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 Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 9:55 am
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So a friend makes a post about how she wants to drop from one weight to another weight. In total, she wants to drop 155 pounds in 7 months. Here was my reply to her as well as to anyone else who is thinking about doing some extremes this year on the Weight Resulution.
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well, that is a lot of weight to drop in just a short time. If you were able to drop it that quickly, you'd end up too weak to go to the convention and then all your work would be for naught. Instead, focus on loosing 2-5 pounds a week as recommended by physicians. Also, try to keep in mind that weight loss is a simple mathematic equation: you subtract more calories than you add. In other words, you have to burn off more calories than you take in.
The ideal caloric intake for Americans is 2,000 calories a day. Before you jump in and start cutting back every way you can, make a list of EVERYTHING you have eaten for the past 5 days to the best of your abilities. Then, look up their calories per serving and judge how much of a serving (or how many, be careful with those fruit drinks! they're 2 servings a bottle or more!) and do the math accordingly. This will give you an idea as to WHAT to cut out and how.
If going to the gym isn't an option, simply do some simple work outs at home! Mines (when the weather is good and i'm not in pain or sick) is walking half a mile. For me, its easy to pinpoint EXACTLY half a mile, it the walk down to the stop sign at the bottom of my hill and back to the house. Take note of your surroundings and pick out a point along an easy route where you can walk to it, tag it (You HAVE to tag your point! I tag the stop sign all the time!) and then walk back to your apartment. If you live on a higher floor, use the stairs. A simple walk down to the bottom floor then up again provides EXCELLENT cardio which is the Best way to burn off calories. It also strengthens the heart muscles which, for women, is the best thing you can do since the number one killer of women is (SURPRISE!) heart disease.
You can still drink sodas as long as they are diet and caffeine free. However, instead of buying the liters, buy a twelve pack and limit yourself to, say, 2 a day. An easy way to remember this is to put two in the fridge every day. Save them to have one can at lunch and the other at dinner and you'll learn to appreciate them a whole lot more.
As far as the water, find a jug that is easy to fill and carry around. You need about 3 liters of water a day for a healthy body and amazing skin. I carry around a 1/2 gallon jug i found at Walmart about a year ago. I fill it up every day and I know that as long as I drain that jug, I only need a little more water to finish my daily intake needs. Don't try to drink your water all at once! If you drink it too fast or too much (as in more than 3 liters a day) you risk diluting the electrolytes in your blood or even drowning in your own body!!
WATCH OUT: Gatoraide is Terrible for dieters!! Yes, a gatoraide is a lovely drink to have after a particularly hard workout but remember this: unless you buy the form called G2, you have to mix the gatoraide with equal parts water. Here is an easy cheat i use all the time: buy the OMG size bundle pack of the small gatoraides. When you are ready to use one, pour the drink into a large cup and then fill the remaining bottle with water and add that to the cup as well. Instant Mix! Just stick a straw in there and sip away while you cool down!!
Always make sure you stretch before you do any sort of workout, even if its just walking. By stretching, you wake up sleeping muscles and prevent aches and pains the next day! Another fun way to work out that has helped so many people is DDR or the Wii Fit and Wii Sports. All involve you getting up and moving around and most DDR games (esp. by Konami) have a workout mode where you can see how many calories you've burned and what your workout equals to (I.E.: thirty minutes of jumping rope). Its easy and fun and the whole family can get involved!!
One last little note: Focusing on a number for your weight goal is dangerous. Instead of relying only on the scale, pull out a measuring tape like what is used for measuring for clothes. Wrap it around your waist and/or other areas you want to trim and write down the measurements of those areas. Then, every couple of weeks, measure the same areas again and keep them on the same list. That way, when the scale numbers start to go UP from muscles (which weigh a lot more than fat) you can look at your shrinking numbers and say, "Hey, I'm still going down!" Also, keep in mind that some ppl build muscle faster than others, such as myself. Due to my build, I can develop muscles at about the same rate as a man so I always have to remind myself of all the activity I have done lately so I don't flip out on the scale when I lose my tape (having ADD sucks sometimes). However, I can also build fat ridiculously fast like most women.
Another tip for goals: Head over to the local second hand store and buy a pair of jeans that are a size you want to fit in to. Be realistic when you buy them and ask yourself, "By doing what I'm doing, how long will it take for me to fit into these things?" I suggest buying a jean size that is only about three sizes smaller than what you currently wear. Each jean size represents 20 pounds and if you stick to a new lifestyle every day and never give up, you'll lose the 60 pounds in no time. Once you have bought your Next Goal Jeans, hang them in your room where you will see them every day when you wake up and every time you enter your room. It will be a daily reminding of your Next Goal.
biggrin
Yet another tip: keep a diary of everything you eat and everything you've done. Have someone else read it and hold you accountable for everything in it or, as my friend Tony is doing, post it up on your journal here on Myspace or Facebook! That way, everything is there where everyone can see if and you have no choice but to upgrade and change yourself and the diary! He's also using photos to show his progression which I think is a great idea.
Good luck and I am more than happy to talk about it all with you as I am going to start cracking down on myself. I've gotten out of my healthy habits since getting out of Alabama Adventure and I need to get back in to them. The good thing is that my dad has pretty much decided that he's not going to be so demanding that I eat what he eats now that he knows that there are some foods that I just don't have a care for. He's learning that I prefer fruits and veggies to meats and he's learning to not hold that against me. Its actually really nice!! Just include your family in your goals and watch them change for the better, too!!!! *huggles*
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 1:56 pm
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As far as losing weight goes, I recommend the following to EVERYONE...
-Drop all sweets. ALL SWEETS. This includes both real and artificial sweeteners. Sugar is just plain junk, and artificial sweeteners, as I have learned from personal experience, are essentially slow-acting poisons.
-NO "WHITE" FOODS. Like white flour, white potatoes, white rice, etc.
-Remember, it's the starches and sugars that fatten you up the worst. Fats are actually very satiating and it's almost impossible to OD on them unless you're eating them alongside processed carbohydrates.
-Find an online support group. My weapon of choice is http://www.lowcarber.org
-Study, study, STUDY!!! Read up on healthy weight loss methods so you know what's realistic and safe. Starvation diets don't do you any good.
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:35 pm
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@Syara
Well I must disagree with you on sugar. I'm a bit confused by your statement but if you mean drop all sugar, then that would be nearly impossible since fruit has sugar, though it is natural it is still sugar, and fruit is a good way to start eating healthier.
@Funem
I do agree with you on that you should measure weight loss with a tape measure rather than a scale. I have a friend about 5'5"-5'6" and she weights 150 lbs but doesn't look fat at all, she's just got muscle.
I'm trying to lose some fat and what I do, since I hate running, I'm trying to build some muscle before I start jogging/running/walking/etc. What I do it atleast 6 nights a week I try to do 50+ crunches and atleast 10 leg lifts. When I feel like doing more I just do more leg lifts, sit ups, and other floor excercises.
I've been gaining muscle in my abdominal area and my thighs and not only does muscle weigh more than fat but it requires more calories so I'm hoping that does something. When the weather gets warmer I also bike everywhere.
I lost my train of thought but biking is really helping me, I really hate walking and running because I feel like it's too slow and I feel like I'm pointlessly walking if I just go in circles so I bike to go places, I go to the store, friend's houses and such. Most places within and 5 mile radius of my house, I'll bike to get to.
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 7:29 pm
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Syera Miktayee As far as losing weight goes, I recommend the following to EVERYONE... -Drop all sweets. ALL SWEETS. This includes both real and artificial sweeteners. Sugar is just plain junk, and artificial sweeteners, as I have learned from personal experience, are essentially slow-acting poisons. -NO "WHITE" FOODS. Like white flour, white potatoes, white rice, etc. -Remember, it's the starches and sugars that fatten you up the worst. Fats are actually very satiating and it's almost impossible to OD on them unless you're eating them alongside processed carbohydrates. -Find an online support group. My weapon of choice is http://www.lowcarber.org-Study, study, STUDY!!! Read up on healthy weight loss methods so you know what's realistic and safe. Starvation diets don't do you any good.
I disagree....all that sounds drastic in a way. If you watch how much you intake of certain things then I'll agree but you don't have to drop it all.
For one, my main diet in my family is rice. You eat rice with almost most meals so it's huge yet it's not a terrible diet and can be healthy.... Most other (i guess foreign?) families use rice a lot. From what I learn from my mom who makes rice from scratch....you have to wash it out for two reasons before cooking. 1. It cleans it out. 2. You reduce the starch
Secondly...some sweets like fruits ARE good for you. Reducing all sweets isn't great and unhealthy. I even remember in health class I learned that there are good sugar and bad sugar for you. Some that you need others that your body doesn't need. |
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Moonlight_HuangHou Captain
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:52 am
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 9:21 am
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Moonlight_HuangHou I disagree....all that sounds drastic in a way. If you watch how much you intake of certain things then I'll agree but you don't have to drop it all. For one, my main diet in my family is rice. You eat rice with almost most meals so it's huge yet it's not a terrible diet and can be healthy.... Most other (i guess foreign?) families use rice a lot. From what I learn from my mom who makes rice from scratch....you have to wash it out for two reasons before cooking. 1. It cleans it out. 2. You reduce the starch
I didn't say rice was bad. I said to avoid white rice. Wild/brown rice is better.
White foods tend to be less nutritious and filling. For example, white flour has had all the nutritional value beaten out of it, leaving nothing but empty calories. If one is going to eat flour, one should eat whole flour - it's far healthier.
Quote: Secondly...some sweets like fruits ARE good for you. Reducing all sweets isn't great and unhealthy. I even remember in health class I learned that there are good sugar and bad sugar for you. Some that you need others that your body doesn't need.
By 'sweets,' I meant candy, cakes, sweet sauces, etc. Nobody needs that stuff, period. Our bodies are not designed for this glut of candies, pastries, jams, etc, and it's showing in the rampant upswing of problems like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
How do I know it's the sweets? Traditional cultures all over the world have been healthy on widely varying diets. Some ate almost nothing but meat , and they were healthy. Some ate almost nothing but plants, and they were healthy. The only thing is common was that they didn't eat white man's sugars and flours... at least, not until white man decided that these people needed to be "modernized." When these groups started eating highly processed starches and sugars, "modern" diseases started to appear. If you want to watch a people die of diabetes and cancer, start making modern corn and wheat a staple in their diet.
To learn more, I recommend visiting the Weston A. Price Foundation. |
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 11:08 am
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I, personally, don't agree with the low carb diet lifestyle. Reason being, it nearly eliminates fruits and veggies and grains from a person's intake. That is extremely dangerous. Unlike what ppl across the states have been fooled into believing, Carbs are actually necessary for the muscles. While there are things such as Good Carb Bad Garb just like with cholesterol, one should never eliminate or nearly eliminate them from their diet - PERIOD. Just watching the amount of Bad Carbs that enter your body is perfectly acceptable, but, as I said, some cards, such as the Good Carbs, are absolutely necessary for muscle growth and maintenance.
ALSO: If you are addicted to something (like I am to sweets), it is NEVER a good idea to quit cold turkey. Instead, just take stock of how much sugar you are taking in. Doctors state that the Human body should not take in any more than 15g of sugar a day. Keep in mind, that is ADDED SUGARS not natural sugars such as what is found in fruits and vegetables. Even the most successful dieters and lifestyle changes will keep a little bit of sweets in their home to have from time to time to either remind them not to get addicted again or simply because it was that one thing that gives them a little boost.
As much as I hate to mention him, Richard Simmons admitted to buying a back of mini candy bars and placing seven of them, lined up, on the top shelf of his refridgerator and taking only one a day at the end of his day. At the end of the week, when the last one is gone, he puts seven more in the fridge and repeats the cycle.
Several long term weight watchers success stories will admit to keeping small sweets at their desk at work or at a friend's desk and limiting them to only X amount a week. For most women, cutting out sweets is extremely difficult.
As i learned in a study published my senior year in high school, the psychology of a male and female brain is amazingly different. In men, the logic center of the brain is the most active while women had their emotional center of their brains as the most active. Because of the effects of chocolate, specifically dark chocolate, women have a tendency to reach for it in times of extreme distress. Now, you might be asking what Chocolate's effects may be: Chocolate, esp. dark, releases a "feel-good" endorphin in the brain and the SMELL of chocolate can release an endorphin likened unto that of the emotion of Love.
Women, because of their brain design, are easily addicted to chocolates. Thus, it is harder for them to give up sweets. However, as said before, it isn't impossible. Never give up cold turkey, just cut back until you feel confident that you can live without it.
heart
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 12:26 pm
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 12:35 pm
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Funem I, personally, don't agree with the low carb diet lifestyle. Reason being, it nearly eliminates fruits and veggies and grains from a person's intake. That is extremely dangerous. Unlike what ppl across the states have been fooled into believing, Carbs are actually necessary for the muscles. While there are things such as Good Carb Bad Garb just like with cholesterol, one should never eliminate or nearly eliminate them from their diet - PERIOD. Just watching the amount of Bad Carbs that enter your body is perfectly acceptable, but, as I said, some cards, such as the Good Carbs, are absolutely necessary for muscle growth and maintenance.
Gah... I'm going to say this once...
LOW-CARB DIETS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.
Grains are limited on low-carb diets, but most people eat some whole grains. (Grains are an unnatural addiction to the human diet, anyway, so I don't see what the fuss is.)
Many people on low-carb diets eat more vegetables than they ate before. Fruits may be limited, especially the more sugary varieties. Seeing as how today's hyper-sweet cultivars are the result of many years of selective breeding to create unnatural sweetness, again, I can't see what the fuss is.
Also, while low-carb diets do not mean no-carb, the human body can function without any carbohydrate intake at all via a process called gluconeogenesis. The body actually converts protein into all the glucose it needs. I don't recommend this, of course, because it's neither practical nor realistic.
Please read this before dissing low-carb diets in the future: Five Low Carb Myths
If you still think we're "fooled," go and talk to the people who have been thriving for years, if not decades on their controlled-carbohydrate eating styles. The only people who were "fooled" were the ones who believed the mass media's portrayal of low-carb diets. Half the nonsense they claim is commonplace is rarely, if ever practiced, let alone encouraged by most of us.
I've been studying diet and health for years now, and there is no reason why a low-carb diet is inherently unhealthy. They can be, but so can any diet. |
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 3:06 pm
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 4:39 pm
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Wow, someone's a bit fussy when it comes to diet.
Syara, while I do agree with you on some points. They way you're saying all of it it rather annoying to be frank. You're shoving your knowledge down our throats.
And why do you say grain is an unnatural addition to human diet?
If I'm remembering my history correctly, native americans ate maize(sp?) which was a grain. They've found signs that Egyptians ate bread hundreds and hundreds of years ago. You may be going back to the stone age, and I have no idea if they ate grain then, and saying since they possibly didn't eat grain it's unnatural, but humans have been eating grain pretty much since the start of civilization.
It's just recently that obesity has been such a problem because people are eating more sugary, fatty, unhealthier things in general and being less active. And bread is now a kind of iffy food because of all the sugar they put in it anyway.
Personally, I don't really like bread so I don't eat much of it to begin with but those are just my views on it. But also, I've done no research, I'm just going off things I'm speculating and remembering from that year I slept in history. I know you shouldn't come to a debate unprepared but hey, let's see what happens.
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 7:16 pm
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Funem the low carb diet is still not recommended by physicians. Dietitians will tell you that there is no better diet or lifestyle than consuming no more than 2,000 calories a day and making sure that you follow the food guidelines as presented in the food pyramid.
Most people don't realize this, but money and politics, not health, wrote the food pyramid. People (doctors included) assume it's healthy because someone said it was healthy. Read more about the shenanigans that formed the food pyramid here.
In fact, food politics have done much to influence human eating. In the 50's, orange farmers started a mass marketing campaign telling people to drink "a big full glass" of orange juice every day. Because it's, you know, fruit juice, it must be healthy, right? Well... not exactly. Turns out that juice has just as much sugar as a can of soda pop.
Zizzykitty And why do you say grain is an unnatural addition to human diet? If I'm remembering my history correctly, native americans ate maize(sp?) which was a grain. They've found signs that Egyptians ate bread hundreds and hundreds of years ago. You may be going back to the stone age, and I have no idea if they ate grain then, and saying since they possibly didn't eat grain it's unnatural, but humans have been eating grain pretty much since the start of civilization.
Yes, grains appeared at the start of civilization as we know it. However, our species, Homo sapiens, pre-dates civilization by about 190,000 years. So in the grand scheme of things, grain is a late addition, especially for humans in colder climates where farming was extremely limited by short growing seasons.
Now, I'm not saying that all grain is bad. Whole grains can be quite good. The problem is that a large amount of grain products are made from bleached white flour, which only appeared in the modern era. White flour, having been stripped of everything nutritional, is no better for you than sugar.
And speaking of sugar, the politics that keep sugar in your food are scary. Given the health problems that have been linked to sugar, I can't see how cutting back would hurt anyone. Many people don't realize it, but sugar addiction is a very real problem.
I know it seems like I'm being rude, pushy, and loudmouthed. The truth is, I'm extremely frustrated with this exceptionally corrupt system that hasn't been able to see the forest for the trees, or rather, for the greenbacks.
I'm sure that since I mentioned "low-carb," a lot of you assumed that I eat bacon and sausage for breakfast and steaks topped with cheese and butter for dinner. Nothing could be further from the truth. I probably don't eat any more meat than most of you - in fact, I probably eat less than a lot of people. I eat lots of healthy vegetables and fruits, some nuts, and some grains. Even if you don't click any other link in my post, please read this article I wrote awhile back.
Also, please explain to me how cutting out highly processed flours and sugars can in any way or form be a bad thing for anyone. That's all I've really been trying to recommend all along, as it's the one common factor I've found in any healthy diet.
Also, I'm a big fan of exercise. Most people most certainly do need more of it. However, a lack of exercise alone cannot account for the large amount of active and obese individuals we have around. |
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 10:46 pm
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 11:34 pm
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Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 11:14 am
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Quote: I don't have time to write a long drawn out reply and hit all the points I'm thinking of but I must say, when did any of us imply that we think you eat bacon, sausage, steak topped with cheese and butter?
It's a common low-carber stereotype, courtesy of the mass media who printed stories based on a select few cases where people claiming to be on "Atkins" ate almost nothing but meat and cheese. (The real Atkins diet never forces you to do anything so absurd.) Thanks to stories like these, people *assume* that Atkins (and by extension, all low-carb diets) mean no (or very little) fruits or vegetables, when in actuality many of them place heavy emphasis on vegetables, nuts, legumes, and fruits with a lower sugar content. Where someone else might be eating mashed potatoes, I'd be having squash or cabbage. Instead of an apple, I'll eat an orange or tangerine.
Quote: But if you're looking to lose weight and eat healthier then cut out frozen food. All the preservatives are terrible for you. I used to eat frozen food all the time and then my doctor told me if I wanted to lose weight then to stop eating it and I've stopped eating frozen food and it's certainly helped. (though I did also cut down my soda intake significantly. I used to drink soda all the time and now I only drink it once a week at best. A lot of weeks I don't even drink soda.)
Quite so. It's far better if you cook your own food than depend on pre-made meals - you know exactly what's going into it. |
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