Then I’m probably doing it wrong, then. Ah, well, at least it’s light ranch. (My usual Italian just gets diluted in the water clinging to the lettuce. But I did manage to remember how much I like cucumber…)
Actually, I wasn’t, but I realize it looked that way, thanks to some bad wording. I intended to ask how (s)he came up with the intense and brutal workout, not the entire concept.
Well, when you begin with the assumption that eating right is easy and enjoyable and that exercise is “fairly painless,” sure it’s bizarre. But as my OP makes clear, that was far from my point of view at the time I posted it.
Leaper, I can’t tell you what to do but I can tell you what is working for me:
Forgive yourself. It took you a long time to arrive at where you are, it will take time to change it. Be kind, be honest, and stop comparing yourself to others when you do decide to change it up. Your progress can only be compared to you; no one else.
Do one thing a day. Even if it’s picking up your dirty laundry off the floor and putting it in the hamper. Wash it and put it away the next day. Just do one thing a day, no matter how trivial, no matter how small.
Turn off the TV and stop eating in front of it. You burn more calories reading or doing absolutley nothing than watching TV.
Check out this website, www.nerdfitness.com. It has done wonders for me, the people in the forums are friendly, non-judgemental and most importantly, get comic book references! I’ve been following a modified version of the Paleo diet Steve recommends. I still eat whole grain breads, rice and pasta, but take the time to load up on lots of veggies. I give myself a cheat day where anything goes! Huge plate of nachos? Check! 6-12 beer? check! Monster ice cream sundae? Double check! Funny thing is though, that since I started a workout program and eating better, I don’t want to eat anywhere like I used to when I wanted to pig out.
If you have it available, check out a cooking class at a college or community center. You get out the door, burn a few calories and learn to make easy, simple, STORABLE meals that are “good for you” and tasty! Or, go to websites that can teach you the basics, hell even Youtube will work!
Good Luck, and remember, We’re all in this together.
No comment on most of it, but if your lettuce is wet and dripping, I can understand finding a salad gross. They seem silly, but a salad spinner will help (I assume the salad is wet because you wash it and then drop it into the bowl?). It’s one of those gadgets that never makes sense until you realize what problem they are actually working to solve.
Also, if your fresh veggies tend to go bad before you eat them, maybe try BluApples. They are things that look like, well, blue apples and you put them in your veggie drawer in your fridge. Anecdotal, but they seem to work to extend the edibility of vegetables for me.
A vinegar dressing would be better than something with cream. Also, I’ve found that if you like croutons, instead of putting a bunch, just take one or two and crush them up. And instead of lettuce, try spinach. (It tastes better, in my opinion – lettuce has no flavor to me)
One of my favorite things is mushrooms dipped in hummus. I loves me some hummus. A really good meal: a small pita wrap, spread on some hummus, some spinach and chopped mushrooms. YUMMY! Or for a snack, take some apple slices and put a little bit of peanut butter on them.
I know exactly how the OP feels. Endurance runners and gym rats posting helps nothing. The OP wants motivation, not workout tips.
Any advice posted here should reflect the actual needs of the OP.
If given the literal choice between eating whatever I want and living for 50 more years, and eating a very restricted diet and living 60 more years, I would choose the former every time.
It’s not just the 10 years difference. The quality of life between the two scenarios will be quite different. By eating right and exercising, you will be much more mobile and healthy much, much longer. The choice is between 60 years of being healthy and mobile vs 50 years of heath problems and lack of mobility.
It’s like saving money. It’s a lot more fun to spend it all right away, but that makes for a pretty awful retirement.
For most people, eating right and exercise is done for the benefits they give, not for the pleasure of the activity itself. It’s important to think of the benefits they bring instead of whether the actual activity is enjoyable or not.
I don’t do stuff that makes me unhappy. You can make changes for the better that will be practically invisible. For instance, we buy unsweetened applesauce. If I’m going to eat sugar, by God let it be a piece of cake! And I do eat cake, just not every day.
I go to the gym for two reasons: to make my husband happy, and so I can get in some reading time while he’s in the sauna. I don’t bust my ass in there either, but just moving around’s going to benefit me whether I like it or not.
Oh! And we got a dog. A big pain in the ass dog who makes us walk around the neighborhood twice daily rain or shine.
I hope this thread has helped you, Leaper. I’ve enjoyed reading it.
I’m kinda in the same school of thought as the OP. I’m 35, have high BP, borderline diabetic and have a BMI so high one doctor refused to believe it was right in my chart until she calculated it herself. I also have a five year old daughter who’s father is out of the picture. I have every reason in the world to get healthier and lose weight but I just can’t seem to motivate myself to do it. Because it’s so hard and I’ve failed so many times. When you’ve been overweight your whole life and failed more diets than you can even remember, you kinda lose hope at some point. Why put myself through all that pain and suffering when I’ll only fail again? I don’t know. I mean, yeah if for nothing else I need to do it for my daughter but at the same time I just don’t care anymore.
Do you perhaps falsely associate achieving the latter as the measure of having succeeded at the former?
You can make changes that will get you significantly healthier, make changes that make it much more likely that you will be around for your child longer and able to be of use to her longer, without succeeding in losing any weight, let alone very much weight. The scale is just one metric and not the most important one.
Oh I am not saying that it easy to make any change, but the change does not need to be onerous. Gradually increasing exercise, slowly improving your fitness, making incremental improvements in your nutrition choices in ways that you will discover taste great, are not so hard to do, and make you feel better … just choose three doable modest behavior changes as your goal at first and stick with them and you will have improved your health … again even if the scale does not reflect it at all.
For me, I find changing diet much harder than adding exercise. Diet is something which you have to think about all the time. Exercise is done when it’s done. You don’t have to think about running all day. You run for 30 minutes and you’re done. Even if you never lose a pound, you will be much healthier if you exercise. The number on the scale isn’t the only indicator of health.
So rather than trying to tackle diet only or diet and exercise together, just try exercise. It’s just 30 minutes out of your day. Do it and you’re done. And after you exercise for a while, you may find you have the motivation to change your diet.
Have you tried group exercise? A good class for beginners is Zumba. It’s a fun, easy form of Latin dance. You don’t necessarily have to go to a gym. Many community centers will offer classes and you just pay when you go. Check the website to find classes in your area.
Consider joining a beginner-friendly, women’s training program. There are often groups for running, triathlons, swimming, and biking. You’ll have a coach to give you specific guidance and be surrounded by supportive women. You may find you actually enjoy going to the training sessions.
My Uncle used to be a very fit guy, very health conscious. He dropped dead while running on a very routine day. To quote Pollyanna “Death comes unexpectedly”.
Losing a massive amount of weight is very difficult, and takes a very long time. Someone that has gotten to that point may choose a “natural” death rather than undergo the ardors of long term weight loss. Some people lack the motivation to undergo such a monumental task. They’d rather suffer the ill effects of being obese and die that way, rather than die at a local gym after having given their all, and eliminating everything that they enjoyed most.
I’m not endorsing that way of thinking, but I know that people live that way.
The last time I was really serious about losing weight, I was more successful than I thought I could ever be. I fit into jeans that my friends might have been jealous of.
I was a beast then. Fat, but HIGHLY motivated. We had a scale in our house that had those little plastic markers that showed your last weight, and I did battle with that little blue marker.
I got to the point where I would brush my teeth before weighing myself because of the weight of what was brushed off my teeth. I contemplated how a fart might affect my weight. It sounds funny, but I was not joking. I did not starve myself then, but I ate like I was on a mission.
That me is AWOL now. If I can ever find him again, I can beat the living shit out of my current problems, but he’s nowhere to be found. What I wouldn’t pay for that energy back…
I can’t disagree with what you said. People will only put up with drudgery for so long before they give up. However, I hope everyone reading this thread gives the changes an honest try. I know that if you’re sedentary and overweight the effort may seem monumental, but it gets easier the more you do it. And if it doesn’t stick, at least you’ll know you tried.
Sorry to hear about your uncle. I suspect he wouldn’t have had it any other way. If he had to go, likely he was doing something he enjoyed at the time. I hope he lived longer and better by being fit.
Not to disagree but to point out yet again the fallacy that is repetively engaged in this thread - the false dichotomy:
Either take on a monumental task that eliminates everything you enjoy most or contiinue as is in an unhealthy state.
Sorry but that is bullshit and is those are not the only two options. Setting up the only alternative to the unhealthy status quo as something so large as to be if not impossible than at least too imposing to achieve is a complete cop out. “Oh, I can’t do everything so therefore I will do nothing.”
You do not have to give it your all to make a major health impact difference. The greatest impacts in fact come with the first smallest steps.
As long as he isn’t using my tax dollars to pay for his “disability” that is his lifestyle choice and/or bringing roaches into the building where I live because he’s too fat or lazy to bring out his trash, I agree. I don’t know what his purpose was for starting this thread. It sounds like validation seeking for unhealthy behavior but these threads inevitably spiral into one camp banging their heads against the wall trying to get someone to change something that he clearly admitted he’s not wanting to change.
Two things keep leaping out at me throughout this thread. One, you sound depressed. You don’t find many things enjoyable, and you don’t have the motivation to do things that you don’t enjoy but know you should do. You’d prefer death over making your life a bit less pleasant? That’s not exactly the sign of a bad person so much as a symptom of major depression. Give it a serious look, because if you really are depressed then have to deal with that before you can really afford to worry about diet and exercise, and they might even resolve themselves.
Two, you have some crazy ideas about diet. Stuff like this:
That isn’t helpful. In fact it’s probably best to forget about all of the nutritional news you’ve heard in the past ever, because it’s almost all garbage. The science is probably okay, but the way its reported on turns a single preliminary study into THE NEW BIBLE OF DIET when the facts simply aren’t there to support it, and they might only apply to a small subset of people. Ferinstance, most people can eat unlimited sodium and unlimited cholesterol (within reason) without suffering for it, even though some people do have to watch them carefully.
You can get by just fine on a balanced diet, and even that’s pretty generous. As long as you’re getting some vegetables, some protein, and you keep your caloric intake in check, you should stay reasonably healthy. Bread and pasta and the like aren’t going to poison you, they’re what almost everybody has subsisted on for millennia. Put some tomato sauce on the pasta, or eat some carrot sticks with your sandwich, or straight up eat potatoes and as long as you don’t eat the same thing day-in-day-out you’ll probably do all right for nutrients.
The problem with sugary drinks and fruit juices isn’t that they’re evil, it’s that they don’t fill you up so it’s easy to keep drinking and drinking and loading you with calories. If you drink them in moderation rather than to keep yourself hydrated, there’s nothing wrong with them. If you drink nothing but, that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 calories a day, on top of everything you eat. If plain water is so unpleasant that you can’t drink any whatsoever, you can still get by drinking artificially sweetened drinks or seltzer.
If the idea of eating the foods you like but with some vegetables here and there is so unpleasant that you’d rather die, again, consider getting yourself checked out for depression. I don’t have anything to say about exercise.:o
Although it must be noted that exercise, at least hitting the standard 3 minutes a day of moderate level exercise 6 days a week, is modestly effective at treating depression.
Ah, well, at least it’s light ranch. 
(My usual Italian just gets diluted in the water clinging to the lettuce. But I did manage to remember how much I like cucumber…)