I think that if I actually regulate what I get while shopping (I haven’t done this yet, and I’ve already thrown away 2-3 items that are terrible for you in my pantries). Waste of money, but it’s necessary if I’m serious about it.
I think I ate on average 1700-1800 calories per day when I lost 35 lbs. I would guesstimate that it was roughly 1.5-2.0 lbs/wk. Any more than that is unhealthy, of course, but I had to keep the caloric intake low due to the fact that my activity level is also low. I DO work a desk job, but as a clerk, I am constantly running around. I lacked this activity back when I lost the weight before, so I’m positive I could do it successfully this time around.
Be REALLY careful of relying on those TV dinners. They are notoriously high in sodium which only ramps up the appetite and can become a disservice to you.
Seriously – there are a ton of better and easier ways to eat healthier without relying on pre-packaged foods. Sautée a few vegetables (leafy greens!) and then scramble a few eggs with them. Homemade soup, not the canned stuff. I make one batch a week and I’ve lost a few pounds already. Keep bags of baby carrots, endive, sugar snap peas, and celery around for snacking. These are just starters.
If snacking is a problem, there are a few things you can do.
For me, I find that if I snack while doing something fun (watching TV, playing computer) I will get a POWERFUL urge to snack every time I do this activity. This urge is almost overwhelming. So I do the “snacks only at the kitchen table thing.” If I want a snack, I sit down at the kitchen table and eat it without any other distractions. It takes around a week, but eventually you can break those “I’m surfing the dope, I should have some pretzels” or “Eating some chips while reading this book sure would be nice” cravings.
Portion control is the other big snack issue. Read the nutritional information for your snack food, and stick to one portion. Always eat chips, etc. from a bowl rather than directly from the bag.
Finally, keep your snacks somewhere inconvenient- on a top shelf somewhere. That way you have to make a conscious decision to access them.
I think, though, you still have to work on your perspective. A “diet” never changed anyone’s weight, it’s permanent lifestyle change that does that. There is never going to be a time that you can fill your freezer with frozen pizza again. Having a pile of junk food around the house is never going to be okay. One or two snacks, sure. But you can’t say “eh, I’m not dieting, I’ll just buy whatever.” Even if you are not dieting, you are still going to have to strive to make healthy choices every day.
If you really don’t like cooking, I enjoy the Lean Cuisine or Weight Watchers meals. They’re generally around 300 calories a pop, and they serve me well for a quick, lazy lunch. I love to cook, so that part is not a problem for me, but I’ve always been happy with these particular frozen dinners. You can usually find one or the other on sale for two bucks a pop (at least around here) at Target or Meijer. I’ve seen them as cheap as $1.69 each.
Otherwise, when I was aggressively dieting, for the stuff I wouldn’t cook: I kept around the low-calorie low carb bread, lots of sliced lean turkey breast, ham, or roast beef; cheese, eggs, yogurt. It really would be worth your while to cook for yourself–save money, know exactly what goes into your food, and you can freeze stuff for later. But, if you really hate it, I find the above works well enough. Also, a soup before your main course helps to fill up your stomach and keep you sated.
I can’t emphasize enough that healthy dieting/dining is doing considerably more than just looking at calorie count.
These 300-calorie packaged foods often contain more than 600 or 800 mg of sodium. The chemical used in the processing of these foods will make you more hungry so unless you have tremendous willpower, you can do yourself a huge disservice to rely on these meals.
Ultimately, it has to get down to a LIFESTYLE change. You can’t rely on quick trick meals to get you to lose weight and then have it remain off. I have been struggling with this my entire life and fervently believe these “diet meals” are causing more detriment than benefit.
I do agree with you in principal, but there are times when its better to make a “less worse” choice, than just fall off the wagon and go hogwild. Like, if I’m at a conference it’s better to have a Zone bar than a giant muffin and a croissant. A Zone bar isn’t the greatest breakfast option, and in an ideal world, I would have made sure to have a hardboiled egg and some veggies on me for breakfast, but, well, none of us can be ideal all the time. Sometimes we’re in a rush, of forgetful, or just a bit lazy, and that’s ok. You can eat convenience foods from time to time, as long as it isn’t an everyday habit or a crutch preventing you from breaking out of bad habits.
shrug YMMV. It works for me. I only eat them for lunch (like I said, I cook for myself for dinner), but they keep me well sated between lunch and dinner. And, to be honest, they probably have less salt than my own cooking.
I also agree that it absolutely needs to be a lifestyle change. The problem was that I entered the comfort zone (ie: dating someone, getting a job), so I started to relax. One could argue that I never actually changed my lifestyle the first time around, but I’m aiming to do that now.
I was effective in aggressively dieting before and then “maintaining.” By this, I mean eating whatever I want, but doing so intelligently. When I was dieting before (and now), I tend to avoid things like that just to forget what they’re like for awhile. I don’t think picking up a Whopper after 4 months of dieting suddenly ignited my urge to eat 2 of them a day along with countless other high-portioned meals. This was brought on mostly by “settling in” and having actual goals besides dieting. It distracted me from it.
I plan on taking off the weight and keeping it off by just not being an idiot. Easier said than done, sure, but there are always side motivations which I can rely on.
I appreciate all the suggestions. I think just turning on the frying pan and throwing a bunch of healthy stuff together can, a lot of the time, yield terrific results.
To the Healthy Choice comments: I ate these probably 3-4 times a week for lunch and never noticed an increased appetite. While I know that excessive sodium is bad for you, it never seemed to affect me in terms of wanting to eat more. YMMV, I guess.
LeanCuisine and Weight Watchers: I totally forgot about those. I didn’t know that they were that cheap. The portions are small, sure, but add on a piece of fruit or some carrots/broccoli and you have a filling meal.
You have to shop around. I’ve seen them obnoxiously expensive (like close to $4 a package), but even at regular price at the Target, they’re something like $2.69 a pop. Usually, there is a sale on one or the other at $2/each rate. I’ve gotten used to the portions, so one actually keeps me satisfied for awhile.
Obviously, yes, of course it’s a about lifestyle change, yaddayaddayadda. I think we all know this. For me, that lifestyle change was not consuming a Big Mac and fries for lunch, but something a little more thought-out. It might be a yogurt with some Fiber One cereal mixed in; it might be a couple hard boiled eggs, some toast, and cheese. Or it might be a Lean Cuisine meal. All three are better than what I used to eat for lunch, and constitute a lifestyle change.
I concur ~ I just know people who fill their freezers with these meals and expect to permanently lose weight by subsisting on nothing but high-sodium, pre-packaged foods. IF they lose weight, it never stays off or other foods start to creep back into the diet.
It’s important, in dieting as in so many other things, to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Changing your eating habits to diet-book perfection overnight is not going to work for most people. It will require more willpower than most people have. It’s better to work on one or a few bad food habits at a time. When you’ve got those down, then work on other habits. Then they’re more likely to stick. A good habit that you can’t stick to doesn’t do you any good.
Also, the Lean Cuisine, etc, probably don’t have more sodium than the OP is used to eating, if he’s been eating TV dinners and restaurant food. Those things are not low in sodium. If they’re comparable in sodium but lower in calories, they are an improvement over what he was eating. Deal with the sodium issue later, when you’ve dealt with the calorie issue. They are two separate issues, and do not have to be dealt with at the same time. As long as you’re not increasing the sodium in your diet as part of reducing calories, you’re better off eating a lot of sodium and not too many calories than you are eating a lot of sodium and too many calories. Neither one is ideal, but you aren’t trying to be perfect. You’re trying to improve your diet.
These are good ideas, too. But keep in mind it might take some people more than a week for those cravings to go away. And remember, the important thing is not whether you have cravings or not, it’s whether you eat or not. Cravings don’t have calories. If you have cravings but successfully resist them, that’s just as good from a calorie standpoint as not having cravings. You don’t need to feel guilty about having cravings.
I’m on a diet called the No S Diet. No snacks, no sweets, no seconds, except on Saturdays, Sundays, and special days (special days are generally holidays or birthdays, things like that). I’ve also added a few mods of my own, like “always eat from a plate, never from a package”. My new diet rule that I’m working on now is “no eating except when sitting down”. That means I don’t grab a handful of this and a little of that while I’m in the kitchen.
Another rule is that the package has to be closed up and put away before I can start eating. That means I can’t bring the package with me to the table. If I want more snack food, I have to get up and get the package out again. The little bit of extra time that takes can give you enough time to think, “do I really want this?”.
This is the problem with diets that say you can only have their special food (or one of the problems with such diets). You never learn to make reasonable food choices on your own, so when you stop eating their foods, you’re back where you started. I know. I did Slim-Fast, and regained all the weight once I stopped drinking those shakes.
When I don’t feel like cooking dinner then sometimes I make sandwiches. I get the low-sodium ham or turkey at the deli and I make one or two sandwiches depending on my appetite. I make them on light whole wheat bread with lettuce and tomato, or sometimes just mustard. I stay away from mayonnaise since it’s pretty much pure fat.
I like the idea of the rice and bean tortillas that **even sven **mentioned, I’m going to try them.
Do you eat for emotional reasons? Some examples of this would be stress eating or eating because you’re bored. If you are, learn some other ways to deal with those emotions. It could be taking a walk, meditating, or doing yoga, or it could be watching a favorite DVD, re-reading a favorite book, or playing a favorite video game. Pretty much anything that doesn’t harm yourself or others and doesn’t involve ingesting calories will be an improvement on eating to deal with those emotions.
Do you hang out at restaurants, coffee shops, or other places that sell food? You might want to think of someplace to hang out that doesn’t sell food. If you see the food, you’ll get hungry. Places that sell food want people who hang out there to get hungry and buy food (that’s how they make their money), so they set things up so that you see tempting food. Find ways to have fun that don’t include food or drinks (or at least not drinks with calories- water or diet soda would be OK).
Tradeoffs are something to watch out for. They’re things like saying, “I exercised today, so now I can eat this pint of ice cream”, or “I didn’t eat that salty frozen dinner, I’ll reward myself with a trip to Coldstone’s”. I advise against tradeoffs like these. If you have to do them, though, make sure that you’re trading off for something of equal or lesser calorie value. It doesn’t do you much good to reward yourself for doing 700 calories worth of exercise with 900 calories worth of ice cream.
Thinking of food as a reward is dangerous. Just ask any number of owners of fat cats or dogs. Find some ways to reward yourself that don’t include food. Food as a reward is emotional eating, the same way stress eating or eating because you’re bored are.
What you do when (not if) you fail at some part of your diet is important. Almost everybody who goes on a diet fails at some part of it at some time (I suspect the ones who say they never did are forgetful or lying). You don’t want to think, as many people do, “I blew my diet, I might as well eat this whole bag of chips/pint of ice cream/whatever”. That’s like saying, “I got a dent in the car, might as well drive it into a brick wall”. Get back on the wagon as quickly as you can. Don’t wait till tomorrow or Monday or New Year’s Day to start again. It’s not the end of the world, or even of your diet, if you break the rules.
It’s less wasteful than eating something bad for you when you don’t even want to. You waste more money that way, in the long term, when you factor in costs of health care.
It’s also not wasteful or a sin to not clean your plate. Learn to stop eating when you’re not hungry any more. Don’t keep eating to finish up what’s on your plate. Better for food to go to waste than to go to (your) waist.
I just came back from the Target, so I can tell you what the prices here (in Chicago) at least are. I would assume Targets nationwide should have comparable pricing.
Lean Cuisine. Regular price: $2.69
Weight Watchers Smart Ones. Regular price: $1.99
Weight Watchers Smart Ones (fancier or newer varieties): $2.25 on sale, $2.69 regular
Healthy Choice: $1.69 (on sale, didn’t note the regular price)
Michelina’s Gourmet or Lean Gourmet (they’re really about the same, calorie-wise. It just seems to be a marketing difference to me. Not a big fan of these, but I’ll throw it out, as they’re in the same calorie range as the above, although the portions feel smaller and less satisfying to me.): $1.02 (regular)
If you read the labels, you’ll even find that not all of them are loaded in salt (except for Michelina’s, which do tend to be on the salty side). For example, since the Healthy Choice were so cheap today, I loaded up on those. The Caribbean Chicken, for example, has 310 calories, 260mg sodium, 5g fiber, which, all things considered, is not all that bad. Read the labels, and make healthier choices. Even when I buy non-reduced calorie convenience food (which actually is most of the time), like frozen pizza, for instance, I read through the labeling to know exactly what I’m getting into.