Thanks so much! By the way, I love your blog!
Bekah

Yeah, this is a hard one, because obviously your trainer has a better idea of what you are doing than I do, and if she’s stumped, I’m probably not going to be much help.

To have your body fat go down 8% (which is huge- congrats!) and there be little weight loss is odd, but not unheard of (and definitly frustrating.) 6 pounds is still a loss, though. I’m not going to be able to give you definite answer, but your weight for your height is quite high, and being at that weight, for what I assume is an extended period of time cause do some damage to your body and your metabolism. It might just take a while for your body to adapt to the changes, or there might be something going on.

The only things I can think of are:

- Are you weighing at the same time everyday- on an empty stomach?

- The calories (as long as they are within reason) aren’t as important as what you are eating. If you are eating a lot of starchy carbs- those stick with you for a while, or salt, which can cause water retention (which is usually in processed foods as opposed to the salt you are putting on top of you food- but that has a big effect, too)

- If you have any medical conditions, those may be a factor

- If you are on any medications, those may be a factor

Like I said, 6 pounds is still a loss. Its only been since October that you have upped your calories to 1500 (good job, 1300 is pretty low) so perhaps the switch will kick up your weight loss a bit. It takes a while for your body to adjust to a calorie change, but I would expect you should see some results soon.

If you trust your trainer, (that’s not a dig at her, some people really don’t think their trainers know what they are talking about, but stay with them anyway) I would go see a doctor just to make sure their aren’t any problems, but if you think your routine might not be intense enough, or the focus you are looking for, then see a different trainer to look over your routine and diet to make sure that its the right program for you.

Don’t beat yourself up,- you are probably doing most everything right, and by picking up an exercise habit, you are already way ahead of the game. Be happy you are making improvements on your body and try and focus on the other positive things that are changing, even if it might not be the fast weight loss you are looking for. Sometimes it takes a while for your body to respond.

I have a follow-up question to my over training. Since my body is used to working out so much how does it adjust when I start a more normal routine? By this I mean if my body was in a constant state of over training how does it know when to slow down. I have cutback on my workouts and even take a rest day. How should I adjust my caloric intake to offset my body adjusting? My goal is to loose about 10lbs.

thanks,
Jenny

To read Jenny’s first Q and A she is referring to, head to Q and A: Over Doing It

your body IS slowed- you dont want it to slow down, you want it to speed back up. over trained means it stopped working on you to protect itself, so even if you force it to workout, you arent going to get any of the benefits from it because it has slowed and stopped all of your body processes.

when it is able to rest- ie. not made to work out, it will start to trust you again, and start your body processes back up (burning calories, building muscle, etc.) Your bodies job is not to die, so if you make it work too hard, it thinks you re trying to kill it, and will do everything in its power not to let you. So it holds on to calories to preserve the energy (fat, calories) you are so desperately trying to burn off it.

Id keep your calories the same, because once your body kicks back in, its going to need them (you arent burning as many calories when you are over training, but when your body starts to work again, it will need those calories because it will be burning them) so you might lose weight by eating the same. If you find you arent, then I would lower them slightly, because you may be working out at such a high intensity/frequency, that even your slowed state is burning a lot of calories.

That was confusing.

Leave your calories alone, because you will need them when your body kicks in, but if you dont notice loss, I would re-do The Harris Benedict Formula and then figure out how many you need for your activity level. It takes a bit for your body to respond to rest, but not too long, so you should be able to do the equation and have it be accurate, because your body will be responding fully to the level of exercise you are doing.

Hey, Kelly. I have a tough one for you .
I have love handles and they drive me crazy. They are pretty much the only part of my body where I have excess fat. I’m 19 years old, 5’5″ and 108 lbs. I do cardio 6 days/week for 40 minutes, keeping my average heart rate at about 180 bpm (I also do strength training 3 days/week). But the love handles won’t go away! I try doing lower back exercises and oblique exercises but nothing works! Any suggestions? Thank you so much!

Ari

Tough one- HA! You can’t phase this….

First of all- your average heart rate is 180? How does your heart not explode? Not trying to scare you- some people’s heart rates run differently, but holy crap that’s high. I can’t even get my peak heart rate past 175 let alone sustain it.

I think this might be one of those things where if I could actually look at you, I would call you crazy. 108 pounds on a 5’5″ body leaves little room for any extra body fat, but Ill give you the benefit of the doubt.

First thing- make sure you are wearing a bra that fits. If it cuts into you, it makes fake love handles- the same way too small pants creates back fat where before there was none.

Ok- fitness advice. Obviously cardio is going to burn excess fat, but since you probably have very little, lets talk strength training.

Love handles are not in the oblique area, although a lot of people make that mistake. The muscle right underneath your arm pits and run down the side of you back, that on really buff people make that nice little V of the upper back, are your lats. Do lat pulldowns till you can’t do lat pull downs no more and barbell rows. Preferably with a weight that maxes you at about 10-12 reps (I like how I can’t make colloquial comments like that, because people take me seriously.)

Keep up with the obliques and lower back, too, because a strong core is very important to getting a sleek back. And preventing injury, and good posture and blah, blah, blah…..

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Thank you
Annonymous

You kind of answered your own question in the question. You have to stop the binges first, then the urge goes away- you have to fight. It would be easy if it were the other way around- if you didn’t feel compelled to binge, you wouldn’t have to do it.

You have to fake it till you make it. White knuckle it. All those other cliches.

Of course its easier said than done. The first thing you have to do is decide that you have a choice. You always have a choice. Each bite of food that you put into your mouth is another opportunity to decide to stop. I used to have the mentality that, “well, I already started binging so I might as well finish it up because I blew bit already” but this is the wrong way of thinking- its just making excuses for yourself. Each step is a success, so if you stop one bite into the binge, or one bite

So what happens? You start to binge, and try and stop, but you get anxious. All you can think about it finishing your binge, and you won;t be able to calm down until you do. You might physically get shakey, or your heart might beat fast and your head spins (sounds like drugs, no?) but guess what? That feeling goes away. Research shows it goes away within an hour, but mine usually didn’t take that long.

The trick now is to distract yourself. You can go about it one of two ways: you can tackle it head on and try and sort through your feelings, or you can ignore them completely. Generally, in the beginning its best to just distract yourself, and do anything you can to pass the time: call a friend, go for a walk- but its usually best if you get out of the house and away from food until the urge goes away. Then, when you get better are resisting the urge, you can use your anxiety to try and figure out why you respond to food the way you do: why do I want to binge right now? what happened that is causing me to react this way? journal about it. talk to yourself out loud. Lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling and just listen to all the thoughts racing through your head and shoot each one down. No i dont need to binge. No it wont make me feel better. No this isnt going to solve anything. No this is not the person I want to be.

The urge will go away when you stop giving into the binges. You are binging because its the only way you know how to deal with your anxiety, but when you dont let yourself do it anymore, you will naturally lose the need to. The clearer your mind gets, and the better you feel about yourself after resisting a few times, you’ll start to realize exactly what triggers you and find a way to deal with it head on- not in a self destructive way. Good luck.

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Amy- there are a few things to consider:

1) The Harris Benedict formula is to figure out how many calories you need to maintain your weight. In order to safely lose weight (about 1 pound a week) you want to subtract about 500 calories from that (500 calories equals 3,500 over a week: 3,500 calories are in a pound, so viola!) so in order to lose, you should be eating around 1,800-2,00 calories a day. Bleh, math.

2) 1,200- 1,500 is way too low. You aren’t going to drop weight if you don’t eat enough- which makes all that exercise you are doing a waste. I say it over and over, but if your body is starving, not matter how much you make it work, it isn’t going to burn calories, so you definately shouldnt be anywhere under 1,600, especially for the weight you are at.

3) Your body only needs a day in between to heal from strength training so you can split your strength training up a number of different ways. You can do full body each time, you can alternate upper and lower (which means one week you will do upper twice and one week you will do lower twice) or you can split it into random muscle groups, or you can do full body one day, then abs and core the next- it really doesnt matter. As long as you give your muscles one day of rest in between workouts (at least) you’ll be fine. Remember: We give our bodies too much credit. Weeks are a man-made thing, your body doesnt think in terms of weeks, so dont worry so much about being even. However, 2 times a week isnt bad, so don;t fret too much

4) Some good sites to check out for exercises are: Youtube.com (just type in the body part you want to work) PTontheNet.com (you have to search a bit for free stuff, but if you sign up for a membership- that’s what my work uses when we aren’t feeling creative), Workoutz.com. There are a million. Just search free workout videos and you’ll find anything you could ever want.

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