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I kinda stopped doing this, but I'm feeling happy today that I am down to 119, after making up for my vacation horse eating. Now, I really just need to start doing Jillian Michael's religiously (*waggle*), but with my active jobs/life, it's really annoying walking around barely being able to move your legs, or your arms feeling like jello.
For the next month, these are the bright-line rules I
want towill follow:I will do my assigned exercises every day.
I do not eat after 8pm and before 2pm.
Will check in again here soon!
Just count your calories (myfitnesspal is a great app for this). What you eat and how much of it you eat are way, way, way more important than when you eat. It's arguable that the when isn't important at all.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Weight Control Information Network web site, “it does not matter what time of day you eat. It is what and how much you eat and how much physical activity you do during the whole day that determines whether you gain, lose, or maintain your weight.”
A calorie is a calorie no matter when you eat it. Even if timing does matter it's not all that important. You're not going to lose weight eating too many calories just because you do it at a certain time. And using it as a way to restrict your eating is going to leave you very miserable and make it hard to stick to your plan.
As with any lifestyle change start small. Once it's sustainable and an actual lifestyle change, not just something born of fleeting motivation, make more changes. Motivation is temporary and will always die. You want to build discipline.
The not eating before 2pm seems strange and unwise, though. Stuffing all your eating into a 6 hour period of the day? And not being well fueled for the morning (unless you actually wake up at noon or so) doesn't seem particularly beneficial.
That said: YOU CAN DO IT!!
tbh I think if you have a problem with eating while bored or habitual eating restricting yourself to a time is just going to encourage even more binge eating.
I know a lot of people equate counting calories to anorexia and whatnot but to be blunt that's a load of crap. It is the single most accurate way to watch your intake and the only one where you can't lie to yourself (well, as long as you're inputting all your food correctly).
Not to say that there's only one single method for weight loss or that it is the only one that works. But you know those stats that say like 95% of diets fail and whatnot? That's because it's more or less impossible, without the IRON WILL of that 5%, to make such drastic changes all at once. You aren't going to go from loving chocolate to not having any at all. But you can see that you're consuming 600 calories of chocolate a day and slowly reduce that. It's actually pretty eye-opening when you break down exactly where your calories are coming from. For me, personally, it was sugary drinks. When I realized I was consuming an entire meal's worth of calories just from sodas every other day it was like holy crap, time to drink water.
I guess it all boils down to the point of stop trying something drastic and go for small, sustainable changes. IMO counting calories is the best way to achieve that. You also get to tailor a plan to your own needs and wants rather than relying on something that someone else came up with. Invest in a food scale! It also encourages you to cook your own stuff which is always better.
Giving myself a six hour window to have what I want for the day may seem ridiculous to most but I've also fallen into the trap were I never really seem hungry. And while I completely agree that calorie counting is likely one of the best ways, I don't have the time to keep up with it and it never lasts long for me.
Trial and error is the best way to learn what works best for you. So this is my trial period! Thanks for the cheering, I'll keep you updated on how things are going.
Salt is this other weird caveat. A lot of dieting restricts salts, which does work. It works because your kidneys regulate water based on salt levels, deny salt and your water weight drops. Turn the salt back on and you can rebound more than you lost, rapidly.
Stick to something you can live with forever, temporary sacrifice gives temporary gain.
It's also a big reason why people restricting carbs in their diets see these massive weight drops at the start then find their weight loss rapidly slows. It can be discouraging but you're still losing fat at the same rate, you just have less water weight to shed. Can be demotivating to see progress plateau but it's all a lie!
3 beaten eggs, 2 cans of albacore tuna drained, half a nuked sweet potato (2min), mixes together with a good bit of smoked paprika and fresh cilantro, tiny bit of salt. I oiled my cast iron skillet with coconut oil. Baked at 375 for 15-20 min. Its so good. Wish i had added cripsy bits of bacon.
I definitely went off the deep end diet-wise for awhile there and creeped into the mid-180s again, but I have snapped back to and am back down to the 178. I am ONE POUND more than what is generally considered "healthy weight" for my height, which makes me LOL heartily. "I'm overweight, by ONE!" Despite that, I know I am not REALLY that close to healty, since I have minimal muscle mass and pathetically low cardiovascular endurance.
One of the BIG things that is helping me is having an easy, tasty, low-calorie and filling breakfast and lunch item I can just grab and go with to work. @Mephistoles gets huge kudos for keeping me able to do that.
I have decided that Keto is kinda expensive and ultimately too crave-creating and calorically dense than I want it to be. As such, I have shifted the diet to include cheaper things like beans and more fruit/veggies. Oh how tasty and cheap dried beans are. 6 pounds of dried beans is less than 6$ and makes a unicorns-ton of beans!
I am still sticking with avoiding grains and refined sugars, because they are just so sneakily caloric with minimal nutritional value.
I started training with a trainer a few times a week and logging my food. I find that when I actually log what I eat, I just tend to make better choices. Maybe I just shame myself into eating smarter.
It's not even calorie counting for me as much as I'm just actually measuring out portions and checking on the big bad sugar content in things. I mean, apparently 4 grams of sugar = 1 teaspoon of sugar... Just looking at the back of a Snapple Lemon Tea shows 36 grams of sugar... That's 9 teaspoons of sugar...
I think most people would not put 9 teaspoons of sugar deliberately in anything they drink. (Side note: I don't do artificial sweeteners, so if something is sweetened I go with sugar.)
So yeah, it's 150 calories - but what are you getting for those calories? A metabolic syndrome that makes it harder for you to lose weight because you are putting your pancreas through a marathon. That's why I more look at sugar than calories... Because you can find massive amounts of sugar in the most "healthy" of places. For example, a "Premium Strawberry Banana Authentic Greek Yogurt"? A nice 130 calorie snack... With 18 grams of sugar... That's 4.5 teaspoons.
For me it's more about making sure what I eat is "working" for me. I eat what I want, when I want to, if I can rationalize why it is good for me. (I do have the occasional "cheat day" just to reward myself and keep myself on track. This is a life change and it's unrealistic to say that I will never have a piece of cake again!) Still, most of the time my reasoning goes: "I'm hungry. These pistachios are a great source of healthy fat... This bag of potato chips is not. If I'm going to eat something, I should eat something that is going to do something good for me, so I will eat the pistachios."
I don't crunch numbers (except when checking out sugar/carb contents), but I do make sure that the calories I eat are not "empty" ones. This way, I'm rarely hungry but I'm still gradually losing weight (between working out and eating better).
This is sustainable for me... But initially lowering my sugar intake HARD. I felt awful for two weeks until I started feeling better. Now, when there's sugar in something, I can taste it right away... Things I used to drink all the time come off as way "too sweet." (Like Southern Sweat Tea which apparently is simple syrup with a splash of tea).
Anyway, I'm not particularly recommending this to anyone - it's just an FYI on what's going on with me since I stopped posting.
I was stupid and bounced my fat unicorns all the way up to 309 two monthsish ago, and now I'm as of 3 days ago at 279, but really only just started getting back into the swing of things. This is (unfortunately) the lowest I've been since I dropped 50 pounds the first time, but seeing a number lower than I've seen in a while has me preeeetty pumped to keep going.
How are the rest of you fine folks doing? Let's get this thread back up and going. There's work to be done here! If you've been thinking of hopping on, do it! Just do it! /Shia Labeouf
Big ol' fatty signing up here and hoping to start exercise once he is stable.
Goal loss is 85 pounds, my doctor said and I quote, "Bro, you are not getting younger, time to get swole."
It helps hes really hot, and ex football player for the state university, but honestly...I will take that advice.
SO here goes nothing.
I wish I could lol and like your post at the same time. I will just relegate to a like. Now, this is me offering my own little take on Spaghetti. It's not exactly an extravagant meal, but I can say that if spaghetti is what my family wants (still living at home an' all), everyone turns and looks at me. And usually I give a sigh and ask for the money to go get the things I expect and want to work with. And usually it's rare for my family to "forget" that I do the cooking for that meal myself so I know what I am working with.
Anyways, here's my recipe, I do wanna note that I don't spend more than 5 dollars per item, and usually it's pretty easy to go for less than 3 dollars for some of the more "expensive" stuff on the list. I'm also wanting to note: This makes enough to feed a family of 5 with leftovers, which I bagged and tucked into our fridge and even family who is known for their own spaghetti meals (weirdly enough, think they are italian and bring spaghetti dinners to things like Thanksgiving, don't ask me) thought it was better than normal.
2+ bottles of water- however much water your pan needs to boil. Some might say that tap water works too, I disagree. Then again, the tap water in my area smells like wet dog on good days, and as if someone was murdered and their blood is leaking into the water sources on bad days. I refuse to feed anyone anything made in this water if I can help it. Not even boiling it will help. I hesitate to even wash my dishes in this crap.
1 box angel hair spaghetti - pretty standard, can get a box of it for 99 cents. Not too hard. Whatever works for price wise, all noodles are the same it seems when it comes to brand.
2 cans TOMATO sauce - This right here, is the start of the big deal in the whole thing. You want TOMATO sauce, plain tomato sauce, NOT spaghetti sauce. The premade stuff just isn't as healthy, and it overall is just more bland in taste. I promise you, this is a difference that you can taste if you try two plates, one made with spaghetti sauce, and the other made with my sauce recipe.
1/2 clove of galric, you don't need much, and even this much will add more flavor than the blandness of normal spaghetti sauce.
1 lb of ground beef: This might seem like a lot, it is a lot, but it's important in my sauce, and yes, I make it as part of the sauce.
Salt: Don't need much, in fact, I think I used at most a pinch, and that was for flavoring, which was almost unnecessary, I just wanted to balance out the sweetness of the tomato sauce.
Okay, the noodles are pretty standard, bring a pot of bottled water to boil, then put noodles in. Then just keep an eye on it and stir it every couple of minutes.
The sauce is where the magic happens:
1st: get out a skillet, or a pan, I use a skillet myself. You want to take your ground beef, and just as if you're making sloppy joes, toss the entire pound into the pan (after thawing or whatever) and take a spatula to it, stirring and getting it nice and loose. It's important that it actually looks a little bit like taco meat before you even consider the next step, because it must be completely brown on all sides, and there must NOT be some super massive chunks in there, big chunks of clumped together meat actually screw with the consistency and the texture of the food.
2nd: While your meat is cooking, and you're watching your water boil, take that half clove of garlic, and get out a plate and a knife, avoid a cutting board because we want this to be something that we can cut into, but also will hold any juice that comes out as we dice and partly mash the half clove of garlic. Once you've got it nicely diced and mashed, set it aside.
3rd: Once your meat is properly cooked (and the spaghetti noodles might be done by now, check 'em, if they are, swap from high heat boil to a low heat simmer, don't get rid of the water JUST YET) go ahead and open your first can of tomato sauce, setting the other aside for now, put that can into the skillet with the meat, and start mixing it up really well, it should look almost like sloppy joes, which is generally where I got the idea to make the sauce this way, keep stirring it up really well until it's well blended, then grab that garlic from earlier and mix it in as well, making sure to get some of the garlic and garlic juice evenly mixed across the entire meaty sauce.
4. Now we drain some of the water (fire goes off here). What I like to do, is generally only drain about 3/4ths of the water, then mix the noodles with what remains to catch some of the vitamins and stuff that might be boiled out (I do this with any foods I end up boiling because of how vitamins get boiled out), then I drain the rest of the water out, but not straining the water out of the noodles. From there, I add the meat sauce, slowly stirring it into the noodles as I mix it all in the pot the noodles were boiling in. Once the meat sauce is mixed in, I will say that you don't look like you have enough sauce in the pot now, because it looks like a watery highschool spaghetti in meatsauce, right? Grab that second can of Tomato sauce, and dump it in, mixing it with the spaghetti.
Put it in a bowl and serve to 5 or more people, and enjoy a very flavorful dish. I usually set permesian cheese and garlic salt out for those who prefer it (I enjoy a hint of garlic salt myself, but do not need it when I make this. Leftovers can actually sit in the fridge for a few days if properly packaged, and I usually make sure to offer it to visiting family.
I hope you folks enjoy the recipe, spoiler'd for MASSIVE BLOCK OF TEXT