Weight Loss Thread

[juspoole]

Damn you food!  I keep hitting the same pattern, great during the morning and lunch, but then I get home and think I need to eat/snack so much more.  Got to be more mentally strong and keep up my intensity with workouts.

[Pug]

Do you have some protein at breakfast?

Do you allow yourself a healthy snack mid morning and mid afternoon?

Are you eating foods that fill you early in the day?

Are your snacks carb heavy later in the day?

Here are two things to consider:

Often feelings of hunger are transitory and will pass in 15 to 20 minutes. In addition, our bodies may give you the impression of being hungry when in fact we are slightly dehydrated. Next time you want a snack later in the day, have a large glass of water and wait 15 minutes. Do you still think you’re hungry? If so go onto the second consideration which is this:

Will an apple satisfy your hunger? If your answer is yes you are genuinely hungry, in which case eat the apple.

If the answer is no, an apple will not satisfy me I want (pick your poison). In this case it is more likely that you are eating out of habit, and not because you are actually hungry. If that is the case and you think you can’t resist eat the apple first, wait 15 minutes and see how you feel then.

Creating new habits takes on average 17 to 21 repetitions. Don’t quit if you stumble. Set backs are to expected.

You might do yourself a favour by developing a plan on how to handle cravings e.g. eat more fruit than prepared snacks and then get rid of your junk food but make sure you have a healthy alternative. Sometimes will power is not enough. Good luck.

[revkev]

@Pug - loved your story man!!! Thanks for sharing it. Mine is very similar and it flows through this thread so I won’t boar you. It started though with a long time friend asking when the baby was due. It continued a month later when my work insurance offered anyone who was pre-diabetic the option of a paid for fitness program. I took it - that was 45 lbs and a year and a half ago.

I got below my target weight of 168 last October and have stayed between 166 and 164 ever since (a tad below what I weighed as a college athlete).

My primary care physician retired and I saw the new one that I hired for the first time yesterday. Weighed in at 48 lbs less than the last time I saw him. Blood pressure was 109/68 heart rate 64.

The doctor came in and said, “Well you are a different person from this chart - 109/68 vs 130/85 last time, 64 vs 85, 165 vs, 210. Tell me how you got there.”

I showed her the app from my fitness plan and detailed my journey. She said, “Okay here’s the blood work I’m ordering. My guess is that your numbers there will be totally changed too. Doctors know that the biggest single thing that most of our patients can do to improve their health is loose weight properly. Everything else is a band aid.”

Wow!

To top it off I was giving out contracts to our teachers and as I was leaving our 4th grade teachers room she said, “man pastor I hope I look like you when I’m in my 60’s.”

Wow again

Stick with it guys - this is a journey - sometimes there are detours but there’s no reason to let those stop you!


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[Pug]

4 hours ago, revkev said:

@Pug - loved your story man!!! Thanks for sharing it. Mine is very similar and it flows through this thread so I won’t boar you. It started though with a long time friend asking when the baby was due. It continued a month later when my work insurance offered anyone who was pre-diabetic the option of a paid for fitness program. I took it - that was 45 lbs and a year and a half ago.

I got below my target weight of 168 last October and have stayed between 166 and 164 ever since (a tad below what I weighed as a college athlete).

My primary care physician retired and I saw the new one that I hired for the first time yesterday. Weighed in at 48 lbs less than the last time I saw him. Blood pressure was 109/68 heart rate 64.

The doctor came in and said, “Well you are a different person from this chart - 109/68 vs 130/85 last time, 64 vs 85, 165 vs, 210. Tell me how you got there.”

I showed her the app from my fitness plan and detailed my journey. She said, “Okay here’s the blood work I’m ordering. My guess is that your numbers there will be totally changed too. Doctors know that the biggest single thing that most of our patients can do to improve their health is loose weight properly. Everything else is a band aid.”

Wow!

To top it off I was giving out contracts to our teachers and as I was leaving our 4th grade teachers room she said, “man pastor I hope I look like you when I’m in my 60’s.”

Wow again

Stick with it guys - this is a journey - sometimes there are detours but there’s no reason to let those stop you!


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Revkev - First, good for you! As you know losing weight and keeping it off is not easy. One of the things about weight loss that has always surprised me is how little personal insight we bring to it. Take yo-yo dieting. What makes us think we can go on a diet for a couple of months, lose weight and then go back to eating what we did before to maintain our new weight? And when the weight comes back, often in even greater amounts, we jump on the next latest hot trend and do the same thing all over again ultimately with the same results - all the weight comes back plus more again. 

We often hear the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. On a related note, depression related to failing to keep weight off can be traced back to pattern recognition when we realize we just went through another yo-yo diet cycle. A rut is just an extended grave.

The other comparison relates to the classical definition of hell - the endless reputation of a meaningless task. Sysiphus had angered the gods (we are never told how) and is condemned to push a heavy rock up a steep hill and will only be released when he gets the rock to the top. Over and over he pushes that obnoxious weight to the peak only to have it roll back down to the bottom and have to start over again. Remind anyone of yo-yo dieting?

From all of these experiences I have developed some rules that I apply to myself.

Rule 1. Nothing changes until I change. That means I can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. Whatever change I make has to be permanent and therefore carefully considered.

Rule 2. All diets work while you are on them. Therefore if the weight loss is to be permanent the change (see rule 1) has to be permanent.

Rule 3. Plan.

If you think you are going to lose weight and keep it off without a plan, think again. How are you going to lose weight and keep it off? What are you going to do to lose weight? Just diet, just exercise, a combination of both? Will you do cardio and strength training as well as change what you eat? What do you have to do to prepare to work out ‍? Do you need some clothes, a bag, gym shoes, lock for a locker, water bottle etc.? Do you actually know how to work out? It amazes me how arrogant we men can get about exercise, as in you can’t tell me anything- I know how to work out. A couple of crunches and I will that six pack in no time. Ha! I was badly deconditioned when I started and really benefited from taking workout classes. 

What about diet? What permanent changes am I going to make to what, when and how I eat. I agree with the other commentators who have said to make it stick it needs to a lifestyle change, not simply a temporary diet. And don’t forget portion control as has also been mentioned.

If you happen to read the book I referred to  earlier you will recognize what I mean when I say I am on the ENC diet. Never heard of it? It stands for Eat No Crap. I don’t have to tell anyone what crap is - we can all figure that out for ourselves.

Start a small journal and write down virtually everything you eat for a week without changing anything. At the end of the week go through the journal and put a check mark beside everything that’s crap. Here’s the diet - stop eating everything with a check mark. And do yourself a favour - have non-crap real food available if you need a snack. Do that, work out and the weight will take care of itself but you still need portion control. Grazing is code for digging your grave with your mouth.

OK, that was long winded. My point is as the old saying goes “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Obviously I have strong feelings on the subject. Thus endeth the rant for today.

 

Edited May 31, 2019 by Pug
Corrected spelling, shortened some content.

[revkev]

@Pug - spot on.

That and don’t be too hard on yourself if you stumble - you’re making a change - that takes time.

I love the food I eat now, but it took time for me to adapt to it. I love my work outs but I had to find ones that fit into my schedule and lifestyle.

My fitness certainly started in my head and heart and not the rest of my body.

Just weighed in at 163.5 for the start of the day.


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[MattF]

Started week 3 of my running and it was a brisk 48° when I ventured out at 5am.

As of yesterday I've lost 4 lbs in 2 weeks just because of the running.  Next week I'll be back on the Total Gym 2 days a week for a little bit of resistance/weight training.

[Pug]

11 hours ago, revkev said:

@Pug - spot on.

That and don’t be too hard on yourself if you stumble - you’re making a change - that takes time.

I love the food I eat now, but it took time for me to adapt to it. I love my work outs but I had to find ones that fit into my schedule and lifestyle.

My fitness certainly started in my head and heart and not the rest of my body.

Just weighed in at 163.5 for the start of the day.


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Going to what was effectively the Mediterranean diet was a big step for me. However by far the biggest and hardest step was becoming a gym rat. Remember I was 60 when I started this journey and I had a lifetime of sloth and deconditioning that caused a huge amount of inertia. A body at rest tends to stay at rest is more than just a basic law of physics. 

Actually getting to the gym and going through the door was the hardest part of the work out. It took 31/2 months to finally feel better when I left the gym than when I arrived. My mantra to get through it was “You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.”

 I was 147.2  this morning which is about 7 pounds too many for my height which with age has shrunk to a towering 5’4”. When I drink alcohol it causes me to retain fluids. So splitting a bottle of wine on a Friday night and not eating crap I went from 145 to 147 from one day to the next. It takes me about 4 to 5 days to sweat it out.

So ...at 165.3 would you have the same problem I do, namely being under tall? 

I couldn’t agree with you more regarding not being to hard on yourself because weight loss does not proceed in a straight line. A post earlier on this thread has a graph that shows how up and down it can be. While I have lost 80 pounds and largely kept it off I had times when I ballooned by 20 pounds and had to rededicate myself to the process. 

Typically I would hit a plateau and then slowly back slide on what I was eating (happily I was very consistent going to the gym) and thus start to gain weight. Revisit Rule 1 - do some portion control, revisit the crap food list and come up with alternatives that worked.

It’s all about fighting the good fight for yourself. Not something we are always good about when we tend to put family and friends first.

 

[Pug]

Hi MattF - What is your goal? Personally I wanted to take care of my weight problem (yes ‘problem’ not ‘challenge’ - that only comes later after I came up with a plan to deal with the problem) by getting taller. Didn’t work.

[MattF]

11 hours ago, Pug said:

Hi MattF - What is your goal?

To live long enough to see grandkids.

[Pug]

Excellent motivation. 

[Pug]

Visited my orthopaedic surgeon today and was advised that the recovery time on my hip replacement is going to be 18 months. No wonder when I asked her before the surgery if I could go back to running afterwards she looked me up and down and said, “No marathons!” So running is out and the interval training I did last week was a bad idea! Oops .

I am 6 months post operative today and I rely heavily on cardio and resistance training for weight control. So ...looks like more time on the elliptical for me. I hate using the treadmill - first with the hip replacement impact is out. Second, as Robin Williams observed, it makes me feel like a hamster .

On the plus side I managed not to gain any weight during the 6 months. On the negative do you think I can shed those last 5 to 7 pounds? I was at 145.8 this morning.

[Mr_Theoo]

Had a rough week last week. AC went out in our house. Had a crack in my windshield and ended up getting a little cold or something. So needless to say I didn’t lose anything. Pretty much stayed around the same which was nice cause my eating was the furthest from perfect and I didn’t get enough water. 

But im bouncing back this week to finish the next 5 weeks of my challenge strong. My new goal is to get to 270 now which I feel is attainable in the next 5 weeks

[revkev]

@Pug I’m 5’9”

165 puts me just inside a good BMI. When I played baseball in college I was at 168. I’m happy hanging between 164 and 166. Feel very healthy there, blood pressure is 110/65 heart rate sub 65.

I’m at home with my current lifestyle


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[Pug]

I want to cheer you on Mr_Theoo. Loosing weight is not easy. Feeling ill even a sniffle can knock us off course. Believe in yourself, keep an eye on your goal and you will get there.

[Pug]

Revkev, it sounds like you are right where you want to be. I am impressed with your blood pressure and heart rate. I’m 120/70. I have not checked my resting heart rate upon waking in the morning for several years. It was at 52 (I was doing a lot of running at the time) so I doubt if it would be anywhere even close now. If I think of it I will have to give that another look. My old heart rate monitor just gave up the ghost so I am shopping for a new monitor. Toying with getting the Fitbit Versa.

Anyone want to wade in on what they are using? I am interested in hearing about what you think of your own gear.

[Mr_Theoo]

On 6/4/2019 at 8:29 PM, Pug said:

Revkev, it sounds like you are right where you want to be. I am impressed with your blood pressure and heart rate. I’m 120/70. I have not checked my resting heart rate upon waking in the morning for several years. It was at 52 (I was doing a lot of running at the time) so I doubt if it would be anywhere even close now. If I think of it I will have to give that another look. My old heart rate monitor just gave up the ghost so I am shopping for a new monitor. Toying with getting the Fitbit Versa.

Anyone want to wade in on what they are using? I am interested in hearing about what you think of your own gear.

I have an Apple Watch and love it. Keeps very accurate heart rates during my workouts when I compare it to the ones my gym uses

[Pug]

9 hours ago, Mr_Theoo said:

I have an Apple Watch and love it. Keeps very accurate heart rates during my workouts when I compare it to the ones my gym uses

Thanks for the feedback Mr_Theoo. I have been considering it and have no doubt that I would also love it. But I think it has more features than I would use so there is a question of value for money, keeping in mind a couple of hundred saved is a shaft or few rounds found.

Of course my problem is that I am already an Apple fanboy. Bought the first one in 1988. The operating system was 1.2.6. The available monitors were crt that only provided black and white pictures. Yeah, that old. Plus I always try to buy quality. I have seldom regretted it. 

Thanks again.

[ole gray]

[Pug]

7 hours ago, ole gray said:

I am a latent heterosexual. It’s an age thing.

[Mr_Theoo]

fastest mile I’ve ran since prolly high school. Let’s see if I can shave another 2:45 off in a month

[MattF]

9 hours ago, Mr_Theoo said:

fastest mile I’ve ran since prolly high school.

Go you good thing!!

As for me, my intro to running has me down 6 lbs in 3 weeks. But I sound like an old puffing billy steam engine going up the hills!

[sp0rtsfan86]

I am finally down within 5 pounds of my lowest weight after putting on 15-20 pounds over the last two years. At my highest I was in the 220 range but 4 years ago I lost 40 pounds completely changing the way I ate, gained back 25 over Christmas and dating a girl the same year, lost 35-40 over a year and a half and then spent 2 years back in the 180 range. I've swapped schedules and now can go to the gym for two- three hours a day or hit the golf course which makes it a lot easier to get the required excersise. My advice to anyone is find something that works and keep using it. For me, it's low carb diet, but I also do carbs if I work out  that much harder the next day.

[Pug]

237 calories in just over 12 minutes. You’re a beast Mr Theoo. Well done!

[Mr_Theoo]

27 minutes ago, Pug said:

237 calories in just over 12 minutes. You’re a beast Mr Theoo. Well done!

Thanks! Don’t know if the calories are accurate or not but I def was moving. 

[Mr_Theoo]

11 hours ago, MattF said:

Go you good thing!!

As for me, my intro to running has me down 6 lbs in 3 weeks. But I sound like an old puffing billy steam engine going up the hills!

 Nice job! Keep it up man

[MattF]

11 hours ago, Mr_Theoo said:

 Nice job! Keep it up man

Thanks mate! We'll be a couple of slim Jims when we play next!! 

[ole gray]

Buckle down folks as half the year is already gone  so keep on keeping on with obtaining your goals!

 

 

 

 

[tommc23]

I'm maintaining my weight so I'm happy but it's getting to the time to train for my big hunt test of the year so my miles walked will be going back over 12 a day so I'm hoping I drop some more weight doing that.

[revkev]

Yep - 164.2 today - I’ve been below my target of 168 since last October. :)


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[MattF]

My running is coming along. Did my first 25 minutes or 2.5 miles on Monday. I'll do another one tomorrow and the last of those on Friday. Next Monday and Wednesday will be 28 minutes and the big one that I've been building towards, 30 minutes (3 miles) will be that Friday.