Losing Weight

Post by **Fan** » 02-06-2014 09:51 AM

I am on a new mission, to lose a significant amount of weight (goal is 40lbs lost in the next few months). I am employing gadgets of course (fitbit among others).

I am logging ALL food eaten and all calories expended.

My diet is good. I eat a ridiculous amount of greens via a juicer. I eat very little fat. I eat NO pre-made food. Everything is made fresh from raw. Sugar intake is at almost zero. Dairy is down to one cup a day.

I am doing body building again after 20 years or so. I was forced to stop by a back injury but always enjoyed doing this.

It is a bit harder in winter here to stay active since going for a walk is a major arctic expedition, but you do burn more calories trying to keep warm

I have a stationary bike I use about 3 times a week.

Does anyone have tips or strategies that helped them?

Lore · Post by **Lore** » 02-06-2014 03:49 PM

Fan, you could always try Art Bell's don't eat so damn much food diet.

Then there is always the move more eat less diet.

Restricting starches and cutting out flour seems to work well for men to lose weight.

Building I muscle is good for keeping weight off, but aerobic activity of any type really accelerates weight loss. Walking is as good as using an elliptical or riding bike.

Move more, eat less works well for building habits to maintain weight loss.

Watch the calories in those blended green drinks. It is very easy to consume more calories by drinking those calories (via fruit juice, veggie blends or fruit and veggie blends). It is much more satisfying to the human body to go through the eating - digestive process as opposed to drinking those calories that are pre digested by the blender. Hunger is less a problem with eating more problematic with already broken down by blender foods.

Good luck. It is far easier for men to lose weight than women.

Post by **Fan** » 02-06-2014 04:03 PM

I am counting as exactly as possible all calories eaten, as well as all calories burned. On average I eat approximately 1000 calories less than I burn (I am pretty tall, I burn about 2800-3300 calories a day). Still, it is a very slow process.

I eat almost no starches. Carbs come from fruit mostly. Occasionally I have a thin slice or two of my homemade whole wheat bread, but that is once every 3-4 days only. Dinner is a large helping of low-fat protein, a big salad and that is it.

I am working out to try to speed up my metabolism, which is incredibly slow due to my computer slothlike activities. I work at home so I don't get the normal commuting exercise most people get.

I am using http://www.fitbit.com/flex to track calories burned and sleep patterns, and I manually input all food. Since I make all the food I know exactly what elements it has so my count is very precise.

The juices I drink are homemade, they consist of a full bag of spinach, 4 carrots, 2 celery sticks and 2 small apples. Occasionally some kale or green beans. I have one every day.

Luckily I have never had a sweet tooth, so I don't care about sugar and candies or soda. I don't find myself hungry often, but when I do I snack on beef jerky (homemade obviously), nuts, dried fruit, etc.

Thanks for the advice Lore, the truism is of course to eat less calories than you burn, and to keep that up. I've been doing it for a few weeks now, but the weight is slow to come off.

Any big weight loss members here? Did you manage to keep it off? What lifestyle changes did you make?

voguy · Post by **voguy** » 02-06-2014 06:00 PM

If I can find the formula from the U of M Med Center, there is a "calories in - calories burned x ????" that I've seen as the only real, workable diet.

The problem is, old fat sits and it takes a while to get off (unless you go in for surgery). New fat is made as the body goes into a panic mode when it sees you starting to shed weight. So where 25% of input calories may go fat as you are now, when you start losing then the number pops up higher. Of course that means incoming food is going more to fat than to sustenance. So be very aware of the panic mode. I know of no medical way to prevent this. If I did, I would be a billionaire.

Post by **Fan** » 02-06-2014 07:00 PM

voguy wrote: If I can find the formula from the U of M Med Center, there is a "calories in - calories burned x ????" that I've seen as the only real, workable diet.

The problem is, old fat sits and it takes a while to get off (unless you go in for surgery). New fat is made as the body goes into a panic mode when it sees you starting to shed weight. So where 25% of input calories may go fat as you are now, when you start losing then the number pops up higher. Of course that means incoming food is going more to fat than to sustenance. So be very aware of the panic mode. I know of no medical way to prevent this. If I did, I would be a billionaire.

from my understanding the "panic mode" is triggered when you intake much less calories than you should. Your body thinks food is scarce so it lowers your energy level and stores as much as possible. The diet I am doing tries to prevent this by eating a sane amount, just less.

SquidInk · Post by **SquidInk** » 02-06-2014 08:38 PM

Yep, in my experience (I helped my partner lose 27lbs), I found the calorie math to be very useful. I also recommend climbing stairs. Find the biggest staircase in town, and go up and down it as many times as you can, lift your knees high, and keep your weight balanced. That would probably be difficult in the land of the Yeti, where you live, Fan. Maybe you can build a wooden "stepmill" ?

That's really all there is to adjusting body weight (in most cases) - calories in versus calories burned.

Great goal, good luck.

SquidInk · Post by **SquidInk** » 02-06-2014 08:39 PM

oh, also... http://lifehacker.com/331319/fifteen-fo ... ey-contain

Raggedyann · Post by **Raggedyann** » 02-06-2014 10:06 PM

SquidInk wrote: I also recommend climbing stairs.

The temp here right now is 20F and my wood stove is in the basement. This means that I have to have the thing on full blast to heat every nook and cranny of this old house. This also means that I get to go up and down the stairs at least 15 times a day to load up the stove and bring loads from the shed into the house with the wheel barrow. I might live longer if I don't freeze to death.

Riddick · Post by **Riddick** » 02-07-2014 01:35 AM

I lost 30 lbs via the long-term "Nagging Doctor" method. Took two years to take it off, but it's staying off. Basically I've 1) stopped mindless snacking, 2) reduced meat & increased veggie intake, 3) shook off my sweet tooth, and 4) gradually but substantially increased exercise.

My weight's still 20-25 lbs over where I'd really like it to be, but it seems the first 30 are the easiest to lose sans strict bookkeeping of calories consumed and burned - Even so, as keeping an eye on the scale and making adjustments as needed has helped over time toward maintaining a more or less downward trend, as my goal at the least I'm looking to be another 5 lbs down at my next bi-annual checkup.

More would be nice but any loss is surely better than a GAIN... I've already had enough nagging, I don't wanna start alla that up again!

voguy · Post by **voguy** » 02-08-2014 01:38 PM

Fan wrote: from my understanding the "panic mode" is triggered when you intake much less calories than you should. Your body thinks food is scarce so it lowers your energy level and stores as much as possible. The diet I am doing tries to prevent this by eating a sane amount, just less.

Not necessarily. If you have been taking in 2,500 calories a day, and start decreasing to 2,000, it will trigger the "panic mode". More dramatic if you go from 2,500 down to 1,500.

When I was doing weight loss one of the tricks a doctor told me about is the relationship between the panic mode and an empty stomach. Our system gets accustomed to having food in our stomach, so when we start cutting back it's part of the trigger mechanism which starts the panic mode.

The trick is to eat things like unbuttered and unsalted popcorn, and if the truth be known I did use just a little to get the taste but not the usual theater amount of salt and butter. And at dinner eat regular green peppers and other foods that act as a natural diuretic. Space your meals out so the meal with the most calorie intake is breakfast, and try not to eat things which have a tendency to sit in your stomach for a long time. If I ate more, it was my regiment to then walk more, sometimes as much as 6.5 miles around the local reservoir. I lost about 100#.

voguy · Post by **voguy** » 02-08-2014 01:41 PM

Raggedyann wrote: The temp here right now is 20F and my wood stove is in the basement. This means that I have to have the thing on full blast to heat every nook and cranny of this old house. This also means that I get to go up and down the stairs at least 15 times a day to load up the stove and bring loads from the shed into the house with the wheel barrow. I might live longer if I don't freeze to death.

Speaking of which, another thing the doctor told me was that when you start losing weight you tend to feel cooler/cold. For me at my worse, I could tolerate a room at 65. After I lost the weight then I found if I was watching TV, I had to set the furnace to 68 or even 70.

Must be something to that blubber of insulation.

Post by **Fan** » 02-08-2014 01:58 PM

Going well so far, in the past 2 weeks my body fat percentage has gone down by 6.5%. My weight has stayed almost the same, but of course this is the problem with only measuring weight. You think you are not losing "Weight" when in fact you are replacing fat with muscle.

So much of this is misunderstood. There are a million fad diets, products, measurements, bla bla bla. I think it is like making any change, you need mental strength and resolve. The rest is really pretty simple. It takes work, but if you can do work you enjoy (walking somewhere nice for instance) it is not going to be so hard.

We are trained in strange ways for eating. People don't think about how many calories that bag of fritos is, or that soda. Simply changing sugary drinks for water would make the average person drop weight fast.

voguy · Post by **voguy** » 02-08-2014 07:36 PM

Go by body mass, honest measurements with a cloth tape around various surfaces. The fat is retaining, and will only burn off after the body realizes it's OK to start discarding it. For me, it took 3-months before my first real loss. At 2-months and 2-weeks I was ready to say F it and just go back to my ways.

Another thing I should mention, give yourself an exercise treat. Walk a mile or two to a McDonalds or Burger King (someplace you would go to), and just get water, or a low-cal drink, and then walk home. For me it was ice tea, with an extra lemon, or a large water with lemon. It gets your mind thinking you can resist temptation when in these places.

Another trick I would do is order things with lots of veggies, such as a 6" turkey from subway with triple lettuce and green peppers. In the early stages of weight loss you fool your mind thinking you pigged out, when what you had might be only 350 calories. Lettuce and peppers will fill you up, too.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » 02-08-2014 08:50 PM

I don't know about anyone else but for me this is a daily battle.

Post by **Fan** » 02-09-2014 11:20 AM

I am having fun with it so far. It presents different cooking challenges. The technology I use makes it into a sort of game, you get real feedback every day. They give you badges as you progress (just got my "lost 15 lbs badge"). They let you see how your friends are doing and you can "cheer" or "taunt" them.