2015 Weight Loss and Healthy Living Support Thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So this year I’ve decided, really decided, that I am going to lose the weight I keep talking about. I have made abortive attempts in the past, but this year I am doing it.

January starting weight: 278.2 lbs. (130 pounds over weight according to websites).

Steps I have taken:
Every morning before breakfast, I do calisthenics: Jumping Jacks, Push-ups, Sit-ups

Every evening when I get home, I do more calisthenics, this time with dumbells: Arm curls, arm lifts, arm circles, squats.

I have sworn off Biscuitville’s ultimate ham biscuits for breakfast and am instead eating 8oz special K cereal with almond milk. Using Special K because they have a variety of flavors.

I have thrown out all my Skittles and KitKat bars. Instead I have purchased clementines (to replace skittles) and bananas (to replace KitKats).

More water, less soda. A friend told me I should be drinking 96 oz of water a day. That seems high, and I’ve only made it to 80 so far. I am down to 1 20z bottle of soda a day from 2 liters. My friend wants me to switch to green tea for my caffeine.

I have started a spreadsheet where I log everything I eat, and every activity I do. In addition I am tracking my weight every Monday.

Before leaving work, I am using the treadmill for 15 minutes. I plan to be up to 30 minutes by April 1st.

Better portion control. I’ve bought some lean cuisines to give me ideas of how much a person really should eat instead of the all you can eat buffet style I’ve lived. I can make a tuna casserole using a whole pound of pasta and eat it in one evening.

My friend thinks I’m making too many changes at once to maintain. Fortunately, I’m the stubborn type where if you tell me I can’t do something, I’ll try harder just to prove that I can :smiley:

2

Started getting back on track in November, slightly derailed by the holidays but hopefully I will show continued improvement again.

Starting point: 211 (November)
Low: 201 (Just before the holidays)
Current: 203

Immediate goal is 195, and I’ll decide on a new goal once there.

I’m using MyFitnessPal to track food and weight, seems like a pretty good interface and it keeps me honest. My hip is feeling better thanks to a cortisone shot so I can run again, and the exercise really helps me stay focused.

3

Another MyFitnessPal user here. It’s been working pretty well for me–25 pounds since last May, even with essentially no regular exercise, and a holiday break. I was a confirmed hater of anything to do with calorie counting. Unfortunately, menopause, two teenagers, and a long commute have convinced me that only calorie counting is going to work.

My goal now is to add some exercise somehow. My kids are more self-sufficient and my daughter is going to start doing some driving on her own, so that should free up some time.

Starting weight (May 2014): 210
Current weight: 184
Goal: 150 and fitter

4

My goal is to drop 20-25 pounds. I’m currently 170, the highest I’ve EVER been. I’d be happy around 145, so I guess that’s 25 pounds. I had surgery end of October and have packed on 8 pounds since then. I eat well during the day, and exercise on a fairly regular basis, but my problem is between 7pm and bedtime. So I’m restricting my snack to microwave popcorn and a Fiber One bar. And no other salty snacks.

5

Depending on your schedule (and theirs) can you work in the fitness stuff *with *your kids? Going for a bike ride together means their company but doesn’t force conversation if they’re not feeling talkative …

6

Sure, let’s do it.

Sigh.

Weight loss is not my main goal. Stopping weight gain certainly is a goal. Functional fitness is the primary goal. Crawling my way out of a pit of despair is a nice secondary goal.

I’ve been thinking of running again. It’s sort of a crazy idea. Even my former Coach/friend doesn’t want me running because I have bad knees. Also, I’m a terrible runner.

But still, I’ve felt this bizarre impulse to run.

7

Actually, their schedule is the issue. They are in multiple scouting, music, and other activities, and the time when I used to exercise is often taken up with being an audience and taxi service.

When they were littler they went to school later and I worked closer to home. Now they start at 7:30 and I have to be on the road to work right after that.

I think the solution will be to use our very nice exercise bike early in the morning and claim some walking time on the weekends. What I’d really like is more time with my husband, so maybe I can persuade him to go on some walks.

8

Exercise is way over-rated for weight loss. I started exercising in September, and I was losing weight a lot faster before that. Mostly I exercise because I’m at high risk for diabetes, and I want to halt that, plus I don’t want to be flabby even when I’m skinny.
I have lost 42 lbs since June. I have 28 pounds to go. I’m on myfitnesspal and would LOVE to have new friends on there, if anybody wants to pm me.

9

Exercise isn’t the driver for most weight loss itself, but I find that it is really important for me to exercise since it puts me in the right frame of mind to control my diet. It’s a complementary thing, it tempers my desire to snack.

10

I was about to post something along these lines. Anyone wishing to lose weight would do well to remember that weight loss is primarily due to diet. You could spend day after day exercising, but if your diet isn’t good the results of all that exercise will be minimal. Ideally people should have both a good diet and an adequate exercise regime. However, diet is where the majority of weight loss comes from.

11

also using MFP (please feel free to add). could do with losing 50+ pounds, will reassess when anywhere near overall target

Main plan is to stick to my calorie targets and also do a fair amount of running (4 times a week, currently 5.5 miles per session)

12

I’ll check into my fitness pal :slight_smile: I bet it’s a lot better than my spreadsheets.

13

is that due to people over estimating the calorie burn and treating themselves and undoing the calorie benefits of the exercise? It would seem that any significant sustained cardio burn should help.

14

I keep getting chubbier. I don’t have a scale, so I don’t know how much I weigh, but I’d like to get some of the weight off.

I’m trying to do more exercise and stick to the rule of only two sugar binges a day. ( :rolleyes: I know, that’s still too many.) Doesn’t help that we still have a lot of leftover chocolate from last year! I try not to eat too much of it at a time, though. And I’ve bought some apples.

A problem is that I often get hungry in the middle of the afternoon, when it’s not quite suppertime. Around that time, if there’s healthy food around, sometimes I’ll try to eat a healthy snack instead of, say, chips. Easier said than done sometimes.

15

My goal was to lose 25 pounds before March. I’ve lost 20 since Christmas. I do NOT recommend the flu as a dieting method.

16

It’s a combination of things, including eating more to “reward” yourself for exercising. But the bottom line is that it’s far easier to eat more than you can exercise away. Running for 1/2 hour is fantastic for your cardio health, bone strength, mental well being, etc, but you can eat the calories you just burned in 30 seconds.

So, unless you’re spending 2-3 hours per day in strenuous exercise, your diet is going to be the major factor in weight loss. The most important exercise is pushing yourself away from the dinner table. :slight_smile:

17

I started at 215 lbs. on New Year’s Day. I’m at 204 as of this morning. I know I won’t continue to lose that quickly- my goal is 2 lbs a week until I hit my target weight of 170 by June 8.

I’m using an app on my iPhone called ‘Lose It!’ to track calories & exercise. One thing I like about using an app-- I’ve been tracking my calories very closely, and when I exercise it subtracts those calories burned from my total, so it gives me more motivation to exercise- it “buys” me calories so I can eat a bit more and still stay under my calorie limit! Of course I already understood that more exercise equals more calories burned before, but without tracking things it’s not as easy to figure “I exercised X amount, so I can eat X more food”.

18

I effortlessly lost heaps of weight after my son was born… Until I stopped breastfeeding. After that, my appetite didn’t change but suddenly I wasn’t expressing all those extra kilojoules. Then I got a job on a help desk and had all these long, lonely evening shifts with nothing to do but wait for the phone to ring, and my weight blew right up.

In November 2013 I found MFP and started logging my food and sticking to the kilojoule limit, and I dropped from 196lb/89kg to about 178lb/81kg in six weeks. Christmas derailed us (my SO was doing it too). We had promised ourselves we’d let ourselves go for Christmas but get right back to it after all the Christmas food was gone. We didn’t.

By August 2014 my weight was back up to 191lb, and we decided we’d do MFP again. We started on the 14th. Later that month I got a Jawbone UP24 fitness tracker and began walking in earnest too.

As of this morning, I weigh 147lb/66.9kg, down from my all time high of 89.5kg. My initial goal was to get to 154lb/70kg (my low point while breastfeeding), and my current goal is to get my BMI below 25 (currently 25.2), and my next goal is to get to somewhere in the middle of the BMI range, around 132lb/60kg. Of course, my final goal will be to maintain my weight.

I currently have a 5024kj (1200 cal) daily food goal and walk around 15,000 steps a day, which MFP imports from the Jawbone app and adds as kilojoules to my daily limit. I’ve cut back on milk in my coffee and stopped taking sugar, dropped pasta dishes from my diet, increased the vegetable component of my meals and I’m home cooking almost everything, rather than having regular fast food. Conversely, I’m eating way more ice cream and drinking far more hot chocolate than ever before - they’re budgeted for in my kilojoule allowance, and it’s these little treats that make me feel like I’m not missing out on anything.

I weigh myself every single morning, even though my doctor told me not to. Seeing all the ups and downs makes it easier for me to concentrate on the bigger picture: that my weight may fluctuate daily, but it is always trending down.

19

Exercise is a keystone habit. Once that is in place, the rest does seem to come a lot more easily. Sleep is improved, we are more inclined to make healthier food choices, we have more energy, and we are more psychologically resilient. While good nutrition/calorie restriction might be the quicker fix for weight loss, exercise is about the closest thing to a panacea that we have, for a wide range of physical and psychological problems.

So far the only thing I’ve found that truly keeps my depression in check is regular, vigorous exercise. At my peak I was virtually depression free for over a year. I haven’t been doing it for several months and have been pretty depressed as a result.

I weighed myself and I have gained 7 pounds since September. I’m not terribly surprised because for a while there, I was eating complete garbage. I’ve been doing better about cooking healthy meals for dinner, complete with vegetables. Current goal is to halt weight gain.

I’ve decided to run, against all common sense. I’ll start with the Couch 2 5K. I accomplished that before, so I know that it is possible.

20

I think there are a couple of reasons it works for me. Primarily, it’s because I always have my phone with me. It also has some convenient ways of finding calorie counts, including just scanning barcodes on food items.