Your sage advice (please!!)

[L Sass]

Hi Cathe. I really need your advice. I attended the road trip and heard the advice that a person probably needs to stick with a new exercise type / rotation for a solid 6-8 weeks before she can adequately judge its impact on your body. That makes a lot of sense.

I am a thin fat person. My BMI and all medical indicators are very healthy - but my body fat is way too high. This has been a lifelong struggle for me. FOr the last 8 months or so I've been following a low (but healthy) carb high protein diet - pulling in about 1500 calories and working out 90-120 minutes a day. My body fat isn't budging.

So now I am lucky enough to have begun working out with a personal trainer who is also a registered dietician. In evaluating my diet she says I'm getting no where near the carbs that I need. She advises that my brain needs those carbs and so does my metabolism - essentially that given my activity lelel, I'm in starvation mode.

My current macronutrients were about 40% protein, 35% fat and 25% carb. She wants me at 55% carb, 20% fat and 25% protein. After a week on that I'm up 3 pounds. She says that's a normal body reaction as my brain is telling my body "THEY'RE HERE - SAVE THEM!!" but this will even out and drop again.

Here's my long winded question - like giving the exercise routine a solid couple of weeks to judge its effect, do you think the same applies to a new eating style? I had convinced myself that I'm carbohydrate sensitive, but this very well educated dietician does not believe that. The 3 pounds in a week has me so frustrated (tho she's right about one thing - I did NOT eat an extra 10,000 calories this week to pack on 3 pounds) that I'm ready to bag it. But I keep hearing what you said on the road trip. So would you give the increased carbs a few weeks before judging their effect? I would really apprecitate any thoughts you have (as if you're not busy enough huh?) Thanks Cathe.

Lorrie

 

[L Sass]

Bump - shoot, I missed her didn't I? :-(

Lorrie

 

[emy]

I don't have an answer for you, but that is an interesting question. Obviously, those 3 pounds are not all fat, so what are they? I can only suggest water weight. Could your digestion have slowed and you are holding more food weight in addition to water weight. Maybe change in diet could change your rate of digestion...

Just curious, what do you mean by you are a "thin fat person?"

 

[L Sass]

Hi Emy. Thanks for your thoughts on my query. By a thin fat person I mean that my BMI is in the very healthy range and I don't "appear" to be overweight, but my body fat percentage is way too high. So it's annoying for everyone who knows me to hear me say I need to lose weight, but it's annoying for me to have none of them understand that it's body fat I need to lose (that's why I come to these boards where you all know exactly what I mean )

Lorrie

 

[Olivia]

Hi Lorrie,

I know what you mean and would love to hear Cathe's response, so I'm bumping this for you.

 

[lilmsfit]

I'm not Cathe but IMO you should stick with this for a while.

We are bombarded by so much nutrition info these days, it's hard to know what's fact or fiction and not get into a second-guessing game. EVERYONE seems to have advice or some secret weapon (BTW, if all those secret weapons worked, there wouldn't be an obesity problem would there?). Anyway, you have consulted an expert (the trainer/dietician), and she has given you some good and healthy advice. Trust it for now, and in a month or six weeks, see where you're at.

Our muscles use carbs for energy, and you also need carbs to build new muscle. And interestingly, some evidence now suggests that you actually can bring on insulin resistance if you don't adequately fuel them with (good!) carbs. Insulin resistance is a bad road to go down.

Good luck, and I'd love to hear how you feel about the new plan in a few weeks!

 

[Shaz]

When you go on a low carb diet, you lose water from your muscles. When you start eating normal amounts of carbs, you will enevitably add some water to you muscles. I would give it a few more weeks before giving up.

Like you, I have a tendency to be thin/fat. I think concentrating on heavy (low rep) weights is necessary for adding muscle. I would concentrate on this for a while.

Cardio is necessary for losing fat. (Some people say that you should focus on building muscle in order to speed up the metabolism as this will help to lose fat. However, for people like us who don't gain muscle easily this is difficult.)

Trying to do heavy weights and lots of cardio at the same time probably doesn't work for us. It might be wise to cycle each approach, ie, concentrate on building muscle with heavy weights for a while (do some maintenance cardio). Then, concentrate on losing fat with increased cardio for a while (do maintenance strength work). Then, its back to muscle building, etc.

 

[andtckrtoo]

Lorrie -

Not Cathe, but I'm reading something completely different than everyone else. You keep saying that you're not overweight but you need to lose weight. I think you're looking at this wrong. You do not need to lose weight, you need to lose fat. And you are. The scale, as you well know, has nothing to do with fat/muscle, and muscle is more dense than fat. A pound of muscle takes up less space than a pound of fat. Someone posted a wonderful analogy on these boards (sorry, I don't know who) - next time you're at the gym, pick up a 6 pound medicine ball and think about it for a while. Then pick up a stability ball, which weighs two pounds. The stability ball is a lot bigger, but weighs less. You may gain weight when you start an exercise program because you're replacing that big ole loose fat with nice dense muscle. My advice would be to start worrying less about what the scale says, and pull out your old measuring tape and rely on that to give you information on whether or not you are toning and getting rid of that body fat.

If you notice - I have not even mentioned your diet. Either plan is good and both have shown a lot of success. It's not your diet, at least in my opinion.