Has Anyone Else Had To Do It This Way?

[mama2asa]

I am working on reforming my body. Losing fat, building some muscle, mainly getting healthy. My diet is great, not perfect, but great. I have lost a total of 20 lbs in less than a year. I have found, to my discouragement, that I have to workout for about an hour and a half a day to see a difference in my body. I do weights first, then cardio. I tried doing it with 30 min of weights then 20 to 30 minutes good hard cardio, I have tried circuit. Though I was losing weight on the scale, my body didn't change for the better.
Has anyone else who has lost fat and weight discovered that you have to workout longer to change? I started back on my long workout today because my shape is not appealing to me compared to what it was before I started testing other workout schedules.

[srilling]

I am working on reforming my body. Losing fat, building some muscle, mainly getting healthy. My diet is great, not perfect, but great. I have lost a total of 20 lbs in less than a year. I have found, to my discouragement, that I have to workout for about an hour and a half a day to see a difference in my body. I do weights first, then cardio. I tried doing it with 30 min of weights then 20 to 30 minutes good hard cardio, I have tried circuit. Though I was losing weight on the scale, my body didn't change for the better.
Has anyone else who has lost fat and weight discovered that you have to workout longer to change? I started back on my long workout today because my shape is not appealing to me compared to what it was before I started testing other workout schedules.

Not an expert, but I can say for sure that it's a question of calories (unless there is an underlying medical condition)... If your intake is too high, you will have to work harder to reach a deficit. Theoretically, to lose fat, you don't need to train; just eat at a deficit. Though there are huge benefits of weight training and some cardio, so don't stop. If you find that you need to workout that much to see a difference, you're simply eating too much. Outtraining your diet is not a sustainable solution, except for elite athletes who do Iron Mans...

It sucks, but count ALL of your calories for a while, even just a week; you will find the problem. Use the stickies to find out how much calories you need to lose fat at a correct rate (a pound a week is great) - and be careful not to overestimate the calories you burn by training. And by count your calories, you honestly have to weigh your food, if your guessing you will be wrong. I speak from experience...

The quality of what you eat is important; but from a purely fat loss standpoint, quantity matters most. For fat loss, compound movements, full body workouts and the heaviest cardio you can take.

Also, don't be discouraged by the miror. There is a weird point in fat loss that makes you think your looking worse... Just work through it.

Congrats on the 20 lbs and keep it up!

[Wadecounty7]

You are most likely not a special flower. Read the stickies to better understand how to achieve your goals. Summary, calories in/out affects weight loss far, far more than exercise ever will. Exercise (lifting weights mainly) serves 2 purposes, maintain muscle when losing weight, and build muscle when gaining weight.

[mjdieth]

You do not "have" to work out for an hour and a half every day, just eat less, simple as that.

[ChewYourFood]

Your diet is not "great" if you are only losing 20lbs in a year with that much exercise (unless that was your target). It is great progress but you could have lost twice that or more if your diet were on point. Get myfitnesspal (myfitnesspal.com) on your phone / computer and start tracking EVERYTHING that goes in your mouth EVERYTHING. This app makes counting calories so easy that it isn't even a chore. Enter your stats and it will spit out a calorie goal. Stay at or under that number. Simple.

In just over the past month I have lost 23.2 lbs eating whatever I wanted, lifting 3x a week (AllPro - forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=147447933) and my only cardio has consisted of mowing my yard and wrestling with my kids.

Diet > Exercise

p.s. I lied about the cardio. I also walk to the ice cream shop a couple times a week.

[71Avido]

Has anyone else who has lost fat and weight discovered that you have to workout longer to change? I started back on my long workout today because my shape is not appealing to me compared to what it was before I started testing other workout schedules.

Not specifically longer, just efficiently and sometimes that takes a decent amount of time in the gym.
I spend about an hour there if I'm focused.

There was a thread on here the other day regarding a funky transition phase when one starts losing weight.
Basically your skin and tissue is still used to being big and doesn't want to immediately shrink down to your new size. This creates a little person in a big coat sort of effect sometimes. Another issue a lot of people deal with while losing weight is strictly perception. You may still be used to seeing the old you in the mirror, the new leaner you will take some time to get used to.

As long as your weight is trending in the right direction at a rate that is acceptable keep it up.
Skin will tighten up, your perception of yourself will improve if you stick with it.

[ThinkAndGoHam]

Honestly you just need to count your calories, calories in vs calories out burn more than you consume each day and you WILL loose weight, Sure you can fine tune it and not every calories is exactly the same but calories in vs calories out really is 95% of it. You don't need to make it any more complicated if you don't want to. Ive lost 22 pounds in just 6 weeks with ZERO exercise i just lift weights twice a week. You can use any of the calorie calculators on the net to get an idea how many you need to loose weight, get a rough idea stick with it and adjust accordingly if your not loosing enough, drop your calories a little.

[RBZen]

Yes... you need to count calories. I've lost 100 pounds this year so far. And I work out 45 minutes 5-6 days a week.

Even if I did not exercise at all, I'd still lose weight. You need to weigh your food and count your calories.

[ClintMcc]

In my case i plateaued when I OVER-trained. Was running 15-20 miles a week, and also 3-4 weight sessions whilst consuming too few calories.

Upped the calories ensuring I counted them down to the calorie, reduced the running by half, kept the weights the same - weight started shifting again (I went from 280lb to 180lb in 14 months).

I find it's a constant evaluation, re-evaluation, re-evaluation - which is to be expected. You shouldn't have to explicitly train harder/more to keep losing weight, just adjust intake, and be sure you are not dropping cal's TOO low.

[yas360]

My diet is great, not perfect, but great

Evidently not. Stop eating so much and you might lose weight without spending hours in the gym

[ThinkAndGoHam]

I find it's a constant evaluation, re-evaluation, re-evaluation - .

Could not agree more, start with the basic fundamentals and keep re evaluating and fine tuning it as you go along gaining experience and the number 1 place to start without question is counting your calories, it is without a doubt the most important thing if you want to loose weight.

[Complex89]

I am working on reforming my body. Losing fat, building some muscle, mainly getting healthy. My diet is great, not perfect, but great. I have lost a total of 20 lbs in less than a year. I have found, to my discouragement, that I have to workout for about an hour and a half a day to see a difference in my body. I do weights first, then cardio. I tried doing it with 30 min of weights then 20 to 30 minutes good hard cardio, I have tried circuit. Though I was losing weight on the scale, my body didn't change for the better.
Has anyone else who has lost fat and weight discovered that you have to workout longer to change? I started back on my long workout today because my shape is not appealing to me compared to what it was before I started testing other workout schedules.

Hey, what's up.
Read this: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hp?t=133163973
And this: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hp?t=129247741

What order you read them in doesnt matter. The first person who responded to your post gave a pretty informative response. So definitely take all of that into consideration.

I lost 40 lbs in a year and kept it off. I'm currently doing no cardio, though I do engage in full body strength training workouts, 3 days a week. Though my diet wasnt that great, I was at least counting calories. I didn't get serious about these macros until 6/2013.
I aiming to lose another 10 to 15 lbs, starting this week, hopefully done by the end of August at the latest.

But like everyone else said, you may be eating better quality food, but you may be taking in a bunch of calories from it. You have to start counting them. If you have some kind of smartphone, download the myfitnesspal app. It's a life saver...

[mama2asa]

I count my calories, every one of them. I eat between 1200 and 1500 a day. I have been tracking my calories for a long time.

[ChewYourFood]

I count my calories, every one of them. I eat between 1200 and 1500 a day. I have been tracking my calories for a long time.

I did your TDEE with your bodyspace info and 1500 should be doing the job especially with all of the activity.

I can't help you much other than to tell you to keep up what you are doing if you think it is right. Because if you lose another 20 lbs in the next year you'll only have 48lbs of bodyfat which means you will have lost almost a 1/3 of your bodyfat in that period which will show results.

or

Try to speed up the fat loss by slowly reducing calories until you are losing a lb a week. Then you'll only have 18 lbs of bodyfat after that year and I promise that you will see a massive difference in your body.

The choice is up to you.

[Complex89]

I count my calories, every one of them. I eat between 1200 and 1500 a day. I have been tracking my calories for a long time.

When you lost that 20lbs, how many calories where you eating? And do you remember your TDEE for around that time? And do you take your physical activity into account when figuring out your TDEE and caloric deficit? You might've went too far into a deficit for too long and screwed up your metabolism. If thats the case, I would recommend slowly ramping your calories back up (by 100kcal per week) to maintenance and maybe staying there for about 2 weeks to transition into a full diet break.

Also, I noticed you said you were losing weight on the scale, but it didn't change the appearance of your body, much. I would recommend that if you enjoy doing it, keep it up. With your height and weight, you probably won't be able to see much difference between a few lbs, lost. When I weighed 193, I didn't notice any difference in my body until about 20lbs later. And even then, I barely noticed it.

Another thing. Are you getting enough fats in your diet? Not getting enough fats can affect your weight loss in a negative way as well. You should be getting in about 0.4 x your body weight in lbs.