Q: hi mike my name is trey i am 5 feet 9 inches and i weigh about 158 pounds my body fat percentage is 21.3 and i want that down to 16 percent. Since i go to school i just took a weight training class which i have at the end of the day like about at 1:00 clock and then i do cardio at 5: oo clock, my nutrition is that i eat oats in the morning and at lunch i eat a protein bar and then when i come home from school i eat a chicken breast and then i just eat a few vegetables for dinner, can you tell me if what i am doing is okay or if i need to change anything i have benn doing this for a month now

A: Good job on taking up training and cardio! The foods you eat are healthy, but from what you described you eat very little -- maybe 800-900 calories a day or even less. You probably should be eating at least twice that much! I know it's very counterintuitive, but it's very important to eat well, even when you are trying to lose fat.

When you eat very little, as you do, what happens is your body starts to 'think' that you are starving it. When faced with starvation the last thing your body wants to do is lose fat, because fat is its lifeline emergency reserves. Therefore your body will do everything possible to preserve as much fat as possible while this starvation lasts. That means that it will burn muscle for energy, lower your metabolism, and leave you much more tired and weak and susceptible to sickness than you could be otherwise. Yes, you will lose some weight and fat doing this too, but you will also lose muscle and make it much more difficult for yourself in the future to build muscle or prevent fat from coming back.

Everything I said is doubly true if you are under the age of 18-19. That means you are still growing and by starving yourself you are seriously jeopardizing your growth potential. Growth alone can help you achieve your body fat goal -- if you grew another three inches without increasing your weight you would already be under 16% body fat!

So be very careful with losing weight too quickly or eating too little. I would strongly recommend that you eat a lot more than you do now -- yes it means you won't lose weight as quickly but it will benefit you greatly in the long run. Make sure to read my Nutrition article as well.