The only way to lose weight and be healthy is for you to just take charge. Get your food intake correct. Eat healthier. Excercise but dont over do it. You should go to a doctor and possibly a dietician and they will certainly help you. Stay away from junk food and fast food places. If you do decide to go on a diet, Im sure youve heard of a cheat day. where you stuff your face full of fatty foods once a week. Dont do it. Its bad for you. People tend to think because its a "cheat" day that you can just go overboard. Eating a whole cake 1 day a week is worse than eating a whole cake throughout the week if that makes sense. Also its not how much you eat but its what you eat. Go ahead and eat all the healthy foods you want. You dont need to starve yourself.
Please dont take my advice to heart. Im no proffesional and you should definitely try to get professional help.
So, whats my point. Stop damning fast food until you present the whole facts.
How can you get a rack of 3000 calorie ribs? Outback Steakhouse
Whats the Saltiest Dish in America? Wok Charred Beef, 10,047 mg sodium P.F Changs
So since other food is bad for you too, McDonalds is OK to eat?
Whatever you got to tell yourself dude. You want to live on a steady diet of McDonalds, go right ahead, but I would make sure you have pretty good health insurance.
Let me clarify my position (which you will no doubt bash me for yet again), The Egg Mcmuffin is a good breakfeast, compared to others in the fast food world. Webmd says its a good bet, Mens Health say its good.
That's like saying you are better off eating dog **** than horse ****. While you may be right, either way, you are still eating ****.
Also, from your own post:
I cut down to 2250 and walked a little more and got down to 310. Yes, im still technically morbidly obese, but my fat isnt around my organs, its mostly externally seen.
310 lbs? You cut your caloric intake to get DOWN to "morbidly obese"? You might not be the best guy to give nutrition advice. Just sayin. If a 310 pound man is telling me it's OK to eat Egg McMuffins for breakfast, that's about all the reason I need NOT to eat them.
Anywhoo....
While we are sharing weight loss tips that worked for us, Slim Fast worked wonders for me. I liked it because it removed a lot of choice: I knew what I was having for breakfast and lunch every day, there was no cheating or adding a little more to my plate or finding out that thing I thought was healthy was actually packed with sodium or whatever. I lost around 60-70 lbs in around 6 months.
They key to it is to : Take a multivitamin while doing it, and for you meal at dinner, make it very high in protein. Lean baked chicken breast with some lemon on it, fish (LOTS's of fish, and put away the tarter sauce, broil it in the oven, a little lemon juice and that's it), whole grain rices mixed with scrambled egg beaters, etc. For snacks I kept a bag of unsweetened roasted almonds from a local farmers market and munched on those, those things will kill your hunger quick.
I went from around 270-ish to between 190-200 where I am now (I'm 6'1) in about 6 months. And I was one of those guys who had fast food for lunch every day, and breakfast and lunch on the weekends. In the beginning, you will crave that fat and salt, but after 3-5 days, your body will adjust. When I look at a Big Mac now and realize I used to suck down one of those things down with a extra large Fry and a Coke practically daily for lunch, I almost want to puke.
Loosing significant amounts of weight does indeed take a lifestyle change. I use an app called myFitnessPal (I think they have it for android and iphone) to monitor what I'm eating and my exercise.
One thing that most people don't know about, especially the "calorie is a calorie" people, one of which I used to be, is that there is now a genetic test to determine which type of weight loss plan is right for you. The study was performed by researchers at Stanford and individuals who were on the right type of diet for their genes lost 5.3% more weight and were more successful in keeping it off. (The test also contains an exercise profile). PR Newswire Report. In a nut shell your body is more efficient at working with certain foods.
I sell high quality weight loss supplements while they may be unnecessary, but they are clinically proven when used properly to make pounds drop more rapidly. Considering we live in a society with little willpower, the ability to take 3 tablets and eat a cupcake every now and then without ruining your whole diet might help some people.
Obviously slamming pills and not changing anything isn't going to help at all because there are lifestyle choices that put you where you are at, and there is no miracle drug for changing that.
With that said, I used to get really nasty headaches when I tried to cut my calories, esp if I was reducing starches. Taking something that helped stabilize my blood sugar eliminated the headaches which really helped me stay on the program.
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
The study was performed by researchers at Stanford and individuals who were on the right type of diet for their genes lost 5.3% more weight and were more successful in keeping it off. (The test also contains an exercise profile
Which to me reads: Anyone adopting any generic, sensible weight loss plan will lose 95% of thier goal.
There's no "trick" to weight loss that really matters all that much. I always go back to the Oprah example: She's a billionaire. If there was ANY way to effectively lose weight and keep it off besides diet and exercise, she would have found it and bought it.
Loosing significant amounts of weight does indeed take a lifestyle change. I use an app called myFitnessPal (I think they have it for android and iphone) to monitor what I'm eating and my exercise.
One thing that most people don't know about, especially the "calorie is a calorie" people, one of which I used to be, is that there is now a genetic test to determine which type of weight loss plan is right for you. The study was performed by researchers at Stanford and individuals who were on the right type of diet for their genes lost 5.3% more weight and were more successful in keeping it off. (The test also contains an exercise profile). PR Newswire Report. In a nut shell your body is more efficient at working with certain foods.
No.
Interleukin Genetics has some sort of proprietary screen they do that looks at whether your body is good at absorbing, metabolizing, and storing carbs and fats (I'm guessing that if its not just empiric math voodoo, they probably look at certain genetic variations of your enzymes, and if you have, lets say, an enzyme variation that makes you mediocre at absorbing fat anyway, they figure you can get away with higher fat diet, or something like that... it's proprietary so we'll never know)
Either way, it gives it all at least a patina of scientific/genetic legitimacy. I'm open minded to the idea that it might go deeper and have some deeper legitimacy, but there's a lot of hype on their web site.
Reportedly, the groups who had a "genotype appropriate diet" averaged a loss of 5.3% of body weight, while those in NOT in a "genotype appropriate diet" lost 2.3% of body weight.
The part that has me scratching my head is where they took patients from a previous study and pulled them into this one, and then divided them into groups by some proprietary genetic test...
When for all I know, they just put the subjects into the groups that would most likely make the genetic test look good:
Quote from article »
Subjects for the study were chosen from Stanford University's previously reported A TO Z weight loss study (Gardner et al. 2007 J. American Medical Association), which compared effectiveness of four weight loss diets ranging from very low carbohydrate, to low carbohydrate/high protein, to low fat and to very low fat in overweight/obese pre-menopausal women over a one-year period.
Participants from the A TO Z trial were invited by e-mail and postal mail to provide DNA samples by cheek swab. Genotyping was performed on the DNA samples obtained from 141 female participants. Participants were categorized into three dietary assignment groups including: a) low fat, b) low carbohydrate, or c) balanced in macronutrients by means of predefined genetic patterns from the Inherent Health Weight Management Genetic Test. The primary endpoint analysis compared weight loss for women who were on a diet that was consistent with their genotype category to those individuals on diets not suitable for their genetic pattern. Interleukin Genetics, Inc. reported initial analysis of data from this A TO Z study in September.
This is industry funded research, by a company trying to sell an expensive genetic test, so I think I'd like more data. Especially when the diets are self regulated, and calorie intake is certainly not being accurately measured.
The conclusions of the study are that there is a proprietary genetic test that can predict whether a person will have BETTER statistical chance at weight loss with a low fat, a low carb, or "balanced macronutrient" diet. The dieters still have to do their own self control about eating. Calorie intake is not controlled at all here. At best, it implies that some people are better about limiting their intake on a low carb diet, while others are better about limiting their intacke on a low fat diet. You could just figure that out empirically for yourself. Do 2 weeks on one and 2 weeks on the other. See which diet is easier to keep. Don't need a damn proprietary expensive genetic test to tell me which diet worked better and was easier to stick to for ME.
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The problem with citing these types of tests is that it's just another way to avoid personal responsibility. It's like you have a losing soccer team with out of shape players in your local league, and somebody comes along talking about how certain referee crews call it one way, and other crews call it another, and that maybe if we get more aggressive when this crew is ref-ing... and how we should play with different shoes on astroturf, because grass affects us in this way and that way... Oh wait! "Now there's a proprietary genetic marker that will tell us which palyers should play midfield and do more long distance training, and which players should play offense and do more wind sprints!!! i guess we'll win NOW!"
IT'S ALL JUST EXCUSES. HOW ABOUT GETTING INTO SHAPE AND PRACTICING HARDER? JEEEEEZ. EAT LESS. EXERCISE MORE. DON'T CHEAT/SKIP PRACTICE. COUNT CALORIES INSTEAD OF PLAYING THIS STUPID GAME OF "MAYBE IF I JUST EAT 20% CARBS AND 80% FAT INSTEAD OF 30% CARBS AND 70% FAT?"
Unlike anything else in your life, you have TOTAL responsibility and control for your intake.
IT'S ALL JUST EXCUSES. HOW ABOUT GETTING INTO SHAPE AND PRACTICING HARDER? JEEEEEZ. EAT LESS. EXERCISE MORE. DON'T CHEAT/SKIP PRACTICE. COUNT CALORIES INSTEAD OF PLAYING THIS STUPID GAME OF "MAYBE IF I JUST EAT 20% CARBS AND 80% FAT INSTEAD OF 30% CARBS AND 70% FAT?"
This.
The dude is 340 lbs. He doesn't need some genetic screening test. He doesn't need to keep X% of his diet macrobiotic or get X% of his calories from Y food source, etc.
He needs to eat less calories. Period.
One he's in the 250 range, you can look for little tweaks that may make his weight loss more effective. As it is right now, he's eating the equivilant of 6.5 Big Mac's a day just to maintain. Just cutting that down to 4 Big Macs a day would take 2-3 pounds off a week.
Finding a good, doctor reccomended dietician to teach him how to eat is the best thing he can do right now. Anything else is just dancing around the core problem that he (like SO many americans) basically has no idea how to feed himself appropriately.
Thanks for all the replies, as an update I saw the doctor today and am speaking with a dietician (sp?) in the next days. Also he is recommending I start taking prozac 20 milligrams daily.
Tomorrow I will be throwing away all of the junk food in my fridge to replace it with healthier choices.
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310 lbs? You cut your caloric intake to get DOWN to "morbidly obese"? You might not be the best guy to give nutrition advice. Just sayin. If a 310 pound man is telling me it's OK to eat Egg McMuffins for breakfast, that's about all the reason I need NOT to eat them.
Anywhoo....
While we are sharing weight loss tips that worked for us, Slim Fast worked wonders for me. I liked it because it removed a lot of choice: I knew what I was having for breakfast and lunch every day, there was no cheating or adding a little more to my plate or finding out that thing I thought was healthy was actually packed with sodium or whatever. I lost around 60-70 lbs in around 6 months.
They key to it is to : Take a multivitamin while doing it, and for you meal at dinner, make it very high in protein. Lean baked chicken breast with some lemon on it, fish (LOTS's of fish, and put away the tarter sauce, broil it in the oven, a little lemon juice and that's it), whole grain rices mixed with scrambled egg beaters, etc. For snacks I kept a bag of unsweetened roasted almonds from a local farmers market and munched on those, those things will kill your hunger quick.
I went from around 270-ish to between 190-200 where I am now (I'm 6'1) in about 6 months. And I was one of those guys who had fast food for lunch every day, and breakfast and lunch on the weekends. In the beginning, you will crave that fat and salt, but after 3-5 days, your body will adjust. When I look at a Big Mac now and realize I used to suck down one of those things down with a extra large Fry and a Coke practically daily for lunch, I almost want to puke.
Valerin, i see that we disagree. Yes, i am morbidly obese, but wanna know how much i used to weigh....try 367 lbs. I used to eat 4000 calories a day, so please dont insult me like that. Im not advocating eating mcdonalds every day, im just saying that an egg mcmuffin is not a a bad breakfeast if you eat at mcdonalds.
I see that you share many of my ideals. No soda, protein is good, etc. I used to eat chili's ribs, memphis style at least twice a week...... go look at the nutrition. I stopped. My usual dinner if i eat out is Chick-fil-a. Grilled chicken deluxe sandwhich with a large tea and no fries. I replace soda with unsweet tea. (i drink 5 gallons or so a week, and that used to be soda)
So, how about we agree to disagree, but we still both believe in a few core beliefs. Sound fair?
Thanks for all the replies, as an update I saw the doctor today and am speaking with a dietician (sp?) in the next days. Also he is recommending I start taking prozac 20 milligrams daily.
Tomorrow I will be throwing away all of the junk food in my fridge to replace it with healthier choices.
That's great to hear man! I will give you a heads up though, eating healthy can be kind of a pain because you end up having to go to the grocery store a lot more often (veggies rot so buying in bulk doesn't really work). But it's worth it and once you get through the first couple weeks you get used to it. I hope it goes well for you! Give us an update in a few months.
Not much to say except, solidarity, man. I started a diet recently, and it hasn't been easy. Let's both try to make healthier choices together.
Things that have been working for me so far.
1.) Drinking only water - This has saved me like 300-400 calories a day off pure sugar. I cut out soda, cut out juice, cut out sugary drinks. A 1500 calorie diet allows for like... three meals and four snacks if you eat all your calories. If you're slamming the gatorade and soda, that makes things hard.
2.) Pretzels - You're not going to go from junk food all the time to all greens. If you do, you'll rebound hard. 100 calories of pretzels (as a between meal snack) will fill you up, and give you a nice crunchy snack that is relatively healthy.
3.) Sleep - Sleep 7-8 hours a day. This has been really helping my temperament and my enjoyment of life.
4.) Find reasons to leave the house. Okay, this is more from past diets than now... currently I have a steady job and am just naturally busy. But I've dieted before, and hanging out in your apartment all day is the death knell of a diet. Food is on hand, you're sitting a lot... it can be boring, etc.
If you can think of a reason to be outside or run errands a few times a day, you'll get walking exercise, sun and fresh air, and you'll have a more well rounded life than if you would being a homebody.
5.) Calorie count once in a while - If calorie counting makes you crazy, don't do it. I personally enjoy it, but I don't do it every day. Doing it once in a while will help you be mindful of when you're eating, how much you're eating, and allow you to ballpark healthy portions in the future.
6.) Cooking. Cooking slows the "daily shovel" down, and makes you conscious of what goes in your food. It will also save you money.
7.) Enjoy yourself. Exercise in ways you enjoy. Eat food you enjoy. I don't like cauliflower, or brussel sprouts, so I don't eat them often. Food is a joy, if you take that away from yourself and only eat bland crud, you'll be off your diet in under six weeks.
I've found the best way to enjoy tasty, healthy, cheap food is to stay away from processed food. My breakfast yesterday was a banana and a pear, 96 cents. Don't go from hot pockets to lean pockets, go from hot pockets to poached eggs with baby spinach and sun-dried tomatoes. Mmm.
I have to say, all this use of drugs sounds wrong to me.
Back then when I was fat, and while losing weight, I talked to a lot of guys like me,
and nobody took any drugs.
Some had been to the doctor and said similar stuff "sad, don´t know that to do with life, everything is "
But the doctors basically told them that this is because of the weight and the effects this has on our social life and personal wellbeing.
No doctor even thought about prescribing drugs,
and here, "take the drug"
I mean, come on, if one is super heavy, he has a bunch of problems, so of course one is depressed, but drugs against the depression is just treating the symptoms,
the weight is the core problem that has to be treated.
Chicken-and-egg problem. Being overweight can destroy your self-image and social motivation, as well as make you easily fatigued and tired all the time. But getting that way is a process that takes years of overeating that's often triggered by, and sustained by, emotional problems. And this is why when the doctor finds symptoms of depression and anxiety, they should be treated. Not just with drugs, but with cognitive behavioural therapy to identify attitudes and situations which aren't helping, and learn to cope with them.
@sirpsychosexy,
How do you define often?
There are a handful of vegetables that have to be processed within 2-3 days, but we go shopping once a week and that works without any problem and the vegetables (those we don´t have in the garden ourselves) are enough till we go shopping next. Also, whats the problem, to go to the next store during lunchbreak to buy a bunch of X?
The most importants stuff, potatoes, rice, peas, carrots can be stored for weeks or months (potatoes and carrots only if one has a cool basement),
I would buy corn in tin cans, and always have a store of concentrated tomatoes, which are just as fine as normal ones.
If I come home late, I often just make some quick pasta, throw it in a pan, ad a spoon of cooking water (secret tip,) ad some concentrated tomatos, grab some basil, salt, pepper, whatever I have the taste for, let it simmer for 2-3 minutes, and put it on a plate.
Depending on where you live, and your social status, you may not have access to these things. In many American cities you have to have a car to access a supermarket which stocks fresh fruits and vegetables. Otherwise you are left with the convenience store which usually stocks only packaged foods like frozen pizza and frankfurters, cookies, cakes, chips, etc. If you don't have a car, and you don't have many friends, you can expect to walk up to an hour each way to get to the grocery store. Ergo, subsisting on a diet largely made up of fast food, frozen pizza, soda, and frankfurters.
@the pumpkinking
You will have to say no to things, but thats life.
This I can get behind 100%. Accept that sometimes you will feel cravings, and hunger, and be uncomfortable and have to spend some willpower to stick to your lifestyle commitments. That said, changing your habits doesn't occur in a vacuum. You have to have "fuel" to maintain these commitments. Have long-term goals that fill you with hope and yet are realistic enough that you can actually see progress.
Valerin, i see that we disagree. Yes, i am morbidly obese, but wanna know how much i used to weigh....try 367 lbs. I used to eat 4000 calories a day, so please dont insult me like that. Im not advocating eating mcdonalds every day, im just saying that an egg mcmuffin is not a a bad breakfeast if you eat at mcdonalds.
I see that you share many of my ideals. No soda, protein is good, etc. I used to eat chili's ribs, memphis style at least twice a week...... go look at the nutrition. I stopped. My usual dinner if i eat out is Chick-fil-a. Grilled chicken deluxe sandwhich with a large tea and no fries. I replace soda with unsweet tea. (i drink 5 gallons or so a week, and that used to be soda)
So, how about we agree to disagree, but we still both believe in a few core beliefs. Sound fair?
You're both right, but I think you understand the "diet needs" of a large person better than Valarin does.
A 300+ pound man will lose weight eating 2500 calories a day. A couple of pounds a week, actually. Most american men would maintain their weight if they ate that much. A slim guy would gain weight if he ate that much.
A slightly active 300 pound man burns close to twice the calories a day as a slightly active slim person.
So yeah, OP could probably eat McDonald's once in a while and still lose weight, if he wants. I personally don't recommend it, because if you eat really fatty, salty foods, the healthy foods you eat will taste bland to you.
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I'll be sad if people don't start calling The Chain Veil "Fleetwood Mac."
You're both right, but I think you understand the "diet needs" of a large person better than Valarin does.
I disagree. The OP needs to learn how to eat. That doesn't mean "switch from eating complete crap to eating something slightly less crap". It means "stop eating crap all together, and learn how to eat"
You don't tell an alcoholic trying to go sober to switch from whiskey to beer, you don't tell a drug addict trying to get clean to switch from heroin to weed.
You know whats going to happen if he thinks he can substutes things on the McDonalds menu to lose weight? He'll eat 1 less Big Mac and instead eat 2 Egg McMuffins, and then wonder why he isn't losing any weight.
If you are a healthy person, and understand nutrition, and know how to feed yourself, yeah, you can eat the occasioanl Egg McMuffin andbe no worse for the wear. That is NOT the OP. He needs to cut ALL fast food from his life and learn how to feed himself.
I can't blieve people are actually defending eating McDonalds in a weight loss thread. Let along backing up a 300+ pound man trying to defend eating McDonalds in a weight loss thread.
I disagree. The OP needs to learn how to eat. That doesn't mean "switch from eating complete crap to eating something slightly less crap". It means "stop eating crap all together, and learn how to eat"
You don't tell an alcoholic trying to go sober to switch from whiskey to beer, you don't tell a drug addict trying to get clean to switch from heroin to weed.
You know whats going to happen if he thinks he can substutes things on the McDonalds menu to lose weight? He'll eat 1 less Big Mac and instead eat 2 Egg McMuffins, and then wonder why he isn't losing any weight.
If you are a healthy person, and understand nutrition, and know how to feed yourself, yeah, you can eat the occasioanl Egg McMuffin andbe no worse for the wear. That is NOT the OP. He needs to cut ALL fast food from his life and learn how to feed himself.
I can't blieve people are actually defending eating McDonalds in a weight loss thread. Let along backing up a 300+ pound man trying to defend eating McDonalds in a weight loss thread.
Im only defending the egg mcmuffin, because ive seen docotrs say its one of the better menu items for fast food breakfast. The rest of the menu i dont care for.
and promatim brought up a point about caloric needs and weight. at my weight and activity level my body uses 2900 calories. I eat 2400 calories, which works out to 100 an hour (no, i dont eat that, but it does make me think.) And also, eating before going to sleep wont make you gain weight. I know, that sounds odd. But weight is based on calories in-calories out. is cico<0 you lose weight (to a point. too low and you starve and your body doesnt lose weight). cico>0 you gain weight.
Also, no more metabolism talk. Research has shown that people who weigh more have a higher metabolism. But wait, wouldnt that mean that they should lose weight? No, because it takes more energy for me to do stuff than it would take Valarin. Oh, and Valarin, i took up your advice. Im eating steel-cut oatmeal for breakfeast every day, mixed with brown sugar (guilty pleasure), but also with a handful of cranberries( dried and unsweetened).
So OP, Cut all sodas and replace processed foods with fresh foods (if you cant read more than 3 ingredients, get rid of it.....or if an ingredient isnt food.)
I disagree. The OP needs to learn how to eat. That doesn't mean "switch from eating complete crap to eating something slightly less crap". It means "stop eating crap all together, and learn how to eat"
You don't tell an alcoholic trying to go sober to switch from whiskey to beer, you don't tell a drug addict trying to get clean to switch from heroin to weed.
You know whats going to happen if he thinks he can substutes things on the McDonalds menu to lose weight? He'll eat 1 less Big Mac and instead eat 2 Egg McMuffins, and then wonder why he isn't losing any weight.
If you are a healthy person, and understand nutrition, and know how to feed yourself, yeah, you can eat the occasioanl Egg McMuffin andbe no worse for the wear. That is NOT the OP. He needs to cut ALL fast food from his life and learn how to feed himself.
I can't blieve people are actually defending eating McDonalds in a weight loss thread. Let along backing up a 300+ pound man trying to defend eating McDonalds in a weight loss thread.
The problem is the number of HUGE lifestyle changes that come along with cutting out all (anything) in someone's life.
And your examples don't make sense. A lot of drug users use weed to quit other drugs. (And are better off for it.)
The risk here is a rebound. If you're not used to controlling your diet, just walking around with this militant "gotta be good, gotta be good," attitude is going to get you results for about six weeks. Then you gain it all back. That's called yo-yo dieting, and it's as unhealthy as staying heavy.
McDonalds, frighteningly enough, has some smaller portion items than other fast food places. Try finding the "hamburger" on most other fast food menus. Their food is high in salt and fat, but I'm sorry to say, an obese person can eat eat more McDonalds than you and burn it off at a faster resting rate. Agreed, their shouldn't, but if the occasional trip to McDonald's keeps someone on a diet for six months instead of ten days, then it's worth it. That's called building a lifestyle, and building a lifestyle is so much more important than crash dieting.
It does need to be about moderation and variety, though. Don't build a diet around fast food. Even if you only eat 1000 calories a day, you'll lose muscle and hurt your kidneys.
If that's what you're saying, then yeah... obviously. You never want to be a named regular at any fast food place, diner, or restaurant. You want to cook most of your meals and balance them.
For example, with my current diet... I've gone to Panera's, Chipotle and Jimmy John's each once in the past seven days. Each time I've tried to mitigate it by getting the healthiest thing on the menu that appealed to me. The SCGO Baltimore open was in town, so I had to eat out over the weekend more than I'd want to on a diet.
However, I drank water with every meal, rarely snacked, and most of my meals I prepared myself, and almost all involved lean proteins and vegetables. So far I've lost six pounds this week.
Would my diet be better if I hadn't gone out to eat this week? Yes, probably, but then it wouldn't be something I could realistically maintain through the holiday season. In February, I'll still be losing weight. Anyone who tries to eat 100% diet food they wouldn't normally eat probably won't be.
If you've never been obese, you don't know what kind of lifestyle problems lead you there. At my heaviest I was 260. A diet may seem like one lifestyle change, but it's actually FOUR for someone in my or OP's shoes.
-Eat less food
-Eat healthier food
-Sleep regularly
-Exercise more
Maybe stronger people can just wake up one day and fix all that at once... but I couldn't. I can try and fix all four, and rebound, or I could try to change one, and be unraveled by the other three... or I could try to moderately change all four.
Especially considering that OP is dealing with depression, moderately adjusting all four of those aspects of his lifestyle will be easier to maintain for months on end than suddenly pretending to be mister fitness.
(Caveat: Every 20 pounds lost, you do have to re-evaluate your diet and become more strict. What worked at BMI 35 won't work at BMI 32.)
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I'll be sad if people don't start calling The Chain Veil "Fleetwood Mac."
McDonald's has healthy options on the menu, as do most fast food joints now. Problem is most people don't order them. A McMuffin with egg and ham is by no means a bad or unhealthy breakfast, jeez...
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Beauty of mine, sit before me. Let me peruse you and remember you... always like this.
I signed in(which I rarely do cause I usually lurk) to try to help you out.
Bodybuilding.com
Simplyshredded.com
Amazing websites that have a lot of workout help.
If you don't like running cause I know my overweight friends who want to lose weight hate it, try lifting weights. Yes Cardiovascular activity is good for the heart and burns calories, but with a steady weight lifting regiment you should be able to lower body fat percentage.
Weight is just a number, you can lose weight but after you lose the weight whats left? You'll have flabs of skin, like one of those flying squirrels. Take the weight loss slow, go to a local gym and nutritionist. Get your lean body mass, and find out your macro-nutrients(the amount of fat/proteins/carbs your body needs) and contour it to your goals. Lift weights so you fill out your body. You'll feel more confidence being bulked, rather then some skinny guy.
Uh, actually the milk curdles and thus expands once it's exposed to the acids in your stomach...
Small nitpick, but the reason for the difficulty of the "gallon in an hour challenge" appears to be the lactose, as people can succeed by either drinking lactose-free milk (e.g. Lactaid) or by taking a lactose-intolerance medication (e.g. lactase supplement) before attempting it.
A bowl of oatmeal with some fruit sprinkled in WILL tide you over for lunch, and at 200-250 calories, with ZERO fat, and being whole grain, is a better choice than anything you can get at a fast food junkstop by lightyears.
Technically speaking, if you're going strictly for weight loss, refined sugar content is a more important metric than fat content. The ultimate cause of weight gain is consuming more calories than burned, and the ultimate cause of weight loss is burning more calories than consumed. So total calories is the most important number. Beyond that, difficulty of digestion becomes important because some calories are more difficult to break down than others (in other words, some types of molecules require more calories to break down than others). Fats are the most calorie-dense of the nutrient categories, but they aren't the easiest to break down; simple sugars (succrose [as in table sugar], fructose [as in high fructose corn syrup], etc.) are.
Fat content is still important, but it relates more to increased risk of high cholesterol and atherosclerosis. If we want to get very specific, saturated fat is actually the most important metric, as mono- and poly-unsaturated fats (e.g. omega-3 fatty acids found in fish) contribute to the production of "good" high-density lipoprotein (HDL cholesterol) that actually helps clear free cholesterol from the blood and lower the risk of atherosclerosis. Similarly, while high cholesterol foods are usually universally declared "bad", foods that are high in cholesterol but low in saturated fat (e.g. shrimp) also contribute to HDL production and can help lower free / circulating cholesterol and improve your HDL / LDL (low-density lipoprotein) ratio.
This becomes a bit of a conundrum in nutrition because some foods (most notable fruits) that are "healthy" in the sense that they contain a large amount of vitamins are not necessarily good for losing weight because they also contain a large amount of simple sugars. Foods high in simple sugars cause a quick rise in your blood sugar, which triggers the release of insulin. Insulin activates lipid synthesis (increased production of fat) and inhibits lipidolysis (breakdown of fat). Because the simple sugars are easily metabolized, they are quickly cleared from the blood stream, which triggers a corresponding quick drop in your blood sugar, which triggers the release of glucagon, which makes you hungry again and causes the process to repeat. This is why most juice blends / cocktails and smoothie-type drinks aren't good for people trying to lose weight. At the other end of the spectrum, complex carbohydrates (like those found in whole wheat products) are more difficult to digest and will both keep you fuller longer and contribute to weight loss.
With all that said, I'm not saying oatmeal and fruit is an unhealthy breakfast. Quite the contrary; oatmeal has been shown to reduce cholesterol and has complex carbohydrates that keep you full well into the day. Fruit is packed with vitamins and antioxidants. But from a strictly weight-loss perspective, a topping like Splenda would probably be a better choice.
To the OP:
Several years ago I dropped between 50 and 60 pounds, mostly through small changes. This is all anecdotal evidence, but the things that helped me were:
Cut out refined sugar to the largest extent possible. Some simple things like switching to diet soda and cutting out candy bars and big desserts can make huge differences.
Eat a larger breakfast with a lot of protein. Oatmeal is a good one, as are egg white omelets (especially if you put vegetables in them). Complex carbohydrates and proteins will help you stay full longer.
Eliminate between meal snacks (as in chips, cookies, etc.) to the largest extent possible; see my post below for more details.
Honestly, the most effective thing to do is not prepare meals yourself since you have no sense of volume you should consume. The best way is to start on a fixed calorie diet by buying products that have a set number of calories in a package. It's cost effective, easy to store and maintain, and very easy to track calories.
Designing your own meals is very advanced stuff and is the final part of your lifestyle change, not the first.
I highly recommend using a website like sparkpeople or myfitnesspal and record everything you eat for a while to see where you are at normally. I especially like myfitnesspal because they give a realistic daily calorie limit to reach. The simple act of recording everything will teach you a ton about how much you are eating and how much you should be eating. It's one of the hardest adjustments to make and the one that takes the longest.
I also recommend you start learning about food, nutrition, and cooking by books/websites/classes/etc. It's hard to sort through it all, but you will find the mixture of things that works for you.
Finally, a quarter of your success is determined by lifestyle and exercise. Try and stand for longer periods of the day. Stand when watching TV or playing games. That act alone will lengthen your life and improve your fitness (compared to sedentary). I highly recommending walking at least and hour a day at your fastest walking pace, and breaking that hour into smaller chunks throughout the day (20min in the morning, 15min at lunch, 30min after dinner, etc.). I also recommend focusing on intense weightlifting as your "planned" exercise since that will help you in the long run by burning more calories. Make note that by intense I mean moving quickly between exercises, resting 30seconds between sets, using rest-pause, etc. - you should be breathing heavy and sweating from your weight lifting and feel sore the next day.
Seriously, if you want a simple way to lose weight, just stop eating out. Period. Learn how to grocery shop, learn how to prepare a handful of healthy meals, and only eat what you make. Once you see what goes into the food you eat, you become a much better judge of what you put in your mouth.
Depending on geography, eating out can be healthier and cheaper if you know where to go. I can get a lovely bowl of tripe pho for $3 for lunch and it's way more for me to buy the ingredients, prepare it, store it, etc. It's simply better to buy out sometimes, and a lot of places have an amount of calories you can record vs. relying on yourself to record each ingredient going into your meal.
It's a better plan for him to control his calories more exactly and not risk underestimating how much he's eating.
Eliminate between meal snacks to the largest extent possible.
Lovely post, and I know you said this is anecdotal evidence, but, eating smaller portions spread out throughout the day raises your metabolism. One of the better fat burning things you can do is to cut out big meals and eat small portions every two hours.
Honestly, the most effective thing to do is not prepare meals yourself since you have no sense of volume you should consume. The best way is to start on a fixed calorie diet by buying products that have a set number of calories in a package. It's cost effective, easy to store and maintain, and very easy to track calories.
Designing your own meals is very advanced stuff and is the final part of your lifestyle change, not the first.
I highly recommend using a website like sparkpeople or myfitnesspal and record everything you eat for a while to see where you are at normally. I especially like myfitnesspal because they give a realistic daily calorie limit to reach. The simple act of recording everything will teach you a ton about how much you are eating and how much you should be eating. It's one of the hardest adjustments to make and the one that takes the longest.
Sparkpeople is awesome.
A person doesn't need to know what good portions are. If you have a measuring cup and a serving size, you can mathematically figure out portions.
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I'll be sad if people don't start calling The Chain Veil "Fleetwood Mac."
By the way, to all of you who wrote it, the whole "eating before bed is bed", it seems newer studies say, it doesn´t matter, its just not healthy in general, but not really linked to weight.
I haven't seen this research, but I don't doubt it. It's certainly not a "cut-and-dry" situation, as the cause / effect balance hasn't really been worked out. There is evidence in animal models that the culprit is circadian rhythms, as well as some evidence in humans that there is a correlation between eating after 8pm and gaining weight. However, it's entirely possible (likely in my opinion) that the reason for the association is less the time of eating and more the fact that night eating tends to be a) when you're not hungry, but are instead eating because you're bored, and b) with food that's high in fat/salt/calories.
Lovely post, and I know you said this is anecdotal evidence, but, eating smaller portions spread out throughout the day raises your metabolism. One of the better fat burning things you can do is to cut out big meals and eat small portions every two hours.
Very true; I should've been more clear in that by "snacks" I meant "stereotypical snack foods", i.e. chips, cookies, etc. that are high in sugar, salt, and calories. If you're eating healthy, well-balanced, small meals 6 times a day, that is indeed superior (from a weight loss perspective) to the same amount of food 3 times a day.
Im only defending the egg mcmuffin, because ive seen docotrs say its one of the better menu items for fast food breakfast. The rest of the menu i dont care for
It's not better. It's "less bad". It's still not a good choice for breakfast.
Im eating steel-cut oatmeal for breakfeast every day, mixed with brown sugar (guilty pleasure), but also with a handful of cranberries( dried and unsweetened).
Lose the brown sugar and you are good to go. If you want to sweeten it up a bit add either some honey or a little granola.
The problem is the number of HUGE lifestyle changes that come along with cutting out all (anything) in someone's life.
But it's required. If you were 10-20 pounds overweight, I would agree, you can make small adjustments, shave 1 day a week off eating out, pick less crappy selecitons when eating at a fast food joint.
That's not the OP. He's mobidly obese, I won't beging to guess what his blood pressure is, he's at a hugely increased risk for diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, and stoke. You don't make tiny little changes in that situaiotn. He needs to make a radical shift.
This isn't rocket sciene. You are the only person who controls what you put in your mouth. Stop putting crap in it, and you will be healthier. Learn how to feed yourself and then do it.
Plus, your body craves what it is used to. If you keep eating salt, fat, and grease, even a lower calorie option, our body will continue to craze salt, fat, and grease.
Cut out ALL Fast food, start eating healthy, and inside of 2 weeks, you will be digusted at the site of a Big Mac and be completely disgusted that you ever ate one. Instea,d you will be craving almonds, spinach, lemon chicken, fruit, etc.
McDonald's has healthy options on the menu, as do most fast food joints now. Problem is most people don't order them. A McMuffin with egg and ham is by no means a bad or unhealthy breakfast, jeez...
The only thing healthy on a fast food menu is a salad, and that's if you chuck the dressing. And no. A greasy, fat and sodium laden McMuffin is unhealthy. It may be less unhealthy than other things you could get, but that's not a reason to eat it. If you never step foot in a McDonalds again, you will be better off for it.
Honestly, the most effective thing to do is not prepare meals yourself since you have no sense of volume you should consume.
Short term this can be a good idea, but you will need to learn how to feed yourself. You need to learn what portion size is, what a good meal is, wha healthy food looks like.
Depending on geography, eating out can be healthier and cheaper if you know where to go. I can get a lovely bowl of tripe pho for $3 for lunch and it's way more for me to buy the ingredients, prepare it, store it, etc. It's simply better to buy out sometimes, and a lot of places have an amount of calories you can record vs. relying on yourself to record each ingredient going into your meal.
Long term it is a bad idea. A HUGE part of eating healthy is education. If you don't learn what an apprpriate portion size is, how many calories food have, how to grocery shop and cook for yourself, you are going to revert back to old habits. And just because you found one lunch shop that might have one cheap meal doesn't mean it is cheaper and healthier to eat out. It isn't, plain and simple. And even if you find somehting cheap and low calories it is usually loaded with preservatives and god knows what else. You might find cheap, healthy snacks while out, but over the long term, nothing is healthier and more affordable as knowing how to feed yourself.
Originally Posted by Viricide
Eliminate between meal snacks to the largest extent possible.
Ideally you should eat all snacks and no meals. You want to "keep the furnace burning", as they say. As for when to eat, that makes next to no difference. You people are giving him tips to take off the last 10 or so pounds. He needs to take off the 100+ before that, and he's only going to do that by learning how to eat.
I'm very sorry to hear about your troubles. I have had a similiar life, I've been trying to lose weight in various ways for a long time. I suggest watching "forks over knives" It's available on netflix streaming if you have that. It's quite good. The issue with human health is that absolutely everyone has a different opinion on it. If you stop eating too many calories you will lose weight but it takes a long time. You have 2 options. You can either commit to a struggle with food cravings and hunger for a period of months to get used to a healthy eating lifestyle or you can deal with health problems for most of your life. Theres really no chance of avoiding them at your weight.
I hope everything works out for you.
I haven't read the whole thread, but I have advice to give.
I became obsessed with nutrition around the late 90's when I picked up bodybuilding. I still continue to try to stay in shape, but I basically came to a point where I don't diet but follow what is best for me.
I have noticed that exercise plays a much smaller role than one would think in losing weight. It is absolutely necessary but people go way overboard on cardio and if you are weightlifting, it's best to work out with lighter weights and more reps- not to burn more fat but the keep hunger down. This is incredibly under-addressed, the effects of weightlifting on hunger. If you are wanting to lose weight there is no point in trying to gain muscle, (although muscle will burn calories) because you will have to eat more protein, in conclusion will make for big meals. If you aren't eating enough then you won't get the right amount of calories for it to be benefiting. You will have to eat more, so you will have to eat leaner food which is hard enough as it is for a dieter. So throw out the whole bulking up thing. I know it seems like common sense but don't go in powerlifting and expect to eat brown rice and a chicken breast afterwards and be happy. I have a friend who works out hard but eats like crap (but not enough protein to gain muscle) and wonders why he isn't either losing fat or gaining muscle. I have more to say but this is long enough for now.
Plus, your body craves what it is used to. If you keep eating salt, fat, and grease, even a lower calorie option, our body will continue to craze salt, fat, and grease.
I was under the impression that our bodies craved fat and calories because early man required a great deal of energy, but was able to easily stay healthy due to being ludicrously more active than we are today.
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Please dont take my advice to heart. Im no proffesional and you should definitely try to get professional help.
So since other food is bad for you too, McDonalds is OK to eat?
Whatever you got to tell yourself dude. You want to live on a steady diet of McDonalds, go right ahead, but I would make sure you have pretty good health insurance.
That's like saying you are better off eating dog **** than horse ****. While you may be right, either way, you are still eating ****.
Also, from your own post:
310 lbs? You cut your caloric intake to get DOWN to "morbidly obese"? You might not be the best guy to give nutrition advice. Just sayin. If a 310 pound man is telling me it's OK to eat Egg McMuffins for breakfast, that's about all the reason I need NOT to eat them.
Anywhoo....
While we are sharing weight loss tips that worked for us, Slim Fast worked wonders for me. I liked it because it removed a lot of choice: I knew what I was having for breakfast and lunch every day, there was no cheating or adding a little more to my plate or finding out that thing I thought was healthy was actually packed with sodium or whatever. I lost around 60-70 lbs in around 6 months.
They key to it is to : Take a multivitamin while doing it, and for you meal at dinner, make it very high in protein. Lean baked chicken breast with some lemon on it, fish (LOTS's of fish, and put away the tarter sauce, broil it in the oven, a little lemon juice and that's it), whole grain rices mixed with scrambled egg beaters, etc. For snacks I kept a bag of unsweetened roasted almonds from a local farmers market and munched on those, those things will kill your hunger quick.
I went from around 270-ish to between 190-200 where I am now (I'm 6'1) in about 6 months. And I was one of those guys who had fast food for lunch every day, and breakfast and lunch on the weekends. In the beginning, you will crave that fat and salt, but after 3-5 days, your body will adjust. When I look at a Big Mac now and realize I used to suck down one of those things down with a extra large Fry and a Coke practically daily for lunch, I almost want to puke.
One thing that most people don't know about, especially the "calorie is a calorie" people, one of which I used to be, is that there is now a genetic test to determine which type of weight loss plan is right for you. The study was performed by researchers at Stanford and individuals who were on the right type of diet for their genes lost 5.3% more weight and were more successful in keeping it off. (The test also contains an exercise profile). PR Newswire Report. In a nut shell your body is more efficient at working with certain foods.
Obviously slamming pills and not changing anything isn't going to help at all because there are lifestyle choices that put you where you are at, and there is no miracle drug for changing that.
With that said, I used to get really nasty headaches when I tried to cut my calories, esp if I was reducing starches. Taking something that helped stabilize my blood sugar eliminated the headaches which really helped me stay on the program.
Which to me reads: Anyone adopting any generic, sensible weight loss plan will lose 95% of thier goal.
There's no "trick" to weight loss that really matters all that much. I always go back to the Oprah example: She's a billionaire. If there was ANY way to effectively lose weight and keep it off besides diet and exercise, she would have found it and bought it.
As for this Interleukin genetics business:
No.
Interleukin Genetics has some sort of proprietary screen they do that looks at whether your body is good at absorbing, metabolizing, and storing carbs and fats (I'm guessing that if its not just empiric math voodoo, they probably look at certain genetic variations of your enzymes, and if you have, lets say, an enzyme variation that makes you mediocre at absorbing fat anyway, they figure you can get away with higher fat diet, or something like that... it's proprietary so we'll never know)
Either way, it gives it all at least a patina of scientific/genetic legitimacy. I'm open minded to the idea that it might go deeper and have some deeper legitimacy, but there's a lot of hype on their web site.
Reportedly, the groups who had a "genotype appropriate diet" averaged a loss of 5.3% of body weight, while those in NOT in a "genotype appropriate diet" lost 2.3% of body weight.
The part that has me scratching my head is where they took patients from a previous study and pulled them into this one, and then divided them into groups by some proprietary genetic test...
When for all I know, they just put the subjects into the groups that would most likely make the genetic test look good:
This is industry funded research, by a company trying to sell an expensive genetic test, so I think I'd like more data. Especially when the diets are self regulated, and calorie intake is certainly not being accurately measured.
The conclusions of the study are that there is a proprietary genetic test that can predict whether a person will have BETTER statistical chance at weight loss with a low fat, a low carb, or "balanced macronutrient" diet. The dieters still have to do their own self control about eating. Calorie intake is not controlled at all here. At best, it implies that some people are better about limiting their intake on a low carb diet, while others are better about limiting their intacke on a low fat diet. You could just figure that out empirically for yourself. Do 2 weeks on one and 2 weeks on the other. See which diet is easier to keep. Don't need a damn proprietary expensive genetic test to tell me which diet worked better and was easier to stick to for ME.
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The problem with citing these types of tests is that it's just another way to avoid personal responsibility. It's like you have a losing soccer team with out of shape players in your local league, and somebody comes along talking about how certain referee crews call it one way, and other crews call it another, and that maybe if we get more aggressive when this crew is ref-ing... and how we should play with different shoes on astroturf, because grass affects us in this way and that way... Oh wait! "Now there's a proprietary genetic marker that will tell us which palyers should play midfield and do more long distance training, and which players should play offense and do more wind sprints!!! i guess we'll win NOW!"
IT'S ALL JUST EXCUSES. HOW ABOUT GETTING INTO SHAPE AND PRACTICING HARDER? JEEEEEZ. EAT LESS. EXERCISE MORE. DON'T CHEAT/SKIP PRACTICE. COUNT CALORIES INSTEAD OF PLAYING THIS STUPID GAME OF "MAYBE IF I JUST EAT 20% CARBS AND 80% FAT INSTEAD OF 30% CARBS AND 70% FAT?"
Unlike anything else in your life, you have TOTAL responsibility and control for your intake.
This.
The dude is 340 lbs. He doesn't need some genetic screening test. He doesn't need to keep X% of his diet macrobiotic or get X% of his calories from Y food source, etc.
He needs to eat less calories. Period.
One he's in the 250 range, you can look for little tweaks that may make his weight loss more effective. As it is right now, he's eating the equivilant of 6.5 Big Mac's a day just to maintain. Just cutting that down to 4 Big Macs a day would take 2-3 pounds off a week.
Finding a good, doctor reccomended dietician to teach him how to eat is the best thing he can do right now. Anything else is just dancing around the core problem that he (like SO many americans) basically has no idea how to feed himself appropriately.
Thanks for all the replies, as an update I saw the doctor today and am speaking with a dietician (sp?) in the next days. Also he is recommending I start taking prozac 20 milligrams daily.
Tomorrow I will be throwing away all of the junk food in my fridge to replace it with healthier choices.
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Valerin, i see that we disagree. Yes, i am morbidly obese, but wanna know how much i used to weigh....try 367 lbs. I used to eat 4000 calories a day, so please dont insult me like that. Im not advocating eating mcdonalds every day, im just saying that an egg mcmuffin is not a a bad breakfeast if you eat at mcdonalds.
I see that you share many of my ideals. No soda, protein is good, etc. I used to eat chili's ribs, memphis style at least twice a week...... go look at the nutrition. I stopped. My usual dinner if i eat out is Chick-fil-a. Grilled chicken deluxe sandwhich with a large tea and no fries. I replace soda with unsweet tea. (i drink 5 gallons or so a week, and that used to be soda)
So, how about we agree to disagree, but we still both believe in a few core beliefs. Sound fair?
540 Peasant cube- Gold EditionSomething SpicyThat's great to hear man! I will give you a heads up though, eating healthy can be kind of a pain because you end up having to go to the grocery store a lot more often (veggies rot so buying in bulk doesn't really work). But it's worth it and once you get through the first couple weeks you get used to it. I hope it goes well for you! Give us an update in a few months.
Things that have been working for me so far.
1.) Drinking only water - This has saved me like 300-400 calories a day off pure sugar. I cut out soda, cut out juice, cut out sugary drinks. A 1500 calorie diet allows for like... three meals and four snacks if you eat all your calories. If you're slamming the gatorade and soda, that makes things hard.
2.) Pretzels - You're not going to go from junk food all the time to all greens. If you do, you'll rebound hard. 100 calories of pretzels (as a between meal snack) will fill you up, and give you a nice crunchy snack that is relatively healthy.
3.) Sleep - Sleep 7-8 hours a day. This has been really helping my temperament and my enjoyment of life.
4.) Find reasons to leave the house. Okay, this is more from past diets than now... currently I have a steady job and am just naturally busy. But I've dieted before, and hanging out in your apartment all day is the death knell of a diet. Food is on hand, you're sitting a lot... it can be boring, etc.
If you can think of a reason to be outside or run errands a few times a day, you'll get walking exercise, sun and fresh air, and you'll have a more well rounded life than if you would being a homebody.
5.) Calorie count once in a while - If calorie counting makes you crazy, don't do it. I personally enjoy it, but I don't do it every day. Doing it once in a while will help you be mindful of when you're eating, how much you're eating, and allow you to ballpark healthy portions in the future.
6.) Cooking. Cooking slows the "daily shovel" down, and makes you conscious of what goes in your food. It will also save you money.
7.) Enjoy yourself. Exercise in ways you enjoy. Eat food you enjoy. I don't like cauliflower, or brussel sprouts, so I don't eat them often. Food is a joy, if you take that away from yourself and only eat bland crud, you'll be off your diet in under six weeks.
I've found the best way to enjoy tasty, healthy, cheap food is to stay away from processed food. My breakfast yesterday was a banana and a pear, 96 cents. Don't go from hot pockets to lean pockets, go from hot pockets to poached eggs with baby spinach and sun-dried tomatoes. Mmm.
Chicken-and-egg problem. Being overweight can destroy your self-image and social motivation, as well as make you easily fatigued and tired all the time. But getting that way is a process that takes years of overeating that's often triggered by, and sustained by, emotional problems. And this is why when the doctor finds symptoms of depression and anxiety, they should be treated. Not just with drugs, but with cognitive behavioural therapy to identify attitudes and situations which aren't helping, and learn to cope with them.
Depending on where you live, and your social status, you may not have access to these things. In many American cities you have to have a car to access a supermarket which stocks fresh fruits and vegetables. Otherwise you are left with the convenience store which usually stocks only packaged foods like frozen pizza and frankfurters, cookies, cakes, chips, etc. If you don't have a car, and you don't have many friends, you can expect to walk up to an hour each way to get to the grocery store. Ergo, subsisting on a diet largely made up of fast food, frozen pizza, soda, and frankfurters.
This I can get behind 100%. Accept that sometimes you will feel cravings, and hunger, and be uncomfortable and have to spend some willpower to stick to your lifestyle commitments. That said, changing your habits doesn't occur in a vacuum. You have to have "fuel" to maintain these commitments. Have long-term goals that fill you with hope and yet are realistic enough that you can actually see progress.
You're both right, but I think you understand the "diet needs" of a large person better than Valarin does.
A 300+ pound man will lose weight eating 2500 calories a day. A couple of pounds a week, actually. Most american men would maintain their weight if they ate that much. A slim guy would gain weight if he ate that much.
A slightly active 300 pound man burns close to twice the calories a day as a slightly active slim person.
So yeah, OP could probably eat McDonald's once in a while and still lose weight, if he wants. I personally don't recommend it, because if you eat really fatty, salty foods, the healthy foods you eat will taste bland to you.
I disagree. The OP needs to learn how to eat. That doesn't mean "switch from eating complete crap to eating something slightly less crap". It means "stop eating crap all together, and learn how to eat"
You don't tell an alcoholic trying to go sober to switch from whiskey to beer, you don't tell a drug addict trying to get clean to switch from heroin to weed.
You know whats going to happen if he thinks he can substutes things on the McDonalds menu to lose weight? He'll eat 1 less Big Mac and instead eat 2 Egg McMuffins, and then wonder why he isn't losing any weight.
If you are a healthy person, and understand nutrition, and know how to feed yourself, yeah, you can eat the occasioanl Egg McMuffin andbe no worse for the wear. That is NOT the OP. He needs to cut ALL fast food from his life and learn how to feed himself.
I can't blieve people are actually defending eating McDonalds in a weight loss thread. Let along backing up a 300+ pound man trying to defend eating McDonalds in a weight loss thread.
Im only defending the egg mcmuffin, because ive seen docotrs say its one of the better menu items for fast food breakfast. The rest of the menu i dont care for.
and promatim brought up a point about caloric needs and weight. at my weight and activity level my body uses 2900 calories. I eat 2400 calories, which works out to 100 an hour (no, i dont eat that, but it does make me think.) And also, eating before going to sleep wont make you gain weight. I know, that sounds odd. But weight is based on calories in-calories out. is cico<0 you lose weight (to a point. too low and you starve and your body doesnt lose weight). cico>0 you gain weight.
Also, no more metabolism talk. Research has shown that people who weigh more have a higher metabolism. But wait, wouldnt that mean that they should lose weight? No, because it takes more energy for me to do stuff than it would take Valarin. Oh, and Valarin, i took up your advice. Im eating steel-cut oatmeal for breakfeast every day, mixed with brown sugar (guilty pleasure), but also with a handful of cranberries( dried and unsweetened).
So OP, Cut all sodas and replace processed foods with fresh foods (if you cant read more than 3 ingredients, get rid of it.....or if an ingredient isnt food.)
540 Peasant cube- Gold EditionSomething SpicyThe problem is the number of HUGE lifestyle changes that come along with cutting out all (anything) in someone's life.
And your examples don't make sense. A lot of drug users use weed to quit other drugs. (And are better off for it.)
The risk here is a rebound. If you're not used to controlling your diet, just walking around with this militant "gotta be good, gotta be good," attitude is going to get you results for about six weeks. Then you gain it all back. That's called yo-yo dieting, and it's as unhealthy as staying heavy.
McDonalds, frighteningly enough, has some smaller portion items than other fast food places. Try finding the "hamburger" on most other fast food menus. Their food is high in salt and fat, but I'm sorry to say, an obese person can eat eat more McDonalds than you and burn it off at a faster resting rate. Agreed, their shouldn't, but if the occasional trip to McDonald's keeps someone on a diet for six months instead of ten days, then it's worth it. That's called building a lifestyle, and building a lifestyle is so much more important than crash dieting.
It does need to be about moderation and variety, though. Don't build a diet around fast food. Even if you only eat 1000 calories a day, you'll lose muscle and hurt your kidneys.
If that's what you're saying, then yeah... obviously. You never want to be a named regular at any fast food place, diner, or restaurant. You want to cook most of your meals and balance them.
For example, with my current diet... I've gone to Panera's, Chipotle and Jimmy John's each once in the past seven days. Each time I've tried to mitigate it by getting the healthiest thing on the menu that appealed to me. The SCGO Baltimore open was in town, so I had to eat out over the weekend more than I'd want to on a diet.
However, I drank water with every meal, rarely snacked, and most of my meals I prepared myself, and almost all involved lean proteins and vegetables. So far I've lost six pounds this week.
Would my diet be better if I hadn't gone out to eat this week? Yes, probably, but then it wouldn't be something I could realistically maintain through the holiday season. In February, I'll still be losing weight. Anyone who tries to eat 100% diet food they wouldn't normally eat probably won't be.
If you've never been obese, you don't know what kind of lifestyle problems lead you there. At my heaviest I was 260. A diet may seem like one lifestyle change, but it's actually FOUR for someone in my or OP's shoes.
-Eat less food
-Eat healthier food
-Sleep regularly
-Exercise more
Maybe stronger people can just wake up one day and fix all that at once... but I couldn't. I can try and fix all four, and rebound, or I could try to change one, and be unraveled by the other three... or I could try to moderately change all four.
Especially considering that OP is dealing with depression, moderately adjusting all four of those aspects of his lifestyle will be easier to maintain for months on end than suddenly pretending to be mister fitness.
(Caveat: Every 20 pounds lost, you do have to re-evaluate your diet and become more strict. What worked at BMI 35 won't work at BMI 32.)
Bodybuilding.com
Simplyshredded.com
Amazing websites that have a lot of workout help.
If you don't like running cause I know my overweight friends who want to lose weight hate it, try lifting weights. Yes Cardiovascular activity is good for the heart and burns calories, but with a steady weight lifting regiment you should be able to lower body fat percentage.
Weight is just a number, you can lose weight but after you lose the weight whats left? You'll have flabs of skin, like one of those flying squirrels. Take the weight loss slow, go to a local gym and nutritionist. Get your lean body mass, and find out your macro-nutrients(the amount of fat/proteins/carbs your body needs) and contour it to your goals. Lift weights so you fill out your body. You'll feel more confidence being bulked, rather then some skinny guy.
Small nitpick, but the reason for the difficulty of the "gallon in an hour challenge" appears to be the lactose, as people can succeed by either drinking lactose-free milk (e.g. Lactaid) or by taking a lactose-intolerance medication (e.g. lactase supplement) before attempting it.
Technically speaking, if you're going strictly for weight loss, refined sugar content is a more important metric than fat content. The ultimate cause of weight gain is consuming more calories than burned, and the ultimate cause of weight loss is burning more calories than consumed. So total calories is the most important number. Beyond that, difficulty of digestion becomes important because some calories are more difficult to break down than others (in other words, some types of molecules require more calories to break down than others). Fats are the most calorie-dense of the nutrient categories, but they aren't the easiest to break down; simple sugars (succrose [as in table sugar], fructose [as in high fructose corn syrup], etc.) are.
Fat content is still important, but it relates more to increased risk of high cholesterol and atherosclerosis. If we want to get very specific, saturated fat is actually the most important metric, as mono- and poly-unsaturated fats (e.g. omega-3 fatty acids found in fish) contribute to the production of "good" high-density lipoprotein (HDL cholesterol) that actually helps clear free cholesterol from the blood and lower the risk of atherosclerosis. Similarly, while high cholesterol foods are usually universally declared "bad", foods that are high in cholesterol but low in saturated fat (e.g. shrimp) also contribute to HDL production and can help lower free / circulating cholesterol and improve your HDL / LDL (low-density lipoprotein) ratio.
This becomes a bit of a conundrum in nutrition because some foods (most notable fruits) that are "healthy" in the sense that they contain a large amount of vitamins are not necessarily good for losing weight because they also contain a large amount of simple sugars. Foods high in simple sugars cause a quick rise in your blood sugar, which triggers the release of insulin. Insulin activates lipid synthesis (increased production of fat) and inhibits lipidolysis (breakdown of fat). Because the simple sugars are easily metabolized, they are quickly cleared from the blood stream, which triggers a corresponding quick drop in your blood sugar, which triggers the release of glucagon, which makes you hungry again and causes the process to repeat. This is why most juice blends / cocktails and smoothie-type drinks aren't good for people trying to lose weight. At the other end of the spectrum, complex carbohydrates (like those found in whole wheat products) are more difficult to digest and will both keep you fuller longer and contribute to weight loss.
With all that said, I'm not saying oatmeal and fruit is an unhealthy breakfast. Quite the contrary; oatmeal has been shown to reduce cholesterol and has complex carbohydrates that keep you full well into the day. Fruit is packed with vitamins and antioxidants. But from a strictly weight-loss perspective, a topping like Splenda would probably be a better choice.
To the OP:
Several years ago I dropped between 50 and 60 pounds, mostly through small changes. This is all anecdotal evidence, but the things that helped me were:
Good luck!
Designing your own meals is very advanced stuff and is the final part of your lifestyle change, not the first.
I highly recommend using a website like sparkpeople or myfitnesspal and record everything you eat for a while to see where you are at normally. I especially like myfitnesspal because they give a realistic daily calorie limit to reach. The simple act of recording everything will teach you a ton about how much you are eating and how much you should be eating. It's one of the hardest adjustments to make and the one that takes the longest.
I also recommend you start learning about food, nutrition, and cooking by books/websites/classes/etc. It's hard to sort through it all, but you will find the mixture of things that works for you.
Finally, a quarter of your success is determined by lifestyle and exercise. Try and stand for longer periods of the day. Stand when watching TV or playing games. That act alone will lengthen your life and improve your fitness (compared to sedentary). I highly recommending walking at least and hour a day at your fastest walking pace, and breaking that hour into smaller chunks throughout the day (20min in the morning, 15min at lunch, 30min after dinner, etc.). I also recommend focusing on intense weightlifting as your "planned" exercise since that will help you in the long run by burning more calories. Make note that by intense I mean moving quickly between exercises, resting 30seconds between sets, using rest-pause, etc. - you should be breathing heavy and sweating from your weight lifting and feel sore the next day.
Depending on geography, eating out can be healthier and cheaper if you know where to go. I can get a lovely bowl of tripe pho for $3 for lunch and it's way more for me to buy the ingredients, prepare it, store it, etc. It's simply better to buy out sometimes, and a lot of places have an amount of calories you can record vs. relying on yourself to record each ingredient going into your meal.
It's a better plan for him to control his calories more exactly and not risk underestimating how much he's eating.
Lovely post, and I know you said this is anecdotal evidence, but, eating smaller portions spread out throughout the day raises your metabolism. One of the better fat burning things you can do is to cut out big meals and eat small portions every two hours.
Sparkpeople is awesome.
A person doesn't need to know what good portions are. If you have a measuring cup and a serving size, you can mathematically figure out portions.
I haven't seen this research, but I don't doubt it. It's certainly not a "cut-and-dry" situation, as the cause / effect balance hasn't really been worked out. There is evidence in animal models that the culprit is circadian rhythms, as well as some evidence in humans that there is a correlation between eating after 8pm and gaining weight. However, it's entirely possible (likely in my opinion) that the reason for the association is less the time of eating and more the fact that night eating tends to be a) when you're not hungry, but are instead eating because you're bored, and b) with food that's high in fat/salt/calories.
Very true; I should've been more clear in that by "snacks" I meant "stereotypical snack foods", i.e. chips, cookies, etc. that are high in sugar, salt, and calories. If you're eating healthy, well-balanced, small meals 6 times a day, that is indeed superior (from a weight loss perspective) to the same amount of food 3 times a day.
It's not better. It's "less bad". It's still not a good choice for breakfast.
Lose the brown sugar and you are good to go. If you want to sweeten it up a bit add either some honey or a little granola.
But it's required. If you were 10-20 pounds overweight, I would agree, you can make small adjustments, shave 1 day a week off eating out, pick less crappy selecitons when eating at a fast food joint.
That's not the OP. He's mobidly obese, I won't beging to guess what his blood pressure is, he's at a hugely increased risk for diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, and stoke. You don't make tiny little changes in that situaiotn. He needs to make a radical shift.
This isn't rocket sciene. You are the only person who controls what you put in your mouth. Stop putting crap in it, and you will be healthier. Learn how to feed yourself and then do it.
Plus, your body craves what it is used to. If you keep eating salt, fat, and grease, even a lower calorie option, our body will continue to craze salt, fat, and grease.
Cut out ALL Fast food, start eating healthy, and inside of 2 weeks, you will be digusted at the site of a Big Mac and be completely disgusted that you ever ate one. Instea,d you will be craving almonds, spinach, lemon chicken, fruit, etc.
The only thing healthy on a fast food menu is a salad, and that's if you chuck the dressing. And no. A greasy, fat and sodium laden McMuffin is unhealthy. It may be less unhealthy than other things you could get, but that's not a reason to eat it. If you never step foot in a McDonalds again, you will be better off for it.
Short term this can be a good idea, but you will need to learn how to feed yourself. You need to learn what portion size is, what a good meal is, wha healthy food looks like.
Long term it is a bad idea. A HUGE part of eating healthy is education. If you don't learn what an apprpriate portion size is, how many calories food have, how to grocery shop and cook for yourself, you are going to revert back to old habits. And just because you found one lunch shop that might have one cheap meal doesn't mean it is cheaper and healthier to eat out. It isn't, plain and simple. And even if you find somehting cheap and low calories it is usually loaded with preservatives and god knows what else. You might find cheap, healthy snacks while out, but over the long term, nothing is healthier and more affordable as knowing how to feed yourself.
Ideally you should eat all snacks and no meals. You want to "keep the furnace burning", as they say. As for when to eat, that makes next to no difference. You people are giving him tips to take off the last 10 or so pounds. He needs to take off the 100+ before that, and he's only going to do that by learning how to eat.
I hope everything works out for you.
I became obsessed with nutrition around the late 90's when I picked up bodybuilding. I still continue to try to stay in shape, but I basically came to a point where I don't diet but follow what is best for me.
I have noticed that exercise plays a much smaller role than one would think in losing weight. It is absolutely necessary but people go way overboard on cardio and if you are weightlifting, it's best to work out with lighter weights and more reps- not to burn more fat but the keep hunger down. This is incredibly under-addressed, the effects of weightlifting on hunger. If you are wanting to lose weight there is no point in trying to gain muscle, (although muscle will burn calories) because you will have to eat more protein, in conclusion will make for big meals. If you aren't eating enough then you won't get the right amount of calories for it to be benefiting. You will have to eat more, so you will have to eat leaner food which is hard enough as it is for a dieter. So throw out the whole bulking up thing. I know it seems like common sense but don't go in powerlifting and expect to eat brown rice and a chicken breast afterwards and be happy. I have a friend who works out hard but eats like crap (but not enough protein to gain muscle) and wonders why he isn't either losing fat or gaining muscle. I have more to say but this is long enough for now.
Though I'll put it in a small font.
Please stop hijacking my reply box.