hi, i'm pretty new here, only made a couple of post so thought i'd put my eating / exercise plan on here for comment!

i've been on this for 3 weeks now, but here are my starting stats:

height 177cm
weight 88kg
age 31
29% fat (by scales)

not too sure what i'm aiming for....probably around 15-20% fat, but will just see how it goes.

calculated my BMR to be 1945 and so my calorie intake to be about 3000 to stay at that weight (moderate exercise)....hence i'm aiming to eat around 2000 calories a day. i've not gone out of my way to balance protein / carb / fat ratios but i THINK i'm around 30-40% for protein....no doubt i'm wrong! anyway...here's a typical day's food....

7am Wholemeal pitta bread, 100g cottage cheese (1% fat), slice of ham, 1 plum - 294 cals

10pm Chicken (130 cals) and brown rice salad (130 cals), remaining cals made up with veg - 320 cals total

12pm Banana - 108 cals

3pm Same as 10am....chicken, rice etc - 320 cals

5pm Pint of skimmed milk - 200 cals

7pm Usually something along the lines of a chicken breast, pitta bread and onion/tomato/cucumber/olive salad with olive oil - Around 700 cals

I realise i'm kinda leaving a large proportion of the eating until the evening and that i might not be making up to 2000 cals for the day :spank:, but i think i'm almost around 2000.

so far i've lost 11lb....sounds a lot i know but the first week was 6lbs i guess from water loss etc....however, it seems i'm still losing more than 2lbs a week....currently 184lbs, 26.7% fat (from 195lbs/29%).

oh, exercise....currently out of action due to an elbow injury but next week will be back on it, so here's the plan:

weights three times a week - chest/biceps, shoulders/triceps, back(and maybe legs) - 6 sets of 4-6 to failure on each muscle group (well back's a bit different but that sorta thing anyway)

cycle about 4 to 5 miles every weekday (virtually no exertion there tho, just going to work!) and one or two 20-30 mile bike rides at the weekend.

any comments would be welcome! :moon::neener:

apologies for the length of my post!

Be wary of using electronic scales to measure body fat % as even expensive scales are notoriously inaccurate.

While I too am pretty new to all this your diet looks ok to me.

Just remember, with a proper exercise plan, overeating healthy foods is better than under-eating as you don't want to lose muscle mass that you'll have to get back later

Also when making out your exercise plan don't neglect your legs - ignoring them completely will make your weight loss harder

If you are currently losing more than 2lbs a week, and you are planning to add additional exercise into your current routine, you'll need to increase your calories accordingly.

Overall looks like too little food. You should be over 2000 calories if you're just starting out.

I don't like your general eating pattern with the set times for eating only a banana or having a glass of milk in the middle of the day. These are hours apart from what looks like a decent meal (but likely too small serving sizes). After 10am to 3pm there's hardly anything there, and this repeats after 3pm until 7pm.

I wouldn't cut 1000 calories right from the beginning on what you're only estimating to be your daily energy expenditure. Start a little higher, and if things aren't going like you want, then eat a little less. Your results need to be the main determining factor in how you layout your nutritional plan, not some online calorie calculator.

As your body fat percentage comes down, you want to lower the net deficit between your body's energy expenditure and your diet. You can sometimes get away with a bigger gap in the beginning, but keep this up for too long and your body composition will suffer.

thanks for the replies.

you're right about the large gaps with too little food, i do get pretty hungry. i'm struggling to think of what to add to the 10am (banana) and 5pm (milk) 'meals' though.

what do you guys reckon to adding in 100 calories worth of dried fruit/nuts at each of those times? So i'm up to around 2200 for the day.