I only lost a pound and a half in 2 weeks so that’s all I am under my goal weight, but it will probably take from now until Christmas to lose whatever I gain over the weekend. Oh well, I know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the winter. It isn’t hard to stick with but it’s disappointing.
Some random thoughts…
Cost: I’ve belonged to several different gyms, it seems the price varied from $30.00 per month to $99.00 per month. Corporate discounts are usually available if you work for a company in the area. Negotiate “enrollment fees” as they’re just bogus free money to the company.
What to look for:
Get a free 5-day membership and go at different times a day. How busy is it at 6:00 AM? Lunch-time? 6:00 PM? Keep in mind, gyms are about to see their “New Years Resolution” jump in memberships and useage so it’s gonna be more crowded come January through about March.
How are the amenities? Lower priced gyms I’ve belonged to don’t provide towels, lockers, laundry service, massages, etc. More expensive gyms should have toiletries in the locker rooms such as deodorants, lotions, shaving cream, etc. This maybe important if your working out then going to the office or going out to dinner after the gym. Do they provide towel service, both work-out towels and bath towels for showers or sauna. (This is so much more important to me now that I have a gym with towel service!)
How new and plentiful is the equipment? Few things worse than being stuck with 3 treadmills that are really old and creaky. Look at all the equipment, even if you don’t think you’ll be using the free-weights for example - you never know, 6 months from now you may want to switch up your routine from nautilus type machines to free weights or vice versa.
Classes - I lurve me fitness classes. Look at the schedule and variety of classes offered and how they may match up with your schedule. Having 5 spin classes a week is great unless they are all at 5 AM and you are not a morning person!
Physical Trainers - Almost all gyms offer them but look for bio sheets on the trainers. Watch them on the floor working with cilents during your free 5-day session. How are they working with a client? Are they engaged or dumping them on a cardio machine for 15 minutes while they chat with other members?
People - I hate gyms that are more “pick-up” places for the beautiful people. I also don’t care for muscle-head bare-bones type gyms. Are people there to just work out? Are there social groups within the gym to meet new people based upon fitness interests - kick-ball leagues, basketball or volleyball teams, etc.
Comfort - Most important, pick a gym you can see yourself actually spending time at! You are about to commit yourself to getting in shape and that requires a lot of discipline, especially at first, so don’t pick a place that has characteristics that make you less likely to spend time there. If you are like me, at first gyms are intimidating anyway - bunch of damn healthy, strong, good looking people in there and then me… out of shape, not so good looking, older guy. 
You’ll get over some of that initial discomfort and when things settle into your routine do you feel comfortable there.
Hope that helps!
MeanJoe
I get this too. I was told a couple of years back — when I was admittedly still overweight by any standard — that my ideal weight was 67 or 68 kg at 176 cm. Yeah, right. I weighed more than that when I was a skinny teenager a few cm shorter than I am now, who swam a couple thousand yards every day during swim season and put in another hour+ of practice for springboard diving. If I had 0% body fat I might, possibly, be that light. Realistically, I doubt I’d be healthy any lower than 70 kg, and I’d have to lose muscle along with any remaining fat to get that low. Similarly, my creatinine level of 1.1 got flagged on my last physical because that’s out of the norm for the population. It’s well within the 1.2 upper boundary of the norm for the US; I’ve simply got more muscle than a typical Japanese guy.
When I was fat, I was fat because I was a foreigner. Now that I’m intimidatingly muscular from a Japanese point of view (barely qualify as “getting there” by my standards) they say, “yappari, gaijin dakara.” Forget how I’ve gotten better results working out only 3–4 days a week than most teenagers here get doing 6 or even 7 days with their sports teams. I recently ran my first 10 k ever with the local high school on their annual marathon-taikai and beat the times of more than 180 of the 340 boys who participated — who are half my age — despite never having run more than 5–6 km previously. And I’m sure I can outlift everyone except for some of the bigger judo guys. I got that way by working my ass off when I exercise, and by learning about how real fitness works so that I’m not wasting time and effort on useless crap.
You can pretty much ignore anything the Japanese say about health fitness. Not only does the fad consciousness extend to workout and diet trends, but they go for pseudoscience or impractical crap extrapolated from typically IgNobel prize-worthy research that is virtually unknown outside Japan.
After seeing some enthusiastic stories and demonstrations on the news, my wife asked me my opinion about an expensive boutique fitness technique where compression cuffs are put around your legs and arms and you exercise with relatively light weights. It costs a lot because you need special equipment and a trained person running it to avoid complications like blood clots or necrosis from too much blood restriction. I can’t remember the name of it right now, but when I looked it up I found that while it does work for increasing strength and muscle size over control groups, virtually no one outside Japan gives it any credence except as a possible rehabilitation technique. It’s useless for trunk muscles, for obvious reasons. I actually found only an article or two in English that even mentioned it, though there were pages of hits in Japanese. That is the kind of junk that’s promulgated even on mainstream news programs.
If you pick up Tarzan or other fashion/fitness magazines for men, you’ll see guys who look like recovering famine victims doing exercises that might be challenging for pre-teen girls. It’s not fashionable to be muscular, it’s desirable to be slim. Forget that the slender girl advertising the local gym has no muscle tone, flabby thighs and butt, and probably has higher body fat than she appears to have since she’s go so little muscle mass. She’s got thin arms and legs, so she’s “fit.”
It’s even more detached from reality than the US fitness industry. You can’t even buy decent weights anywhere. If you want your team name embroidered on an overpriced sports bag, or your tennis racket restrung, they can do it, but forget about anything to do with weight lifting. Stores will sell completely out of natto for several weeks because of a story about how it helps you lose weight and reduce the chance of strokes, while the commercials are for Regain, with enough caffein and B-vitamins to recover from your hangover while working yourself into an early grave.
Your attitude is just fine. Screw them. Do your exercise and diet for you and ignore what anyone says about it.
Thank you, Sleel. I’m sorry you have to go through it too but it’s good that someone understands. I am so, so SICK of being “enormously fat” and then I go to England and I’m just average.
When I was at my absolute ideal weight and fitness just about 7 years ago now, (I was a US size 4/6 and a UK 8) my MIL came back from a shopping trip and triumphantly dragged a tent out of her bag. “Here! I found this great shirt for you and it might just fit!”
Or being told scornfully and yet with a leer by a doctor that someone with such a “Rippana karada” (splendid body) as I could not possibly have pneumonia, despite having sat next to a guy with bacterial pneumonia for three days during a conference before he knew he’d got it and despite me being sick with a fever and cough and congested lungs for three weeks. I was too weak to yell that time, just slunk off, unmedicated and unhelped and humiliated.
Or how about when pregnant at 60kg and was told that as I was unhealthily fat to begin with, my absolute limit for weight gain was 6kg. As the WHO’s limit is a MINIMUM of 9kg I just stared him in the face and told him I wasn’t going to listen to such stupid and dangerous advice.
It is just so depressing to live here and it does have a HUGE impact on self esteem, to be called fat and ugly (or alternatively cheap and sexy) all the time. Men get the joy of being scary, too…
I’m back to 184, this morning. So I’ve held steady for the five weeks that I’ve been getting ~1500 calories per day and going to the gym three times a week.
I am broken and disillusioned. I can hold my weight steady by not paying attention to what I eat. I gained this time because of alcohol. So… I’m gonna stop counting till after New Year. Eff this.
I’m not feeling too good about weight loss today either. I’ll try not to overdo it but I’m not going to count every calorie over the weekend. I just keep telling myself that my jeans are much looser than they were a few months ago and having to tack a few more weeks on at the end isn’t going to be a big deal. I can go back to 1200 - 1500 calories a day on Monday and stick with it until Christmas cookie season.
Okay, first of all, when you’re losing weight five weeks is NOT a long time. You didn’t gain the weight overnight and you’re not going to lose it that way either. It really is not uncommon to not lose at first as your body adjusts to this new routine. Our bodies like to hang on to that fat, and will fight us for it. I’d say that any day now you’re going to start seeing the weight come off. Don’t give up!
One question, also. How did you come up with the 1500 calorie a day goal? I question whether, at your weight and the amount of calories you are burning, this is enough. You need to eat to lose! When I started (again) in February I was at about 180 pounds. My goal was to eat 1700-2000 calories a day, and I lost 17 pounds. I’m not saying that’s what would work for you, just that you might want to tinker around with your calories a bit … calorie cycling, “free days,” that sort of thing.
Karyn, don’t worry too much about the holiday weekend. Keep in mind that it takes 3,500 extra calories to gain a pound, so when you wake up on the day after Thanksgiving six pounds heavier, it’s probably mostly water weight and will come of quickly if you watch the sodium a bit. I think people should go ahead and indulge on holidays, but remember that it’s not holi-week or holi-month. That’s where we end up gaining. Indulging for one day isn’t going to hurt us! Another tip that’s been helpful to me on holidays is to eat what you want, not what other people want you to eat. If you don’t love it, don’t eat it. There’s no use wasting perfectly good calories on something you’re not crazy about when there’s so much to choose from.
I’m skipping the mashed potatoes and dinner rolls. It’s not much but they’re just little butter holders anyway. I don’t need whipped cream with pie either and I’m going to try to cut out as much butter as I can in everything without my partner noticing. That should help a little.
And now I’m off to do the power level Zumba workout for the first time instead of the advanced level that I can keep up with now. If I don’t come back there’s a good chance that I had a heart attack.
I can’t skip the mashed potatoes. To me, they’re not just butter holders. They’re gravy holders. 
Well, I didn’t die because the power level isn’t all that much harder than the advanced one is. It has a lot more hip and abs moves and it doesn’t slow down to teach the steps but I could still keep up. For a $30 investment I’m getting a lot out of it and it’s fun.
I love gravy too. I think that I’ll make the real kind for everyone else and make one of those little packets for myself because they don’t have a lot of calories. I can also leave the sweet stuff off a serving of sweet potatoes for me. I won’t miss any of those things.
Hello gang. I know I’ve been away, but I’ve stopped to wish everyone a safe and happy Thanksgiving.
I am doing pretty well weight-wise (although I seem to be at a plateau.)
In 15 years the only time I’ve been at a lower weight was when I was so sick in 2005. I’m only 11 lbs over that weight right now and about 18 lbs over my current target. (I may change the target when I see what I look and feel like.)
I have given up sugar almost entirely. (More on that later.) I’ve subscribed to the 10,000 steps philosophy. I’ve only hit 10,000 steps once (just this last Monday), but I average about 9500 daily. I’m not losing weight, but I am pretty sure that I’m losing fat. I just got jeans a size smaller. They were a little tight at first, but they seem to be fitting me a little better each week. I also lift weights 3 times a week. My workouts are probably better than when I was 20, but I gain muscle so much more slowly now at (nearly) 47. (Getting old is not for sissies!)
It helps that I was laid off in August. Not only did I get back all that time driving to work, I can also walk/workout whenever I want.
Due to health issues, I eat a pretty high-protein meal and hardly any carbs. I allow myself some carbs once a week, but the truth is that usually makes me feel pretty bad.
Of course, this is a tough time of year and I expect to wrestle pretty hard. Monday is my Birthday and Mom will make a batch of her excellent Tollhouse cookies for me. I could ask her not to, but she has been doing it for more than 30 years, she is almost 70 and I fear there is going to come a time when I wish she would be around to make them for me. IOW, it is a tradition I want to enjoy while I still can. So while I no longer eat sugar, I will be doing so for at least the next few days, while the cookies last.
One funny thing about the sugar. I allow myself the idea of having some once a week. But I tend to buy them and then not eat them. I get them home and think: you don’t really need this, keep them for next week. And now I have a ton of uneaten sweets. 
Dec 13 I have a wedding. I don’t think it will be quite as bad as it might have been years ago. The operations that I had in May and June have really cramped the room down in my insides and so I cannot drink beer like I used. Less beer, less calories and less eating. Not a bad thing (though I miss beer.)
And then we have Christmas.
But worst of all this: A business partner is flying in from London and from the 15th through Jan 10 we’ll be working nearly every day. Which means I will have to conform to his schedule and I worry that will intrude on my daily walk. It is too cold to walk too early in the morning and too late in the evening and he will be here during the day. I am trying to adjust to using the elliptical instead, but that doesn’t have the same feel for me.
My goal is to keep the weight gain to 0-5 lbs this month. If I can do that, I will not feel too bad.
One reason I am doing better is that the Doc said that for every 10 lbs over weight I am, there is an X% increase in the likelihood of having another operation. (I forget the X and no doubt he made the number up anyway)
Each operation takes a little more out of me and I can’t face the idea of having another. Tony Robbins said: People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals - that is, goals that do not inspire them.
Not having another operation is a pretty potent goal. So, when I have a day like Sunday where I was feeling pretty low and I really had decided I wouldn’t walk, well eventually I couldn’t stand it and went for a short walk anyway. Not as long as my usual daily routine, but still better than laying on the couch.
In any case, I’m not really back, but I am here in spirit. I read along and cheer for your successes and I wish you luck at this particularly tough time of year.
Good luck losing!
My willpower will get me through the turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes just fine tomorrow. I never eat very much of that stuff anyway. My downfall has always been the appetizers and snacks before the meal: Cheese balls, creamy spreads & crackers, wine…I’ve a tendency to graze socially, to be sociable.
I need to avoid the snack table!
Thanks, yellowval. I’m still going to go to the gym, avoid alcohol, and eat sensibly–these five weeks of calorie tracking have taught me a lot. I’m also going to step up my cardio time from 35 minutes 3x/week to 50 minutes 3x/week. But I’ve lost hope that any weight will come off. I sit at a desk all day at work, I have Hashimoto’s, and nothing is working. I need to talk to my doctor about it, when I get my Synthroid prescription renewed in early January. Something isn’t right, here.
I got the 1500 number from SparkPeople. Give that I want to be at 150 by July, it’s giving me a calorie range of 1380-1730 per day. Sometimes on post-gym days I eat up to the limit. Sometimes I stay at the bottom. I’ve been having one or two free, but sensible, days per week, also. I want to blame my lack of progress on those, but really… come on. I’m sure that I’m not eating past 2200 on those days.
So anyway. Back to normal life for a while.
Hey everyone, I’ve been absent for a while but thought I’d check in as I have just committed myself to losing the final 10lb that I’ve been holding on to. I’ve kind of sort of been on weight watchers in that I’ve been going to get weighed and thinking about what I eat but not actually tracking food/exercise points. My weight has stayed steady at 163/164 (11’9/10 for us Brits) for the last couple of months which I guess is a success in itself as it means my regular lifestyle is enough to maintain my weight and not gain, but it’s not taking care of those last pesky pounds.
I’m now back on the WW system for the second week and managed to lose 1lb at my last weigh in. Given that I’m at the tail end of a fairly significant loss (26lb lost so far and I’m a 5’7 man) I don’t expect to lose much more than 1lb a week, possibly 2 on really good weeks. So I should hit my target by January, which isn’t long to go at all. I’m supplementing my dieting efforts with regular trips to the gym, I’m currently doing a programme of weights that takes about an hour, three times a week. I’m really enjoying it as I’m starting to see the results now and I’m definitely feeling stronger.
So, my stats are:
Starting weight - 188.5 (7th Jan 2008)
Current weight - 163 (24th Nov 2008)
Goal weight - 154 (probably around 26th Jan 2009)
You bet your sweet ass I’m submitting myself as a WW success story too!
I weighed myself this morning and I was down by another pound. I’ll gain it back over the weekend but I don’t care (at least until Monday).
I weighed myself this morning and I gained a pound, and that’s fine, because I was continuing to lose weight even beyond my goal weight. If I stay between 125-130 I can live with that.
Thanksgiving was fine. I had turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing with gravy, (:D) sweet potatoes, broccoli salad, and pecan pie. I also snacked on some appetizers (cheese and olives) before dinner.
Considering I had a high fiber breakfast, I think I did fine overall, since I really only ate two meals today.
I’m still full from yesterday and I feel like I have butter running through my veins. I’m not weighing myself for at least a week after the last leftover is gone. I only ate a little bit of everything but that was enough to overload a plate and I was so full that I couldn’t eat pie until 6 hours later. Thanksgiving is the only day where being able to get up off the couch is a sign that you can eat more.
I traveled for the holiday and didn’t really try and eat well. Too difficult and stressful. I’m officially on detox now after eating too much garbage of the last three days… I’ll be happy as long as I maintained my pre-holiday weight and didn’t gain anything. I’ll find out tomorrow.
I’m thankful I’m a Brit and didn’t have Thanksgiving to deal with this year! On the other hand, the round of Christmas parties for my work begins TODAY with making a traditional Christmas dinner with my adult English students… Will have to be careful but faced with mince pies my will power will go out the window.
I am down 1kg this week to 72.2kg (159 lbs) How exciting to be in the 150’s!
Starting weight 4th October 79.6kg (175.5 lb)
Current weight 72.2kg (159 lbs) for a total of 7.4kg (16.5 lbs) so far.
Goal weight 55 kg (121 lb) Hopefully by next summer.
Well, my discipline has been crap for the last two weeks in the exercise department, not to mention the glory that is Thanksgiving. I weighed myself with my clothes on and a full tummy, though, and I haven’t gained anything. I think I will wait another week before weighing myself for real. And get back on the weight lifting track! Skipped Friday and Sunday this weekend, dang it. For no reason. Did XC ski though.
Starting weight: 134
Current weight: 123 (where I’ve been for Months)
Goal weight: 117