What is a reasonable time allowed to lose 90-95 pounds? I’m 5’4’’ and about 200 pounds and I can’t go on living like this. I can’t breathe…it’s hard to walk up the satirs. I tried to ride a bike and got to the end of the block and couldn’t pedal my own weight. I don’t own any exercise equipment and I don’t have a job so my only option is to go for walks or work with free weights? I guess I can do sit-ups in the house and get a workout video at some discount store. What should I eat and how long each day should I exercise? I’m going to limit myself to 1100 calories a day. I’ll mostly eat fish and vegetables and take vitamins for the foods I’m not eating.
See your doctor right away and have him or her tell you what is best. Obviously, eating right and exersising, but you need to have a baseline let for your weight, blood pressure, ect.
Without drugs, at least a year. And by “at least” I mean a major diet change, thrice weekly workout and no cheating!
With drugs, four months.
But that would be dangerous.
1100 Calories/day sounds a little extreme, but I’ll let wiser heads weigh in on that. As for exercise:
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Yes, walk. Keep taking those stairs, too. As a matter of fact, walk everywhere you can.
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Yes, free weights are excellent. As long as you don’t hurt yourself (easy to do), they’ll build muscle, which burns Calories and improves looks.
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20 minutes a day, three days a week is supposed to be the minimum for seeing any cardiovascular benefit from aerobic exercise. Losing weight will require more. Walking is not ideal cardiac exercise because it doesn’t get the heart rate up that much, but it’s a good start for you.
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If you can stand it, or as soon as you can stand it, jumping rope is great exercise, and very, very cheap.
I consulted my doctor a year ago and she told me to see a nutritionist. i saw the nutrionist in April 2003, and she just gave me a pamphlet and a picture of the food pyramid. She just said limit your portions and exercise. I tried to workout when we had a treadmill, but the treadmill was old and the motor blew up. I keep falling off the wagon and I fel like I’ll never lose this weight. I just met a guy on the internet and I don’t want him to see me like this. I want to lose some weight by July so I can at least meet him looking semi decent. I hope to be at least 170 or 160 around July or August. I think part of my weight gain is that I sit in the house 23 hours a day and stay on the internet about 16 hrs a day. I feel kind of weird taking walks thorugh our rough city and I don’t want to tal kto the neighbors. Maybe I can go to a park for my exercise?
I just want to congradulate you for wanting to do it the right way. All those damn diet pill and crash diet advertisments nowadays can be hard to resist. Good for you for wanting to be healthy and not just skinny.
I’ve started walking at a park that has trails through the woods. I think it’s much more fun to walk in a place like that rather than on concrete streets or trails. This park even has a little waterfall that you can hike to and climbing up and down the hills makes for a great workout. If you have a dog, or can borrow someone’s dog (who would probably be glad to have their dog walked), the walk is more enjoyable and the dog can keep you going at a good pace.
The first thing I would recommend is to readjust your goal weight to something more realistic and more healthy for your height. And I say this as someone who’s also 5’4" and spent most of my life under 115lbs. 105 - 110 is just too thin for someone your height.
Secondly, although you mentioned your frustration with taking stairs and difficulty breathing, you’ve made your primary reason for making such a radical change in your life some guy you’ve started speaking with over the internet and haven’t even met yet. Of course I understand your desire to make a good first impression when he sees you. But you cannot make that your overriding reason for getting physically healthy or you are setting yourself up for almost certain failure.
Third, find a new doctor (one who gives a damn about your health) and get a complete physical. Ask them to test your thyroid. As many as 10% of women may have some degree of thyroid hormone deficiency. You may not, but there’s absolutely no reason not to test it and know for sure.
Don’t diet by skipping meals. This will only serve to make you hungry and angry and you’ll just end up bingeing. There are many different programs and not everything works for everyone. Make an appointment at Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and/or any other weight loss center in your area. Learn about their programs, gather information and find one that feels like it’s right for you (don’t let them strongarm you into signing up on the spot).
Yes, walk, walk, WALK! You may have to build up to it, but you should shoot for going at least 20 minutes, as it takes that long for your body to switch from burning sugar to burning stored fat. I’d also recommend (as does the linked Straight Dope column) exercising in the morning. Besides being a more efficient, “one study indicated that two-thirds of the calories you burn up in the morning come from fat, whereas less than half come from fat in the afternoon,” you will find that it practically propells you through the day – the endorphin “high” that you get can take as long as 4 to 5 hours to wear off and return to “rest” mode!
As you start building strength and endurance, add some small hand weights (3-5lbs each) to carry while you walk. Even without weights, bend your elbows and pump your arms. Take as long of strides as you can and try pushing yourself forward. Keep small hand weights by your computer and use them while you’re sitting and reading the internet.
Drink lots of water!
Supplement your diet with vitamins (even a multi-vitamin is better than nothing). Take calcium to keep your bones strong!
I’m sure others will come along with more ideas and suggestions, too. But these are my recommendations for where to start, at least.
Best of luck and don’t lose hope!
I agree that 1100 calories is not enough. Your body will more than likely go into starvation mode, and you will not lose weight. You should try to limit your fat intake. Buy foods that are low in fat and sugar. Exercise, at least 3 times a week, 20 minutes per go. I would probably suggest a bit more for losing such a good amount of weight in a small time period.
Crunches/sit ups will build muscle but it will NOT burn the fat. It is like any other muscle group.
On the flip side of that, muscles burn more calories than fat, so toning up won’t hurt a bit. Muscle does weigh more than fat, but you will be able to see a difference.
Don’t starve yourself. Make a fist, that’s a portion. Eat 6 times a day, not 3 or less. Eat sensible food, fruits and veggies. Make sure you are getting enough fiber, iron and calcium. Vitamins are good, but they cannot be a complete substitute for food.
Take pictures of yourself, maybe once a month? Don’t weigh too often, you don’t want to get discouraged. Weight doesn’t drop off in a day or two, it took you a while to get to this point, it will take a while to get the weight off. Set realistic goals for yourself. A few pounds the first week, but it will taper off occasionally. Prepare yourself for that so that you don’t become obsessed. Also take measurements, sometimes that’s more accurate if you are gaining muscles.
Good luck!
Thank you all for giving me comforting words and wisdom. I lost weight once in my life when I was 11 years old. My grandmother told me I was fat and I just flipped out. I went on a crash diet and became anorexic. I lost about 65-70 pounds and I got so sickly thin I looked like a walking skeleton. My mother considered putting me in a psychiatric home, but I liked how i felt when I was skinny (not sickly thin). I really want to do this for my health now because I’m tired of not having socks fit my thighs and roll down, my stomach hangs over. It looks like my body went through hell because I have stretch marks everywhere, and I mean everywhere! They are on my breasts, arms, thighs, butt, stomach, and hips. It looks like I had a baby, but never lost the weight. My breasts are so huge. They’re a 42DD and I remember when I had 32 A breasts. I liked that so much better. I hope this works and I plan to start Monday when I can get the right food. The culprit is the food my family buys. They buy bags of candy, chocoalte bars, pop tarts, chips, tv dinners, soda, cookies, and peanuts. They think those are healthful. I have to do my own grocery shopping for now. I want to buy fish, chicken, vegetables, and fruit. I want to blend strawberrries and bananas for a breakfast smoothie everyday, have chicken and vegetables for lunch, and fish and vegeatbles for dinner and then i can take a vitamin and calcium pill.
You sound a lot like me a year ago (except for the guy on the internet part). I needed a plan, I chose Atkins. People on this very message board had been having success with it, so I bought the book Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution ($4.95 on half.com) and started. Nine months later I’m 50 pounds lighter. I cannot stress enough what a positive change this has been for me. I chose Atkins because I needed a definite plan. I had tried previously to just eat healthier and get more exercise, but that didn’t work out for me. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. I couldn’t come up with a good plan I could stick to on my own. Atkins did all the legwork and the plan made sense to me - it is all explained in the book how and why it works. And for me, it works well. Atkins is not for everyone, but it might be worth your consideration. The only foods you really have to give up in the long run are processed sugars and flours. I eat lean meats, a little fruit, and tons of vegetables.If you do decide to try Atkins, don’t fall for all the low carb crap products that are popular now - you don’t need them, they are expensive and not very tasty. Stick to whole, natural unprocessed foods instead.
I feel better physically than I have in years. For the first six months, I lost weight rapidly. I have slowed it down to a little under a pound a week. I feel this is the right way to go about it, it took me a few years to put it on, it should take a few years to take it off.
I bike, too. At first it was pure torture, but I kept at it. After a week of biking daily, it will get easier for you - don’t give up! Walking is great, too. The thing that matters is to find something you enjoy, and do it daily. Don’t pick an exercise you don’t like, you won’t keep at it.
Good luck with losing weight. It won’t take a loss of too much before you start feeling better about yourself, and that will spur you on.
I’ve lost 50 pounds since the end of June last year. I did it through Weight Watchers, which I really recommend. It does cost some money. In my area, it’s thirteen dollars a week, but you don’t have to buy anything else to participate. Your medical insurance may even cover some of the cost (in my case, it was a dollar fifty a week, but you might have better insurance than I.)
According to the literature for WW, somebody of your weight should be eating about 1300 calories a day to lose at a safe rate (0.5 to 2 pounds a week. One to 1.5 is optimal, I believe). On the plan, most vegetables don’t count towards the total. It’s based on a points system that you will learn more about if you sign up.
Experiences may vary, but my WW leader is a great woman, and she gets genuinely excited about seeing her charges lose weight. It’s a very supportive atmosphere, which really helped me out. I started off thinking that I wouldn’t want to have all the applause/handholding that comes with the meetings, but it has been great.
One more thing - Depending on how old you are, your healthy weight range at 5’4" ranges from 116 to 145. Those are the outside limits. Please don’t try to get down to 105.
Oops, I missed the pat of your OP that says you don’t work. FYI, you can also get an online WW membership for around 15 dollars a month. That will get you the plan, but not the meetings. You could even join for couple of weeks and get the program information, then quit.
If you’re doing it on your own, I really recommend participating in some of the weight loss threads here. A supportive atmosphere can make a huge difference in your success.
Good for you for wanting to make a change.
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First thing to know: this is definitely do-able. Not everything about the process is easy or fun, although some of it can be, but it is definitely do-able.
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It’s good that you seem to understand the basic equation. If calories in exceeds calories out, you gain weight. If calories out exceeds calories in, you lose weight. Every human body in the world obeys this same formula, without exception. Yes, there are differences, and some people lose weight more easily than others, but the basic equation is always true. Never, ever lose sight of this truth, and don’t for one moment have anything to do with all the advertised gimmicks and crap that promise to make weight loss easy or quick or instant. They don’t work. I thnk you are aware of this, but it’s good to state it for the record.
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The only combination that works is a change of diet and regular cardio-vascular exercise. Some people try the diet without the exercise. This only works for a tiny fraction of people, and they almost all put the weight back on eventually. Some try the exercise without the change of diet. Can work, but unwise and unlikely. The two factors work well together and re-enforce each other.
Understand that the ‘change of diet’ is not some temporary fad that you try to stick to for a few weeks or months. It’s a mature, adult decision to make some changes to what you eat and when, so that instead of achieving one result (weighting 200 pounds) you achieve a different result (reach a significantly lower weight and stay there). This is a change you make for the rest of your life. It means you adopt the dietary habits of people who don’t have a weight problem.
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See your doctor or physician. Say you are planning to lose a lot of weight and you need to know if there are any factors you need to be aware of. The main advice most people get (IANAD) is to take it easy at first, ease yourself in gradually, and don’t try to do too much too soon. Slow and steady is the way to go.
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Buy ‘Body for Life’ by Bill Philipps. The best book ever written on the subject. Ignore all the bits about body building if that’s not for you (I ignore them too). It’s the best single book which addresses exercise, and diet, and the psychology and motivation part. Most books only deal with one or two of these areas. Bill’s book has changed my life and that of many other people too. (I have no commercial interest!).
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The exercise part is a tough challenge at first. There’s a nasty Catch-22 which affects beginners. To begin with, you’re not very fit so you can’t exercise very hard, so you can’t reap much benefit. So the exercising feels hard and you don’t have much to show for it. When you get fitter, you can exercise harder and you get better results to show for it. So, to some extent, you have to be fit before you feel (and see and can weigh) the benefits of exercising! This can be very emotionally off-putting. The trick is to realise that if you exercise regularly, you cannot help but improve. It is literally impossible not to improve gradually over time. So you don’t need to try and improve - you just will, so long as you stick with it. Take it slowly and gently, and only ever work inside what you know is your capacity. Bill’s book is very good on this. Just accept that results take time, and if you put in the time you will reap the rewards.
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Never under-estimate the importance of mood, emotion and psychology. If you have a weight problem (and I’ve had one to deal with for many years) then there are underlying emotional reasons. There’s probably a whole cocktail of reasons why you took to eating more food than you need, and the wrong kind (fattening and unhealthy) rather than the good kind (lean and nutritious). There may be reasons why you have come to associate eating with comfort, compensation, self-gratification, boredom-avoidance and other things. You don’t need to go on a mammoth session of therapy. Just be aware that these psych factors play a big part, and try to understand them and cope with them over time. You can learn to feel a different way about food, and to undo the emotional knots that have skewed your understanding of what food and eating are all about.
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Good luck. You can do it. You will do it. Make the commitment to yourself, love yourself and the new you that you are creating, and be proud that you are taking the decision to achieve positive change in your life.
You want to weigh 105 pounds? Eat 1100 calories a day? Both those figures are a bit extreme. Try not to make quick, radical changes in your life. You’ll only end up staying on the plan for a few weeks.
I think the most important thing to do is to try to reconsider your relationship with food. For a lot of people food is comforting and I know that it can be too, but you don’t have to eat just because you are hungry. I normally don’t eat so often, and only when I am very hungry. I don’t particularly like the “really full” feeling, rather I prefer to be full but not bloated. I wish I could help overweight people understand this mindset, but I guess you have to find it yourself.
One of the problems I think people have with watching what they eat is the fact that they have to pay SO much attention to food. It is true that some diets may help people providing them with the correct nutrients in the appropriate amounts, but I have the hunch that the best way to do it is to permenantely change your eating habits to something sensible. When you focus on eating so much (like when you diet) the actual act of eating becomes a big deal too. I suppose the key would be to make food be a smaller part of your life. Its true that with cigarettes or drinking, people HAVE to give it up completely. Eating is something that you have to do. When you give up smoking you have to give entirely and the best thing to do is to forget about it. How can you have a normal relationship with food if you constantly have to monitor it? I can’t really answer the question but I am sure that there are lots of diet books that may deal with it from this angle. I think the ideal weight-loss situation would be one you don’t think about.
I also am doing Atkins, and like you, I’m 5’4". A year ago I was 250-something and today I’m 181. I eliminated processed sugar (like soda and candy), flour, pasta and potatoes. Like Boscibo said, stay away from the recent “lo-carb” franken-foods like shakes and bars and soy chips and stick with “real” foods like chicken and fish and veggies. That’s what I did. I ate lots of eggs, lots of plain chicken and turkey, fish filets, turkey burgers, salads, and lots of veggies. You can have real salad dressing, cheese and sunflower seeds on a salad, butter on your veggies and nuts for a snack.
Be sure to drink LOTS of water, and walk for exercise. Don’t try to rush the rate of weight loss. Doing it too fast is unhealthy.
I am by no means an expert in this area, but in addition to what others have said about diet and exercise, you said you spend 23 hours a day indoors, which seems alarming to me.
Unless there is some non-weight related reason, like taking care of kids or family members or something, maybe joining a group activity or getting a part-time job would help with getting more active lifestyle.
I would imagine it would be downright depressing to sit around the house all day, every day, with all the temptation for junk food that your family buys. Even working a few hours a week at the local copymat or book store or something will at least motivate you to get up, move around, and gain confidence to change your way of life.
Again, I’m no expert, but it just seems to me to be a good enough place to start.
Yeah, cutting to 1100 isn’t a good idea. You will slow your metabolism and start burning muscle for fuel. Its better to keep it higher. however we have no idea what your baseline metabolic rate is.
Also you should start weight training.
Gyms start at about $25-35 a month around here. If you can’t afford it maybe you can do something like jump rope, step aerobics, calistenics, jogging, walking or something that requires no equiptment or cheap equiptment. Dumbbels are cheap too, maybe $20 for a set and you can mostly work your whole body with a pair of them.
Also you may want to start using herbal meds and supplements. They may help. Calcium, alpha lipoic acid, green tea, synephrine, things like that. Im on about 13 weight loss supplements right now. I’ve lost 1"-1.5" on my waist in 11 days, but im sure some of that is water. ive managed to gain 2 lbs though but its not fat, you can’t gain 2 lbs of fat and lose 1"-1.5" on your waist at the same time.
But i’ve seen some people here echo how you spend 23 hours a day indoors. That can’t be good. Maybe (as a guess) on a deeper level you may want to be fat to shield you from the world. Who knows, but if you have psychological issues with weight and food losing weight could be doubly hard.
Also cheating isn’t a bad thing. Denying yourself over & over will just build the cravings. Its best to give into cravings when they are small and get them out of the way in my experience. If i want a cheeseburger i get one, i dont deny myself then binge 2 days later that way.
Just wanted to chime in and say here’s another vote for Atkins. I started it on March 17th and have lost 16 pounds already. (True, most of that came in the first week from loss of water weight, but I’m still losing at a rate of about 2 pounds a week.)
The first couple of days were really hard, but once I got past that I found this way of eating easy, easy, easy! I’m never hungry…when I want to eat, I eat. And I honestly can say I’ve never felt this good in my life. I do exercise for thirty minutes a day at least 3 days a week, but it’s usually more than that because I have so much energy.
Whatever weight loss method you choose, drinks tons and tons of water.
And you might want to check out www.fitday.com. It’s a great (free) site for tracking your calories, etc. (Atkins.com has all the info you need, too, if you don’t want to buy the book.)
Just an observation, but going up and down stairs repeatedly is good exercise… And you can stop at any time. You may also like to start swimming.