And I feel great! I was eating two egg biscuits thrice a week, and 2-3 beers a night. I would feel lousy all the time. I attributed it to aging, physical labor, the long term effects of various surgeries, and being overweight. In an attempt to solve the overweight problem I decided to cut out unnecessary calories. Beers and biscuits had to go.
Man, I feel great!
Funny how that works, isn’t it? 
Due to an intense sinus infection, I haven’t had anything but soup for the last 4 days. I still feel miserable, but I’m starting to drop some weight. It isn’t just dehydration, because I drink plenty of water to help fight the infection. Maybe I can keep these eating habits (slightly modified, of course) when I’m well. Good luck to both of us!
Thanks. Truth be told, I need to drop about fifty. My work is physically demanding and it is getting harder and harder to do. I get home aching all over and the first thing I do is grab a cold one. Sort of a vicious cycle.
No kidding. All it takes is will-power. (OH, if Life were that simple!) But keep at it…you can only get healthier. My job isn’t very physically demanding, so I have to work all the harder to lose weight. I haven’t been all that good at it. It sounds like you have a good attitude about things, and that is a good first step. Keep us informed how things go…we could use the encouragement!
Will power is highly overrated. Get the temptations out of the house, and eat small, frequent meals, 5 or 6 /day. Keep only healthy food around. Go to the store after you eat, so you aren’t tempted.
I’m with picunurse on this one. Our family cut out all fast food except pizza, sub sandwiches, and Teriyaki Chicken Bowl about a year and a half ago (after watching Super Size Me, the children somehow lost their taste for fast-food burgers) and we phased out even those things over the past six months. After a few months of making our own pizza, subs, and stir-fry, the idea of eating the lousy food we can get at the fast-food joints just doesn’t appeal at all.
Or, if you have the kind of grocery store that has free samples, get loaded on those and then shop. That’s the economical strategy.
It may save money, but it won’t keep any pounds off.
Sure it will! Come on, you can’t get that fat off those itty bitty samples. Unless you’re as greedy as I am, which is rare.
I understand about the beer, but I can’t see any reason to cut out alchohol of all sorts completely. Surely you could switch to tequila or vodka? Perhaps mixed with healthy fruit juice?
After I lose the weight, sure. Three beers a day is roughly 3,000 calories a week. I need to lose fifty pounds, so gratuitous calories gotta go.
I stopped drinking a week ago, just on a whim. I wanted to experience all of my social events and family gatherings sober. Interesting, I surived them all! Maybe I can turn this into a long term thing and get healthy again.
-Tcat
After reading an article about organic food and the environment, I decided to start shopping at the co-op. Not all the time, but about half the time (there are things about co-op shopping that drive me nuts - I do still want plastic trash bags, thank you. Sixteen kinds of tofu and two cuts of beef). You know what, food that has been just plain old grown without being sprayed and processed within an inch of its life does taste better! There have been a bunch of products we’ve bought at the co-op that we’ve brought home to “this is really GOOD.”
And this is an effortless way to get rid of most of the temptations around the house. Yeah, I can buy chips and cookies and chocolate at the co-op (organic free range cookies), but there is MUCH less selection, and the markup on junk is pretty high. Its a fairly effortless way to drop a few pounds.
(Actually, their chocolate selection is probably the best I’ve run into outside a chocolate shop).
That’s excellent Contrapuntal! I, too, have recently curbed my drinking habits in that I have decided not to have 2-3 glasses of wine every single day of the week with dinner.
I’m sleep better. I have more energy for my morning walk and I’ve lost a few pounds.
Who’d have thought it could be so easy?
BTW 3500 calories = 1 lb so by just cutting out the beer you should be able to lose 1 lb a week. Subtract the biscuits as well and now you’re really on track to some actual sustainable weight loss.
I cut out drinking a year or two ago because it was giving me rapid heartbeat in the middle of the night, and I felt better all over as a result. And I wasn’t even drinking much when I quit - a glass of wine with dinner, or maybe a mai tai on Friday nights after work was my intake at that point.
Unfortunately, I haven’t lost any weight as a result. Maybe the baguettes with camembert after dinner most nights will be cut next!
I thought there weren’t very many calories in hard liquor? Isn’t it just ethanol and water? If you have 4 shots of vodka instead of 4 beers your alchohol intake will be the same, but caloric intake will be reduced, will it not?
About three shots of vodka is equal to one beer, calorie-wise.
This chart has vodka at 115-125 calories per shot, versus 150 calories per 12 oz. beer. Pretty much a wash, as far as I am concerned.
This chart has vodka at 115-125 calories per shot, versus 150 calories per 12 oz. beer. Pretty much a wash, as far as I am concerned. If you mix the vodka with tonic or OJ or tomato juice, you add more calories.
Good god! And here I was under the imression that hard liquor was a healthy, lean alternative, while all those quarts of rum I’ve been guzzling have going straight to my ass! Thanks for fighting my ignorance guys.