15 days of treadmill workouts - no weight loss. What gives?

[Ralph_Kirk]

Originally Posted by Teckeeee

How many calories you take in is much more important than exercise, the hard truth.

Good job on exercising, it's good for you health. But when you compare how many calories you burned vs. how much you eat, each lb of fat is approx. 3500 calories so compare your treadmill results vs 3500 and then you begin to understand it's much more important to control calories that run another 1 hour on treadmill.

Your thread was a nice reminder for me since I have stressed, binge eating, and working out for 1 hour at the gym with no results.

Originally Posted by hawaiiancoconut

Let's see, 2miles a day @70-120 calories a mile (depends if you're walking, jogging or running) and you need to burn 3500 calories to lose 1lbs.....

Wouldn't it be easier to not drink that one soda or eat that one cookie then to walk 45mins to burn it off?

Focus your weight loss on diet. Lose weight in the kitchen, exercise to get in shape.

Unfortunately it took 28 posts to get to this truth.

I'm at age 65 myself. I used to be an avid cycler, doing >250 miles a week, including two century rides (100 miles) a month. But even then, from age 35 up my decreasing metabolism because of age showed a slow but steady weight increase...mostly because my wife is an excellent cook.

In my mid-60s, I know that my metabolism is slow, slow, slow. I know I won't be gaining any substantial muscle--that takes the recuperability of youth, and the same age factors that slow down all healing also slow down muscle growth. My joints betray my efforts to increase my squat. Being old sucks.

So that leaves diet as the major controllable factor.

Originally Posted by Der Vogel

You must get your heart rate up as well. You want to hit 70% of your maximum heart rate. This is your target rate. Take the number 220. Subtract your age. Now take 70% of that number. OK..the number you now have: 130 or whatever it is? That is how many beats per minute you want your heart rate to be, from exercise, for an hour a day, for 4-5 days a week.

Thumbrules are unreliable. Heart rate monitor, heart rate monitor, heart rate monitor.

I started using a heart rate monitor thirty years ago in my cycling, and I never exercise without it. You do want a chest-band radio monitor (not Bluetooth) because it reads continuously without having to hold down a button. The cheapest Polar will do, and is best in many ways. Many brands of professional gym cardio equipment are also frequency compatible with Polar.

With a heart rate monitor, you can determine your own real maximum heart rate as well as your real exercise target heart rate to increase performance--which will be slightly above your "lactate threshold." The heart rate monitor will show the difference between breathing hard and working hard.

In my case, I should theoretically be blowing chunks of lung at 150 beats per second, but in fact I'm still breathing through my nose at 165 bps and I'm not really working at my lactate threshold until 175.

If I'm slightly sick or under the weather, the heart rate monitor shows it immediately--I see a significantly higher heart rate at a level of exertion (machine settings) I know should be much lower. Time to take a few days off.

I also use the heart rate monitor for weight training. When I do a set, my heart rate rises to a certain level, say 160 bps after a set of squats. When I rest, it falls quickly and continues to fall to a point that it "bounces"--it stops falling so quickly and may dribble a bit around a certain point, say from 160 bps right at the end of the set to 125 bps after 90 seconds of rest. That's when it's the proper time to do the next set and get the best performance of the exercising muscles without being cardio-bound.

[davidt1]

I know eating right is everything, but sometimes it's hard though. A relative just gave me some greasy but delicious food. I know it's bad for me and I should throw it away. But I couldn't. Never could throw away free food. So I ate it. A whole week of cardio I did last week is gone. What's wrong with me?

[Ginge McFantaPants]

It's probably been mentioned already, but I think a lot of people are guilty of underestimating their calorie intact, overestimating how much they burn during exercise and then "eating back" too many calories. Try to schedule cardio right around the time you would normally eat, that way you're not taking in the equivalent of a whole extra meal afterwards.

[LiveForItWorks]

I'm in the army, we rum all the time, but when the food I eat just outweighs what I lost from running just helps my legs but not my stomach. I switched up my diet and my company sells fat burners and the best body wraps on the market which helped me tighten up my stomach. Dropping weight can take some help from something more than just exercising. If you wanna see for yourself my site is in my profile. Healthy Life is a Better Life

[ZeusAV]

Originally Posted by davidt1

I know eating right is everything, but sometimes it's hard though. A relative just gave me some greasy but delicious food. I know it's bad for me and I should throw it away. But I couldn't. Never could throw away free food. So I ate it. A whole week of cardio I did last week is gone. What's wrong with me?

You're undisciplined with your diet. To get to the point where you can pass on bad food you have to break the habit of regularly eating it. Unhealthy food is like an addiction. It typically takes about 2 weeks of not having food with excessive sodium, saturated fat, sugar and such before your body passes the withdrawal phase and you finally lose the craving for it. At least that's how it worked for me.

[davidt1]

Originally Posted by ZeusAV

You're undisciplined with your diet. To get to the point where you can pass on bad food you have to break the habit of regularly eating it. Unhealthy food is like an addiction. It typically takes about 2 weeks of not having food with excessive sodium, saturated fat, sugar and such before your body passes the withdrawal phase and you finally lose the craving for it. At least that's how it worked for me.

Doing a lot better now. Went to a party last Sunday and did not touch one greasy food. Had veggies and seafood instead. I don't think I will ever conquer my bad eating habits though. The best I can do is substitute good foods for bad ones. For example I have been binging on frozen berries like there is no tomorrow -- eating as much as 2lbs a day.

[Naturebox]

Speed walking trumps running because you don't feel a need to eat more food to compensate afterwards.