Need advice regarding a friend's weightloss

Hi

I need some advice regarding a friend's weightloss please...

She is 29 years old, weighs 114kgs and is 164cm tall.

About 9 months ago she joined my Zumba and Toning classes. Her weight at the start was 117kgs. Besides her coming to all my classes, I also gave her a guideline regarding her eating. Encouraged her to stay away from sodas, sugar, oily fried food, etc. She didn't drink much water at all and her meals throughout the day were very irregular. She seemed to take it to heart and with all the exercising, better eating and drinking water she has lost 36cms in total around her body and I can literally see her shrinking away. But the problem is her progress is slow and her kgs aren't coming off as fast as she would like.

So I approached her again yesterday to ask how her eating is going and she said she is skipping meals to try speed up the process (which I told her is a no no). She says she skips breakfast some days but is trying to remember to not do that. She still eats more bad than good foods but tries to eat clean. It's hard to watch someone work so hard in the gym but see little results from it...so I had a serious chat with her and she seems very motivated to start eating clean and make a difference.

My first question is: What would be a good diet to give her? She is quite a big girl and I'm not clued up at all as to what her daily intake should be to sustain her needs.

And my second question is: Why are her kgs coming off so slowly but her cms are coming off fast? I know in our toning classes she might be gaining muscle mass and that might make it look like she isn't losing fat. But are there any other reasons why this could happen?

Looking forward to your responses.

Thank you!

Her average daily diet consists of:

BREAKFAST
special k with 2% low fat milk

SNACK
Banana (only on the day of her workouts)

LUNCH
low gi sandwich

SUPPER
chicken/fish/stead with veggies/salad
sometimes she adds basmati rice/2 slices of low gi bread/potatoes

She said she cheats and has a packet of chips every now and then.

Her KG is dropping slowly because after training she eats shit. Obviously she is not telling you everything about what she eats.

I see this issue daily. They use 10 different fat burners, exercise 3 times a week, but still eat like shit. And then......eventually they blame the trainer and product quality.

She needs to give you 100% commitment 100% of the time or she will never be happy with her results.

As for that diet, its shocking. The diet gurus will give you guidelines soon.

She is actually at that point now where she wants to start taking fat burners because she is unhappy with her progress. I said I think she should rather get her diet right first. It is sad though, all these ppl put in so much effort in the gym and then sometimes I go down to the cafe in our office block and see some of them eating hot chips straight after?!! Then they come to class demotivated because they aren't losing weight. Sigh.

Tough one. Clearly she is addicted to eating rubbish and she would probably rather do anything than have to change the way she eats. So giving her a diet like we follow is pointless. She will fail and then feel terrible and stuff herself. The best fat loss diet is one you can still see yourself following in 6 months. Initially, all she needs to do is make small changes and she will start to see results. But she needs to hear that no amount of exercise will make you thinner if you're eating 500 calories extra because you just burned off 500 calories at gym.

Small things like you suggested will work. Cut down on sugar and bread, only drink diet sodas, no fruit juice - rather lipton ice tea light or something like that, no fries/slap chips and, switch out white rolls for rye, no processed carbs like bread after lunch, eat her biggest meals early in the day, last meal no later than 7pm with NO fried foods, starchy carbs, or fruit - slowly working towards cutting out all carbs in the evenings. If she must fry something then use a little macadamia oil - no butter or sunflower oil. That will already be extremely hard and will test her willpower. Once she's able to do all that for a month she will have lost a few KGs already and can slowly make the diet stricter.

she is starving herself,thats why. also no offence but zumba should be in addition to weight training program. she needs to get a body fat % done and then work on working out a nutrition plan for herself, something that is more life style based. the amount of food she is eating for her body size is not enough and she might be loosing weight but she is probably just loosing water by starving herself. i am not saying that calorie counters are the be all and end all of fat loss but my goodness she is lucky to be breaking 1000 calories there where she might need close to 1300-1400 calories a day. she is causing herself metabolic shut down.

i can guarentee u she will loose weight by sticking to her calorie requirements for the day, if she is going to have bread and special k she needs to measure it out, how big is a bowl? i have a bowl that can fit a whole box of cocopops in it, but yet if i have 50g of cocopops i can still loose weight! the biggest thing here is she is blowing herself out the water by starving herself in search of weight loss vs fat loss!

i bet u right now if she had a bowl of strawberries and greek style yoghurt she will be getting in 267 calories, and its a health high protein low carb meal that would keep her fuller for longer than say special k and milk. when u are looking at food,sometimes the small food sources are choc full of calories. i mean lets take this for example, what is going to keep u fuller for longer, a 75g bag of jelly babies or 300g of strawberries and 300g of yogurt? its the same calorie content but look at the volume of food! i can guarentee u 600g of food sitting in the gut is going to be more benefitial for a dieter than 75g of jelly babies which contains 60g of sugar, where as strawberries and yogurt has 33g of protein and 31g of carbs, the protein slows down the digestion and fructose is way better for u than the glucose used in making those sweets!

Muscleaddict wrote: Tough one. Clearly she is addicted to eating rubbish and she would probably rather do anything than have to change the way she eats. So giving her a diet like we follow is pointless. She will fail and then feel terrible and stuff herself. The best fat loss diet is one you can still see yourself following in 6 months. Initially, all she needs to do is make small changes and she will start to see results. But she needs to hear that no amount of exercise will make you thinner if you're eating 500 calories extra because you just burned off 500 calories at gym.

Small things like you suggested will work. Cut down on sugar and bread, only drink diet sodas, no fruit juice - rather lipton ice tea light or something like that, no fries/slap chips and, switch out white rolls for rye, no processed carbs like bread after lunch, eat her biggest meals early in the day, last meal no later than 7pm with NO fried foods, starchy carbs, or fruit - slowly working towards cutting out all carbs in the evenings. If she must fry something then use a little macadamia oil - no butter or sunflower oil. That will already be extremely hard and will test her willpower. Once she's able to do all that for a month she will have lost a few KGs already and can slowly make the diet stricter.

I think your advice here is spot on with her because she has been trying to change her diet for ages (almost the whole 9 months she has been coming to my classes) and she keeps falling back. So I will take your advice to her and suggest small cuts, and then hopefully the kg loss will motivate her to make further changes in her diet.

Thank you for your response

DJ wrote: she is starving herself,thats why. also no offence but zumba should be in addition to weight training program. she needs to get a body fat % done and then work on working out a nutrition plan for herself, something that is more life style based. the amount of food she is eating for her body size is not enough and she might be loosing weight but she is probably just loosing water by starving herself. i am not saying that calorie counters are the be all and end all of fat loss but my goodness she is lucky to be breaking 1000 calories there where she might need close to 1300-1400 calories a day. she is causing herself metabolic shut down.

i can guarentee u she will loose weight by sticking to her calorie requirements for the day, if she is going to have bread and special k she needs to measure it out, how big is a bowl? i have a bowl that can fit a whole box of cocopops in it, but yet if i have 50g of cocopops i can still loose weight! the biggest thing here is she is blowing herself out the water by starving herself in search of weight loss vs fat loss!

i bet u right now if she had a bowl of strawberries and greek style yoghurt she will be getting in 267 calories, and its a health high protein low carb meal that would keep her fuller for longer than say special k and milk. when u are looking at food,sometimes the small food sources are choc full of calories. i mean lets take this for example, what is going to keep u fuller for longer, a 75g bag of jelly babies or 300g of strawberries and 300g of yogurt? its the same calorie content but look at the volume of food! i can guarentee u 600g of food sitting in the gut is going to be more benefitial for a dieter than 75g of jelly babies which contains 60g of sugar, where as strawberries and yogurt has 33g of protein and 31g of carbs, the protein slows down the digestion and fructose is way better for u than the glucose used in making those sweets!

How can I find out what her calorie intake should be for her specifically? Is there someone I should send her to or is there a calculation we can do?

Also, I agree with you that the Zumba should be in addition to the weight training. I even take that advice for myself, because my true fitness results came more from the weight trainig than from any form or cardio. And my friend started getting her results more from the toning classes she came to with me as well.

You made some very insightful points here though. Clean, wise eating will definitely be most effective here. I think for her in particular small changes to start off with will benefit her, but she must definitely take her weightloss more seriously.

Do you perhaps have an example of a daily meal plan I could give her to follow?

well there are calculators that can be used if u have her lean body mass, so she needs to get her body fat % done, she needs to do more exercise and then she can re access from there. she will need to get her body fat % done with calipers.

no i dont have a daily meal plan for her to follow. as each meal plan needs to be different. this is a life style change where she needs to cut out quick snacks and what not, but there is no reason why she cant have a roast chicken and cottage cheese sandwich and loose weight. i think the biggest problem here is portion control and size and calorie intake. she will need to measure out things and count the calories for her daily intake and she will actually see that when she has a 50g chocolate she cant have dinner because the same calories in a chocolate will be in some chicken and some low fat roast potatos.

Muscleaddict wrote: Tough one. Clearly she is addicted to eating rubbish and she would probably rather do anything than have to change the way she eats. So giving her a diet like we follow is pointless. She will fail and then feel terrible and stuff herself. The best fat loss diet is one you can still see yourself following in 6 months. Initially, all she needs to do is make small changes and she will start to see results. But she needs to hear that no amount of exercise will make you thinner if you're eating 500 calories extra because you just burned off 500 calories at gym.

Small things like you suggested will work. Cut down on sugar and bread, only drink diet sodas, no fruit juice - rather lipton ice tea light or something like that, no fries/slap chips and, switch out white rolls for rye, no processed carbs like bread after lunch, eat her biggest meals early in the day, last meal no later than 7pm with NO fried foods, starchy carbs, or fruit - slowly working towards cutting out all carbs in the evenings. If she must fry something then use a little macadamia oil - no butter or sunflower oil. That will already be extremely hard and will test her willpower. Once she's able to do all that for a month she will have lost a few KGs already and can slowly make the diet stricter.

^^^this!! (^^,)

DJ wrote: she is starving herself,thats why. also no offence but zumba should be in addition to weight training program. she needs to get a body fat % done and then work on working out a nutrition plan for herself, something that is more life style based. the amount of food she is eating for her body size is not enough and she might be loosing weight but she is probably just loosing water by starving herself. i am not saying that calorie counters are the be all and end all of fat loss but my goodness she is lucky to be breaking 1000 calories there where she might need close to 1300-1400 calories a day. she is causing herself metabolic shut down.

i can guarentee u she will loose weight by sticking to her calorie requirements for the day, if she is going to have bread and special k she needs to measure it out, how big is a bowl? i have a bowl that can fit a whole box of cocopops in it, but yet if i have 50g of cocopops i can still loose weight! the biggest thing here is she is blowing herself out the water by starving herself in search of weight loss vs fat loss!

i bet u right now if she had a bowl of strawberries and greek style yoghurt she will be getting in 267 calories, and its a health high protein low carb meal that would keep her fuller for longer than say special k and milk. when u are looking at food,sometimes the small food sources are choc full of calories. i mean lets take this for example, what is going to keep u fuller for longer, a 75g bag of jelly babies or 300g of strawberries and 300g of yogurt? its the same calorie content but look at the volume of food! i can guarentee u 600g of food sitting in the gut is going to be more benefitial for a dieter than 75g of jelly babies which contains 60g of sugar, where as strawberries and yogurt has 33g of protein and 31g of carbs, the protein slows down the digestion and fructose is way better for u than the glucose used in making those sweets!

^^^ and this!! (",)