It’s fine to eat the same thing day in and day out if you eat a wide variety of foods every day, and concentrate on eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and lean protein sources. It doesn’t hurt to take basic multi-vitamin, either.
Not exercising is just stupid if you’re trying to lose a lot of weight. There’s no polite way to put it. Intense exercise, particularly heavy lifting, makes things a lot easier. Look at what this guy did, starting out a lot leaner than the OP.
Of course, at some point the question of supplementation will come up. Supplements only make sense if you’ve got your diet, training, and lifestyle in order. Otherwise, they’re a waste of money.
There’s a lot of conflicting dietary advice out there, but if you look at the various plans, you start to realize that a lot of them are pretty similar. Get the basics right, and the details matter a little less.
Thats what I am trying to say. I have been eating the same basic setup every day for weeks at a time for almost two years now and I have never been healthier or more fit. (I do alter my diet slightly every few months or so, switch chicken for beef, or change the veggies I eat, eat peanuts intead of almonds, etc) Every bodybuilder I know personally, and most of the ones I have seen on countless message boards do this, and many fad diets as well.
Of course if you want to try to caculate up a set amount of calories, doing it the way I suggest is much easier. Once a week. If you do it Snoopies way, you will get tired of keeping track of calories, slip up and forget, or plain stop caring about it, and then you will start gaining weight again, or stop losing it. Of course if you want to stick to weight watchers the rest of your life and make it “easier” go ahead. Those things are not cheap.
If you do it Snoopies way, you will get tired of keeping track of calories, slip up and forget, or plain stop caring about it, and then you will start gaining weight again, or stop losing it.
You haven’t read a word I’ve said, have you?
I don’t count calories to begin with because it’s not friggin necessary!
Eat when hungry. Stop when full. This is not rocket science.
Actually, something that no-one seems to have mentioned is that we, in general, tend to eat so fast that our hunger/full mechanism is cut off. Your stomach is full, but your brain doesn’t have time to register that because you keep eating. You have to eat much slower (your mom’s advice about chewing each mouthful 20 times was actually worth something!) and you should drink water with your meals. Drink a sip of water for every mouthful of food. It will help you feel full sooner and will help you eat slower too.
I lost 50lbs last year between July and Christmas but I didn’t do it in a terribly healthy manner. I used Xenedrine, didn’t eat breakfast and only ate a small lunch and dinner. I also increased my excercise. I have found that if I eat breakfast, I am hungry by 11am (doesn’t matter what I eat), whereas if I don’t eat anything in the morning, I am fine til lunchtime. I wasn’t terribly strict about the diet, and when I stopped taking the Xenedrine, I started gaining weight gradually so when I fell pregnant in May, I had already put back about 10lbs. I am going to have to lose the pregnancy weight next year, so once I stop breastfeeding, I will go back to my Xenedrine…it worked for me, but I don’t know that I would recommend it to other people as everyone is different.
My brother lost 100 lbs in a year on the Atkins. We thought he would be dead before 40. He’s been steady now for over half a year at 240 lbs. He is 6’2". It is a miracle – go see a doctor and talk about doing Atkins.
hunger depends on many factors, so you pop an ephedra pill and your hunger goes away does that mean you should now be eating less, even though your caloric expenditure is now MORE ?
you should eat exactly the amount you know you should be eating regardless of whether you want to or not. i wake up at night and have a high-protein meal because my muscles need it, has nothing to do with hunger, i obviously am not hungry when i am asleep.
to assume that your body will know how much and when to eat is only a good idea for somebody who is naturally fit. and even if you are, your results will be sh1t compared to mine.
I’m sure that it’s been said already, but I’m not reading all this .
(1) Fat. Less of it. Eat only supermarket food with <5% fat (i.e. no take-away). If you have to buy food that someone else cooks/prepares, buy low-fat stuff.
(2) Sugar. You can’t do much about it if you’re following (1), but never drink another soft drink that has more than a couple of calories per can/box. 2l of Coke = 800 calories, 2l of Diet Coke = 5 calories.
(3) Exercise. Don’t do it (at first). It’s vital, but if you’re 21 stone I suspect that your key problem is calorie intake not exercise. When you do start, take it easy.
(4) Alcohol. Up to you. I suspect that you’ll need it and you don’t sound like a huge drinker. If you compare your alcohol calories to the total, I suspect it’s not a huge amount.
(5) Calories. I’ve never had a huge problem keeping the calories down if I restrict fat. That might not be the case with you. Still, take it step-by-step. Just getting used to “better” food will prove useful to you, even if you find yourself eating too much. Then it’s only a question of reducing the quantity without having to worry about being used to a high-fat diet.
The key thing is that it’s a lifestyle change. You have to get used to looking at the Nutritional Information blurb on a food packet. You also have to filter out the noise (i.e. 0% Fat notices on packets of sweets ).
I’ve not had to drop anything like what you’re looking at, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it’s something similar to quitting smoking. Btw, if you smoke, keep doing so. One thing at a time .
Others have commented on this, but I will as well. It isn’t rocket science, but the human body is just as complex as rocket science. Certain foods cause insulin spikes that often fall and cause low blood sugar, making one hungry. This is evidence by rice. Notice people always say “eat chinese, be hungry in an hour?” it is because of the drop in blood sugar in an hour. It causes a false sense of hunger.
Hey, do what you want, eat what you want, but don’t come here and try to spread ignorance.(that how you eat is ok to lose weight) To lose weight and keep losing weight, oraganization is important. Oraganization means record keeping and calorie counting.
Sure, you did it, but you got lucky. If all it took was eating till you are no longer hungry to lose weight, there wouldn’t be a weight problem in America.
I can’t properly respond to this outside of the pit, so I’m just going to remark that the dieters who fail are the ones who don’t take the time to learn about stuff like blood sugar, insulin, glycemic/insulin indices, and all that. Y’know, like Epimetheus.
If you’re not on an Atkins diet, then fat has a very high calorie count. If you are on an Atkins diet then it still does but, apparently, this does not matter.
Naturally, it’s not just the calorie content of food that is important. If you can arrange it so that you eat 2,000 extra calories a day in fat but that you won’t absorb it, then that’s great. However, you’re into the realm of miracle cures there that will leave you screwed the second that you stop using them.
Anyway, thanks for your insight. Much appreciated. You are a great advert for the benefit of steroids .
hehe. Sure. The Atkins diet might work, but it has yet to attract much support from the medical community (certainly over here). Plus my own personal experience of (admittedly not Atkins) a low carb, high protein diet actually had me gaining weight. So I find it hard to recommend.
Finally, if you’re 21 stone, I’m not sure that you should be doing anything extreme. I doubt that there is a doctor in the world who would say that cutting down on wasted calories for soda or reducting your fat intake is going to be bad for you.
Bromley: Eating a lot of omega-3 fats will actually help you lean out, despite the high calorie count. Furthermore, fat intake correlates with testosterone levels, and low testosterone won’t help anyone lose fat.
Omega-3. That may well be the case. However, your average 21 stone guy is going to be so overwhelmed by the whole losing-100-pounds thing that I doubt he’ll need the issue confused.
If you want to make it easy for him, tell him he can eat all the fish that he wants (not fried, of course ).
As to the fat intake=testosterone levels business, I think that’s muddying the waters as well. If a guy is drowning, you don’t ask him if his underwear is chafing . Correct me if I’m wrong though.
Any links to this appreciated. Until they appear, here’s a brief link for people like me who’d never heard this before.
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