I suppose we should have mentioned our proposed methodologies - I know some did, but it would be interesting to see the results tabulated with a comment on how it was achieved.
For myself, I shall be entering into a strict regime of:
Breakfast: Small bowl of cereal or one slice of toast with minimal butter
Lunch: Several pieces of fruit
Dinner: single (reasonable)portion of whatever is on the menu, no second helpings or desserts
No snacks or sweets.
Exercise in the form of swimming and long brisk walks, possibly cycling if I can fix the bike.
What worries me is that it really hasn’t been a consistent steady loss. I think that six pounds was water weight I dropped from just starting to diet (first time in my life ever). Because I haven’t lost an ounce since then – since I’ve been really serious about losing and working out, etc., I haven’t lost anything. I have realized how my goal – 15 pounds is a little more than 10% of my body weight. And I do recognize that it took time to put it on and it’s going to take time to take it off. I get that. I wonder: for how long should you be working at it before you see any result at all? I’d be happy if I lost half a pound in a week – just to see the damn scale move.
I just started carefully tracking calories, fats, protein and carbs. Looks like too many hidden fats got snuck in there, so this week I’m trying to lower that number without lowering the number of calories. (Which meant I had to bring carbs back – I’m a vegetarian and it was too hard trying to live on protein alone when I have to struggle to find protein sources that are NOT fatty, i.e. peanut butter). No Atkins, South Beach or low-carb for me. I am still attempting to not allow carbs to control my life and am working them in in moderation.
I’m not much of a snacker, now that I’ve banned snacking after 8:30 p.m. If I do snack, it’s a handful of nuts or seeds. There is no junk food in my house – I purged the fridge and pantry a couple months ago.
Am I getting enough calories? That’s the part I’m not sure about. It depends on what resource you go to. I joined a web site which shall remain nameless until I decide they are NOT full of beans (but I have a sneaking suspicion I should try to get my money back). According to this web site, it should take 2000 calories a day to simply maintain my weight and 1500 to lose. I have probably only gotten 2K calories a day when I was eating six cookies at 10 p.m.! (That so sounds like a ridiculous amount of food for someone who has always eaten like a bird.) Right now I’m averaging 1200-1400 calories a day (after exercise). Some days I’m at around 1000.
I went to another site that has a basal metabolic rate calculator. According to that calculator, my BMR (amount of calories I’d burn if I laid in bed all day and didn’t move) is 1350. Which means to me, that if I want to lose weight I shouldn’t take in more than 850 – or else work off calories until the net for the day is 850. That sounds awfully low to me – doesn’t it to you? (I am tiny, but I dunno about that.)
Bottom line: I’m really not sure where I need to be in terms of net calories per day, to lose 1-2 pounds per week. Note: I am walking 30 minutes 5 days a week and doing 40 minutes of yoga 3-5 days a week and garden for hours at a time on weekends. point being: I’m getting plenty of exercise and drinking boatloads of water.
Now, I don’t want to use this as an excuse, but part of my confusion involves external factors that affect metabolism. Such as, 1) I’m a girl and boys burn fat faster since we girls are evolved to store fat for babies. 2) I’m on birth control, which I understand can slow your metabolism – I know many women gain weight on Depo Provera, which I am on. 3) I just quit smoking (I’m on week 3!), which I KNOW slows your metabolism. And 4) I’m about to turn 35 and I understand your metabolism slows after age 30. My question is, how much do these factors really matter in the battle to lose the love handles? Should I work doubly hard or eat half as much to compensate for these factors? Short of going to a doctor (which I think is a tad unnecessary) or finding a professional nutritionist… I’m hoping my fellow Dopers can help straighten this out for me. Thanks to anyone who has any ideas and good luck to all of you who are joining in on this.
I’ll join in. I’ve been dieting for about a month or two now and have dropped about twenty pounds as is so ten more pounds next month should work out fine if everything stays the same and I don’t hit a plateau.
The first five pounds shouldn’t be *too *hard, as I’ve been gaining and losing it over and over again for the past few months.
Method: Calorie and fat counting, lots of fruit to keep fat calories low, moderate exercise. I find that just ritually recording what you eat makes you eat a lot less.
Am I a day late and a doughnut short? If not, I’d like to join. I’ve lost lots of weight in the last year, but have started to put some back on. About 8 pounds I think. It must go away now. Not sure how reliable my scale is, but at least I can use it for relative weight loss/gain. Checking in at 145. Method? I had cut out milk and just generally stopped eating a lot of crap, especially late at night. More activity, too. I’ve let some of the junk food creep back in and need to get out walking more again. Outside yard work will help now that spring is here in the Northeast. Of course that also means it will rain for a week straight now. Maybe I can cover myself in Saran Wrap and try to rake the wet leaves.
(Crap, my Sunday cheat really made me take a big step back. I had been 210 on Saturday morning)
My plan of attack:
Sticking with Atkins–NO ‘cheat days’ this month.
And that means NO booze, too.
Workout at Curves at least 4 times a week.
Pull out my Yoga tapes and do yoga a few times a week–I’m ready to start working on my flexibility (I want to be able to put a foot behind my head again. ;))
The big problem? I’m on vacation in April, and will be visiting family. Visiting family=lots of food. Luckily, they do know I’m on a diet, and I will remind them that I plan on sticking on it. It will still be a challenge to stay on the righteous path.