I need to lose a lot of weight. I lost 85lbs on a low-calorie diet over a period of a year, but to date have gained back about 40lbs. I struggle with food each and every day.
I am so confused about what I’m supposed to be doing. The USDA recommends eating 70% carbs; Atkins swears I probably have hypoglycemia since I’m fat, and to eat low-carb; others say recently that carbs are okay as long as they are low on the glycemic scale.
The problem on the low-calorie was that I was starving at night and had to fight eating something every damm night. Finally gave in after months of resisting. So, I thought I would give the low-carb a try. In five days I lost 1.5lbs, but I was exhausted all day, was naseuous in the morning when I woke up, had constant diarreha, was peeing (no lie) all five days about 15-18 times all day and night. The worst thing was I developed this pelvic pain that was quite severe. Tonight when I decided enough was enough and ate some peanut butter and nuts and an avocado, the pain vanished.
In my normal diet I eat little meat, cheese and rarely eggs. I absolutely abhored the food on Atkins. I’m thinking about the low-calorie diet again, but I was only losing 4.5lbs a month eating 1400 calories.
Has anyone else lost a significant amount over a more reasonable period of time and how did you do it? I’m just interested in diet, not stapling or anything like that. And also, someone who is older e.g. >50. Did you find some combination of food, not just salad and fish, at least 1400 calories, that you lost weight on?
I swim laps for an hour and do weights, treadmill and bicycle 3X a week; have been swimming, etc. for years, and started the weights about 6 weeks ago. I’m 60 with two hip replacements so naturally I’m not going to run or do extremely strenuous exercise.
Well, I’ve found that when I’m hungry between meals, I eat fruit. Find some kind you like and keep a supply handy. That’s the only thing I can really suggest, becaust everything else sounds resonable.
The only other thing I can suggest is either give up or cut back on sweets/junk food/soda, if they are part of your diet.
I’ve been told that Swimming doesn’t actually burn fat well because you aren’t warming up enough, but It’s better then nothing.
Screw Atkins. the scientific community repeatedly asked him to provide hard clinical evidence of the stated advantages of his diet, and he never could. If he were that great, people wouldn’t have given up his diet in the 70’s just as they have now. I don’t have the cite handy, but a recent British study of 170 different diet plans suggests that the only low-carb plans that people lost wieght on were the ones that restricted calorie intake
70% carbs sounds a touch high. My most recent source (1999) says the recommendations are 58% carbs, mostly complex carbs as opposed to sugars.
Your exercise level sounds great. The only advice I can offer is to talk to your doctor about maybe restricting your calories a little further and picking up the pace on the exercises you already do (e.g., swim in 50 minutes the same distance you do currently do in an hour)
I didn’t lose over 75+ pounds - only 62, but that’s close, I would think. I did it through Weight Watchers - and what I learned there was the concept of portion control, the importance of fiber, and that fat is not totally evil. It is a low calorie diet, it is true - but I also learned that eating fiber rich foods kept me fuller longer, and kept me from mindlessly eating. As for carbs - go more for whole grain carbs, and decrease your processed & white carbs. I eat whole wheat breads (read the ingredients label - be sure that wheat flour is a primary ingredient!), and I don’t eat potatos, potato chips, rice as much any more - and fat free foods replace a lot of fat with sugar, so that’s not good. I kept healthy fats in my diet - 1 Tbsp. of natural peanut butter (no trans-fats or sugars!) every day. Also - fruit - I live on fruit - 2 to 3 servings a day, mostly apples, oranges, bananas, and grapes, but kiwis, strawberries, mangos, raisins, dried cranberries thrown in as well. Veggies - well, that’s my weak point - basically because I am too lazy a lot of times for preparation - but that’s where canned/frozen comes in. I will eat an entire can of green beans (rinsed, try to get salt off) - frozen sugar snap peas are yummy - and bagged salads go on sale often. I also like to steam zucchini and summer squash, so since they are coming into season, I will be eating them more often. I also drink a glass of 1% milk every day, and have a fat free yogurt every afternoon - for calcium requirements. Oh - and around 2 liters of pure water a day.
How were your eating patterns? The strength for me with WW is that I planned my days in advance - and if you did that, I am sure that you could plan for a snack at night, when you know you are the hungriest. I also found that eating breakfast and then mini-meals throughout the day kept me from getting too hungry.
Anyway, it took me nine months to lose the weight, and I have kept it off for over a year now.
110 pounds since October 2001, through exercise on a near-daily basis (two miles a day on a treadmill, weights with varying degrees of regularity) and attempting to limit caloric intake to 1000 a day. I don’t pay super-close attention to calorie counting. No food diaries or what have you. Also try not to stress if I “screw up” and eat more than I plan every once in a while, and if I want chocolate or something fattening I have it. I try to remember that I’m not a “bad person” if I do mess up, which is probably the hardest part.
I didn’t lose 75, I lost 46 in 9 months. I found out it was a combination of Weight Watchers and undiagnosed and out of control diabetes. I wouldn’t recommend the diabetes, but WW taught me how to eat healthily.
That’s the best you can do, really. Learn how to eat normally, yet healthily. I gained back 20 lbs after started my “diabetes diet” and injured my knee, but what I learned at WW kept me from bugging out too much. My sugar has been stable for quite some time now and I’m going to ask my instructor if I could join WW again.
You might be interested in the Micheal Thrumond diet plan. (You might have seen the infomercial.) Long story short you eat 5-6 meals a day with specific amounts of protein/carbs/veggies each time. The more frequent small meals are supposed to increase your metabolism. Several people on it have lost in excess of 100 lbs and kept it off for years. (Link to the site: http://www.provida.com/6wk_main.asp Be sure to check out the messageboards where a lot of questions are answered.)
I didn’t have a lot of weight to lose but it really helped me stay on track by telling me what to eat, when, how much etc. It also comes with a “body sculpting” band and plan which you use according to your trouble areas. (I didn’t actually use this as I prefer free weights.) The price of the “kit” is a little off-putting but I was able to pick it up on eBay for about half the price (and it came brand new right from the company, lol…not sure if there’s shady dealings going on at the warehouse there or what!)
I cut out all refined sugar, greatly increased my fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and walked everywhere. it was a long slow process and I had many relapses. But the lifestyle change becomes more and more permanent as I enter the 6th year.
I have lost 120 over the last two years with low carbing. Not atkins low but pretty much what as_u_wish said. my goal is 100 more lbs so i will have to catch up with you then and tell you how it went
Thank you so much for starting this thread. I was thinking of starting one myself.
I tried the Michael Thurmond diet and found it extremely hard to stick too. I also have a large amount of weight to lose. I think it would be hard to stick to for a long time to be honest. I found the food to be too bland after about a week. However, I did lose 9 pounds in that first week.
Good luck to you though if you do decide to use it.
Over the past six months or so, I’ve lost a little over 30 pounds…Yes, that isn’t fast, but I have no problem keeping it off. I just followed the Weight Watchers plan (counting points). Its great…all foods have points, so there aren’t any “no-no” foods, and its makes it very simple. I’m never hungry, and I don’t even feel like I am on a diet. Its great to help you change your eating habits, which is what you have to do. Good luck
Well, the bad news is that this morning I had gained 4.5lbs overnight. I was so dehydrated from all the protein, my body is hanging on to every ounce of liquid apparently. I also experienced what is called carb-loading, which athletes use to get their liver and muscles to store max carbs; I had been low-carbing for 6 days and when I ate some carbs, my body, reacting to the lack of carbs, loaded up. The only good thing about that was that I had all kinds of energy when I was swimming and exercising today; quite unlike the death-warmed-over feeling I had with 20 carbs on the induction diet.
As_U_wish, how much weight have you lost? It encourages me to hear you say you have had relapses but apparently were able to overcome that and keep plugging away. Did you basically go low-calorie? What do you eat for protein?
Justwannabeme, what are you doing now?
Deadlynightlight, your diet sounds like the South Beach Diet, based on the glycemic index. Do you have a calorie limit?
Voguevixen, I want something that I can do the rest of my life, with a few calories added for maintenance. Does that diet fit that idea?
Today I went back to the low-calorie, but I’m not happy with the very slow weight loss I’ve had before. I tried eating about 4oz of meat around 8pm to see if it would help the hunger pangs and help me with my night eating problem.
I’ve thought about a modified (a little meat and poultry) vegetarian diet because I love the food. Has anyone tried a low-calorie vegetarian diet?
As far as the exercise, I don’t believe it has helped me lose weight; I think it would have to be much more intense. What I do keeps me flexible and my muscles strong and that’s about it. Well, also when I’m eating too much it makes me feel that at least I’m doing something.
My boyfriend lost nearly 100 pounds (dropping down to just over 140 pounds at 6’ tall at his lowest weight) over a couple of years, just before I met him. I don’t know exactly HOW to describe what he did, other than “pure insane willpower”, but I’ll give it a shot. He decided that snacks were his main weakness, and so removed all foods that were even vaguely snacklike from the house. He reduced the fat in what he did eat, and increased the protein as needed to support his exercise regimen. (Though it still left him hungry a lot of the time) He started biking. And biking and biking and biking and biking. Fast, over rough terrain, for a long time, as often as he could. It helped that he started to love the sport, enough that he now owns an insanely expensive bike, (he refers to it as “the Precious”) but he still made himself go out and push HARD.
I doubt that what he did would’ve taken so much work if he hadn’t been fighting generations of family tendencies, and if he hadn’t gone for such a low weight. (actually just a bit under a healthy weight by some scales)
One thing I do if I am hungry at night is to get that whole wheat Total and have it around, and have some one or two percent milk, and just eat a big bowl of that.
The calorie count isn’t too intense, and it helps fill you up, and it is really, really good for you (all the vitamins and everything).
Also lots of water. I don’t know if you like drinking it but I finally became a convert to it. I keep it bottled in the refrig so it is easy to grab like a soda.
A good snack is frozen grapes. They are sooooo good. They have the consistency of sort of a creamy popsicle. And those goofy bars, I think they are snackwells… they are kind of small but one will have only 2 grams fat and about 80 calories… the caramel p.b. one tastes like a Whatchamacallit bar. And I did some comparisons, and even if you only ate a small part of a candy bar it would still be more.
I know slow sucks, but usually the pounds you lose slowly are the ones most likely to stay off.
Also remember that it isn’t the number on the scale; it is how you feel, and your health and if you are happy with yourself. Your exercise sounds great, and I hope you don’t stop.
Yeah the diet has pretty much two portions: The “weight-loss” portion and the “living lean” portion. You stay on the weight loss part until you get to a weight you like (and yes, it is pretty hard to stick to, especially at first when you’re “detoxing” from sugar, fats, etc. It gets a lot easier after the first couple weeks though.) Then when you get to your goal weight you can add back in some things you miss: pasta or olive oil or cheese, etc. You still pretty much stay on the same eating schedule but it’s less restrictive, until you notice you’re putting on weight again then you modify until you have something that works for you. Justwannabeme is right in that at first the food seems really bland and hard to stick with. I think the second or third week I got frustrated and broke down and went to Burger King. I got about three bites into my burger and fries and found that at that point they tasted disgusting to me. I think any diet that works is about your learning new habits until they’re ingrained and they seem natural. Now that I’m in the habit of eating this way I don’t so much miss the stuff I always used to crave before and that makes me think I can actually stick to this way of eating in the future.
BTW, a low-fat vegetarian diet was how I GAINED the weight in the first place, lol!
My mom lost about 40 pounds by cutting all processed foods out of her diet. Basically, anything run through a factory was cut out. She prepares her vegetables and fruits herself, and she cut out all wheat products. She eats as much as she likes, and is looking good. I’m thinking about going the same route, cuz she feels so good.
Don’t want to get into another Atkins screaming match, but one of the effects of the diet (for me, at least) was that it negated my hunger, thus making it easier for me to eat a lot less.
I absolutely have to agree about Atkins negating your appetite. I was never, ever hungry. I am thinking that if you normally gravitate towards meat, cheese, and eggs even if you aren’t on a diet then Atkins might be just the ticket. If left to my own devices, I will eat meat about 3 times a month, but mostly like beans, noodles, rice, stir-fry veggies, oatmeal, potatoes, etc. I like CARBS. So Atikins was diet hell.
I know the vegetarian diet can be fattening because of all the nuts and oil and dense grains. Last night I went through my vegetarian cookbooks and found some recipes I like and incorporated them into a new diet plan; quasi-vegetarian and low calorie. So we’ll see.
One thing I did when I lost the 85lbs was that I made up my menu for the following day each and every night. The fat mind is devious and if not given absolute limits on food can play tricks on you e.g. these calories don’t count because it’s a vegetable or somehow its"good for me" so that negates the calories.
Another thing I did was decide if nutrition or losing weight was of more immediate concern. Since I couldn’t seem to stay on a conventional diet, I decided to eat what I liked and limit the calories. And it worked for 15 months. I ate MacDonalds three times a week, oatmeal with banana and soy milk every morning, and varied the snack at night, eating about 1400 calories a day. and my health doesn’t seem any the worse despite the guru’s; just like Atkins and all the naysayers. It appears those people stay healthy, at least according to recent studies. Let me see: it appears we don’t know as much about staying healthy as we think we do. In 10 years we are going to find out that we need trans-fats to stay healthy. Well, maybe not, but I have a friend who absolute cannot eat any fat because she was so indoctrinated over the past 5-6 years and she has dry, wrinkled skin, and dry hair, all symptoms of not eating enough fat. Also, your heart and organs need fat as well. The bottom line is that being an intelligent person, my health decisions have as good a track record as big brother and the food police.
Did anyone else make up their own diet that worked for them? Don’t be afraid to be politically incorrect.
I’ve lost a hair shy of 100 pounds in a little more than a year (I might hit 100 at my weigh-in tomorrow night (crosses fingers)) using Weight Watchers. I’ve rarely felt deprived–I can count on the fingers of one hand the times in the last year when I’ve really regretted not being able to eat something I wanted.
I’m not a perfect Weight Watchers follower in that I don’t eat nearly enough veggies and fruit (I don’t like fruit so I basically don’t eat any of that, and veggies only 2-3 times a week), but aside from that I’ve followed the program closely and it’s worked out great for me. A few things that have helped me:
Look at it as a process, not a goal. Don’t focus on your goal weight, especially if you have a lot to lose. It takes most people a long time to gain that much weight–it’s going to take awhile to lose it. A year might seem like a long time, though, until you get into it and realize it’s really gone by quite quickly. I think of it this way–yeah, it’s going to take awhile, but if I don’t do anything, that same time will still pass. I can choose to stay overweight, or I can do something about it.
Celebrate your victories. In WW they give you a little star every time you lose 5 pounds, and a magnet for each 25. Silly, sure, but they’re good motivators. Make your own motivators: every time you lose X pounds, buy yourself a little gift to commemmorate it.) And don’t forget about “non-scale victories”–all those times when your scale weight doesn’t go down but you can fit into something you couldn’t before. These start coming surprisingly quickly–my first came after only a 10 pound loss.
Drink lots of water. At least eight 8-ounce glasses per day. This is especially important for women, whose bodies tend to hold onto water more if they don’t get enough. It seems counter-intuitive, but it works. Drink more water and you’ll shed more water (and hence more weight).
Here’s the huge one for me:
Do not give up what you love. When I started WW, I determined that most of the junk food I ate, I could actually live without. I didn’t need it, and I didn’t want to waste the points on it when I could have something else. But there are two things I won’t give up–pizza and M&M’s. Once a week the spouse and I go for pizza, and I eat half of a small canadian bacon pie with very generous toppings. I budget points for it, and my weight loss hasn’t suffered for it. Same with the M&M’s–I have a few every day, and it’s enough to keep me happy. Whatever these foods are for you, keep them around. Eat them when you crave them. Just cut back on portion sizes (or on how often you eat them, or both) if they’re fattening. They won’t sabotage you in moderation.
Fat is not the enemy. I eat a lot of fast food–mostly Arby’s and KFC these days–adjusting my portions to fit with my WW points. I can’t prove it, but I think the fact that I have fat in my diet is part of why I’ve been so successful–my body doesn’t go into starvation mode even though I’m only eating about 1100 calories a day.
I hope this helps. I get so tired of the idea that you have to live on salad and cottage cheese to lose weight. If that were so, I’d be sunk because I can’t stand either of them.
