I am totally at a loss as to why my husband is not losing weight.

In July he was diagnosed with high cholesterol and as a result has since been pretty motivated to lose the excess weight. He tends to build muscle up quickly so has chosen to do pure cardio until he drops the excess weight and will then build from there. I know all the advice of doing weights to lose the maximum most quickly, but for him it's too depressing to see the weight increasing and clothes fitting tighter, even though it's muscle.

However, since July he has lost only 4kg. And seems to be plataeuing. I am stumped. His diet is healthy, he is exercising 4 days a week. I am concerned that he is probably eating too little and also thinking perhaps his metabolism is just really slow and won't kickstart.

Both his sister and mother have a genetic low active thyroid and the cholesterol is predominantly genetics, but I reckon it's onset was stress related weight increase.

Any thoughts at all on this? I really don't know what to say / do / anything anymore.

Stats:
186cm
108kg - goal 90kg
26.4% BF

Food: 35P/55C/10F - 1900 cals
Breakfast: 250g Oats 250g with milk and brown sugar for flavour
Snack: 85g John West Tuna Packet, 5 Provita, Apple
Lunch: 1 Cup chicken breast / Pork, 1 cup vegetables, 1/2 cup rice
Snack: Protein shake, Apple
Supper: 2 min noodles, 1 cup vegetables, Protein shake

Catch is, he tends to skip the supper veges and protein shake.

I am totally at a loss as to why my husband is not losing weight.

In July he was diagnosed with high cholesterol and as a result has since been pretty motivated to lose the excess weight. He tends to build muscle up quickly so has chosen to do pure cardio until he drops the excess weight and will then build from there. I know all the advice of doing weights to lose the maximum most quickly, but for him it's too depressing to see the weight increasing and clothes fitting tighter, even though it's muscle.

If he is calorically restricted, he will NOT gain weight for long if at all. I think this is a big mistake because if you just cardio down, you're not going to retain as much lean mass, and likely will lower the metabolism and stall out even faster.

Weight training raises metabolism for a day or two after you lift. Low intensity cardio doesn't have that effect. So do both. 3 days lifting, 2 days cardio, or 3 and 3. Or if you have to get by with 4 total days, 2 and 2 (least desirable of the options).

Especially since what he is doing now isn't working.

And when lifting, do big movers. Squats, deads, rows, pullups/pulldowns, presses. Don't spend very much time doing smaller moves like curls or calf raises. Do those once he's lost the weight and is working on putting muscle on.

However, since July he has lost only 4kg. And seems to be plataeuing. I am stumped.

See above.

His diet is healthy, he is exercising 4 days a week. I am concerned that he is probably eating too little and also thinking perhaps his metabolism is just really slow and won't kickstart.

See above. Seriously. Calories might be low, and that's probably causing even less muscle to be retained.

Both his sister and mother have a genetic low active thyroid and the cholesterol is predominantly genetics, but I reckon it's onset was stress related weight increase.

Heavy training can help the ratio of good to bad cholesterols. So lift.

Any thoughts at all on this? I really don't know what to say / do / anything anymore.

Stats:
186cm
108kg - goal 90kg
26.4% BF

Food: 35P/55C/10F - 1900 cals
Breakfast: 250g Oats 250g with milk and brown sugar for flavour
Snack: 85g John West Tuna Packet, 5 Provita, Apple
Lunch: 1 Cup chicken breast / Pork, 1 cup vegetables, 1/2 cup rice
Snack: Protein shake, Apple
Supper: 2 min noodles, 1 cup vegetables, Protein shake

Catch is, he tends to skip the supper veges and protein shake.

IMO, that's too low on fat for healthy hormone production in men. At a minimum, go to 15-20%. I'd go higher on a cut, especially if high carbs low fat isn't working now. Time for a new approach.

All kinds of hormones key require fat, including testosterone (back to that lean mass retention again).

If what he's doing isn't working, work toward dropping carbs back to maybe 35-40%, upping protein and upping fat.

M1 Ditch the brown sugar, and possibly the milk. Use cinnamon/splenda/maybe a dash of ginger for flavor instead.

The rice and 2 minute noodles are high GI carbs that affect insulin about as much as sugar I'd bet (not knowing the types). I'd look for better choices here, or even swap the calories later in the day for fats like peanut butter or olive oil on the veggies. If eating rice, brown rice is a better option than typical white rice. Use whole grain pasta if you must use it. But I think there are better options.

Add another bedtime meal of protein and fat to get some more calories in and to feed the body overnight. Cottage cheese and natural peanut butter for instance.

And start lifting. Really. You are at a loss...but you know what we normally recommend around here... :D

Thanks for your input. I really have tried convincing him about the weight lifting, but he doesn't believe in it and wants to do it his way for now. I will suggest to him to do the big weights like you have suggested, but again, he is really worried about gaining muscle and thus scale weight.

Will it take a while of gaining muscle weight for him to then see a loss? He doesn't want to be a bigger, more muscled guy, but with the fat still hiding it. I.e. what can I tell him to expect...? How quickly will it take for his metabolism to be up and running again properly?

I can take out the carbs for lunch and supper and was thinking of replacing this with another meat meal. I wonder if that would help. And then also to add some nuts into the mix to help with the fat intake.

In a calorie restricted diet he doesn't have to worry about putting on muscle. It simply won't happen, except for some newbie gains which will still result in practicaly nothing.

Tell him that he will not put on muscle regardless of what he does since he is in a caloric deficit. Bodybuilders don't lift weights on a deficit to gain muscle, they lift weights to retain muscle and increase (maintain) metabolism for the purposes of losing fat. This is the function that he is looking for, an increased metabolism and frankly nothing will do that better than performing some heavy compound lifts.

Okay, but he is in a caloric deficit at the moment and this is still not working. Based on the same diet he was putting on weight when he was weight training. But I suppose that wasn't 100% clean eating - weekends were still a bit shaky. Since we have removed really bad eating on weekends he has only been doing cardio. I will again suggest tonight to try the weight training - perhaps 2 days weights, 3 days cardio. However, I know that if he feels the clothes fitting tighter then we are back to square 1 again.

I post this all the time it seems, but have him read this (http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1526539&cr=).

Okay, but he is in a caloric deficit at the moment and this is still not working. Based on the same diet he was putting on weight when he was weight training. But I suppose that wasn't 100% clean eating - weekends were still a bit shaky. Since we have removed really bad eating on weekends he has only been doing cardio. I will again suggest tonight to try the weight training - perhaps 2 days weights, 3 days cardio. However, I know that if he feels the clothes fitting tighter then we are back to square 1 again.

The thing that worked best for me was 30 minutes of cardio and then lifting for another 30 - 45, five days / week. When I lift I do 1 dropset / exercise. So if I was on a bench I'd start off with my 8 rep max and do that. I then removed 20lbs and put in a few more reps. I removed weight 3 - 5 times and just burned that muscle group out, then onto the next thing.

Gaining muscle is impossible at a caloric deficit, it cannot happen. Think of calories as bricks, mortar, nails, whatever building blocks for a house. You cannot add onto the house if you don't have enough materials to even make repairs.

I would suggest doing workouts like that 30 minutes of cardio and then a 45 minute lift. The cardio will use his glycogen and the lift will keep his HR up and make his body feed off the fat. Do big movements, and do 8-12 rep dropsets. No rest in between removing weight. So if you did 225, 205, 185,165 on bench as a dropset. Take no rest between that. After you switch from bench to say decline dumbells press, take 1 minute of rest. The idea is to make this like more cardio but it's resistance training. Tell him to watch his HR and stop for a few minutes if he feels like he's going to pass out ( I almost did lol ).

The other thing that I'd be interested in seeing is a month or so of his Fitday.com data. I suspect the diet isn't quite up to par somewhere.

I wouldn't overly complicate things with advanced techniques like dropsets until we just get him lifting for awhile. Plus, as low as his calories are, that's probably a bit much for his recovery capacity, especially if he isn't even used to lifting at the moment.

And I'd recommend cardio 2nd myself if you have to do both in one session. That was you can put full energy into lifting.

Also, higher intensity exercise creates EPOC, which is primarily a fat fueled metabolism increase. Lifting weights (or high intensity cardio) releases fat into the bloodstream, then the theory is that lower intensity cardio in this state burns that released fat off.

But IMO things don't need to get too complicated here. I'd still prefer separating lifting and cardio, but everybody has different schedules.

Ok, I think I get it now. Well, the whole building muscle part. If he is gaining weight while doing training, the likelihood is that it is then something wrong with the diet and that would need to be looked at. Possible the weekends when we ease up is when he gets caught.

I'll suggest the heavy, big muscle weight training 2 times a week and then cardio sessions 3 days a week and see how that flies. He's used to lifting weights so he knows which ones he's used to. Won't waste time with the biceps etc as these are worked anyway when doing the big muscle groups.

I want to check one thing though: Not referring to muscle gain, while on a calorie restricted diet of 1000cal below maintenance levels, this should be a kilo a week. Targetting that through cardio and weight sessions.

Now, the weight sessions are geared at building muscle.
So if scale weight stays the same, then I'll need to check body fat.
If that's dropping, then all good.
If body fat is increasing, then that's bad and likely to be diet related.
Thus, what if body fat remains the same, but his weight increases...this is muscle right?
Hence my question of his concern, the scale weight increases, pants are fitting tighter and he sees no real progress. What then?