What Am I Doing Wrong?

OK i have decided to post here because i am so frustrated that my body is not changing the way i think it should be. I have been lurkin these fourms for some time now. i have red a lot of Dr. John articles and what not and i understand some things but not a lot. so i guess i will lay out my current diet and workout routine and you guys can critique.

first off i should start by saying i am currently 5’9 and 160 lbs. i started dieting around this time last year, i was at my heavest in my life at 199lbs. so i started eating better (no pizza, fries, hero’s for lunch and stuck with grilled chk wraps and salads, no carbs was big there too) and i lost 30 lbs pretty easliy in 4 months. from 170 down to 160 was tough. consisting of lower cal intake and weights and cardio.

but now i am down at 160 for a couple months and i am trying to loose some more body fat. at this point i dont care if i weigh 160 or whatever but i want to be lean. i have a at home pinch test and says to test at one spot by the love handle. it reads that i am about 14% BF which is where i have been forever now (4 -5 months). so let me get to the details now on what i eat and my training.

my training has been pretty static now:

cardio days - i sometimes switch between bike and eliptical depending on how my knees recover from running.

Monday - Chest and Bi’s (1hour to 1 1/2)
Warm up stretch
5 pull ups
flat bench: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
incline bench: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
overhead dumbell pullover on flat bench: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
dumbell chest flies on flat: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
dips: 3 sets (10 - 10 -10)

right then left curls with cables: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
standing curles with short barbell: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
right/left seated curls with dumbells: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
right/left gym machine curls: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)

Tuesday - Cardio (1 1/2 hour)
Treadmill 50 min
5 mile runs from jogging to sprinting to jogging and walking
pushups: 3 sets of 20
leg lifts: 3 sets of 20
crunches: 3 sets of 20
oblique extensions: 3 sets of 20 for both right and left sides

Wed - Back and Legs (1 hour to 1 1/2)
Warm up stretch
5 pull ups
seated row machine: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
One-Arm Dumbbell Rows: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
Bent-Over Barbell Rows: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
lower back extensions with dumbells: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
Lat pulldown machine: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
superset with standing straight arm pull downs (3 sets of 10)

lay down leg press: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
seated Leg extensions machine: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
seated Leg contraction machine (back of legs): 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
Seated Calf Raise Exercise Machine: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
dips: 3 sets (10 - 10 -10)

Thurs - Cardio (1 1/2 hour)
Treadmill 50 min
5 mile runs from jogging to sprinting to jogging and walking
pushups: 3 sets of 20
leg lifts: 3 sets of 20
crunches: 3 sets of 20
oblique extensions: 3 sets of 20 for both right and left sides

Fri - Shoulders and Tri’s
Warm up stretch
5 pull ups
seated overhead dumbell press: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
One arm cable lateral rises: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
Smith upright row: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
shrugs: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
Lever Seated Rear Lateral Raise: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)

seated one arm tricep extension machine: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
One arm cable pushdowns: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
Pushdown with spread rope: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
cable pushdowns: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
Barbell Lying Triceps Extension: 3 sets (12 - 10 -8)
superset with close grip bech press: 3 sets of 10
dips: 3 sets (10 - 10 -10)

Sat - Cardio (1 1/2 hour)
Treadmill 50 min
5 mile runs from jogging to sprinting to jogging and walking
pushups: 3 sets of 20
leg lifts: 3 sets of 20
crunches: 3 sets of 20
oblique extensions: 3 sets of 20 for both right and left sides

now diet:
suppliments = colon cleanse (fiber), mega mens multi, fish oils (omega 3 & 6 pills)

if i am starving which happens sometimes i usually squash the cravings with 2 tbls of jiff peanut butter.

monday thru fri are pretty much the same every day. as far as quantity is concearned.

7am wakeup - 1 mega men

8am breakfast - 4 colon clense pills
fruit - 1 apple 2 Tbls jif peanut butter sometimes some pinapple also.
(i used to have a package of reg oatmeal but cut that out)

12pm lunch - 4 colon clense pills
1 whole weat wrap with lettuce tomato or roasted pepers and either grilled chk or roast beef. mostly chk
1 apple with 2 TBls of jif peanut butter

230 - 3pm mid afternoon snack - 1 apple with 2 TBls of jif peanut butter

6pm workout

7 30pm dinner - 4 colon clense pills and 1 fish oil
good helping of vegies (either broccoli or spinach or peas)
meat protien (steak or chicken, fri is shrimp)
bread very rarly
salad with olive oil and balsamic

dinner portions are big not crazy big, but def full/stuffed cause usally starving after workout

10pm 1 mega men
bed by 11 - 12

Saturday
morning - 1 megamen, 4 colon clense
i eat nothing usally up by 11am and go straight to gym. cardio on empty stomach.

lunch
either a large salad with grilled chk, roasted peppers and a tomato
or
whole wheat wrap same as during the week

dinner - cheat meal (usually out to dinner) 4 colon clense pills and 1 fish oil
nothing crazy crazy
bread, chk parm, or steak and potatoes.
sometimes a little dessert

again nothing crazy.

10pm 1 mega men
bed by 12 - 2 am

Sunday (rest day/off day)
11am wake up morning - 1 megamen, 4 colon clense

12 pm breakfast - 6 egg whites and 1 whole egg with 1 slice american chees
6 small turkey sausages
6 slices of turkey backon
1 whole grain english muffin

5 pm diner
very small amount of pasta with sauce (i am italian :))
some salad made the same (no chk in it though)
meat usually chicken backed or rarly fried
heavey veggies

7pm snack - 2 TBls jif peanut butter

now it seems i am not getting enough cal but when i eat more i feel/scale reads me gaining weight. my BF stays the same on apperance and pinch test.

i am stuck and dont know what else to do.

i am gonna try the HIIT interval cardio tonight to see how that goes. any input would be appreciated. i will post a pick of the troublesome area (love handles/ bottom abs)

You must not have read much from Dr. John. Because your diet is nothing he would ever have you do.

You really need rework your diet. At least that is where i would start.

Ya your diet is major sucko!!! Never get anywhere eating like that and wtf are all the colon pills for?

just fiber pills really, keeps me regular. otherwise i can go days without emptying out. sorry.

i guess i can try to ad some stuff.

does anyone have a diet plan that they can share with me as a starting point. or at least tell me what im doing wrong exactly. what i should add to my diet and what i should subtract.

what exactly is so sucko about it.

details would be appreciated.

what about my workout? any thoughts on that? I just finished my first HIIT cardio, was ok. wasnt as spent as i feel after a 50/5 mile run but had me panting. heres what it looked like:

strecth
5 min warm up (speed walk 2 min / light jog 3 min)

5 intervals
1 min jog (4.5 mph)
1 min sprint (9.2 mph)

1 interval
2 min jog (4.5 mph)
1 min sprint (9.2 mph)

1 interval
1 min jog (4.5 mph)
1 min sprint (9.2 mph)

5 min cool down (light jog 3 min / speed walk 2 min)

then push ups/abs

You need to go to the beginner forum and read the stickies. They have excellent information.

A few things to start you off:

  1. You should try to eat 6-7 meals per day.

  2. You need to eat protein at every meal. From what I can tell most of your protein comes from peanut butter, which is not good.

  3. Breakfast should be your biggest meal of the day.

My 95 year old grandmother eats more than you. And are you training for a shitting contest with all those colon pills? Stop the madness.

[quote]naughtybox wrote:
And are you training for a shitting contest with all those colon pills? [/quote]

ROTFLMAO!!!

OP, you need major work on your diet. Read some more 'cause you don’t seem to understand the basics. Without going into details the main flaws could be summed up in one word protein. You might also want to focus on PWO nutrition.

Best of luck.

so adding 3 protien shakes a day should help. and more meat. im not a big fish eater, i know its very good but i just dont like fishy tastes. and more egg whites in morning.

so im not eating enough then.

hmmm

guess its eating time.

do they have to be small amounts each time or can i eat till full?

Why is your breakfast so small? It’s basically a snack. I’m guessing you don’t like to eat in the morning. I use to have that problem, but after a while you get use to it.

Hey man,

You just need do a lot of reading about nutrition. A lot of people been on the same boat as you, and the best way to learn is to read a lot and experiment what works for you. For example, I love doing a low carb diet especially since summer is coming up, but that works for me and might not work for you. But in almost any diet the basics are 6 meals a day, a big breakfast, big post workout and a good amount of protein with each meal. And another suggestion is try not do a cheat meal until you have reached your goal.

Good luck

[quote]naughtybox wrote:
My 95 year old grandmother eats more than you. And are you training for a shitting contest with all those colon pills? Stop the madness.[/quote]

hahaha thats funny… i was wondering what was up with all the colon pills myself.

ok noted. i guess i will try the 5 - 6 meals a day at around 500 cal per meal.
i was starving so.

i started today of with:

8 30am
1 container of egg whites(2 servings = 60 cal, 6g protein
1 whole egg
1 slice of american cheese
5 turkey sausage links (3 links = 110cal, 9g protein)
6 turkey bacon slices (1 slice = 25 cal, 2g protein)
1 multi grain english muffin (100 cal, 24g carb)
with 1/2 teaspoon of grape jelly
1/4 teaspoon of butter for frying egg
2 mouthfulls of pinapple
1 mega mans multi

not sure how much cal all that was with the whole egg and slice of cheese but i am full and feel fat. theres no way i can eat 6 meals like that and not gain weight. my goal is to be ripped not huge. lean ala tyler durdun from fight club. haha

***no colon cleanse fiber pills
to note the fiber pills say 4 pills 4 times daily. i was doing 3 times. its really just fiber. and it cleans the pipes out great. going foward i will only take 4 pills once a day.

just wanted to note the problem area haha.

PS- thanks for taking the time to help me, like i stated earlier i used to eat a lot of food but junk food. it seems awkward to me that eating large quatities of the right foods will not make me gain. especially after the strct cal restriction diet ive been on the last year or so.

oh please comment on my breakfest. is this too much, like i said i feel like i ate too much, maybe not used to gorging like that anymore.

start here, From Dr. John himself, 7 habits

http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=459493

First of all, figure out your bmr:

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

Do not eat less than this even on a diet. Your metabolism will slow down if you do and a lot of what you eat will be stored as fat.

Add in your activity level:

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/

Eat 500 calories less than this. If the calories are below your BMR, eat more so the calories less the activity is always above bmr, or be less active.

eg. 1900 bmr + 700 activity level: 2600 to stay the same - 500 = 2100 to lose weight.

or eg. 1900 bmr + 300 activity level: 2200 to stay the same - 500 = 1700 to lose weight. Eat 200 calories more, or you’ll plateau.

Log everything you eat or drink!!

Eat 1g of protein for each pound of weight. The rest of calories split between fat and carbs. Dont fear eating fat. It will help you lose fat:

http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=461360

And read all these articles:

http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=629609

I hope this helps.

Hey there. It seems to me that if you change your diet to eating 5 to 7 small meals a day, each one with fruit and/or veggies, the need for the super-colon-blow will subside.

BTW, the peanut butter seems like a pretty decent hunger killer, but if you eat more meals throughout the day, you shouldn’t need it (unless its a planned part of one of your meals, of course).

Good luck.

Lot’s of good advice here.

A few easy rules (many already mentioned):
-log everything (calories, nutrients, cardio, weight training)
-get 1g/lb protein
-space meals out over day (6-7 with similar calories each)
-try to get protein (and fat if possible) at every meal
-cut all white carbs except post workout

I think the fiber is fine. People just didn’t know what it was. Colon cleanse doesn’t exactly have that much of it though, get some fibersure or something like that and mix it with protein shakes IMO. Your calipers are likely very inaccurate. I would start doing measurements and taking pictures as a better indicator. Are your calipers plastic? Over time those will consistently read higher and higher bf due to stretching, fyi.

I’m not a fan of your workout but there are 101 different theories on the best workout scheme so I won’t bore you. If I were in the gym 1.5 hours I would kill myself. I’ve never been a fan of or got results from low intensity - high volume.

My 2 cents,
-J

[quote]jpuck wrote:
Lot’s of good advice here.

A few easy rules (many already mentioned):
-log everything (calories, nutrients, cardio, weight training)
-get 1g/lb protein
-space meals out over day (6-7 with similar calories each)
-try to get protein (and fat if possible) at every meal
-cut all white carbs except post workout

I think the fiber is fine. People just didn’t know what it was. Colon cleanse doesn’t exactly have that much of it though, get some fibersure or something like that and mix it with protein shakes IMO. Your calipers are likely very inaccurate. I would start doing measurements and taking pictures as a better indicator. Are your calipers plastic? Over time those will consistently read higher and higher bf due to stretching, fyi.

I’m not a fan of your workout but there are 101 different theories on the best workout scheme so I won’t bore you. If I were in the gym 1.5 hours I would kill myself. I’ve never been a fan of or got results from low intensity - high volume.

My 2 cents,
-J[/quote]

Good basics here, follow this stuff OP, and read read read, and when your eyes fall out shove them back in and read some more. It appears you really don’t know much at all about how you need to eat, so change that. You should be getting at least 30 grams of protein every 2-3 hours for starters, with decent amounts of fat and carbs in your diet. Now go read!

Yea your diet is rough. More protein and less carbs is what I would recommend for leaning out. Try just getting your carbs in the am and PWO and of course veggies all day. Supplement protein shakes between your meals as snacks, thats an easy way to squeeze in protein and it keeps you full.

Your workout: try CT/Shugart’s workout for gustavopacho in the physique challenge, you will be tired after the first giant set.
http://www.T-Nation.com/readPhysClin.do?id=1852678&pageNo=23

keep doing the HIIT its the best form of cardio for fat loss.

[quote]alaw4516 wrote:
keep doing the HIIT its the best form of cardio for fat loss.[/quote]

It works for those who have tons of fat to lose. If you’re already under 18-20%BF, I’d stick to low intensity 30-40 mins fasted in the AM immediately after waking up. For those on severely restricted diets, lower intensity spares the muscles and strips away fat very efficiently. Couple the cardio with HOT-ROX or other thermo for the best effect.