Losing Weight
- Thread starter Ernil Menegil
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the problem i have with weight watchers is they essentially charge money for what should be, to every dieter, common knowledge.TheCaptain said:
if you make it your responsibility to check the packages of what you eat and carefully monitor your own calorie intake there should be no reason to need a point based system.
again it obviously works for some ppl so meh i guess
Well, the online tool admittedly caters to my own laziness. There's still the CD-Rom tools and the point lists in paper form that come without the monthly charge. Of course they don't want you doing that ^^lechat said:
In my personal experience, diet worked much better than exercise. I can only talk from personal experience because every body is different and what works for some won't necessarily work for you. Anyway take what you will from my story...
I was always a fit guy and played rugby fairly seriously, ran, and spent many hours in the gym. as a young man I always tried to get bigger and stronger, so ate a lot and trained a lot. When you train hard you can be pretty indiscriminate about what you eat too. Problem was once my knees gave in and I could no longer run and had to give up sport I never really recallibrated either my diet or my image of myself to suit. i went from being about 95kgs of seriously buff strong guy to 105kg of fat middle aged guy in the space of a couple of years. Each time I got on the scales I was always "yeah I'm 100kg, but I'm an athlete so it's mostly muscle" until I saw a photo of myself and went "holy shit, I'm fat".
So first thing I did was I kept a spreadsheet and just wrote down everything I ate for about a week, without embellishing or trying to kid myself. Then I made lots of sensible changes to that diet. I mean the easy things - I cut out drinking a can of soft drink with dinner, and replaced snacking on a pack of chips with fruit. Instead of fast food for lunch I ate sandwiches. And that was about it. No exercise - no crazy diet, just cut out a bit of shit from my diet and I started dropping about 1-2kg a week. After that I made more changes - My meals were generally either pasta or red meat. In fact that's about all I could cook - though I really enjoyed cooking and did a mean steak or roast lamb I had never really cooked fresh fish. I tried to eat fish for 1 or 2 meals a week and have one vegetarian meal too. I cut out heavy creamy pasta dishes for healthier recipies and stopped cooking for 4 when it was just me and the missus. Again none of these things seemed like sacrifices: having a nice piece of well cooked salmon instead of a pasta dish was actually much nicer. I guess I had to think about food a bit more, picking up fresh fish on the way home from work instead of eating frozen shit for example. But since I enjoyed the meals anyway it seemed no big deal.
Cost wise fruit, veggies, and fish are more expensive and more inconvenient than fattier stuff, but I did save a bit on cutting out the junk food, so it wasn't too bad. I kept up consistently losing about 1kg until I'd dropped about 25kgs, with the only excercise being a few push ups and sit ups each night. Oh I forgot beer. Another plus from quitting rugby was getting out of the beer drinking culture. That definitely saved a few calories. That all happened about 2 and a half years ago and the weight as never come back because my diet has never reverted back to beer and fast food.
TL;DR: make small dietary changes to cut out some calories by not eating as much crap. Weight loss won't be dramatic, but as long as those changes are positive you'll stick to them and not put the weight back on.
I was always a fit guy and played rugby fairly seriously, ran, and spent many hours in the gym. as a young man I always tried to get bigger and stronger, so ate a lot and trained a lot. When you train hard you can be pretty indiscriminate about what you eat too. Problem was once my knees gave in and I could no longer run and had to give up sport I never really recallibrated either my diet or my image of myself to suit. i went from being about 95kgs of seriously buff strong guy to 105kg of fat middle aged guy in the space of a couple of years. Each time I got on the scales I was always "yeah I'm 100kg, but I'm an athlete so it's mostly muscle" until I saw a photo of myself and went "holy shit, I'm fat".
So first thing I did was I kept a spreadsheet and just wrote down everything I ate for about a week, without embellishing or trying to kid myself. Then I made lots of sensible changes to that diet. I mean the easy things - I cut out drinking a can of soft drink with dinner, and replaced snacking on a pack of chips with fruit. Instead of fast food for lunch I ate sandwiches. And that was about it. No exercise - no crazy diet, just cut out a bit of shit from my diet and I started dropping about 1-2kg a week. After that I made more changes - My meals were generally either pasta or red meat. In fact that's about all I could cook - though I really enjoyed cooking and did a mean steak or roast lamb I had never really cooked fresh fish. I tried to eat fish for 1 or 2 meals a week and have one vegetarian meal too. I cut out heavy creamy pasta dishes for healthier recipies and stopped cooking for 4 when it was just me and the missus. Again none of these things seemed like sacrifices: having a nice piece of well cooked salmon instead of a pasta dish was actually much nicer. I guess I had to think about food a bit more, picking up fresh fish on the way home from work instead of eating frozen shit for example. But since I enjoyed the meals anyway it seemed no big deal.
Cost wise fruit, veggies, and fish are more expensive and more inconvenient than fattier stuff, but I did save a bit on cutting out the junk food, so it wasn't too bad. I kept up consistently losing about 1kg until I'd dropped about 25kgs, with the only excercise being a few push ups and sit ups each night. Oh I forgot beer. Another plus from quitting rugby was getting out of the beer drinking culture. That definitely saved a few calories. That all happened about 2 and a half years ago and the weight as never come back because my diet has never reverted back to beer and fast food.
TL;DR: make small dietary changes to cut out some calories by not eating as much crap. Weight loss won't be dramatic, but as long as those changes are positive you'll stick to them and not put the weight back on.
better program for a clean diet , i found here fatlossfact.wordpress.com , i'm felling ok after i use the program and i lost a couple of pounds in 5 days , eating regularly each day ,i feel energized and its not a pain in the ass to follow up .
Well the same thing doesn't work for everyone but I'll tell you what I did.Ernil Menegil said:
About 3 years ago I decided to actually care about my health. Before I started diet and exercise I weighed about 300lbs(~136kg)(and I'm 5'10" or 1.78m),now I weigh about 200lbs(~91kg). Still not my target weight which would be about 160lbs(~73kg) but getting there.
What I would suggest are 2 things. One, find some way to work in exercise into your daily routine. I purposely park at the far lot in my college and do a half hour walk to my classes, giving me a total of one hour walking every day (I walk at other places on weekends). Two, and this is the harder thing, count calories. You may be surprised when you look into it just how much your eating. Before I started counting I was eating about 6000 Kcals every day when I should have been eating about 2000.
Also set a weight goal, and from that a daily calorie allowance. Their are good resources for both those things. To set a weight goal I suggest you look at a Body Mass Index (or BMI) chart. And to get an Idea or your maximum daily calorie allowance look up a Basal metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator.
But in the end the third and hardest thing is motivation. And I can only tell you what worked for me but I don't know if it will work for you. I like graphs and numbers so I kept track of everything. With weekly weigh ins and charts. Also if your into rpgs it may help to think of exercise and "grinding" and "leveling up".
I think you have to start with the understanding that, long term, you can't force yourself to eat food you dislike and you can't force yourself to do things you dislike.
What helped for me was to just try many different things. I was eventually able to find vegetable dishes I enjoyed (despite having hated "rabbit food" my entire life), and realize that a lot of the junk I was eating I really didn't like all that much.
As for exercise, my recommendation would be to join a club sport/high intensity physical activity type thing on campus. I absolutely hate "workout routines" where you go the gym and run for X minutes and do Y reps of Z exercise machine while this big bulky jock sneers at you and makes what you're sure is derisive remarks about you to his meathead friends. I joined intramural fencing, rock climbing, hiking and naturalism, kayaking, and swing dance. All fun, all very good exercise, and also great ways to meet people. It works out to about 2 hours of exercise a day, and I dislike none of it.
What helped for me was to just try many different things. I was eventually able to find vegetable dishes I enjoyed (despite having hated "rabbit food" my entire life), and realize that a lot of the junk I was eating I really didn't like all that much.
As for exercise, my recommendation would be to join a club sport/high intensity physical activity type thing on campus. I absolutely hate "workout routines" where you go the gym and run for X minutes and do Y reps of Z exercise machine while this big bulky jock sneers at you and makes what you're sure is derisive remarks about you to his meathead friends. I joined intramural fencing, rock climbing, hiking and naturalism, kayaking, and swing dance. All fun, all very good exercise, and also great ways to meet people. It works out to about 2 hours of exercise a day, and I dislike none of it.
OK, so here's my stance on this. Do not try to lose weight. Start becoming healthy with your health as the only focus. Don't care what your weight is, care about what you see in the mirror.
Find some food that is healthy and you can enjoy. Personally my favourite kind of food is salmon with some vegetable, potatoes and maybe some sauce depending on the quality of the salmon. A good salmon will be so juicy and succulent that a sauce will only ruin it. Vegetable soup is also an option. You can make enough to reheat for a few days so you wont have to cook every day. With a large pot you could probably have 4 days of food there.
Now exercise is also very important. If you can get a cheap gym membership (student membership or something) I'd advice you to check that out. Otherwise you can buy a weight set or just some moderately heavy items from your house (bag of groceries) and that will get you quite far. Now if you can combine lifting weights with some sit-ups, push-ups and jogging that's great. Try to work out so you can lift 6-12 reps, personally I prefer 8x3.
Now here's a site that offers some advice for programs depending on how many days you'll be able to work out:
http://www.exrx.net/Lists/WorkoutMenu.html
Now if you manage to find a program and stick to it you might experience some weight loss or you might even gain weight because you're replacing fat with muscle. The important thing is that you will improve your health and most likely your looks. You might stay the same weight you are now, but you wont be fat.
Find some food that is healthy and you can enjoy. Personally my favourite kind of food is salmon with some vegetable, potatoes and maybe some sauce depending on the quality of the salmon. A good salmon will be so juicy and succulent that a sauce will only ruin it. Vegetable soup is also an option. You can make enough to reheat for a few days so you wont have to cook every day. With a large pot you could probably have 4 days of food there.
Now exercise is also very important. If you can get a cheap gym membership (student membership or something) I'd advice you to check that out. Otherwise you can buy a weight set or just some moderately heavy items from your house (bag of groceries) and that will get you quite far. Now if you can combine lifting weights with some sit-ups, push-ups and jogging that's great. Try to work out so you can lift 6-12 reps, personally I prefer 8x3.
Now here's a site that offers some advice for programs depending on how many days you'll be able to work out:
http://www.exrx.net/Lists/WorkoutMenu.html
Now if you manage to find a program and stick to it you might experience some weight loss or you might even gain weight because you're replacing fat with muscle. The important thing is that you will improve your health and most likely your looks. You might stay the same weight you are now, but you wont be fat.
Yep.BringBackBuck said:
You need to make the effort to incorporate healthier foods in your daily intake. Don't see it as a diet, though (I hate that word); you're just making better daily choices. Eat sensibly. Eat sensibly. Eat sensibly. Eat sensibly. Egyél Észrevehetően (loltranslate). As for exercise, take it at a steady pace. If you make the effort, it'll come naturally to you. G'luck!
A standard dinner in my house is salmon or tilapia, whatever veggies we have on hand (usually carrots, cucumber, zucchini, and mushrooms), and rice, all mixed up together. It usually lasts several days and is absolutely delicious. Pretty inexpensive as well (the most expensive part is the salmon, and there are ways to mitigate that).Yopaz said:
If there's one thing I've learned from messing about with my own weight for fun (went from 8.5 stone to about 12 in a year or two) it's that everyone seems to react differently to various factors.
I found that as soon as I hit my 22nd birthday, my habit of eating a cheesecake every other day was starting to rest on me. Since I decided that I should practice what I preach when it comes to obesity, I decided to start exercising and, for the most part, cut out the cheesecakes. I was already at kind of an advantage because I walk pretty much everywhere (a benefit of living in a heavily built up area) but I added things like weight training to push myself further, which also meant I could be more lenient in terms of my diet.
The main difference in how you seriously lose weight, in my opinion, comes down to which way you wish to suffer: I don't mind putting my body under a lot of strain through exercise but I hate calorie-counting and eating only meticulously planned out meals. This means that, while I use a lot of fresh meat and produce in my meals, I pretty much eat whatever I want, just in moderation, and then I gun it at the gym.
Other people I know just don't like the pain of strenuous exercise (which I completely understand) so they keep their weight in check by monitoring what they eat and just staying active, (eg: try to walk at least a mile a day, even if you've nowhere to go).
The only thing I can say about these methods is progress is a lot slower than the dedicated people I know, (after three years I'm only just starting to develop the physique I desire) but on the plus side, by taking things at my pace I've not got sick of my regime and every time I see new muscle definition or notice my face looking less round it's a great reminder of what I'm trying to achieve.
I don't know if any of this helps, just waffling on about my own habits, really.
I found that as soon as I hit my 22nd birthday, my habit of eating a cheesecake every other day was starting to rest on me. Since I decided that I should practice what I preach when it comes to obesity, I decided to start exercising and, for the most part, cut out the cheesecakes. I was already at kind of an advantage because I walk pretty much everywhere (a benefit of living in a heavily built up area) but I added things like weight training to push myself further, which also meant I could be more lenient in terms of my diet.
The main difference in how you seriously lose weight, in my opinion, comes down to which way you wish to suffer: I don't mind putting my body under a lot of strain through exercise but I hate calorie-counting and eating only meticulously planned out meals. This means that, while I use a lot of fresh meat and produce in my meals, I pretty much eat whatever I want, just in moderation, and then I gun it at the gym.
Other people I know just don't like the pain of strenuous exercise (which I completely understand) so they keep their weight in check by monitoring what they eat and just staying active, (eg: try to walk at least a mile a day, even if you've nowhere to go).
The only thing I can say about these methods is progress is a lot slower than the dedicated people I know, (after three years I'm only just starting to develop the physique I desire) but on the plus side, by taking things at my pace I've not got sick of my regime and every time I see new muscle definition or notice my face looking less round it's a great reminder of what I'm trying to achieve.
I don't know if any of this helps, just waffling on about my own habits, really.