I am an active vegetarian who can't seem to lose weight anyone know how?

Question

I am a construction worker i work 30-60 hours a week vigourous work. Plus I go to school i lift weights on occasion nothing to serious. I am also a vegetarian who cooks all my own food i never eat processed foods and rarely eat sweets. What is wrong I weigh 275 pounds am 6'1" and have a 36 inch waist someone help please!!

Answer 1

You are very similiar in build to my husband (6'6'', 280 lb), and he has an active job like yours as well. What I can think of is:

1.) You might be consuming too many calories; I'd say if you are trying to lose weight you should go for 500 calories less than you need in order to maintain weight - since you are already maintaining your weight, just cut 500 calories from every single day - you will lose roughly a pound a week.

2.) You might not be eating regular meals (this is why my husband is still heavy!). My husband works in HVAC for about a year now and he doesn't really eat until he gets home for dinner. He has to leave early and he's always on the go. This slows you metabolism down.

You should also check with your doctor to eliminate thyroid problems or other medical issues. If all else fails you can get a prescription weight loss aid that might push you through this.

Answer 2

Do you eat any animal products? If so, I'd say cut those out. If you're eating pasta and other things like that, yes, you ARE eating processed foods. Eat more whole fruits, veggies, and greens and less of the other stuff.

Monkeyboi: It takes a 3500 calorie deficit to lose a pound. Cutting out 1-200 calories a day is going to take forever to lose a pound, especially if that's without knowing what his BMR is.

That said, I have no idea how old you are, David, so I just put 20 into a bmr calculator. if you're 20(ish) you need 2500 calories a day to maintain. To lose 2 pounds a week, you'd have to cut that down 1000 calories a day. That is also assuming you lay in bed all day, which you don't. So factor in how much you burn through activities and modify accordingly.

Answer 3

Unless you have huge muscle mass you are overweight. The thing about weight is once you get it on, which is usually easy, it takes a lot more effort to get it off. If you are a vegetarian you must eat huge portions to work that much and maintain your weight, and you may be cooking with too much oil or fatty products such as cheese if you use that.
If that is not the case, you may actually not be getting enough calories, in which case your body may go into a fat conservation state and actually try to conserve weight. Check some calories calculators online for your age/height/wieght and then adding for your activity level, reduce your calorie level to 500 less than recommended for you body size. That is a reduction diet.

Answer 4

I've tried many diets and couldn't make anything work. Since having my first child, I've been carrying around an extra 30 pounds. This diet just made sense and showed me that everything I was doing before was wrong and a waste of my time.

The plan was so refreshing and so simple to follow. I did everything plan said and lost 23 pounds in the first three weeks. I'm now starting the diet again to lose 7 more pounds. This plan has changed my life.

Get started today!

Answer 5

A BMI calculator here says that you're obese - now, you could just have lots of muscle (which would put your BMI totally out of whack), but by looking in the mirror, if you have that paunchy stomach, you know you need to lose a few pounds.

You might be just adding too much oil to your food, or eating too many simple carbs like white breads, white rice, plain pasta, etcetera.

Try this as a test to see why you're weighing so much more than you should.
Go to http://www.fitday.com/
Put in all your food and your activity each day for about a week. Use the graphs to figure out how many more calories you're taking in than you need.

Also, go talk to a registered dietitian and your family doctor. They can tell you A) if you actually need to lose weight and B) why you need to lose it.

Answer 6

Reduce your daily caloric intake by 100-200 calories. Do this for about a week. Repeat process until you start to see the weight come off, but you shouldn't be losing more than 1-2lbs/week.
Also, keep a food diary. It's great you're not eating processed foods or sweets! But intaking too many fats/oils (especially saturated fats & trans fats), simple carbs, or not enough protein can inhibit weight loss.
Good luck!

Answer 7

Well, I suppose you mean "fat" when you say "weight" as I'm sure you are not talking about trying to lose all that muscle.

Cardiovascular exercise is what you need. Running, cycling, cross country skiing, etc. I'm an advocate of going full out. I only jog or go slow when warming up. When you've done your stretching and warm-up, go full out... as far and as as fast as you can. You can do intervals in-between. For example, go moderate for a bit, relax, then go full out sprint to say the second telephone pole, then back to moderate until you recover, then do it again. You can accomplish in 30 minutes what others cannot in hours of going the same pace. What do you want to accomplish? Raising your metabolism, that's what. How hard - how long - how far determines how this goes.

Answer 8

try flat-out cardio, increase your protein, keep a food diary to watch your calories, take up kickboxing, you must exercise regularly, even if your job is physically demanding ... drink more water, walk after dinner, don't eat after 7pm, eat at least 4 times a day and no more than 500 calories per meal ... if you eat a lot of dairy, this could be your problem - a lot of people have problems with dairy and weight-loss/gain ... a lot of vegetarians do not have a nutritionally balanced diet ... get on some vegetarian forums and find out if you are dong it right ... if your body is malnourished, it will not process food properly or let go of its fat stores ...

Answer 9

Everyone has a different size frame. You might be decently muscular with a large frame.

Go to a dietician for a better idea of what to eat. But you might be eating too many oils and simple carbs (such as those found in white bread). Go whole wheat.

It might be you're eating too much. Count your calories for a day and work from there.

Answer 10

If you want loose weight, the only way is to drasticaly reduce fat and sugar. If you drink alkohol or soda, reduce drasticaly as well. Remember one thing: the only food you can "really abuse" is raw vegetables, sprouts and fruits (with few exceptions, like avocados, durian, banana). So natural-state food is the best. Bread, rice, pasta, dairy products (I believe you eat them if you are vegetarian) can be eaten but in small proportion.
Many vegetarian are doing this wrong thing: they replace meat by more dairy product (cheese, milk, butter). And this is really wrong. If it is your case, try to just stop the dairy products for few weeks and you will see the difference. And if you are ready to become vegan, jump to this step at the same time. :-)
Good luck.