Hang in there, Rome wasn’t built in a day (of course, it’s crumbling now so that’s not the best of examples!) You are a smart woman (at least I am hoping so… I have a flight on Monday! :-) ) so you’ll learn from the things that aren’t working and get on track. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

My response was intended to be self-deprecating and sarcastic. I’m well aware that my way doesn’t work. And I mentioned in a previous post that I have contacted a nutritionist.

In order to find your resting metabolic rate, the amount of calories your body needs in order to simply function, you take your current weight and multiply it by ten. So for demonstrations sake, let’s say you weigh 130 pounds, your body needs 1300 calories just to keep you alive. Then you figure in how active your lifestyle is apart from exercising. Walking Leo, taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator, performing some physical tasks at the office or at home, etc… If you are moderately active throughout the day, you take 50% of RMR and then add toe two together. So let’s say you have a slightly moderate life, so say it’s 40%. You are now up to 1820 calories needed per day to maintain your current weight without exercise. Then you add in the exercise. This varies depending on what you do and the intensity. I recommend getting one of those runners watches with the heart monitor in one. I got one of the cheaper ones at WalMart and I’ve seen them at Target. Don’t drop $100 bucks at Olympia, you just want to get an idea of what your heart rate is and try to get one that measures your calories to make the math simple. Mine was like $35.

So say you burn roughly 600 calories with exercise, then your body is going to need 2400 calories a day to maintain your weight. A deficit of 500 calories a day will result in one pound of fat loss per week (you need 3500 calories to lose one pound). So you will want to try to target around 1900 calories consumed per day. That is assuming that you are only burning 600 calories for exercising. When I was running regularly, I would run this four mile course in my town with hills and I would burn around 1000 calories on the run. I am also a 215 pound male so my heart might have been pumping harder to get my giggly ass up the hill but you still may be burning close to 1000 calories, in which case your body needs closer to 2800 calories to maintain. If you are eating less than 1800 calories, then you MIGHT be triggering your body into starvation mode. And even if you are not, I think it’s going to be an unsustainable weight loss for you because once you get to your ideal weight and you start eating more and put the weight back on. The best weight to lose weight and keep it off is to cut corners and cut out crap to get a smaller calorie deficit and just keep things that way so when you hit your target weight, things are easier to maintain. I’ve been stuck at 215 for awhile in part because I’ve regressed back to pizza and beer on a regular basis hanging out with friends and while I eat healthy enough and exercise enough to maintain my raw weight and my resistance training is helping transform my body, I am still stuck at 215.

The two best ways to burn fat is resistance training (weights) and high intesity interval training. Long time cardio exercises like jogging can help target visceral fat (for some reason, having a heart rate around 120 burns visceral fat the most effectively) but having you heart rate at that low of a level will minimize that raw calories you burn. HIIT is great because it gets your heart rate up and your metabolism goes into overdrive. Also it minimizes lactic acid production and lactic acid can hinder hypertrophy (or building muscle). The second way is through strength training. Adding one pound of muscle can raise your RMR by 10 calories per day so if you replace five pounds of fat with muscles, your RMR will jump 50 calories; you will need 50 more calories a day for your brain to continue to function. Also, your metabolism can spike as far as 48 hours after your lift so your body will continue to burn calories. Unfortunately for you, your training for the half marathon runs counter to the most effective methods. As much as it would suck, I think you might want to just hide the scale until after you run the half marathon and then focus on losing weight afterwards. You will lose weight through your training but it will be minimal and discouraging because you are focusing on distance cardio.

I love you hun but stop being a fucking twit and see a nutritionist. You just had a completely drastic diet altering experience in becoming a vegan and you need to get all your ducks in a row. There are things like protein and iron and calcium that will be more difficult for you to ingest in the proper amounts as a vegan. It can be done but it takes a more deliberate effort on your part to achieve that. A dietitian or nutritionist can give you a lot of details and she has the proper training to really help you. I’m just a nerd who wanted to lose weight and is passing on what knowledge he has. I have no proper training in this shit. And for you to say something like “NOBODY is gonna tell me how to lose weight. I’ll do it MY way and my way only” is disrespectful to me and my fellow readers who are making an effort to help you. I’ve spent close to two hours typing epic sized posts to pass on some wonderful information for you and when you say something like that, I have to ask myself why I even bother if you are so arrogant and bullheaded. You’ve said on numerous occasions that you’ve had a Buddha Belly all your life. Guess what, YOUR way hasn’t work so sack up, admit you aren’t an expert at something and find the answers and information so that you can become one. One real easy way to find a lot of answers and information is seeing a nutritionist. If you want to stick with your My Way or the Highway routine, then accept the fact that you’ll have that Buddha Belly the rest of your life. We all care about you and want to help you so make the effort on your end and eat a slice of humble pie. I swear it’s fat free and totally vegan kosher.

Touche. I don’t know why. It’s, like, I understand that the law requires that I visit some sort of M.D. in order to get a blood work-up, although I would happily let a friend draw the blood and then analyze the results for myself if that were possible, but NOBODY is gonna tell me how to lose weight. I’ll do that MY way and my way only, thank you very much. I’m independent to a fault.