Had enough of back pain and being fat - time to diet and exercise! Advice?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I have had incredible success with DDP Yoga. It’s a DVD based program that includes a meal plan and an online support system. In the first month I lost 20 lbs and my body feels better everyday (I’m not losing as much weight as quickly at this point as I’ve gotten a bit lazy towards the meal plan). Most workouts are 20-30 minutes long (there are some longer ones) and you can do it from the comfort of your house.

DDP Yoga uses traditional yoga poses along with dynamic resistance to provide a strength and cardio workout with minimal joint impact. Keep in mind, this program doesn’t have any of the meditative or spiritual aspects of traditional yoga. It’s very in your face but it’s also incredibly effective.

While talking about DDP Yoga I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the video that inspired me to start. It worked for Arthur, it worked for me and it can certainly work for you!

22

More tidbits of information to aim the advice better:

Doctor_Why_Bother’s guess of my age is nearly correct - I am 38.

I am very aware of the benefits of caffeine and especially black coffee, but one of the problems that being fat gives me is hiatus hernia; I have to be careful with caffeine. Because I am not used to have too much of it, having more than an espresso will give me the jitters. I am now using green tea.

And speaking of drinking extra fluids, it looks like I have hyperactive kidneys or something. I pee a lot as it is, and when I tried to drink more water I was peeing once per hour!

Thanks to all that advise me to take up running, but running is the very first activity off the menu, because of my back problems. Which, by the way, a specialist confirmed as being caused by excessive weight.

Eating and drinking: good points on cutting on junk food, soda and the like, only I never have them anyway. And cooking your own food - already doing that. And sticking to a Mediterranean diet, as a superficial doctor told me - I am Italian, Mediterranean cooking is what I’d do anyway. In fact, I had to steer away from mostly Mediterranean style, because it evolved for farmers doing active work outdoors and includes lots of carbs that I had to cut out.

So the frustrating thing is that I don’t really have much to cut. I have good cholesterol levels, much to the frustration of an idiot doctor I saw some time ago that thought that fat=junk food=cholesterol; I don’t go for junk food and soda binges, don’t drink, don’t smoke. No wonder my life is so boring! :slight_smile:

It looks like the best options I have for physical activities are swimming and yoga. I used to swim for many years - in fact I started to put on weight when I stopped. As for DDP Yoga, I knew of it by sheer coincidence. A friend of mine started it, even tried to get me into it, but we gave up as it was just too much for us inexperienced fatties.

Walking to work? Good idea, but I just live too far. What I could do is to get off the bus a few stops earlier. If the weather is not too bad.

Lots of good advice, overall. It looks like my plan of action is: get information on yoga, find a cheap place to swim (YMCA? In this country they’re just hostels, and in any case there aren’t any here), walk some of the way to work, get stuff to munch.

Speaking of stuff to munch, my wife suggests buying a bag of almonds. Good idea? How many is too many?

23

It sounds like you make relatively healthy food choices, but probably eat too much of it. As said, track your food (honestly) for a while to see how much you’re taking in. I’d even go so far as to suggest that you buy a scale and try to be very accurate - most people don’t know what a serving is. For example, a serving of pasta or rice is about 1/2 a cup. Measure that out - it’s less then most people think! A serving of meat is about the size of a deck of cards. A serving of cheese is about a cubic inch. Once you start actually measuring out servings and getting an idea of what they look like, you’ll see where you need to cut back.

On that note, a serving of almonds is 12 - 15 or so. I would recommend unsalted.

24

Almonds (all nuts, really) are generally nutritious, but a very high-caloric food. They’re fine for a snack if you have a few, but it’s easy to eat a lot. Green vegetables are snacks that you can have almost without limit. It’s quite difficult to eat enough raw celery or cucumbers or bell pepper to gain weight on.

I strongly recommend using a calorie and exercise tracking app and sticking with its suggestions. You will make different decisions because you’re measuring what you do, and sticking to the guidelines keeps you from going overboard at first and getting burned out.

Note that this is a slow process. Safe rates of weight loss are usually around half a kg/week, and your body weight can easily fluctuate over the course of a day by 1-2 kg, so it can be several weeks before you actually get measurable results. Just stick with it.

Accept the fact that sometimes you will feel a bit hungry. You shouldn’t feel starved, but it’s ok for the hour or so before you eat a meal to have a desire for sustenance. I think we too often eat at the very first pang of hunger.

25

I encourage you to try it again. Many of the positions can be modified to fit your fitness level. Don’t be afraid to modify! When I started I couldn’t do a three count pushup without dropping to my knees. Now I can do them all day. Watch the video I linked to–Arthur had to lean on a chair when he first started. Look at him now! Remember, start small and work your way up. No one was an expert when they first started.

26

Here’s how I lost 80 lb. YMMV. Around 2000, my wife and I went on the Zone diet. This is not a fad. It is a balanced diet, roughly 1/3 carb, 1/3 fat, 1/3 protein, but controlled portions. I lost 30 lb, then gained 10, then after I was diagnosed diabetic and put on metformin, I lost 20 lb without dieting, then stalled. Meantime, we were still following the Zone diet, but I was supplementing it by snacking. A lot.

Then I had a thought. The way to quit any addiction is cold turkey. So define my addiction as addiction to snacking, not to eating. So I cut out snacking entirely. Over the next couple years, I lost 40 lb. I also lost the craving for snacks. While still enjoying my portion-controlled meals. Then, having reached the weight my doctor thought was healthy (my BMI is 27 and he felt I should stop there) I gradually introduced an afternoon snack. But I still do not snack in the evening, nor do I crave it.

Snacking is a habit. This is clear not only from my recent experience, but from a friend of mine when I was in college. His mother sent him a box of home-made cookies. For about three weeks, he had a glass of milk and a few cookies every night around 9. Until the cookies ran out. The next night at 9, he experienced a craving for something. He resisted and the craving disappeared over the ensuing week.

27

Almonds great. Yes unsalted.

22 almonds dry roasted unsalted is 1 oz /28 grams. Thing about nuts is that they satisfy (high satiety in the lingo) and result in less consumed otherwise. One to two servings a day.

Dry roasted ceci (a.k.a. chick peas or garbanzo beans) are also a great mid day snack, especially mixed in with the nuts. You can get them already made at some Italian delis.

Yes to high fiber and lean protein. Lots of veggies and reasonable amounts of fruit.

No single right answer because the plan you settle on needs to be sustainable for you, not some generic person.

I’m a big fan of non-fat plain Greek yogurt with some dried or sometimes fresh fruit, some added chia seeds and/or hemp seeds, and some All-Bran, sometimes with some raw unsweetened chocolate powder added as a high satiety breakfast. YMMV.

Do you have stairs? Just walking up and down them for a while or stepping up two and back down a bunch of times. Body weight squats, push ups starting off supporting your weight with your knees. A pull-up bar keeping your feet on the ground and only pulling up and letting down a fraction of your weight but gradually more and more of it. Do what you can for a four minutes of all three in sets over and over a gain and then rest a few minutes and repeat at least four times. A plastic milk jug filed with water or sand held in front of you: squat down, stand up and then press it over your head, repeat ten times (a version of thrusters). Too hard put in less water; too easy use two jugs, one each hand. Keep tabs of how much you can do in X amount of time just because it is fun to see your progress! You might be able to find a used bike for cheap … is it close enough to bike to work? For errands? (Wear a helmet!)

Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Great idea about geting off a stop or two early. Stand instead of sitting when you can.

Reasonable goals! Losing 5 to 10% of your body weight will gain most of the health benefits if maintained with lasting healthy nutrition and exercise. (Nothing wrong with aiming for 30 kg, just that 20 kg maintained long term is ample to give major benefits. Yes, your BMI will still be about 30 and you will be much healthier.) Avoid inactivity as much as possible. Success is less measured by the scale than that you had another day of sticking with the plan. The weeks to be most proud of will be the weeks that you stick with your plan despite the fact that the scale has stopped budging (the dreaded and pretty unavoidable plateau) for weeks. Lesser people quit then falsely believing they are failing … you need to know that sticking with it in the face of that inevitiable wall is what defines success.

Best to you! (Not best of luck because luck has nothing to do with this decision to become healthier … it is all you deciding to make it happen and sticking with it.)

28

Maybe some general principles might help … in any case I wonder if we could get some broad agreement about them.

  1. Achieve weight loss with a caloric deficit.

  2. Improve body composition with exercise. Exercise will make more of the weight loss come from fat, and in paricular the fat most associated with bad health. It will preserve or increase muscle mass and improve insulin sensitivity. Exercise does not need to be fancy and the biggest benefit comes just from avoiding inactivity. That said working up to including some intensity and some resistance training as part of the mix over time works best.

  3. There are many ways to achieve a caloric deficit but in general eating foods high in satiety, high in nutritional value, and only moderate in palatability help make it easier. That means high fiber and high protein. It, for most, means vegetables (including root vegetables), fruit, beans, nuts, lean protein, and whole grains, and avoiding added sugar (included that hidden in processed foods), highly refined carbs, processed meats. Some find that explicitly counting calories works well, others count carbs and end up taking in fewer calories over time as well (for a variety of reasons), and some can achieve calorie reduction merely by improving the composition of their diet.

  4. The behaviors themselves, the sustained healthier eating and increase in exercise, are the real goal, not merely a means to achieve the goal; the weight loss really is less important but does gradually follow from the improved behaviors. Modest loss can go along with major impacts.

Any thoughts from the TMs?

29

More updates: I think I’ll shelve plans to go back to swimming. I just found a wart under a toe. I’d just feel too embarrassed going swimming with it, and it would not be respectful of the other pool users. I have rubber swimming shoes, but I hate them. And they’d make me stand out even more. So, I’ll focus on yoga and walking.

I asked my friend if he was willing to lend me his DDP Yoga DVDs; he was uncomfortable with it. He asked if I wanted to buy them from him, but well, my budget is tight. I found lots of yoga resources using Google, but it looks like most of it is covered in mystical sauce. I don’t want the mystical sauce, I just want to get fitter; we can leave the Spinning of the Chakras and the Opening of the Eyes of the Overworld for another time.

The other half looks like something put together by someone who was not really well prepared. So, the obvious question is: are there good online resources that you’d recommend, or good books?

Snacks: I’m not actually in the habit of snacking. I find myself having to add snacks mid morning and mid afternoon. Snacks were never an addiction for me, and in fact I worry about developing one now.

As for weight, another tidbit of information. I have actually been stable at around 110Kg for many years, so apparently I am reasonably good at sticking to a given weight. That’s bad for the back, however, because it means it carried all the extra weight and got bent out of shape for so long.

I learned that I have to be careful when it comes to physical activity while going to work. I got off one stop earlier, walked at a brisk pace, climbed up the stairs, but then I was sweaty and unpleasantly smelly. I got a few odd looks. I have meetings in the afternoon and I’ll have to spend some time mopping myself with wet wipes.

Is there an app for Android that measures how far you walk, by any chance?

30

So you can’t yoga because woo, can’t swim because wart, and can’t walk because sweat?

I’m not trying to be mean here, just showing you what I am hearing. There are always good reasons not to do stuff, if you look for them.

31

It’s not mandatory to have the woo together with the yoga, hence why I’m looking for some without it; it’s not professional to be sweaty and smelly in a workplace where I interact with lots of other people, hence why I’m restructuring my early plans; it’s inconsiderate to go around increasing other people’s risk of getting a nice wart of their own, especially considering I most probably got my sparklin’ new one from someone just as inconsiderate when I was shopping around for swimming pools.

And the answer to that is to make superficial assumptions because overgeneralization?

32

Load up on fruits and veggies. Change your eating pattern from the 3-squares-a-day to something like 6 small meals a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner should be moderate (and I would make either lunch or dinner be a salad), the other three could be nothing more than just a piece of fruit. Drink lots of ice water as well…

33

Lars, the first thing you have to deal with, IMHO, is denial and procrastination - both common among people who are overweight. Please take this in th e spirit intended, I mean no disrespect.

Excuses, pure and simple. A common wart? Possibly mildly contageous. In no way “disrespectful” of other pool users. Cover it with a waterproof bandange. And nobody gives a rip about your pool shoes, period.

More excuses. So use the yoga poses and ignore the “mystical” stuff. Easy solution.

Denial and rationalization. You are in the habit of over eating and being sedentary. Don’t like to snack? Then don’t. Just eat 5-6 mini meals throughout the day. The key is smalller portions, but closer together to help stave off hunger.

That just means you have reached a state of equalibrium - calories consumed = calories burned. It happens to almost everyone eventually, just at different weight levels. It’s kind of like saying “I’m pretty goood at breathing just the right amount to keep me alive”. You want to adjust the calorie equalibrium to maintain a lower weight. That means less calories consumed and/or more calories burned.

More excuses. If walking to work is an issue, then walk from work to the next bus stop. Or get off one stop before you get to your house. Or walk around the house for 20-30 minutes. Just walk - somewhere, sometime, every day.

Yes, a bunch. I use My Tracks by Google. It’s GPS based and, in my experience, has proven to be accurate. I use it to see how much I walk while playing Disc Golf at various courses.

Agai, I mean all this in a helpful manner. I don’t mean to berate. If you are serious about losing weight, break through the excuses and go all Nike on it - just do it.

34

Not with the teachers I met. That’s why I intend to do it on my own. With good, reliable sources. No, woo is not mandatory.

“I never snacked before but now I find I have to add healthy snacks” is not the same thing as saying “I hate to snack and reject your advice”.

Which means, as I read it, that I am not overeating, but that I should undereat.

Which is… exactly what I said I would do.

Thanks for trying not to berate me but “Just get over it” never gets anyone over anything. Saying “X doesn’t work because of Z” is not the same as saying “Hooray, I have an excuse not to do X”. Saying “X doesn’t work in this way, I’ll try X in this other way” is not the same as “Hooray, X is off the Todo list”.

If I really wanted to dodge the effort, I could have just stopped replying. Analyzing what does and doesn’t work for me isn’t stating that nothing will work, hence nothing will be done.

Good point on the waterproof bandage, though, I will investigate that. Thanks.

35

Um, as long as you’re getting 20+ mins of elevated heart rate a day, what difference does it make if it’s before or after work?

36

Exactly. Which is why I’m going to do it after work.

37

I don’t know what your budget is, but I’ve used www.myyogaonline.com for under $10 a month, unlimited access. They have lots of classes on video at all skill and energy levels, they have videos that give detailed breakdowns of each pose, they have videos with just appropriate mood music so that you can do your own yoga. There is woo available on the site if you want it, but it’s clearly labeled and easy to avoid.

I confess that I haven’t used them a lot - I tend to either go to a class or do my own yoga at home, but the videos that I have seen were great. However, I have a friend who lives in rural Maine and can’t get to classes. She has used them for years, and she’s become incredible at yoga, so they must be doing something right.

38

Also, Lars, good on you for trying different things. Doctor Jackson is correct that saying “this doesn’t work for me” is a often a first step to giving up entirely, but you do need to experiment some to find what exercise routine works for you.

I used to be completely sendentary. I tried rowing machines, I tried some other stuff. When I started walking to work, I felt awkward and sweaty and weird and I wanted to avoid it. After about two months, I realized that I was making excuses for why I could walk to work despite snow or other obstacles. That was odd.

39

Sorry, I apparently missed the point of the thread. If this is a “threputic release of frustration” thread, then I retract all advice. I read it as a “help me lose weight” thread and I was responding based on that. You had only been posting what won’t work or is not acceptable to you or what you are “going to do”, not what you are doing that is working or how you overcame an obscacle to make progress.

Everybody needs to vent, no harm in that.

40

All of this is up to you and you know that so I won’t get on your back about anything. I was in a similar situation to you a few years back.

Luckily the problem I had with my back was (hopefully permanently) fixable with a operation which I had.

I lost 5 stone (70lbs) by just cutting down on what I eat. No junk just good fruit and veg. No comfort eating, nothing other than healthy breakfast, dinner and supper. I was very motivated as I was in severe pain which sometimes left me bedridden in tears and out of my mind on really strong pain killers. It had to end and I was 100% on that I would do everything I could.

The only real advise I could give that may be of help is the exercise side. I went to a physio for two sessions which wasn’t too expensive and got her to show me exercises that would build my core. I also got more advanced exercises that i would be able to do safely after I had do the initial group for a few months. This is what I continue to do. Every few months i go back for a single session and get some new exercises and or her opinion of how I’m going and what if anything i should be doing different.

All the best with your attempts. I hope it all works out for you. It took me years to sort myself out but in the end it was like a switch just was thrown and I reached the threshold of my pain limit and just did what I needed to do without procrastination and all the other rationalisations I had put in my way before.

ETA: oh the other thing I did was incidental exercise. Need to take a lift 2 floors? Take the stairs. Need to go to the shop that is 10mins away? Walk rather than drive or cycle. Burn those calories any way you can.