy if i continue and keep eating healthy and working out and doing cardio? i understand everyone is different but if im 230 right now and im looking to lose 40-50 more pounds, how long will it be? im not in any kind of hurry but it would just be nice to know or even have some timeframe. thanks.

Your BF% (Body-Fat percentage) is simply how much fat you have relative to your total body weight. If you were 25% body-fat, then (if your 230 pounds)...then you have 57.5 pounds of fat on your body. In general, you start seeing your abdominals when you approach 10%. There are many techniques to measuring BF%...hand-held devices that you grip and they pass electrical current through your body, weight-scales that do the same thing through your legs, water-tanks you get dunked in, calipers that pinch you and the highly regarded golden-standard: DEXA which is an x-ray machine that scans your body. EACH TECHNIQUE HAS IT'S FLAW.

I myself see a nutritionist who uses the body-fat calipers on me...he pinches several areas and we take an average. Calipers only measure the subcutaneous fat under the skin...it can't measure the visceral fat deeper inside the body...BUT you lose fat throughout the body....so all we need to see if a drop in the calipes to indicate an overall drop. One area on my body may pinch-out at 20% while another at 7%. I have no idea what my total BF% is, but as long as those same sights register 19.1% and 6.7% the next visit, I know I'm losing.


835 per hour is very high, even hard running doesn't go quite that high...but still, your burning calories. By your numbers, doing 12 hours of basketball would burn (12x835) 10,020 calories. Since we burn about 30-40% of calories from fat, that means you burned about one pound (3,500 calories) of solid fat from all that work. The other 6,513 calories came from glycogen, which comes from food you ate and energy stored as such. If you didn't eat heavy that day, the food you ate went towards replenishing the glycogen, so your body burned fat to sustain what that food otherwise would have gone towards. Hope that makes sense. In the end, you still benefit from the net loss of those 10,020 calories.



The weight scale only measures weight, it can't tell you how much muscle you've gained. I will again remind everyone: my first 5-6 weeks I worked my butt off...huge exercise, low calories, etc: I actually had a GAIN of 2+ pounds on the scale...yet I looked leaner and we found that I lost 2.8% Body-Fat. I've repeatedly had BF% losses while concurrently having weight gains. Muscle weighs more then fat. More important: do NOT rely on the scale to do anything more then frustrate you. Dude: I'm 5' 8" and weigh about 232 pounds...yet you can clearly see my abs coming-in with some lobe definition and everything. If I got down to 210 pounds, I'd probably be at 6% body-fat. My point being, you gotta let-go of the scale and not fixate on your weight!

Lastly, it's good to read and learn more...but be careful, there's a LOT of info out there that conflicts with other stuff you'll read/learn. Even doctors, trainers, nutritionist will vary with information. Vitamin & supplement stores want to sell you products with all sorts of claims and false marketing (information that'll throw you off). In the end, the sum of all we know comes from what we've heard, read or experienced...so we're all walking around with ideas & notions that may be wrong. Science is routinely changing the way we think & understand stuff....but again: all you need to know is eat healthy, eat whole foods, exercise and the rest follows.

at school not too long ago i did the hand-held device and it said 19. im rounding up to 20 to make it easier for myself and because u never know if it went up since then.

that means 46 pounds of fat are on my body. and 10% would be 23 pounds of fat, correct?

but wouldnt that number change because my weight is changing and making my 10% a different amount?

if not, then id have to lose half of my body fat (46 to 23) to see my abs.

SO...if i need to lose 23 pounds of fat and all that basketball (12 hours of it) loses 1 pound, then i need to do a lot of basketball and even if i do 12 hours a week, it will take me 23 weeks or roughly 6 months. am i on the right track?

I think you're thinking too much about numbers! Just eat good, do your exercise, basketball or whatever. But think, that 832 or whatever it was is probably a figure for top level players. I don't see scientists hooking up there machines and equipment to kids in the school gym, or guys meeting up in the park for a casual throw about. So I think you should use a figure of more like 600cals an hour. But as I said, forget all that, eat good stuff, get some exercise done and see what happens. If you're wanting a time frame, it will never happen!

good point. thanks for the input.

+1 Same thing I've been saying

BUMP

any1 got any other tips or help? anything at all?

First of all hows the diet, exercise and weight loss going?

I think for optimal results you would benefit further from doing a mixture of cardio and lifting. Even if you have no weights, there are good bodyweight exercises you can do.

I agree with Tom--an update would be helpful...

I seriously think you need to balance out your physical activity with some weight training!