For most of my life I’ve been fat or heavy (not including the high school years when I didn’t eat). I carry the majority of my extra weight in my stomach, which is a delightful boost to my already-low self esteem. It’s a combo of bad eating habits, stress, depression, and a number of other excuses I make on a daily basis. I know - wah wah wah.
So I’m looking to lose weight, about 60 pounds or whatever the fat-to-muscle equivalent is. I’m not looking to lose weight quickly, in fact I’d like to go relatively slowly so I can try to keep the saggy skin to a minimum.
I’m planning on starting an AM walking regimen, walking at a brisk pace for about 45 minutes to an hour. After that, I’m at a loss. Are exercise DVDs worth a damn? Is the walking even worth a damn?
I can’t afford a gym membership and my afternoons and evenings are taken up with helping the kids with homework and getting dinner ready, so I’m trying to find things I can do in between the other nonsense I have to do every day. My husband works nights, so I’m also looking for kid-friendly and/or kid-convenient activities).
I think so far you’re definitely on the right track. One thing that I noticed from what you said is that you didn’t eat in high school . . . were you quite underweight then? And did you become quickly overweight after high school when you started eating normally again? It might help us if you give us more specific advice on how you gained the weight and your eating habits.
The 45-min AM walk is definitely a great idea. Could you also do an evening walk with your kids? Or even play an outdoorsy game with them for about an hour a day in the evening (like tag or something?). I notice your in Az, so weather shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
That being said, I’ve found that eating well is essential to weight loss. You probably know to focus on a healthy combination of vegetables, whole grains, fruits, and low-fat protein and dairy. More essential than just that, though, for most people I know, is forming a healthy relationship with food. Do you have a tendency to graze a lot (eating all the time), eat while standing up or doing other things, and at irregular times? If so, I can definitely give you some advice on how to really change how you approach food, but I would like to know if that’s one of your problems before I write out detailed advice.
I walk outside for at least an hour every day. I’m 5’6", a size 8. I eat three meals a day when I work and two meals on my days off. If I eat a lot at lunch, I don’t eat supper, or at most have tea and toast. I try to eat nutritionally, but do allow myself sweets once a day.
True story: A heavy, but not really overweight man, once stopped me in the street and said “I don’t want to scare you, I just want to say Thank You. I’ve been overweight all my life and nothing worked. Then I saw you walking every day and figured ‘If she can do it, I can do it and it might work.’ I’ve lost 60 pounds in four months just from walking. Thank you.”
If you walk every day for a month, you will be hooked. It helps not only with the weight loss, but with the stress and depression. Walking gets you outside of your place and outside of yourself.
Walking is great. If you’re looking for kid-convenient activities, I just bought myself a mini-trampoline; sometime after lunch I watch 20+ minutes of TV and bounce. (You can’t read while you bounce.) It gets my heartrate up and loosens me up nicely, and I can fit it in just about every day.
During high school, I was 5’4" (still am) and anywhere from 103-120 lbs, and wearing a size 3 or 5 jeans. To my eyes, I was horrendously overweight. I’m trying to think about “way back then,” so please forgive my stream of consciousness-like writing. After high school, I stayed at a steady 125-135 range, which I was ok with. After some time in college and a bad relationship, I got really depressed & started packing on weight, in the 150-160 range. I don’t recall eating really differently, but I’m sure I did. I know I was a late-night eater (10pm or so for dinner).
At the end of that relationship, I went back to the not eating plan, and was working at a high-energy job (haunted house), so I was back down to 125-130.
In my current relationship, went back to late-night eating, extreme stress, depression, etc. And I also had a kid back in 2002, and haven’t been able to really get rid of that extra weight. And seeing my typed-out life, duh.
So, a bit more of my life than you probably wanted or needed to hear, but I’m feeling generous.
I’m a total stress eater. I’ve tried to get a handle on it, but I’m failing miserably. I tend to do it after the kids are in bed, so they don’t pick up on my bad eating habits. Ew. Written out, that just sounds creepy and pathetic.
Since I’ve gotten my new job I don’t graze, thank goodness. I try to make relatively healthy meals for the family (I’ve eliminated red meat, opting for fish, lean turkey, and chicken).
I had my walking routine a few years ago, but then my schedule changed to where I had to be at work at 5:00 am. By the time I got home at night, I just wanted to fall into a coma.
I love walking, though. I’m glad to hear that it’s not time wasted.
Start the walking regimen you proposed. Do it consistently3-5 times a week for six weeks. Then come back and ask what else you can do.
I think that many people looking to make a lifestyle change, particularly with regard to weight, want to change everything all at once - exercise, lifestyle, nutrition, etc. In my opinion, it is too much. Try one thing and see if you can stick to it. Seriously, if you consistently walk as much as you say you want to the weight will start to come off. Once it becomes part of your day, then start to make other changes that you can live with.
Walking is a fabulous exercise and I recommend it heartily–unless you need/want to tone specific muscle groups in order to get your body tuned to just the way you want it special exercises are no better for you and can be worse.
The advantages of walking are:
It’s low impact–less stress on your knees and joints and if you start reasonably and increase gradually you won’t hurt yourself. When you’re stiff the morning after a workout it’s a great excuse not to exercise again until you feel better–which could be never.
You don’t need any special equipment aside from some comfy shoes.
You don’t have to get up and go someplace special just to exercise–just walk out your front door and there you are!
Walking in the morning raises your metabolism for the whole day, which means you’ll burn more calories doing your everyday routine than you would without the walk. It also raises your energy level and makes you feel good all day long–feeling good helps you to say “no!” to snacks and junk food.
Regular exercise helps combat depression and releases endorphins into your system which again makes you feel better about yourself and the world around you and gives you more “won’t power.”
It’s really easy to get someone else to walk with you and you can talk and enjoy the other person’s company without getting all out of breath.
If you have a dog, he will love you even more if you take him along with you every day–and if you feel like slacking off those mournful puppy dog eyes will get you out the door better than a boot to the ass.
Once you get in shape you can walk faster, add handweights and incorporate lots of uphill into your route, which burns even more calories for the same time commitment–but still keeps your risk of injury low.
The other exercise I recommend greatly is riding a bike–same advantages as walking but you go faster and further and the scenery is usually better.
I lost a ton of weight (40+ lbs in less than a year) by doing nothing more than cutting junk food and sweets out of my diet and walking every day–a coworker and I used to go walk for our two 15 minute breaks and another 15-20 minutes during lunch. I was amazed at how much a difference just that amount of exercise made. It helped that neither of us would let the other off the hook, and the ingrained habit has stuck with me. I’ve put a few of the pounds back on and I want to drop about 15-20 in the next few months so I’ve started hiking seriously again after slacking off a bit over the past six months. On the plus side, since I spent so much time hiking before I didn’t lose much tone or wind and I can still do my regular 5-6 mile up and downhill route in 2 hours–only up 15-20 minutes from my average peak time.
And good on ya for taking the steps to get in shape–you’ll love yourself for it, trust me!
I think the first thing to do is set realistic goals. Is being 60 pounds lighter overly optimistic? Are you trying to look like you did in high school? Do you possibly have a view of yourself that’s skewed negatively by your stress/emotional issues?
Walking, changing your eating habits, and playing outside with your family are all excellent ways to help keep healthy, but none of it is going to work unless you can be comfortable with yourself on a deeper level. I don’t know how serious your depression is, but you might want to consider talking to a therapist to see if there’s a deeper issue bothering you.
I don’t have any weight loss tips, but a friend who took a Nutrition class (a Nursing Program requirement) told me that learning the basics and getting an understanding of how our bodies work has helped her to stick with a diet and exercise plan.
I won’t recommend taking a class (Nutrition is hard!) but it makes sense that learning about calories and metabolism can help with a lifestyle adjustment. It seems like understanding why something works, or doesn’t work, can help you to be successful.
Also, as part of the class, students had to analyze various diets and weight loss plans to determine which were healthy. Weight Watchers came out ahead, of course, but I was surprised to learn that the Slim-Fast plan was nutritionally acceptable. Whodathunkit?
About the only thing that’s ever worked for me is Weight Watchers. It’s about the easiest thing to do if you don’t know much about food (I didn’t when I started). They have a great online version if you don’t much go for meetings (or can’t afford them–I get the meetings for a greatly reduced rate through work, but ordinarily they’re very pricey). The other piece of advice I have is that you need to learn how to cook good food to lose weight. Nobody likes eating the same salads and frozen dinners over and over again. I’m addicted to Cooking Light magazine. I didn’t really learn to cook until I lost weight, and now I’m damned good at it, to the point where almost everything I make is better than I could get at all but the best restaurants in town. Cooking helps with variety, and getting stuck in a rut is a diet-killer.
I’m definitely *not * trying to look like I did in high school. I was happy at 135, so losing 60 would put me at that weight. Don’t make me admit my weight on a public forum. Also, I think that not expecting immediate results helps out. I haven’t scheduled my Victoria’s Secret shoot yet.
I can’t really answer if I have a skewed image of myself. I know what I see in the mirror and I know what my husband tells me; those two things do not match. I know that my current weight far exceeds what it should be, and body areas are not the way I would prefer them to look. And given the questions of “when are you due?” I think my image is closer to reality than what my husband says. [I think I may pit those “When are you due?” bastards.]
I’m back & forth with my depression. Generally, I’m able to take a step outside myself & realize that it’s Not That Bad and “They’re” not out to get me. I’ve had some not-great experiences with therapists, so I haven’t been in a huge hurry to seek one out. I do realize that I really could use some help, but financially it’s not really in the stars right now.
I figure that the weight issue is one of my stressors that I’m able to control. I don’t expect to be hot Milfy von Sexpants; I’ll settle for Cutie McTushie.
I’ve started looking at Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig, and even this place locally. I go to the gym 3-4 times a week, alternating between weights/cardio and just cardio. My weight is stuck.
Anybody have any luck with Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, etc? I can’t see spending $300 a week on special foods, PLUS fresh fruits and veggies, just for myself…not when there’s two other people in the house.
I think I need to spring for the Bodygem metabolic test my gym provides.
I did Jenny about 12 years ago. I quickly lost 30 lbs and promptly put it back on. They have overweight counselors and that is NOT inspiring.
Then I got smart and went to Weight Watchers which teaches you how to eat real food and deal with your mindset about food. I dumped over 100 lbs and love it.
Understand your weaknesses - sounds like you know you are a stress eater, so you either need to channel the stress eating into another activity (which would be best, particularly if your activity was something like yoga that addressed the stress while not eating), or at least change what you eat when you are stressed (air popped popcorn is tons better than half a bag of Oreos).
Some people have a weakness for sweets, some for salt - if yours is salt, don’t deny your salt habit, but do indulge it selectively - a few carrots liberally sprinkled with salt is better than a bag of potato chips. Mine is chocolate, but one tiny bit of good chocolate is worth a whole Hershey bar.
I log my calories almost every day–I treat my calorie budget the way I treat my financial budget. So when I’m out of calories for the day, I’m done.
I’ll also echo Dangerosa’s point about figuring out what your weakness is for–and then figure out a way to have some that fits in your calorie budget. I know when I started logging (I use Calorie Count, you can google them if you are interested) I was surprised to see how many things I eat that are on the sweet side. I don’t mean chocolate, just sweet, like strawberries with Splenda or the brown sugar I put in my oatmeal. Prior to logging my calories I would have told you I didn’t have a big sweet tooth–surprise!
Anyway, that’s what works for me. I know calorie counting isn’t very fun and may be more effort than you care to put in, and fair enough. It works for me.
Hey I lost 70 lbs and have kept it off for nearly 3 years. I had been overweight since high school - I managed to “diet” myself from a 140 lb 15 year old to a 200 lb 35 year old. I lost and gained weight for 20 years before I finally figured out what worked for me. I was always able to LOSE weight, but always gained it back and more weight with it.
What I wanted to do was “diet” for a short time and then eat “normal.” It took me 20 years to figure out that my “normal” made me heavy. I had to accept that short term restriction would never give me long term weight loss - I had to change how my normal way of eating.
It’s a really long story, but I read this great book called Super Foods Rx: 14 Foods That Can Change Your Life and it’s like I grabbed an electric wire. I decided that day to change everything - I started concentrating on foods with powerful nutritional properties and avoiding foods with little to no nutritional properties. That’s it, that’s what I did and that’s what I basically still do now.
For the record, the super foods are: tomato, beans, soy, turkey, salmon, walnuts, pumpkin, blueberries, oranges, yogurt, oats, broccoli, tea (green or black) and spinach. Each super food has “sidekicks” (like tomato has watermelon, papaya and pink grapefruit; walnuts has all other nuts, blueberries has all other berries, pumpkin has carrots, orange peppers and sweet potatoes). I concentrated on eating at least 1 food out of each group every day, that didn’t leave me much room to eat anything UNSUPER.
It was a huge mental diet change - from DONT EAT THAT to EAT PLENTY OF THIS! I really think that was key for me, concentrating on the positives and not the negatives.
Basically, I eat a mostly plant-based diet, tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein (mostly fish, turkey and chicken), whole grains (I avoid packaged baked goods and “white” products as much as possible), low fat dairy and healthy fats. I used a combination of eating whole foods and calorie counting and that’s what I still use, everyday, to maintain my weight loss (except instead of 1400-1600 calories, I get 1800-2000 calories, 2200 if I work out).
What really worked for me was cutting out all the processed sugar - I have a strange reaction to sweet things (most baked goods, cookies, crackers etc), if I eat one, I want another one and another one and another one. I’ve found it’s so much easier just to NOT eat the first item. I do allow some sweets, but I eat them in a controlled way (no cold cereal or cookies or ice cream in the house!), I split a dessert in a restaurant, get a 140 calorie biscotti with my non fat latte or get a single scoop of ice cream - I do think life is too short to live without the things I love. Now that I’m maintaining, I also have the occasional glass of wine - I made really hard decisions about what I COULD live without forever (fast food, soda) and what I could not (red wine, dark chocolate, natural peanut butter, the occasional piece of birthday cake).
Another benefit of cutting back on sugar/processed foods - natural foods taste so good to me. A baked sweet potato is decadently sweet, fresh raspberries are divine.
PROS - I feel wonderful, tons of energy, great skin, lost a lot of weight and kept it off, shopping is blissful - I went from wearing the same pair of loose fit jeans every day to a huge closet of adorable size 6 clothes, I am happy being naked in front of my SO (something I NEVER dreamed would be possible), it’s relatively easy to food journal and estimate calories every day
CONS - I go to the grocery store constantly, I cook dinner nearly every night, I pack lunches, I don’t eat fast food or drink sugary soda, I have to make mindful food decisions nearly 100% of the time, and it’s FOREVER. It’s really really hard eating unlike most people.
Exercise is GREAT, but for me, losing weight was at least 90% diet.
Just FYI - I also participate on a pretty good weight loss site - 3fatchicks.com
I find the extra support and accountability very helpful (even after all this time). Please feel free to PM me anytime!
I like crunchy stuff. Luckily, my husband just bought a ridiculously large bag of carrots, which I peeled and have been eating like gangbusters (however gangbusters eat).
Glory - thanks for the info. I’m going to check out that website, and that book looks interesting. I’ll see if my library has it.
And I’ll look into Calorie Count, Contrary (yay alliteration!). Sounds like a good thing.
Also, I think that not expecting immediate results helps out. I haven’t scheduled my Victoria’s Secret shoot yet.
I lost 70 lbs and have kept it off for nearly 3 years. I had been overweight since high school - I managed to “diet” myself from a 140 lb 15 year old to a 200 lb 35 year old. I lost and gained weight for 20 years before I finally figured out what worked for me. I was always able to LOSE weight, but always gained it back and more weight with it.