How much work do you do to keep a healthy weight?

[Glory]

@GuanoLad

So you’ve removed every ounce of fun out of eating?

Personally I don’t really like food, but that kind of extreme seems to be missing one of the key parts of what makes life worth living.

Like Crafter_Man, I have a list of food I don’t eat. For example, in 6 years I have had exactly one donut (which I didn’t even really want to eat, someone brought donuts to work for my birthday and I felt compelled to eat one).

What joy in living was there at 200 lbs? The taste of food? How temporal and ultimately unsatisfying. Food didn’t make me happy. All the pints of ice cream I ate didn’t make me happy, nachos, fried chicken, whatever.

Let me be clear, the foods I did give up (fast food, sugar soda, packaged baked goods, cream based sauces, chips, most crackers, pretzels, cold cereal) were the foods that were easy for me to give up. I don’t miss them on a day to day basis. The foods that would be hard for me to give up (red wine, dark chocolate, home made cake, chocolate dip cones from Dairy Queen), I made room for in my life.

I adore food, I am lucky enough that I was able to turn my love of food to a love of healthy foods. Roasted cherry tomatoes with sea salt? LOVE. Greek yogurt with a drizzle of honey and fresh blackberries? DELISH. Whole grain toast with natural peanut butter? HEAVEN.

For dinner tonight, I am eating a big bowl of home made soup - tomatoes, spinach, leeks, chickpeas and summer squash (seasoned with white pepper, oregano and red pepper flakes) topped with some grated parmesan cheese - the whole thing probably has 300 calories tops and I love it!

My biggest problem with my “no foods?” I have a hard time stopping eating when I start. My whole life, I thought I had a problem with food, turns out, I just have a problem with SOME foods. Pretzels, cold cereal, chips, crackers (like Wheat Thins), cookies (like Oreos), when I eat one, I want more and more and more and more. It is so much easier to just NOT eat the first one. I don’t like the way I feel when I eat those foods, it isn’t worth the taste.

I was in a food prison I didn’t even know existed until I got out. The end of my lifelong food cravings has been a minor miracle for me.

[Glory]

@Scarlett67

Glory (you rockin’ chick, you), may I quote you on this in next week’s WW meeting? As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ll be hitting Lifetime, and I’m sure I’ll be asked to say something, and this expresses very well what it’s like (and why it’s a great idea) to keep in the weight-control mindset once we reach goal, instead of going back to old habits.

Wow, of course

Another good analogy is a budget. If you count calories, most folks think you are a WEIRDO, but if you balance your checkbook and use Quicken to keep track of money, you are fiscally responsible! I wish I were as rich as Paris Hilton and can buy whatever I want, but I can’t. I wish I could eat whatever I want, but I can’t. Sometimes I can save up for a big purchase, though

[rhubarbarin]

Hmm, interesting question for me. I’m ‘thin’ but technically quite underweight, so I’m actively trying to gain without going to extremes of overeating that make me feel ill. Right now I’m very into my health, I eat a whole-foods high fat-protein-calorie (2500-3000) diet and live an active life.

I’m a couple pounds heavier on this regimen (from muscle development) than when I was sedentary and ate little but large servings of junk, but what’s more important is that I FEEL much better eating this way in various ways. Which was the reason I changed my diet.

I said ‘something else’.

[moejoe]

I picked Healthy weight- I make no special effort, but try to moderate my meals and/or keep somewhat active.

I tend to eat the same foods for breakfast (greek yogurt w/granola) and lunch (healthy sandwich and chips or soup) every day, and then whatever I want for dinner. It’s worked for me to think of food as fuel during the day and then as a pleasure for the evening meal.

I walk probably 45 minutes at a good clip a few times per week and I generally avoid sweets unless I’m really in the mood.

[Scarlett67]

@Glory

Another good analogy is a budget. If you count calories, most folks think you are a WEIRDO, but if you balance your checkbook and use Quicken to keep track of money, you are fiscally responsible! I wish I were as rich as Paris Hilton and can buy whatever I want, but I can’t. I wish I could eat whatever I want, but I can’t. Sometimes I can save up for a big purchase, though

Ooh, I love analogies, and that’s a good’un.

[MeanOldLady]

@Glory

Let me be clear, the foods I did give up (fast food, sugar soda, packaged baked goods, cream based sauces, chips, most crackers, pretzels, cold cereal) were the foods that were easy for me to give up. I don’t miss them on a day to day basis. The foods that would be hard for me to give up (red wine, dark chocolate, home made cake, chocolate dip cones from Dairy Queen), I made room for in my life.

I adore food, I am lucky enough that I was able to turn my love of food to a love of healthy foods. Roasted cherry tomatoes with sea salt? LOVE. Greek yogurt with a drizzle of honey and fresh blackberries? DELISH. Whole grain toast with natural peanut butter? HEAVEN.

For serious.

When my metabolism told me, “Easy there, lady, you’re not 18 anymore. You may wanna lay off on the cheeseburgers,” I had to decide to eat different foods, or get fat. For a while, I decided to just stay the course and see what happened, but it turns out, that “choice” was actually the get fat plan. Plan A was to keep eating whatever the hell, because hey, I’d been living for however many years and wasn’t fat, therefore I was impervious to weight gain, and all this extra padding on my tummy was just bonus material that would soon evaporate (somehow). When Plan A failed, I opted for B, which was to eat better. The good news is, despite what some people will say (“But all the food that tastes good is covered in grease and/or sugar!”), a lot of healthy food tastes really flippin’ good. Even so, you don’t have to give up all the bad-for-you foods all the time. I don’t drink soda, I do eat bacon. I almost never eat fast food, if someone offers me a piece of cake, I’ll eat it. Etc.

At my heaviest, I probably wouldn’t have been called fat by anyone, but I was fleshier than I would have liked. I’ve since lost the weight, and I didn’t have to go Atkins, or cut out all sugar or whatever. Hell, my gallery photo is 20 lbs ago, and I think I got from there to my playing weight in something like 6 months. It wasn’t rapid weight loss, but I was happy with its pace, and I didn’t have to give up butter.

[monstro]

As an adult, I’ve always been pretty mindful of my calorie consumption, some times more conscientiously than others. I wouldn’t say it’s been all that hard. Like most habits, once you start doing it for long enough, it almost becomes automatic.

As far as exercise goes, I haven’t always been able to say that I’m moderately active. I’ve gone through periods (like when I was in grad school and didn’t have a car) when I’ve been very active. But I’ve also gone through periods when I was not doing so much, and it showed. Now, like what I eat, I exercise quite conscientiously and actually enjoy it and the benefits it has reaped.

I know people who do these things and still gain weight, so maybe I don’t really have to work that hard compared to others. But I’m not naturally thin…I do make an effort to stay thin. I’m lucky in that my good physical health allows me to do the things I do, but I wouldn’t say I’ve been blessed with the “super fast metabolism gene”. I come from a family of fat folks.

[lezlers]

I’m a healthy weight and I work damn hard at it. I count my calories religiously, and try to keep a certain portion of protein vs. carbs vs. fat.

I exercise 6 days a week, alternating between cardio and strength training. I ran my first half marathon in May and will be starting to train for another in August. It’s damn hard work, but if I wasn’t religious about it I’d balloon up with a shocking quickness.

Life really isn’t fair sometimes. Even with all of the effort I put into it, I can still stand to lose about 10 to 15 pounds. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to stay where I am and am just grateful I’m not bigger than I am.

[lindsaybluth]

10 pounds over. Formerly 30 pounds over. Gained it all in college, and have lost it steadily since. I was underweight in high school (3 hours of hard exercise a day and un-tasty meals at home will do it to ya). College life made me feel lethargic and tired; I never had time to prepare healthy stuff. Now I do, and now I love it. Meal prep is important, - I really highly credit the Eating Well cookbooks for helping me - I like nice things and I like tasty things. Rachel Ray doesn’t cut it for me. Working out 1 to 1 1/2 hours a day, 5-6 days a week is very important for me. If I exercise, I eat less. Somehow working out dampens my appetite; I have no idea why.

The SO and I just started playing 90 minutes of tennis a day, 6 days a week. But beforehand, my schedule was Spinning 2 days/week, Power Lifting class 3 days/week, and Pilates/Yoga 1 day/week.

I’ll never be that person who climbs stairs instead of the elevator. I tried and was miserable doing it. I sweat at the drop of a hat; all that “wear a pedometer” shit is for the birds.

[Illuminatiprimus]

@lindsaybluth

10 pounds over.

And Lucille gives you shit for it, doesn’t she?

I put overweight, take formal steps as I’m on weight watchers and have a fairly regimented exercise regime (gym twice a week and two hours of squash on the weekend). I’ve just started doing British Military Fitness which I think is going to help a lot as I did it for an hour on Monday and thought I was going to puke at one point, so it was definitely doing the trick.

I’m only very slightly overweight, I’m 5’7 and 162lb which is just on the border of overweight and normal. I’m aiming for 154 as my final weight loss goal, I’ve been there before and that felt right in terms of the size I was.

[lindsaybluth]

@Illuminatiprimus

And Lucille gives you shit for it, doesn’t she?

Yes! When she harasses me about it, I take an angry nap. One of my favorite Lindsay interactions is this:

Michael: Come on, face it. You just do all this charity crap just to stroke your ego. You don’t even know what the auction’s for tonight.
Lindsay: The wetlands.
Michael: To do what with them?
Lindsay: Dry them.
Michael: Save them.
Lindsay: From drying.