In november I got a bit of a shock when I weighed in at my annual exam. My doc said some gentle words about weight and when I got home and looked it up I found I had somehow wandered into the medical definition of “moderately overweight” for my height (139 lbs) eek!
So, right after Thanksgiving I decided to cut out carbs (following atkins, basically). Broke it down to meat and veggies (I’ve added nuts and berries now). I use fitday.com to track what I eat.
I’ve lost 9 lbs since Dec 1! Awesome considering I’m on birth control.
I just may have to jump on this thread as a sort of a “kick in the ass” thing for myself. As I start out:
Me? 5’6", 190/190/169
Why 169? That’s what I left high school at. Being of short ‘n’ stocky descent, it’ll be tough. I’m fairly muscular right now, but that darn ‘beer gut’.
I work out pretty often, and last time I got serious about it, I got down to 172. I could be happy with 175, but my good goal for this year is 169. I was a lean fightin’ machine back then.
More shovelling, slogging through the snow to buy vegetables, jumping out of the way of motorists who think they can go the speed limit because they have tire chains–all excellent exercise!
For those trying to cut down on refined carbs: I’ve found it helpful to differentiate between what my body actually needs and what I crave because it’s sweet. I’ve found that substituting a small refined sugar treat or a small amount of sugar substitute treat is helpful for breaking the sugary dessert/snack habit for me. For example, Trader Joe’s sells tiny hard candies (Glitterati, I think), so I might count out 5-10 of them and have my partner put the rest of the bag somewhere. I have a few after lunch and a few for a snack, with something like an apple and an ounce of cheese for dessert after dinner (since my blood sugar’s too high if I eat sugar in the evening). I’ve also found stevia really helpful. I like it because it’s not artificial and is very sweet. It’s great on grapefruit or in a cup of herbal tea. If you have an ice cream maker, you can make a very good frozen yogurt using only plain yogurt (non-fat, if you like), a small amount of frozen unsweetened fruit, and stevia (or Splenda or whatever). You can also throw in a little pure fruit extract and vanilla for a more pungent experience.
I recently met my new internist, a young guy who seems pretty sharp (I have become a lady of a certain age and now want my doctors to be younger than I and closer to their education). He approved of my exercising in the morning and affirmed that this made gooed metabolic sense to me. In the past, the timing of my exercise has sometimes been the only variable that makes a difference for weight loss, so I thought I’d pass that along.
Cutting down on refined carbs is a good idea, I expect, whether you’re on a low-carb diet like Atkins or South Beach, or if you’re on Weight Watchers. Splenda and Trader Joe’s have been my friends in this effort.
Splenda has been great especially because I make sweet (iced) tea with Splenda, and it tastes sweet in a natural way (to me, anyway - YMMV). It satisfies much of my need to taste sweet stuff. Not to mention, we all like to drink stuff that tastes sweet, and beverages whose sweetness comes from sugar come in at ~150 calories per 12 ounces.
Trader Joe’s has been good in several ways, from their stir-fry meals (low-carb and easy!!) to their lo-cal salad dressings to their natural peanut butter to their low-carb bread, among many other things. Their stir-fry meals are best over white rice, but I was eating a lot of white rice this summer (usually with those stir-fry meals, natch), and losing weight while doing so. The low-carb bread will not make anyone give up regular bread on the basis of taste alone - but it’s tolerable (better texture if toasted), and it’s only 4 grams of carbs per slice, so South Beachers can make sandwiches out of it. And sandwiches are good, because they’re easy.
I lost a good deal of weight and inches for a while then it just stopped. i went from 302 w/50.5" waist to 260 w/42.5" waist. Then the weight loss pretty much stopped. When i ate maintenance calories, about 4000 a day, for 3 weeks then dieted again i lost alot of weight in 1.5 weeks (was down to 253 or so and lost about 1" on my waist) but i gained it all back from what i can tell, so im back at 260. I had alot of stress starting in december so i quit dieting 1.5 weeks after i restarted.
Goal now is to restart dieting january 12th or so (after spending 4 weeks eating maintenance calories), then cut to 3000 calories a day of a low fat diet and take a bunch of OTC supplements. Green tea, chromium, calcium, 5htp, alpha lipoic acid and satietrol while increasing protein & fiber intake. Who knows what’ll happen. Goal is about 220 lbs, dont know what my goal waist is. ‘doesn’t look chubby with a shirt on’ sounds like a good goal, id probably need a 36" or so to obtain that. so 220 & 36" waist is my goal.
If anyone else hanging out wants my lunch/dinner ideas (complete with recipes:)) for no-white-carb diets, just let me know. I still have it in Word doc form so it’s easy to copy, paste and email!
I’m still slogging away at it, although we finally had our Christmas dinner last nigh:). It’s been postponed and postponed for scheduling reasons! We had a baked ham, mac and cheese (made with whole-wheat macaroni), mashed sweet potatoes, baby peas with butter and pumpkin bread with cream cheese frosting for dessert (all sugar-free whole-wheat, of course!). Oh, and whole-wheat biscuits.
OK. I’ve started low carbing as of yesterday. It’s worked for me in the past quite well.
Here’s my numbers:
I’m 6’1", 205/205/175
But really, it’s more about inches than pounds. My waist size has ballooned to 38. So my goal is to send that spare tire to the scrap heap.
I just avoid carbs and drink a lot of water. Since I can’t have carbs, I make up the difference with veggies, which is a good thing to do in itself.
I am doing situps, pushups and walking. I plan to dust off those weights in the basement to get rid of my moobs.
I have a motivation besides just good health/healthy self-image…I recently got back into the rock band thing. (Yell County is the band; watch for us!) We’ve recorded a demo and it’s time to start gigging. I’m not taking the stage looking like 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound sack…
The holidays pretty much did me in. On the plus side, I only gained back about 5 of the 40 or so that I lost. On the down side, I got out of the South Beach habit. I kinda, sorta stuck with the plan but not really.
So this morning, I dragged out the book and got started again. I even thought I’d go exactly according to his suggested meal plans.
I managed to drink the 6 ounces of V-8. Ugh. I hate V-8. It’s too thick and has too much celery flavor. I’m not going to be able to do it every morning. I may try plain tomato juice (except there’s that thickness thing) or I may do like I did the first time around and just have some veggies with my breakfast.
As for exercise, I’ve been doing a lot of painting at the house, up and down ladders, bending and reaching and all that. Today, I’m dragging the kid out to the yard and we’ll prune back the dead stuff and rake and generally get the yard presentable for its return to the market.
I do want to make the effort to walk daily - both the dog and I can used the exercise. If I get her used to it, she’ll nag me as soon as I come home from work and we’ll hit the bricks. In theory. We shall see.
My overall goal is still a total loss of 100, so I’ve got about 65 to go from this morning.
I’m doing okay. I had several big slips (chocolate covered almonds that were a holiday present for me and pecan pie at my boyfriend’s grandmother’s house) but I fit them into my points, so I’m still on plan. Unofficial looks at the scale tell me I most likely won’t be disappointed tomorrow, my official weigh-in day.
I also went to the gym two days ago. And I pushed myself. Which is good, but I had forgotten I hadn’t been since exams started and now every movement is pain. I may not go back today as I had planned.
I lost quite a bit of weight 1 1/2 years ago when I first got braces - three weeks of nothing but soup and tofu and milk because of the discomfort and pain! I wasn’t really complaining about the weight loss since I was quite chubby before that. But needless to say, some of the weight loss was muscle mass, which isn’t a good thing!
Since then I’ve generally been eating healthier stuff, and I started working out at the gym about 6 months ago. Recently I put on some weight - some of it might be from the strength training but generally most of it is from the festive feasts since November! :o BTW, Malaysia is definitely foodie heaven, but hell for those on a diet! [The string of festivals since Diwali in October, Aidilfitri (Eid) in November etc hasn’t helped either… sigh!]
So my New Year’s resolution is to be leaner and to tone flabby bits I’m now 124lbs and hope to get down to 115 in six months’ time. Does that sound like a realistic goal? (Am a girl, 5’4".)
Oh, and hi everyone! I’ve mostly been lurking here but thought I’d post to snap myself into action for my goal. The support for each other here feels really good!
I’m now 124lbs and hope to get down to 115 in six months’ time. Does that sound like a realistic goal? (Am a girl, 5’4".)