Today at lunch, I had to fight to keep myself from eating food I didn’t want. As in, I was already full, but wanted to go back for seconds because the dining center was all-you-can-eat. I needed to keep myself from eating food I didn’t want.
Dammit, I’ve at least started every assignment I’ve been given about a week beforehand, have just completed all my work up till Friday (online classes and homework doable online for lecture classes is cool!), I’ve kept my religious preference through storms of people trying to convert me, and I can hold the at attention pose for an hour. In August. In Williamsburg. Wearing a big wool jacket and stockings. (I was a member of the Fife and Drum Corps.)
Today, I threw away the food I didn’t really want. Yesterday, I ate it without thinking, and felt bad all day. Dammit, why do I have selective will power?
Also, I don’t excersize. I cart my 220 pound frame from class to class and up and down four floors whenever I leave my dorm, but that’s it. I lived in a steady-state of minimal exercize and my parents watching my calorie intake up till now. Now, I have to be my own caloric watchdog. I’ve trained for the work. The meeting people is easy. But I never learned how to watch my weight without thinking about it. I suck. Or to be precise, my body’s thoughtful storing of every excess calorie in front of my intestines lest I starve suddenly, combined with the fact that I am confronted with a buffet table open every weekday, sucks.
Two mini-plans I have instituted are drinking water before I get any food, and eating a salad with fat-free dressing before I eat anything else. But dammit, they’re offering pasta alfredo every damn day!
Whats your aversion to exercise?
I am fundamentally lazy. This means that I would rather work my butt off now, get a kewel job paying lots of cash, retire early, and kill time until I die. Similarly, I would prefer to stay relativly healthy, if I can find a method that does not involve excess work.
Knowing that it will be much easier to curb my eating now than exersize my butt off, literally, later, but having to endure an effort of will to do so, is what is pissing me off.
Well the best way is to exercise & watch what you eat. You might be surprised, 20 minutes of exercise once in awhile will make you feel a hell of a lot better about yourself, and shouldn’t put a temporal dent in your day.
Don’t beat yourself up so much. Its hard to change eating habits. You’ve cited examples of your willpower, so its not like you don’t have it at all.
I had to learn not to eat sweets when they were offered to me…and I don’t even like sweets that much. Its just that they were so restricted in my childhood that I had this binge-urge every time they were in front of me. So I recognized the problem and dealt with it. It took a couple of years though.
So try to remember to take an appropriate amount, eat it, and leave if you can’t handle the buffet-temptation. Or eat your food really slowly, if you like to chat with your friends at lunchtime.
I’m with you on the exercise…I hate it. Its a lot more fun to exercise if I go play soccer or basketball. I suck, but my friends don’t mind…and it certainly gets my heart rate up.
I just want to second what ouisey said.
All-you-can-eat buffets are rough, but they are actually pretty easy to deal with. I get into trouble when I just walk up cold and take full-sized portions of the first few things I see that I like. Then, when I’m on my way to a table, I notice five or six other things that I want to try. I think to myself, “Well, it’s all-you-can-eat, so I can always come back.” Bad news.
Take a minute and look over all the available selections, then use your prodigious spacial-relations skills. Figure out what you really want, then take portions of those items just sufficient to fill your plate.
Take your time eating it. If you eat too quickly your body may still be sending “hungry” signals to your brain well after your stomach is already full.
Excercise is actually pretty easy if you spread it out. Walk instead of driving where you have time, take the stairs even when you don’t have too, play a pick-up game of basketball or street hockey with your friends, etc. That sort of thing is actually better for you and more effective than occassionally trying to kill yourself with a strenuous half-hour full-blown workout.
Also, remember that there is a big difference between “hungry” and “HUNGRY.” You can deal with the occassional tummy rumble. They’re really not all that unpleasant.
Good luck.
Dude, are you at William and Mary?
(If you are, don’t worry, you’ll be sick of the food soon enough. Whole place went downhill in the middle of my junior year, when they stopped serving fried ravioli. Stay away from the cheese sticks from Chanello’s, though – those things are dangerous.)
Walking will do you good too. And it doesn’t seem as much exercise as jogging or stairmasters, etc. But it does help. I had a problem after I had my kid, but I’m slowly but surely getting back to where I was. I get times when I like to eat crap food but then I get periods where I eat nothing but healthy. I wonder if it evens out. 
Good luck, Robert!
Now if I could only re-quit my stupid habit of smoking. :rolleyes:
Thanks for the support. It’s very helpful.
Well, I already do take the stairs, and I’m on the fourth floor of my dorm, so I’m getting some exercize that way. And I have no car, so I get lots of walking in.
Question: can anyone suggest low calorie, high-volume, cheap foodstuffs?
I weighed an even 220 when I left for college. (I’m 6’1", big boned, and in possesion of what would be a beer-belly if I drank.) I happened to get the Flu from Hell the day before I left, which, based on the amount of food I consumed during the trip up and move-in day (less than one day’s usual quota) and the amount of heat energy I was radiating, probably knocked off a few pounds right there.
I’ll bump this thread when I go back home for Thanksgiving break, and let you all know if I managed to lose any weight.
And thanks again for the support.
Fruit and vegetables. And they’re good for you in so many other ways.
FWIW, I was in your situation once. I feel so much better now that I’ve taken up a regular exercise program. Do it; it’s worth it.
Don’t get too obsessed with counting calories. That leads to an extremely stressful situation where you are spending way too much time worrying about what you eat.
Trust me, you don’t need any additional stress in your freshman year.
There are a couple of other things you might try:
Bed sit-ups: Ya know how you kinda hoist yourself up out of bed when the alarm goes off. Do it two or three times instead of just once.
The Half-Assed Textbook Arm Curl: While ypo’re walking to class, hold your books out in front of your body ever once in a while for as long as you can. Sure, you’ll look like a dork, but so does everybody else.
The Fifty Foot Jog: When you see some friends, trot over to say “Hi.” Don’t just walk.
In general, just make every physical activity just a little bit harder than it has to be. It’s easy.
Decide exactly how hungry you are before you order your food. Order what you want after that contemplation. and ENJOY IT.
None of this stuff is hard, and it all worked for me.
Again, good luck.
Unbuttered popcorn, or popcorn with just a little butter. You can still put salt on it (assuming you don’t have a blood-pressure problem), and it tastes pretty good. Use season salt if you want a little more flavor.
Popcorn got me through many a lean time when I was at college.
YOU have no willpower? YOU??? Then what am I? A freak?
I weight almost 60 pounds less than I should and I am too lazy to cook when i am hungry. I end up eating once a day…
I wasted 3 years of my life because I was too lazy to get out off bed and attend 3 hours of class everyday.
I have so many more examples in my head right now I feel dizzy. I am deeply ashamed of many of them so I will shut up.
The bad thing about lack of willpower is that you can’t do anything about it since it requires will power to do so…the most vicious of circles. I’ll survive somehow.
peace out.
Beans, beans, beans.
You asked for “low calorie,” filling food, and there it is. Lots of protein too.
Just don’t rely on legumes for all your protein. All proteins are composed of amino acids, and your body naturally breaks down food proteins into those amino acids and re-assembles them into human protein where needed.
Trying to get all the precursors you need out of vegetable matter is a chore. You need to eat a few cuts of meat once in a while too.
Eat salads. Mostly vegetables, lots of vitamins and minerals. They’re filling too, if you build them right.
Here is a link that I hope helps you out. I use it and it works for me.
Calories Burned, BMI and BMR Calculator
Don’t get so down on yourself. Be the studmiester ya are. 