I’ve lost 20 pounds since Thanksgiving. (Please don’t hit me!)
I started Weight Watchers with supervenusfreak and we also started walking. I’ve even cheated on it a bit (Christmas cookies at work) and I’m still down 20 from the end of November. I think the walking is really ratcheting the weightloss up.
Oh, and I’m eating bananas like they’re about to become extinct. Since I’m doing the core plan (a limited but not tiny allowed-food list) and not counting pretty much anything, I usually eat a banana if I’m starting to get restless (boredom is my major overeating trigger) instead of digging into the ice cream or the chips.
Caridwen, I’m exercising at home, and going for walks, weather permitting. When I work out at home, it’s basically just running in place (flashdance style 
)combined with some step/aerobic type stuff, with consideration given to my downstairs neighbors (I’ve figured out exactly where the strongest/least creaky parts of my floor are!). When it’s nice enough out, I walk three to five miles instead (I tried running, but it’s not for me. I try to jog at least part of the way, though, preferably uphill).
I’m not a gym person. I’d love to be able to afford to have the equipment at home, but I don’t like sweating in front of other people unless we’re naked. 
Eve, there’s a recent reprint of *Better Than Beauty: A Guide to Charm * that’s pretty readily available right now. The first printing was 1938, and this one doesn’t seem to have updated anything. Right at the beginning, there is a discussion of dieting and exercise from a 1938 perspective. I have been reading the thread–I hear you that you don’t have time for extra exercise–but doing their goofy calisthenics (which take about ten minutes) and then walking around like Rita Hayworth for the rest of the day seems more like entertainment, than exercise.
My dear, I hate to be the one to burst your bulbble, but just losing weight won’t decrease your cardiovascular risk. You need at least some aerobic exercise. It’s not as hard as it sounds. If you’re walking up three flights of stairs a couple times a day,every day you may be doing enough. Otherwise, try parking farther from work or stores. 30 minutes three times a week can improve cardiovascular health. Just Do It!™
My bible is the recently republished A Guide to Elegance: For Every Woman Who Wants to Be Well and Properly Dressed on All Occasions, by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux. (I, of course, have the first edition!)
Oh, dear, I am afraid I am being sensible. I’m already walking a lot, am cutting all unhealthy things out of my diet (goodbye forever, ice cream and pie) and just had two baked tilapia filets for dinner and will have some cut-up watermelon slices for dessert. I better goddam have a heart like a triphammer and the figure of a social X-ray by (looks at watch) 9:00 tonight, or else.
Pickles make a great snack when you’re craving salty/fried stuff.
I know, and she is a lot more fun than Better Than Beauty, but about the exercises…
“Genevieve Antoine Dariaux”
Wow. All the good names are taken.
I think in some fashion, it doesn’t matter what diet you do, so the idea is to choose one you think you can do. I did Atkins, and lost about 50 pounds, of which I’ve kept at least 40 off for several years (it goes down, and then creeps back up). I looked at the science before starting it, and it’s well supported, but that was just the opener. The point was that what it allowed was something I thought I could live with: it meant giving up some things, at least until I was at maintenance, but it also meant I was allowed a lot of stuff that seemed like treats to me.
I know people who do very well with the eat-sensibly-during-the-week plan, and then they are allowed to eat anything they want on Sunday. That way, they can say to themselves, I can have that, only not right now. As previously noted, maybe it comes off a little slower, but who cares as long as it helps you continue to take it off. It then becomes a plan you can stick with, not a diet but your choice.
As for walking, do get a pedometer–they are cheap and plentiful. Then use it to measure the steps you take in one day, and pick an inactive one. Write the number down with your little gold pencil in your jeweled appointment book. Then try to do no less than that first day for the entire week. The next week, add ten steps to your daily goal, and repeat. If a daily goal makes you beat yourself up, set a weekly goal, so you can get ahead early in the week. And keep writing it down: when you start to lose heart, go back and look at that first week, and you’ll be amazed how far you’ve come.
The point is to try to outthink yourself. How hard can that be? Especially for you, because there is no way your lazy can be cleverer than the rest of your extremely amusing self.
…and when people ask you how you did it, tell them, “I wore heavier jewelry.”
I see a book deal in our future:
nagging nausea and rage-fuelled exercise
goofy calisthenics, then walk around like Rita Hayworth rest of day
diet coke and Wild Turkey
wear heavier jewellery
slap bellboys, trample peasants, sweep down staircases - Make an entrance!
Nyquil at regular intervals - hibernation
give up modern medicine
I like the way all y’all think!
I’m a Lazy Bitch too, and I’ll share a diet hint:
Find some relatively easy and painless change you can make to your diet, and make it harder to cheat than to stick to your diet. That way, you’re working with your laziness, not against it.
For example: switch from regular soda to diet. Only buy diet soda at the grocery store, so that getting regular soda means having to make an effort- you’d have to make another trip to the store or find a vending machine and dig up change from your purse, and who wants to do all that when you’ve got diet soda right there? You might want to try “light” or “no sugar added” ice cream, to see if you like it well enough to substitute it for regular. If one brand doesn’t do it for you, there are others, which you should try before you give up on the idea.
Another example might be, if you’re going out to lunch or going to your company’s cafeteria, to start bringing your lunch, stockpiling frozen dinners, or drinking Slim-Fasts for lunch instead. Unless you’re eating in nice restaurants every day, the food’s going to be about as good, getting lunch will require less time and effort, and you’ll probably save some money, too.
Buy ice cream in smaller containers, and don’t buy much of it at a time. That way, if you want to eat all the ice cream in the container, there won’t be as much. I find that bite-size candy bars work pretty well for candy cravings and don’t end up with you eating a whole candy bar. Buy smaller pizzas, or buy pizza by the slice.
Another tactic is to eat ice cream only from a bowl, never from the carton. Scoop out as much as you want into the bowl, put the carton away, and eat only what’s in the bowl. This works well for things like chips, too. It works really well for me, since my laziness means that I balk at the idea of more dishes to wash, so it makes me ask if I really want this snack…
If you like Chinese food, you might want to look into getting a cheap wok and making stir-fries at home. They’re good for you if you don’t use too much oil (and they’re nasty if you do). All kinds of stores sell pre-cut fresh or frozen stir-fry vegetables, which makes it easy (I’m pretty sure Whole Foods does). A lot of stores also sell pre-cut-up stir-fry beef or chicken, too.
I drink water when I get hungry/bored. I keep a plastic bottle on my desk, and refill it from the water cooler when I want some water. The water cooler is much closer to my office than the vending machine, and doesn’t require me to dig around in my purse for change.
Bake-frying food is much easier and less messy than frying it, and can satisfy a fried-food craving. I make a mix of matzo meal and spices, shake chicken in a plastic bag with it, put it on a cookie sheet covered with foil and sprayed with no-stick spray, then spray the chicken and bake it in the oven like you would baked chicken parts. If I’m bake-frying fish, I usually use flour instead of matzo meal and dredge it instead of shaking it in a bag (so it doesn’t fall apart).
She should just go to the Whole Foods near where I live. The little plastic globes are always empty or nearly so, at least when I get there 
Eve, fingers crossed that all goes well with the leukemia test. And speaking of fingers, I’ve found that keeping mine busy when I get hungry at home in the evenings is the best way to distract myself. I sometimes do a needlework project that takes a lot of concentration, like embroidery.
Another thing that works really well to take one’s mind off food is giving oneself a painstaking manicure. Start by filing your nails, next buff them, then apply cuticle remover. Glue on false nails at this point if needed. Then apply a base coat, then three coats of polish, then a top coat. If you do it properly and let each coat dry thoroughly before putting on the next, it takes hours. While the polish is drying, you’ll stay out of the kitchen for fear of smudging the wet polish. Nothing is more ruinous to wet polish than reaching into the freezer for a carton of ice cream, wresting open the lid and spooning it out. By the time the top coat is dry, your hunger will have gone away and and you’ll be too tired to eat. And the next day, everyone at work will admire your lovely nails. Try this; it works.
Lipstick is very zen for me. I can put myself into a trance for, well, seconds on end by reapplying, lining, blotting and overcoating my lipstick. And you can’t eat while you’re doing that, either!
(Had two tilapia filets and watermelon slices for dessert last night. I am so hungry I could eat cancer.)
Well, I’m a "hippo"crit. I just signed up for a gym. I had to buy new pants yesterday and it turns out I gained more weight this year than I thought. Damn. Oh well, break out the Wild Turkey.
Last June, I smoked my last pipe full of tobacco, emptied what few crumbs were left in my tobacco pouch into the toilet and put on a nicotine patch.
At the end of July I got tired of the red circles that nicotine patches left behind and peeled it off and stopped putting new one’s on.
Then in October, I realized that my pants were feeling a bit tight.
An extra 20 pounds tight.
So… I started following a modified version of the Hackers diet mentioned earlier in the thread.
There’s no way I’m counting calories. It’s just not something I am willing to expend the mental energy on. I just weighed myself, daily, for a couple of weeks without changing my diet. Once I had some idea what direction my current diet was moving my weight, I simply changed what I was already doing. Instead of drinking Mountain Dew for my morning caffeine (usually several cans) I have one can before I leave for work, and I have a cup of black coffee when I get to work.
That one change is enough to cause me to lose a pound every week.
I didn’t replace those calories with anything. I drink a LOT of water, so I don’t get very hungry.
I do the Hacker Diet calisthenics every morning, without fail. I do 40 minutes of cardio ever other day. I’m currently down 10-12 pounds from where I started. (I decided I wasn’t gonna try to maintain the rate of loss over the holidays, i like cookies too much) I’m likely to be down another 10 pounds before the end of February. If you are already walking, then walk faster.
It’s not an earth shattering rate of change, but it’s also a more permanent change. I’m not on a diet. I’m paying attention to my diet. Two totally different things.
The main thing that has made both quitting smoking and weight loss relatively easy for me?
I didn’t do it because someone else told me I had to.
I didn’t do it because I felt like I should.
I did it because I was ready to change, and my desire to change was stronger than my desire to keep doing what i was doing.
For you part of the motivation might be your Mom. For me it is in part my nieces.
I decided I wanted to be around to see them grow up and make families of their own.
Lose 25 Pounds the Lazy Bitch Way – I can’t be the only one who thinks this is a great book title. As an incentive, sign a contact where you get paid only if you actually lose the weight. Mark my word – Oprah will be begging you to appear on her show.
Actually, a good chapter title would be Close Your Eyes and Think of English Food. See, the thing practically writes itself!
The lupus tests have not come back, but the good news is no leukemia, and my cholesterol, while high, has not gotten higher.
Bad news is my sugar is significantly up, and with the high cholesterol and family history of heart attacks, the doctor told me I really have to eat better and lose 25 pounds, no kidding, or I am in big trouble and might not outlive my 85-year-old mother.
He also gave me some really good dolls for anxiety and sleeplessness.I love my doctor, it’s like going to Judy Garland’s and raiding the medicine cabinet!
Ok, now I can breathe again. I couldn’t even post when you said you had to have the leukemia test.
That’s wonderful, Eve. And today being NYE, if I were you, I’d spend it being happy about your leukemia test results, and eating and drinking whatever the hell you want. After all, timing is everything, a last hurrah is in order, and tomorrow is another day.
Congratulations and good luck!
Did you consider that Cloris Leachman may have been using “brush my teeth” as a euphemism?