Quote:
Originally Posted by CarlosTheGaucho
1500 - 2000 sounds pretty low to me, I don't think you need to go that low, and if you're adding physical activity it's even counterproductive, if your body starves it doesn't recover well and tries to burn a lot of muscle
if you're 6'0 and 200 pounds your basal metabolism will be at least 2 000 calories / day, more likely even more
so let's say your intake would be 2 400 calories / day in five healthy, balanced meals
Now how much you should burn (example for illustration):
- 2 000 is basal
- 200 is common activity (walking etc.)
- say 600 is work out (cardio / etc.)
- that would give you a nice 2400 / 2800 ratio 400 cals are cca 1 600 kJ (I always have to use Euro numbers to recalculate) so that would mean you can be burning as much as cca 80 g fat a day (very rough estimation, someone correct me if I'm wrong)
But that way, say 5 work outs a week would mean approx 400 g (almost a pound) a week
I'd say that's about the zenith there and you shouldn't try harder otherwise you'll be burning too much muscle and feel tired
a couple suggestions
- try to cut eating out completely for a month or two, that's the only way to control what you eat, I can more or less guarantee it's gonna boost the results
- aim for five meals a day, don't starve for breakfast and eat more after the work out
- adding a protein drink before the sleep as the fifth meal shouldn't harm either, even if you'd only be exercising abs
- if you want to do abs specifically do them every second day (I used to do that at high school every morning at 5:30 AM) but it's probably much better if you have every other day for recovery
- I'd go for more than 25 repetitions in a serie and a total of 250 - 300 repetitions per session
- prefer a longer cardio work out (45 - 60 minutes) at cca 70 pct. of your maximum heart rate, they say you start to burn fat effectively after cca 15 minutes of cardio and I can attest that longer workouts indeed brought more notable results for me
- pick exercise that works for you and that you feel well, be careful with your neck, test technique until you properly "feel" the muscles
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Maybe i am intaking more than I realize. On days when I eat a subway sandwich for lunch (foot long about 700 cals) and a frozen dinner (350 cals) for dinner, eat a frozen desert (250 cals) and maybe snack on a pudding or couple 100 cal snack packs, I don't think I am getting over 2,000 cals. I might have some OJ that accounts for a couple 100 cals... My biggest help to keeping my calories down is drinking diet drinks and water. With the exception of a glass of OJ I get 0 calories from drinks. Before I switched to diet and water I was drinking about 1200 - 1500 calories a day in soda but I had a 6pack back then not counting all of the beer I was drinking lol
When I eat out (lunch or dinner) I have no idea how many cals I am getting but I eat not the best when I eat out so i am guessing I am eating 1000- 1500 or more just from that 1 one meal. So I might be doing a lot more those days and making up for my pathetic frozen dinner eating days.