Any advice for early 40’s white male having issues losing weight

Just remember that cheating is just cheating yourself. Give up the alcohol completely. Follow an Atkins type diet. Read the book “The Obesity Code”. 49’s is not old. Get into lap swimming. I lost 30 in 5 months doing just this. Get some walking in regularly. At least 3 times a week 2 miles each day.

If you’re slacking in the weekend, that’s 29% of the time and will certainly derail you. How’s Friday night, do you also consider that the weekend?

If you’re like me, the end of football season will help, but you need to limit your weekend “fun.” The magic for me was Sunday lifting - I do my major lift day on Sunday, and lifting usually forces me to eat better and not drink.

Don’t get too caught up in pounds lost, how are your clothes fitting? What’s the mirror say? At 6’3, you might carry 220 just fine.

So I'm no nutritionist, nor a personal trainer, but here's my 30 second diagnosis.

I think you aren't working out hard enough. At 1000 cal/week estimate in the gym, 4 hour long sessions, that's 250 cal/hr. Walking for one hour should burn close to that for someone over 200 lb. A good, hour long gym session should be burning well over 400 cal even for someone out of shape.

If you're getting worn out in the gym (and post-gym) you may be at too much of a caloric deficit during the week. This would hit you in two ways as 1) your efficiency during workouts suffers and 2) your body tries to make up for it with even more cheating during the weekend.

Main change I would recommend is tweak your diet ever so slightly; replace your lunch salad with something similar to your dinner and add a carb to it on gym days (I recommend sweet potatoes). Add a protein shake between lunch and dinner.

Other things to consider:

Make sure you're cognizant of how much you're eating. Grilled protein and green veggies is fine for a meal; but not if it's 12 oz of protein and scarfing veggies until you're full. Vegetables have carbs and can hit you harder than you think.

Cheat meals are fine. 3 weekend days of cheating is not. I schedule one cheat meal a week and it's almost always Friday or Sat night; eating and drinking whatever I want. Obviously an occasional extra cheat will happen, but you've got to better refine your schedule. One cheat meal won't hurt much at all; one cheat day will heavily impact you; entire cheat weekends multiple times a month will be detrimental.

With regards to alcohol, YMMV and don't take anything anyone says to heart. You don't have to give up alcohol. If you do, it will help tremendously. However, I assure you, it's not what is holding you back (yet). Just make sure you're mindful of the carbs you're getting from each drink. Beer is obviously the worst; maybe switch to wine/whiskey when possible. If you make as many other changes as you can and still aren't getting the progress you want, that's when you start knocking out the booze for sure-fire results. But contrary to popular opinion, you can still hit your goals while enjoying a drink (or 3) on a Tuesday; and then again on Thursday; and then again on Saturday etc.

I’m 43 and have been working out at what sounds like a similar place for a few years now. Here are my few thoughts:

1. 7 lbs of weight loss in a few months is nothing to shake a stick at. But odds are you have put on some muscle and have lost even more fat that that. Don’t focus so much on the scale, but rather on body composition, how your clothes fit, how you look in the mirror, how you feel, etc. The rate at which you are able to put on muscle will slow as you continue to train, your added muscle will aid in metabolism, and then my guess is you will see more weight drop off as your training continues for several months.

2. IMO you are not burning enough calories during your workouts. I have similar measurements to you (6’4” 237 - pre holiday weight was 226 which was a great weight for me) and I burn between 800-1100 calories per workout as measured by my strap/program. None of the monitors are 100% accurate and every person is different, but you and I are so far apart something is off. My advice, lift heavier. Amazing what a few sets of heavy deadlifts or squats will do for your heart rate. I will add that my gym is more lifting and core than direct cardio (a lot of the cardio is sort of a byproduct of the strength training).

3. If you are focused on weight loss, diet is absolutely key. As you can tell by my recent weight gain, I allow myself some liberties in terms of drinking and eating. But if you really want the numbers to drop, pay close attention to what you eat (and often more importantly, what you drink).

4. All of this is anecdotal based on my experience but due to our similarities I feel like it might be helpful to you.

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You guys really, REALLY should stop paying attention to the calories burned measurements on all devices.

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I agree with this. I use mine primarily for the heart rate detail and to track my time working out.

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Weekends def kill me I need better will power there. I have cut back on drinking during week days though. 

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I'm not trying to be a jerk, but you've already provided a big answer to your question.

Beyond that, how wedded are you to the group class? There are more efficient options, but if the group setting motivates you, it's better than trying solo stuff and not doing it.

Finally, on diet, try to weigh out consistent portions. It helps a lot with adjustments when you have numbers to adjust from.

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Give up the alcohol completely.

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I haven’t had a drink since NYE and I’ve lost 15. I know most of that is water weight but still, no alcohol is like a cheat code

A lot of good advice in here. I went through this at the beginning of the year after reaching the heaviest I had ever been after our first child (not fat by any means-but all clothes were tight). Here's what helped me:

1. No alcohol. None. You can add it back in slowly later when you hit your goal, but it is detrimental in several ways.
2. No or very low carbs for a while (and not a bunch of fat, either). Grilled chicken or fish, squash, zucchini, asparagus, etc. Add non-processed and non-white carbs back in slowly (wild rice, sweet potatoes, etc.). Peanut butter is your friend when you get a sweet craving or need a quick, cheap meal replacement.
3. No cheating.
4. Drink a lot of water.
5. More running (or other cardio). Less weights. 3 days of nothing but cardio and 2 days of an outdoor crossfit type work-out. If you only have time for 4 sessions per week, make 3 of them cardio.

I dropped about 20 lbs. doing this between April and May last year. 1-4 actually probably did the most for me. They were started earlier because of work obligations that ate up about 80 hours per week in April. I lost more weight simply doing that those than when I added in more exercise in May.

Fast

To your point, what is an estimate to the amount of calories burned performing something like a Greyskull deadlift routine? Squats? Or presses? Assuming your at the top end on your working sets.

It’s hard to find anything on that to factor in to the intake/burn equation.