Posted: 6/11/2008 11:37:47 AM EDT
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Well I have plateaued with my weight loss. I have spoken to the doctor about this and he reccommended that I perhaps look at meal replacement program for a month or so to see exactly what my caloric intake is. He is also sending me in for blood work to see if there is anything happening inside me to cause this. I have never done anything like this so I need some guidance on this. My buddy who is my part time trainer told me to look at the Medifast program. What say you? I am at 270 down from 310. I have been at this weight for a month and I am increasing my cardio as to cut down on the possibility of gaining more muscle. I am bulking instead of thinning out. I am thinning down the gut (one new hole in the belt this month)but I can feel my shirts getting tighter in my shoulders. Are there any meal replacement programs you have used combined with exercise to get results. Or are a low sugar high protein benchmark nutrition program. Thanks |
Just out of curiosity, why do you need a meal replacement program to see what your caloric intake is? As a first step, I'd say buy a food scale and some measuring cups, and create an account on www.fitday.com or www.thedailyplate.com (I've seen some people say that the pre-populated nutritional data on fitday isn't always accurate, but I haven't experienced it). I'd recommend this, because you'll learn a lot about nutrition (i.e., what a real serving size looks like) in "real" foods that you will be able to carry forward into the future. It will generally be healthier (assuming you switch to healthy, whole foods), and you'll be able to adapt better if you don't happen to have a pre-packaged meal at hand, and will be able to develop your own self-control. Only time I'd say go with a plan is if you are soooo pressed for time that the microwave or fast food will be the only options (to which I'd counter that if it is really important to you, you'll find the time to cook - it doesn't take that long to grill/broil/bake chicken breasts for a few days worth of meals at once) or you really have a severe lack of self-control such that you can't portion yourself unless someone does it for you (to which I'd counter is a problem you need to fix, long term, not avoid with a meal replacement plan). Sure, people have lost weight on such plans, but at the end of the day when they get off of it, did they really learn how to live a healthier lifestyle?
OK.... I get where you'd like to see the scale to continue to go down. But it appears that you really are continuing to lose fat, but gain muscle. I don't really understand your "fear" of this, such that one of your goals is to stop gaining muscle! More muscle=higher metabolism=more calories burned for "free". If your doc can observe this and is telling you that you need to stop gaining muscle, please find a new doc. Honestly, if you are maintaining overall weight, but body composition is still moving in the right direction and you simply want to step it up a bit, simply drop 500 cal from whatever you're eating today. Post what you'd eat in an average day and we could probably make some better recommendations - or better yet, "fitday" it, if you can approximate the amounts, and post both what you are eating and the totals fitday comes up with. |
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Not exactly meal replacement, but Costco has these 6lb bags of whey/casein/soy protein that seems to take a while to digest. Depending on how long you've been at it, you might want to back off on the diet for a bit, and start lifting heavy. When you go back to starving yourself, you'll have more muscle mass, which means a higher metabolism. It will also help to keep you from going fucking crazy. |
I'd pass on that if it's the EAS stuff. While I usually like EAS, that giant bag doesn't dissolve well at all making your evening shake a very nasty thing. It's not so bad that I will throw it out, but I will not buy it again. As for the OP, it's not often that I hear of folks worrying about gaining muscle. My suggestion would be to up the cardio. Maybe try HIIT. Good luck. |
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sorry for lack of responding. To start off with the reason the doc suggested was to lighten my calorie counting and just get a benchmark to what a healthy claloric level is for me and my goals. Yes I am lazy in the fact that I want to just use shakes and such as opposed to doing the scale and measuring cup thing. I just have so little time right now. I intend to get into the full calorie home cooking thing soon but I have a 2 month project with tons of travel coming up and that just wont jive. I would rather go with a MR instead of fast food or microwave shit. I really want to thin out and not bulk up. So I am upping my cardio currently and rying to figure out which weight regiment is working. |