Weight Loss

[dukie41181]

Ok, I'm setting myself quite a lofty goal re: weight loss. I am going to lose at least 50 lbs. by June. I know I need to eat better and work out more in order to make this happen. I'm not a huge veggie lover but apparently I'm gonna have to find a change of heart! Honestly, I get overwhelmed by the whole topic and tend to get discouraged. I don't really know how to put together a healthy meal (healthy meals were never really modeled for me when I was growing up which has really come back to bite me in the ass!). I feel stupid for even asking, but can anyone help me out? I want to make this change now so that as my daughter starts eating more solid foods I can be making healthy family meals.

Thanks!

[elephantmeg]

I've used myfitnesspal.com to loose weight with some success. For me it's just been helpful to see how many calories are in foods.

For me a healthy meal includes:
protein
carb
veggie

is made at home and mostly by scratch. I try to avoid too many choices because that leads to overeating. So a meal might be spaghetti and salad and garlic bread made from whole wheat bread (not texas toast). So where the texas toast garlic bread is 180ish calories a slice, mine is:
65 calories for the bread +15-30ish calories for margerine.

what do you eat now? maybe that would give us a starting place to help?

[dukie41181]

Thanks for the myfitnesspal.com tip! I went and joined and what a great site! As far as what I am eating now...we don't tend to make meal plans ahead of time because it just seems like a lot of work when I am beat tired at the end of the night from spending the day with my 9 month old. I know thats not really an excuse, but its honest. We might have multigrain pasta and chicken or low fat meatballs, low fat burgers with baked potato fries, soup and sandwich, tacos, hamburger helper. We might grab something take out and we have digiorno pizza and pizzeria breadsticks once per week. Usually for lunch I'll have a turkey bagel sandwich and wheat thins. I had been drinking pop but I've recent cut that out knowing that even though I LOVE COKE there is absolutely nothing worthwhile in it! I think part of my problem is that I mindlessly eat and I am home most of the time with my daughter. We spend a lot of time in the living room which is right off the kitchen and our office (where I spend a lot of time when she is napping) is also. Since I mindlessly munch at these times I know thats a killer! :banghead:

[BelleoftheBallFlagstaff]

Thanks for the myfitnesspal.com tip! I went and joined and what a great site! As far as what I am eating now...we don't tend to make meal plans ahead of time because it just seems like a lot of work when I am beat tired at the end of the night from spending the day with my 9 month old. I know thats not really an excuse, but its honest. We might have multigrain pasta and chicken or low fat meatballs, low fat burgers with baked potato fries, soup and sandwich, tacos, hamburger helper. We might grab something take out and we have digiorno pizza and pizzeria breadsticks once per week. Usually for lunch I'll have a turkey bagel sandwich and wheat thins. I had been drinking pop but I've recent cut that out knowing that even though I LOVE COKE there is absolutely nothing worthwhile in it! I think part of my problem is that I mindlessly eat and I am home most of the time with my daughter. We spend a lot of time in the living room which is right off the kitchen and our office (where I spend a lot of time when she is napping) is also. Since I mindlessly munch at these times I know thats a killer! :banghead:

Keep a food journal. I make a weekly menu when the sales come out online for my local grocery store, save $$$$, time and eat healthy.

[dukie41181]

elephantmeg,

I just input my Thanksgiving meal into the myfitnesspal website and OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is a real eye opener to see the caloric intake of the food eaten! I feel so guilty but I know tons of others were in the same boat today! This sure has opened my eyes! Heck, I even thought I'd eaten a decent breakfast but come to find out everything together was even high in calories! I had a bowl of special k with banana and milk and a multigrain english muffin with peanut butter...710 calories! Holy ****! :bag

[MmeSunny]

I am currently on Medifast. It's a very prescribed system (and expensive at least for me) but it's worth it for my health. I have a lot of weight to lose. But it comes off safe and fast with this program. It was recommended to me by my doctor. I have been on the plan since 10/16. I stepped on the scale this morning (weigh in day!) and have dropped 20 lbs! In less than a month and a half. For me that's amazing. I have not been at this weight since beginning college over 10 years ago.

The negatives are that you only get one "real meal" per day. The rest are their shakes, bars, soups, oatmeals, hot drinks and cold drinks. But you do get 6 meals a day, so your blood sugar stays stable and there's a lot of protein in their food, so you aren't super hungry.

[emily_gracesmama]

I packed on the freshman oh say 20 in college, when I got home at thanksgiving and got on a scale I was FLOORED at my weight. Weight Watchers guidelines helped me lose it plus exercise everyday, usually walking 30-45 mins or later the treadmill. It really is portion control and balance. But I remember eating a hamburger, with veggies of course and treating myself to some ice cream as a dessert, but I totally remember day 1 and eating an apple with my breakfast and thinking it was the first time I had eaten fruit since I got to college. Portion size is so much smaller than what we gravitate to normally. Good luck, you can do it. I lost 40 lbs from November to May in college!

[lizzywednesday]

I know people who swear by Weight Watchers and people who don't.

Will your insurance pay for a nutritionist consultation? That might be a good bet, too, rather than any "diet" ... you will need to change your overall outlook on food, eating and exercising. You'll need support!

Incidentally, I find that a menu plan actually SAVES me time and energy, especially if I am exhausted after a long work day, because I've already done the planning ... all I need to do when I get home is the assembly. Weekday meals don't need to be complicated!

[kransden]

I am going to Weight Watchers and really love it. It really works for me. BUT... I have a great leader. I have found you need to find a leader that fits your personality, otherwise you are just watching the clock.

[octmom]

I started Weight Watchers last May and lost 32 pounds. I have never really tried (or stuck to) a diet before, but I found WW to be pretty easy to do. I love that I can eat whatever I want, but WW taught me to make better choices and to control my portions better. I hit my goal about 10 weeks ago and am holding steady almost 5 pounds under it now. :) A friend of mine did WW online and was successful. I did it with a group at work, and that made it a lot easier for me. The WW leader came right to our office for the meetings. It could not have been more convenient.

Good luck with whatever you do!

[cvanbrunt]

I dropped weight easily with Nutri-System. It's not magic; it is calorie restriction. The packaged meals and menu planning/grocery lists just make it easy. No thought involved. Well, some thought. Lots of support and resources to help and maintain once the weight is gone. No meetings, stuff is online if you want to use it.

If you don't want a structured plan, keeping track of everything thing you eat is the way to go. It is scary how quickly the calories add up. I lose weight on 1500 calories a day. I rarely exercise so I need to be thoughtful (not fanatical, though) about what I eat.

There is an emerging literature about the limits of exercise and weight loss. It's really about eating less. Start loving veggies!

[dukie41181]

keeping track of everything thing you eat is the way to go. It is scary how quickly the calories add up.


I have been tracking my food intake for the last few days and WOW! It sure is wild how quickly the calories add up! I feel good about opening my eyes to this and now having the power to do something different.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts!

[cvanbrunt]

If you have an iPhone there is a great app I use called Lose It! It was free.

[MamaKath]

I just started back to WW also. A great leader is key for me. I am terrible about writing things down, I need to get better about it.

The other things I am doing are getting a physical (checking especially my thyroid level) and utilizing my blender to make yummy food and hide lots of veggies in stuff (makes veggie soup super easy).

GL~

[gatorsmom]

I haven't read the other replies and I'm sure they have good advice in them. I have a lot of experience with weight gain and loss. My mother spent pretty much 20 years of her life doing all the wrong things to lose weight and feeling miserable for it. I learned tons from her. And 4 times in my life I successfully followed a regimen to lose 20+ pounds and I learned ALOT from that. So, I'll tell you what worked for me and maybe some of this will help you too. :)

First, my mom once bought me a diet calculator and for like 6 weeks I calculated every last calorie I ate. This calculator added up the days calories and gave me an average then added them into the weeks' calories and gave me an average for the past 7 days. The thing I learned from this is that you can screw up your calories ROYALLY for the day and if you go right back on your diet, one day's overindulgence will really not affect your weight loss. If you averaging 1000 calories per day (this is not a safe amount, just a nice round number for this example) for 6 days and then on the seventh day you eat 2000 calories so double what you are allowing yourself, the average for those 7 days is still only 1142 calories. And if you go right back on your plan of 1000 calories for another 7 days, the average then for the past 2 weeks is 1071 calories/day. It's almost like the pigout day never happened. This was an important thing for me to learn because slip ups happen and my tendancy was to feel disgusted with myself and then pigout again because I just gave up. The thing to do is just keep getting back on the horse and keep trying because in the long run the overindulgences will not matter.

FUN exercise will keep you motivated, keep your metabolism up, give you more energy (I tend to eat more when I'm tired), and build muscle which all helps you lose weight. But the trick is to find something that you look forward to doing. I hate having to pack stuff to drag myself and the kids to the gym where I feel self conscious. I hate running. I'm not good at most sports and have a serious self-confidence problem with team sports. HOWEVER, I love to walk outside with the stroller and my headphones. LOVE it. I look forward to that in the summer. The 2 summers after my first 2 pregnancies I lost 30 lbs and then 29 lbs by walking everyday. I started out walking a mile and by the end of those summers I was walking 5 miles/day and biking (with the kids in the bike trailer) 7miles 3x per week. I paired that up with watching what I ate and I lost about a pound to a pound and a half per week. I loved it so much I bought a storm cover for the stroller and walked long into the fall. I felt so confident after losing 30 lbs after having Gator that I did it again after Cha Cha 2 years later.

I chose a limit of 1800 calories per day to aim for because that is an amount that is acceptable for me. If you try to cut too many calories per day, you will end up binging. I know this all too well. The trick is to eat an amount that will leave you feeling only slightly hungry but not hungry enough that you'll actually stop what you are doing to get something to eat- does that make any sense? Because in order to lose weight, your bodies has to be slightly deficient of the fuel it needs in order to pull from the fat stores. So, at some point during the day, you have to be hungry between meals. What I do is eat a breakfast of 300 calories, lunch is 600 calories, afternoon snack of 300 calories and dinner of 600. And I really try to make sure those calories are healthy ones. Eating 300 calories of cheetoes will not satisfy your hunger before dinner like 300 calories of apple slices and peanut butter (ask me how I know). Eventually you start to see what a 600 calories meal looks like approximately and you can even tell after you've eaten a meal if it was too big by how you feel afterwards. Then you don't need to write down the calories anymore.

Also, I try to eat nondiet foods (diet drinks being the exception here). No low-fat artificial stuff for me. I find that my hunger is satisfied better by eating foods that have some fat and protein in them. I try to include some protein and fat in every meal.

This post is already really long but the last thing I was going to say is if counting calories just isn't your thing, you should definitely try doing something like Weight Watchers. The main thing is to learn what a normal portion size is for you at a smaller weight and a lot of people have had success with WW.

Oh, and definitely talk to your doctor about this before making huge changes. Changing what and how you eat can be dangerous if you are hypo or hyperglycemic, diabetic, etc. gl!

[gatorsmom]

Oh, I reread the original post and I wanted to add this. I started getting Health magazine a few years ago and tried some of their recipes. I have just fallen in love with them. MOST of them are fast, healthy, easy to put together and delicious (granted I'm no gourmet ;)). If you buy one of their magazines off the shelf, you can use a code on the cover to access a ton of different recipes on their website. I've printed off a lot of them and put them in sheet protectors in a special binder I use for grocery shopping. I choose about 3 recipes per week and then shop for the stuff I need once per week. I make sure to double the recipe so I don't have to cook from scratch every night (too much work). Another really great thing about these recipes is that the calorie counts per portion are listed. So, the whole family can eat what you make but you can measure your portion. And then you can measure out leftovers and save them in portions appropriate for your calorie budget. This makes lunch the next day easy if you don't mind leftovers. And there have been a few of the Health recipes that my family didn't like but not many. I'm a big fan of theirs :D. HTH!

[lizzywednesday]

If you have an iPhone there is a great app I use called Lose It! It was free.

I wonder if this app is available for iPod Touch ... my DH needs to have external motivation and I don't have the patience to do that. (DH just received the iPod Touch for his birthday from MIL/FIL, SIL/BIL and I.)

[KrisM]

I think part of my problem is that I mindlessly eat and I am home most of the time with my daughter. We spend a lot of time in the living room which is right off the kitchen and our office (where I spend a lot of time when she is napping) is also. Since I mindlessly munch at these times I know thats a killer! :banghead:

Take up knitting. You can't eat and knit at the same time. Or, do something else that requires your hands to be working. Not TV, reading, computer, etc that makes it easy to eat while you're doing it.