Making good habits in foods and moving your body

(Sorry this is long)

These habits start out good but always goes into the trash can too fast

Why cant I get it together??

Any tips on commitment?

Maybe small baby steps are the way but once falling off the wagon, its hard to get back up on it.

I’ve lost my direction the past few weeks, hell, probably a month. The weather definitely affects this activity a lot and we’ve had some horrible humid days which includes mornings when I like to walk.

Plus being older its harder to lose the weight. Diabetic too!

A few months back after coming home from the doctors, I lost 10-12 pounds in the first several weeks.

I need to lose like 100 pounds or at least 50. I know its going to take time but I’d like to keep going no matter how the pounds come off.

I have too many excuses, I like sweets. I can avoid the candy aisle at the store but its hard not to bake something at home. (Plus the candy in checking out at the grocery)

The husband works hard so he can work off all the sweets he wants me bake things for him. Lots of it I can put in the freezer and that is easier to resist.

I try hard to go without sugary things but chocolate cravings drive me nuts

And no, I cant just dabble a bit and go on. Its gotta be cold turkey but chocolate does get me moving!

I have trouble with portion size too. If something tastes good I want more!

And lastly I get very bored easily when I try to eat more healthy. I like salads I like fruits but I only get so far during the week. Fresh foods go bad because of the bore of it all.

Please help!

:eek::eek:

Chocolate: black only. The darker the better. Two squares of 85% have more get go and a lot less calories than a whole tablet of milk chocolate.

Portions: yes, there is room for more. That doesn’t mean you put more in, not right now. The rest will hold for later. Hey, you’ve got several meals without cooking several times!

Hours: different people have different biorythms when it comes to meals as well as to anything else. But whether you’re a heavy breakfaster or can’t have any solid food until noon, pick what times you are going to eat and eat at those times. Any in-between snacking is from a limited list: fruits that “hold well”, don’t need a lot of preparation and won’t send your sugar to the roof; carrots; black chocolate. “I’m a bit peckish and it’s one hour till lunch” shouldn’t be the reason to grab a slice of cake.

If you’ve snacked on fruit, no dessert in the next meal. In fact, avoid cooked or mass produced desserts in favor of fruit.

Can’t help with the husband, sorry. Is there any kind of possibility of getting him to either do his own baking or eat sweets only outside the house? My dad was all in favor of minimalist cooking, but then, he cooked more than Mom did (she OTOH will turn a freaking omelette into a production).

One step at a time - literally. Don’t try to make all of the changes or give up everything at once.

Pick one thing to really work on for now, whether it’s no chocolate, no baking, no candy from the checkout, control of specific portions – whatever seems most workable to you. Then really concentrate on that one thing, being sure to observe whether you are compensating in other areas. If you can stick with the one thing for 21 days, it will become a habit, and much easier – then you can move on to something else. If you just can’t make it to 21 days, or find yourself continually cheating on your one thing, just drop it for now and pick a different thing to try. Eventually you’ll begin to see what will work for you and what doesn’t. You might even be surprised by what you discover.

If fruits are boring you, try to make sure you get enough variety. As someone who eats a fruit-based diet, I have a rule: only one serving of each kind of fruit per day. If I had a peach for breakfast, I can’t have one for lunch. It keeps me from getting in a rut. You could also try looking up new recipes. If salads are boring you, try seeking out one new salad recipe a week, until you’ve built up a big selection of ones you like.

Good luck. Remember that this is something you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life, so it doesn’t all have to get done today.

If you stop buying sugar and various baking goods, it’s hard to bake deserts.

Your husband might like sugar but even he can’t argue that he needs to eat it. Nobody really needs added sugar in their diet. But it does take some convincing to get people to come around to that point of view.

If you don’t buy junk food and bring it in the house, you can’t eat it, right?

So keep the fridge filled with healthy foods (raw fruits and vegetables, herbs, legumes, hummus, greek yogurt, nuts, grains, lean proteins) and eat only those. Avoid all processed foods. Eating healthy is habit forming. It’s going to take you a while to adjust to new way of eating. You’ll sometimes backslide but don’t abandon the good just because of an occasional slip up.

As for chocolate, buy the best dark chocolate you can find/afford. It’s worth it and you might not want or feel the need to finish an entire bar in one sitting.

If you just do one thing better today, than you did yesterday, you’ll get there. Without a lot of structure or stress! Simple, small steps, everyday!

Wishing you good luck!

I know a lot of people who have had success with slimming groups - Weight Watchers and the like. Being around people in the same boat can be very inspiring.

I’d suggest to your husband that he figure out a way to satisfy his sweet tooth outside of the house. Maybe stop by a store/bakery on the way to work. Not entirely the same, but I tend to like a big dinner. My wife doesn’t - not only due to not needing as much food, but also not doing well w/ eating in eve. So I bring larger lunches w/ more carbs.

For my wife and me, the only real solution is to not buy the stuff over which we know we have no will power. No one else is putting the crap into your shopping cart. If games work for you, add up the savings from not buying sweets to save up for some fun purchase.

You can do a lot w/ frozen fruits/veggies to avoid spoilage. And I’d suggest trying to increase your activity in addition to simply modifying your diet.

I’m sorry that the following may seem a lot like bragging, but, like you, I have found it hard to stick to diets and exercise on my own. Here is what has happened this month.

On August 1, I had to have a heart catheterization procedure, which finally woke me up to the realities of where I was heading with my health. My cardiologist had recommended (multiple times) to get a heart monitor device. I had tried a FitBit and it didn’t work; it had a synchronization problem and I finally returned it and got my money back. On August 3, I bought a Garmin device, and I absolutely love it! I also downloaded “My Fitness Pal”, which helps me track my food intake.

I have made a conscious effort to try to walk at least 4 times a day, for about 10-15 minutes each time. Instead of throwing the dog into the back yard for her to do her business, I am now walking her once in the morning, and at least once at night (and sometimes twice). These walks with the dog are quite leisurely, and I have a half-mile route which takes us about 15 minutes or so. During the day, I take a walk around the block (also a half-mile loop), which takes me about 9 minutes.

The Garmin reminds me to move every hour, and so I use that time to get up and walk around the office, get a drink, visit the restroom, etc. It only takes me a minute or two to clear the “Move Bar” on the watch. I have also started taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator, and try to get in 10 flights a day.

The key point is find something that works. Nava’s suggestions about dark chocolate are good. The recommendations about portion control are also important. It has taken me a month, but I’ve finally got my portions under control. Again, an app like My Fitness Pal works wonders; it tells me how many calories I should have during the day, and I try my best to stay under that, or, if I go over, to only go over by a little bit. True, logging the food is a pain in the backside, but I know myself well enough to know that if I try to estimate, I’m just going to go back to bingeing.

I also bought a Ninja juicer/blender/food processor and have fun making a smoothie for breakfast several times a week. I alternate between protein shakes and fruit/veggie smoothies.

According to my Garmin Connect app, I have walked 135 miles in the month of August. Of that, 41 miles have been deliberate Walking activities.

This month, I have lost about 8 pounds. I didn’t put on all my weight overnight, so it is going to take me a while to take it all off. Go slow, but go steady.

I would suggest that you find an accountability partner who will help you, encourage you, and be there for you. My dog is a big motivator for me; she loves our walks, and I figure it’s helping me get healthy. I have also decided I’d like to see my grandkids grow older and have fun with them, and the way I was going, that probably wasn’t going to happen.

You can do this.

I lost over 90 pounds since my peak weight and kept most of it off for about 8 years so far. For most of that time, I used either fitday or myfitnesspal to track my calories consumed and burned. Frankly, it’s a pain in the butt to measure every ounce of food and every minute of exercise, but it worked pretty well for me. If you’re going to go that route, buy a good digital kitchen scale and log your food by weight. Logging by volume is less accurate. One of the biggest obstacles with counting calories was that it meant not eating stuff whose calorie content I was unsure of. You can estimate, but I didn’t trust myself to estimate accurately. I ended up calculating the calorie content per ounce of every recipe I make. That’s a pain but myfitnesspal makes it less laborious than it sounds.

It’s relatively easy to resist the urge to buy junk food for the 45 minutes each week I spend at the grocery store. If I have junk food in the house I find it absolutely impossible to resist the urge to eat it the other 10,035 minutes of the week. If you don’t buy it, you can’t eat it. If your husband wants sweets, let him buy his own and keep them in a secret place you don’t know about or in locked place you don’t have access to.

If there are ingredients to make sweets in the house I sometimes find it hard to resist baking. Consider keeping only small amounts of sugar and butter on hand, and no milk chocolate or semi-sweet. I agree that if you’re absolutely craving chocolate, a little dark chocolate (I use 75% cacao) goes a long way. It satisfies my hunger many times better than an equal number of calories of milk chocolate. I suspect has to do with the stimulants in it. After a month or two without much sugar you may find your old favorites are now too sweet for you.

Find a form of exercise or other activity you actually enjoy. If the exercise is a chore you’re very unlikely to keep it up. For me, walking, snowshoeing, gardening, and chopping firewood are actually enjoyable. For other people it might be running, swimming, biking, mowing the lawn, weight training, golfing (preferably without a cart), basketball, tennis, dancing etc. On days when the weather is too bad for my preferred outdoor activities I sometimes use a stationary bike in a climate-controlled room. I normally find that kind of exercise incredibly boring, but I can combat boredom by watching a video or listening to books on tape while cycling.

Healthy eating doesn’t have to be boring eating. There are lots of low-calorie foods that add a lot of flavor: herbs like oregano and basil, spices like cinnamon and coriander, pickles, sauerkraut, lemon juice, lime juice, vinegar, garlic, onion, hot peppers, Sriracha. Don’t eat salad without dressing or something else that contains fat. A little bit of fat or oil helps digest fat-soluble vitamins in the salad and probably improves satiety.

I almost forgot the most important thing. Don’t go on a temporary diet to lose weight. I must have tried that a dozen times. Sometimes I lost weight, but I always gained it back again a lot faster than I lost it. Instead make a permanent change to your eating and exercising habits that you are comfortable sticking with for the rest of your life. That will include allowing for the occasional indulgence.

:DFirstly CONGRATS on your weight loss and the maintenance! :smiley:

I’ve tried diaries for food intake, gets boring. Also easy to ignore.

I think activity is what I really need to push. Being outside is very addictive but the winter is coming. I will try to take advantage of the milder weather up until the 25 degree and below comes. (I remember being outside all day in my school days, if only I had the energy for that these days!)

I rarely buy snacks like chips popcorn and other sundries in the snack aisle. I buy chips for the husband’s lunch but I dont really like chips at all. So that isnt the problem

We have a small house so any exercise equipment would be in the way of safe walking. We are moving so I would like to get a treadmill then.

Salads: I only like lettuce, carrots, cheese and croutons with french or some other reddish dressing and usually I skip the add-ons and just the lettuce and dressing are fine. Its just being able to get a head of lettuce every few days would be nice but not able to. So eating a salad for three of the days is about all I can get until we go to the store again. (We live in the boonies and the local (small stores) produce is usually bad)

As I said in the OP, my intentions are good but I get bored and off track.

No, not store bought baked goods. Bad enough I use processed stuff in home baking. I just need to learn how to resist eating the cookies for him while baking. I work best on cold turkey.

yep I keep that in mind a lot more than I used to

thanks for the encouragement! The heart thing is what I am terribly afraid of. Maybe I could find some sort of reminder when I want to put cookies in my mouth!

If only the husband could avoid all this crap food. I dont want a big dinner meal either but sometimes he works a 16 hour day so he needs the food at dinner. I try not to eat what he does but that sometimes does not work. -thanks for your input though! :slight_smile:

I dont buy junk food/snacks for me…I avoid processed foods as much as possible. I make meals made from scratch mostly. Neither of us like too many foods. Nuts, regular fruits and vegetables, but not most of those you listed above and again spoilage is a factor with fresh or if not, frequency of visiting the grocery stores with edible fresh foods is limited-thanks for your input!

Definitely a great piece of advice, I shall re read a few times so maybe it will stick!

Appreciate your advice!

Thanks everyone!

That is already a huge plus.

To combat that, look in the frozen food section. There is such a huge variety of fresh frozen fruits and vegetables that you can almost get by without buying fresh produce. And the frozen stuff lasts and lasts.

Best of luck in your efforts for a healthier you.

So, lot’s of discussion about diet, but none about exercise.
It is very difficult to lose weight and (keep it off) with diet alone. Adding in an exercise routine not only makes changing diets easier (you don’t need to be as strict), but raises your metabolism, so you can eat a bit more.

So, OP - what are you doing about exercise?

taking that slow.

Easier for more movement if I can lose 10-20 pounds…gives me more energy and more of a boost to keep going???

Dieting is much more of the problem if I cant keep the movement up.

That damn grocery store!! Another devil’s toy like cookie and cake recipe! That devil…evil evil devil! :eek::eek::mad:

I eat at the same cafe for lunch almost every day. I’ll have a salad or a half sandwich.
They make fresh cookies, and they always have some strategically placed at the cash register.
I can hear them calling to me when I pay… Buy Me! Eat Me!

Sadly I must resist.