Dankelzaga wrote:I think I'm going to ramp things up a bit however and drop my calorie intake about 250 for a couple weeks. I've been doing 1500 calories along with 4 days of working out. Going to hit 1250 and up the workouts to 5 a day for 2 weeks. Should confuse my body a bit and then I'll go back to original routine. I'll let you know how it works.
That's WAY too low, dude. 1500 is the minimum for adult males to maintain autonomic functions, or base metabolic rate (and that's WITHOUT any activity, even waking up in the morning). 1200 for adult women. If you move at all, you need more than that. If you've noticed your weight loss stalling, it's because you may have been
undereating at 1500 calories, and your metabolism has slowed to compensate.
I don't know how tall you are or what you weigh now, but everyone should start by checking BMR first:
http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/
Then comparing it to an approximated burn with regular activity (don't include exercise routines that aren't part of the norm; just your average day):
http://calorieneedscalculator.com/
http://nutritiondata.self.com/tools/calories-burned
and take the average of the two results from the above sites. Typically, your caloric intake should be about 300-500 calories less than your average daily burn, but above your BMR, in order to target a weight-loss rate of about 1-2 lbs. per week, maximum.
For me, my BMR is 1600. Since I work a desk job, my sedentary lifestyle burns about 2100 calories a day. So if my intake is about 1800, I should be doing fine, and slowly losing maybe a lb. a week at at the most.
But, I work out regularly, so I actually burn closer to 2400 - 2800 a day, and my food intake is more like 2200 calories. It's unsafe to attempt to lose any more than 2 lbs. a week.
If you've stalled in your weight-loss at 1500 calories, you are most likely undereating already (or, as you mentioned in an earlier post, eating foods that may not always be the best choices). Decreasing your calorie intake further AND increasing your physical activity is very dangerous and generally does not result in safe, healthy weight-loss.