The Fat Lazy Slob’s Guide To Getting In Shape or something similar?
I may know somebody who could probably use a book like that…
Try The Hacker’s Diet.
I have also personally had great results from Couch 2 5K.
No book necessary.
Eat a lot less and divide it into 5 or 6 portions to eat over the waking hours.
EXERCISE by running of walking if physically limited for two hours a day.
Don’t cheat on yourself. It will take time but slowly and surely you will loose weight.
I’m sure that works for a lot of people, but for the rest of us, it’s like saying the way to get rich is to make more money and spend less.
It’s not rocket science. It’s like how the best way to stop smoking is to . . . not smoke any more cigarettes. I thought it sounded absurd when I was a smoker but then when I finally decided to try it and quit, I realized nothing could have made more sense. If you think about it logically, it’s not like eating less [than the average American diet] or not smoking is going to hurt you. Quite the opposite!
To actually get in shape, that’s another matter. In my experience, you have to find a physical activity you really enjoy. If you stick with it for awhile it kind of snowballs into all sorts of other things you like doing. First I realized I liked hiking, then I got into cycling, then mountain biking, then lifting weights, then swimming . . . I like almost anything physically demanding now. And I was one mess of a couch potato a few years ago.
It’s all mental. If you’re not doing it yet, you don’t really want to do it yet.
A very good motivator is always to find a friend or join a club to go walking every Tuesday evening or play Badminton every Friday, because that makes it harder to find excuses to back out of the activity.
Only important trap: when you go walking/biking whatever in a group, do it for 1 hour, and then sit in a bar for 2 hours, don’t drink beer or eat a big meal! I’ve seen quite a number of guys in those clubs with a beer gut from the after-sports part…
Humans become used to almost everything. This means bad habits develop quickly, but also good habits. So try to get into the habit of taking a walk every Friday or similar.
A study showed that two thirds of people like competitive team sports - like soccer, volleyball etc. - better than solitary fitness sports - like aerobics and similar. Probably because only some people like sport in and of itself, but being in a group/team is very appealing to our instinct.
Visual does play a big part. A portion on a too-small plate will make you feel fuller than the same portion on a too big plate. They did some studies on the psychology of eating:
- don’t clear your plates off the table until you’re done - seeing five empty plates will make you feel fuller
- Very easy tip: put a timer with a bell on your table. Every 20 seconds, the timer rings, and you take ONE spoon of soup, or ONE bite from the steak. You chew and wait till the next bell.
Or, if you don’t have a bell, chew EVERY bite 30 times. You will not only feel fuller quickly, you will discover other tastes in the food, and the food will be easier to digest. - Eat good food, that has a lot of taste, not from artifical taste, though. Buy organic natural stuff instead of prepared TV diners.
- DO NOT read or watch TV while eating: concentrate on each bite as if it were your last or first of that food.
- DO NOT set a limit on how much you have to eat, or when to eat. Try to listen to your body, it will take some time, then you will hear it.
- When you sit on the couch watching TV and want to snack, you’re bored. Either crunch carrots, or start knitting (very good way to keep your hands occupied. If you don’t know it, learning something new might help keep your mind off things).
- Don’t cut off all your sweets completly. Comfort eating is a deep reflex (babies in the womb react to sweetness with smiling). Instead, portion out a single row of chocolate from the big bar each morning: that’s allowed for the whole day. Or a handful of raisins. Or … one portion per day. You can carry it in one of those screwy water-tight containers or a snackbox.
You don’t need to buy any expensive shoes or equipment to do sports - there are a lot of fitness exercises where you use your own weight, or two 1.5 liter bottles of water as weight. You only need some comfy loose clothes and a mat to lie on.
Find out what your best time is and use it. Some people like to jog/ bike in the morning. Some people can’t face the cold day and sport at the same time, but feel good at 11 am. Some do it after work. There are some studies, but mostly it depends on the individual.
This. You need to find something to motivate yourself. Without it, what’s to keep you sticking to your plan? My motivation, of all things, was the Wii Fit. I stepped on that thing when I got it last September and found that, for the first time in my life, I had crested 200 pounds, weighing in at 203 (a 28.3 BMI for my 5’11" frame.) That was all I personally needed to get me going. I did the small meals thing and used the Wii’s weight tracking system as a sort of “game,” challenging myself to get better and better scores. Within two months, I had gotten down to 185.
I eventually ditched the Wii fit, but after two months, my body had gotten used to higher exercise levels and I had become very good at estimating calories (keeping a food diary for a few weeks as part of this–it wasn’t the Wii exercises that took off the weight, it was bringing my diet down to 1800 calories. The Wii was for motivation and tracking.) I’m now at 163 pounds (a much healthier 22.7 BMI), run nearly daily, and I honestly don’t feel like I’ve ever starved myself through this diet. It was just a matter of having motivation and watching what you put into your stomach. Exercise certainly helped, but most of the weight was what I was eating.
The food diary, in particular, can be enlightening. Foods you think might not be calorie-dense are (bread and pasta contained a LOT more calories than I would have guessed), and foods that you might think are heavy, can be low-energy and satisfying (a pound of shrimp, for instance, is only around 500 calories, provided you don’t drown the thing in butter.)
If you eat out a lot, that’s perhaps the most difficult thing to control. There are so few low-calorie options on most average restaurants menus. And even dishes that seem like they should be low calorie are blown by the addition of lots of fats, thick breads, cheese, mayo, etc. For this, you have to exercise portion control, which is very difficult to do when you’re used to cleaning your plate (like I am) when you eat.
Well, I haven’t seen that book either, sorry.
My husband’s been pestering me for a while to go to the gym with him. I came up with lots of reasons not to go, but when it came right down to cancelling the membership, I couldn’t do it. So I’ve started going again (I told my husband I was just making sure I hated it). And instead of “rewarding” myself after a workout with a visit to the pool, like he does, I bring a book. While he swims, I get to read. And that’s been a surprisingly good incentive for me. If you can find the right motivation, maybe you’ll do this.
A tip on weight loss (as opposed to “getting into shape,” which while related is something very different):
I know there’s been a lot of backlash against the low-carb fad but there is wisdom in it if you’re reasonable. A lot of them are too extreme and that’s why people don’t stick with it. But if you drink soda, juice, beer, gatorade . . . basically any drink with calories besides the occasional glass of milk . . . cut it out. Completely. Switch to water or diet soda if you have to. Cut out most of your bread, rice, and pasta (you can indulge occasionally but be smart about it.) Just doing that and keeping my workout regime exactly the same, I dropped 20lbs this summer and I have well-defined abs for the first time.
Whoa . . . that sounds like a really good way to develop some kind of complex or hangups towards eating.
Here are two very easy ways to lose SOME weight. The average person burns about 11 calories per body pound to maintain his/her weight. If you weigh 180 thus you get 180 X 11 = 1980. So if you’re at 250 right now you need 250 X 11 = 2750.
So if you were 250lbs and want to weight 180lbs simply cut back your calories to 1980 per day.
Slowly the weight drops off and will stabalize.
Second way is this, assuming you’re in good health, start with 1200 calories per day. The next week go up to 1300 calories per day. The next week to 1400 calories per day. Do this till you hit 2000 calories per week
The thing is most people can easily start diets, but limiting calories gets harder, by knocking the number of calories up as the weeks go by you can hang on better. It’s a bit of a trick but it works.
By the time you hit 2000 if you want to lose more weight drop back down to 1200 and start over.
As for getting in shape, start slowly and a gym is helpful but not necessary. One thing is if you join a gym make sure it’s convenient to get to. If it is not, you will never go. Plain and simple, it doesn’t matter how cheap or great your health club is, if it isn’t easy to get to from your home or work, you won’t go. People are like that.
I recommend getting books on tape for gyms. Often you get bored working out, books on tape will allow you to “read” all those books you never quite got around to reading in your life.
You have to find little tricks with exercise and eating to keep you motovated.
Last thing if you go under 1500 calories per day for food, it’s very difficult (though not impossible) to get all your vitamins and minerals. So just grab a “One-A-Day” type vitamin (the generic brand) from Walmart or Walgreens. You can usually find them on sale for like a penny a pill. For that price it’s worth it. I am not one for mega-doses of vitamins and such but that’s just a cheap price for a back up.
Make sure all the carbs you do eat are high quality, slow digesting, carbs, like non-starchy vegetables, and whole grains. Avoid things like white bread, pasta, and rice, unless they are brown rice or whole wheat pasta. Avoid things with “fortified” flour or “enriched” flour. The amount of fiber is often a good indicater of a high quality carb, though companies are starting to realize this and artifically increasing the fiber counts, through things like the aforementioned fortified or enriched flour.
Don’t completely avoid fat. Avoid trans fat and limit saturated fat, but if your body doesn’t consume some fat, it will think fat is scarce, and try to hang on to the fat it has. Get good fat in the way of almonds, nuts, avocados, natural peanut butter (Make sure there’s no sugar added). I think Olive oil is a decently good fat, but don’t quote me on that.
Aim for ~500 calories under maintenance. This is 1 pound a week. Too much more and you can start screwing with your metabolism, and makes yoyo dieting a high probability.
As far as I know, a carbohydrate is a carbohydrate is a carbohydrate. It’s what they’re paired with that makes the difference. If you’re eating something with an amount of carbohydrates that is way out of proportion to the amount of fat, protein, and fiber, then these are “empty carbs.”
The South Beach Diet suffers from a really dumb name, but the book has some very sound advice in it. I highly recommend it (though I don’t follow it to a T.)
Try this: www.sparkpeople.com
There is a whole SD Fan Club devoted to this website on living a healthy lifestyle. Personally I have successfully maintained a 50 pound weight loss for 8 months now.
I agree that people eat way too many carbs, but simple carbs, like sugar or white bread, digest quickly which reduces satiety, and will cause an insulin spike which helps the body convert calories to fat, and will cause hunger when the sugar is metabolized and the insulin is still floating around. Complex carbs doesn’t cause the same spike in insulin, and provide better satiety since they take longer to break down. Plus, you need to get your fiber from somewhere, and you won’t get it from simple carbs.
But again, it is my understanding that “simple” carbs are of themselves no different from “complex” carbs; it’s just that “complex” carbs are paired with fiber and other nutrients-- unless you’re claiming otherwise?