This was inspiring to me, so I made it a resolution to do this in 2022: jogging, hiking, or walking, as long as I’m doing it deliberately for fitness. I downloaded Strava and like its app, so I’ll be using that to track. I think I’ll probably start a thread too for tracking and accountability. It’ll take some effort to get to 1000 miles, but barring injury I think I can do it.
My approach to health has always been exercise first. Exercise helps with everything: heart health, appetite, chronic pain (my wrists and forearms are varying degrees of very sore/painful basically every minute I’m awake–but exercise of any kind really helps), mental well-being. My weight drops not because I’m burning calories, but because exercise takes up time I’d otherwise be boredom snacking, and I deliberately fast before jogging so that’s even more time without eating. I’m more alert, with better focus, and a better self-image when exercising regularly. And when in-shape, I can do stuff like difficult hikes and rock climbing that I enjoy, but that require a certain amount of physical fitness.
Ya, make a thread…I was going to post my day 1 numbers from yesterday with weight, miles, calories eaten, etc…but not sure if there was any thread like that. With my health issues, 500 is my goal this year.
That got me curious what my numbers were. I didn’t hit it this year because of foot and hamstring issues, but my mileage for 2020 was1032 according to my Garmin Connect app. I think I did half that in 2021.
I ran the numbers and I should get really close to 1000 miles in a year if no injury happens. I’ll log too.
My only issue here is that I do HIIT 2 times a week. In total about 3 miles per week I’m gonna need to figure out how to track, since I will need those to hit 1000 miles jogging, I think. (Likely I’ll actually be at 800 or so, but 1000 is doable and it is a cool challenge).
I bought some things to help me cut some carbs even though I’m not going full Keto at the moment.
I bought some keto granola that I am going to mix with a half a serving of with my ‘normal’ granola. That way I get some whole grains, but not as much as I usually eat.
Pumpkin seeds to eat as a snack or mix with greek yogurt.
Some Keto bread since I do like to have sandwiches. It has a crazy 11 grams of fiber per slice. I’m not sure what I think of it after looking at the ingredients - modified wheat starch, wheat gluten, vegetable and oat fiber… I think I feel better about eating 100% whole grain bread that has a mix of different grains and seeds. It tastes OK
Some almond flour crackers. Still high carb, but I don’t eat crackers that often. I figure almond flour is better than wheat. I do like to have Triscuits with melted cheddar cheese on them though.
Some chocolate, seed, coconut cluster keto things.
I normally eat a lot of fruit, and I will continue to eat quite a bit of fruit, but I’ll try to replace some of it with a vegetable. I also bought some Keto sweetener to use instead of honey for when i make smoothies.
I’m no expert on this, but my understanding is that to do the keto diet, you need to change your diet enough to change how your body metabolism runs. My impression is that adding keto foods to a normal diet is not going to help you lose weight. If you haven’t switched your metabolism to burn fat only, my impression is that you’re going to take in a bunch of pretty concentrated calories and not use them - fat is by far the most calorie dense by weight, though you may eat less if it helps you with satiety.
That said, I could be completely wrong, because I don’t follow a keto diet (I’m closest to a mediterranean diet, but it’s really a low saturated fat, higher fiber, lots of veg diet, very little simple carbs), but I’ve read a bunch of papers to understand the research better.
No, I think you’re right. Half measures are not going to switch the metabolism over. :)
It’ll be interesting to see how it works out! Reducing the high glycemic load sugar intake is a good thing, but replacing it with a lot of fat… the energy from the fat is just going to get stored if the carb intake is still high, in the absence of a lot of exercise.
There are probably some other difs, but Atkins is a low carb diet that initially starts with fewer carbs than even Keto though it eventually stabilizes at up to 100grams of carbs per day which is about 3-5 times the level Keto starts and is always at. True Atkins is a specific meal plan with specific products though. So you get do a low carb diet without actually getting into full ketosis. I’ve done full keto for up to a few months at a time but will often cheat (knocks out of ketosis for few days) or just do low carb (prob l30-50 grams per day) but even Atkins or some other low carb diet will still give you a large benefit of not eating so many carbs. Which are frequently pretty empty unless you’re paying attention.
I think most people would benefit from reducing sugar intake, regardless of whatever else they’re eating. The trick is usually to replace that sugar with something better for you. All foods with fat in them are not necessarily the same IMHO - I’d much rather eat an avocado than the same amount of bacon. OK, that’s sort of a lie - the bacon would be delicious, but a combination of the saturated fat and sodium nitrite aren’t good trade-offs if I care about overall health and not just short term weight loss.
Absolutely! One of the other Keto tenets apart from cutting carbs, is eating ‘high quality’ fats. A lot of these store-bought snack solutions that are being discussed do not contain that (though avocado and bacon are both fine).
Oh, for sure. I think at least half of the good that comes from a low carb diet is just paying attention to what you’re eating. Since so much food is just a massive pile of carbs (hell a good sized banana doesn’t have that many fewer carbs than a Milky Way bar and not a ton of fiber), if you are watching for it you’ll naturally eat better. Though, getting a ton of fat from bacon is prob not the way to go, hehe. But a good dry rub chicken wing is the bomb.
Speaking of technology as per thread title, I almost made it through 2021 without getting an air fryer… but the Amazon boxing day sale got me. Those things make a superb chicken wing really quickly!
My oven here isn’t the best, and it was relatively cheap. Neat little benchtop convection oven, so far it’s pulling its weight with quick keto stuff like the aforementioned chicken wings, some great roast cauli, bacon, and mushrooms. Have to try brocolli, asparagus, and poached eggs next.
Ah, ok. Probably not worth me getting the keto bread then. I guess my plan is:
cut wayyyyy back on treats and simple carbs. I normally get most of my carbs as whole grains anyways (except for my excess of treats)
try to balance the veggies and fruits more since I’m way skewed towards fruits
do at least 15 minutes of light cardio after each meal.
do some vigorous cardio at least 3x per weak.
mix in some dumbbell strength training.
I think this is my 4th day of eating better? Today I weighed 208.6 (down from 213.2) and my Jan BP slightly better than my December average. If I could lose 3 pounds per month from here on out I’ll be happy. I probably already shed the easy pounds. I’ve managed to get under 200 3 times I think in the last several years. I need to get under 200 and finally stay there. I’ll still be 15 pounds or so away from my target.
I started at 213.6 and now 2 1/2 months later I’m at 195, I was 191 but the Christmas break did a number on me, no regrets but back on the healthy eating train. I also have high blood pressure which I take meds for. The blood pressure is definitively dropping and have started to take one every 2nd day. I monitor it closely to make sure things are good. I need to see my doc to get reevaluated but I want to get to my goal of 180-185 and stabilize there. With Covid I don’t want to go there either :)
I have been eating vegetables, complex carbs (lentils,beans quinoa, brown rice) with the exception of pasta, just can’t do whole wheat pasta, fruit, whole wheat pita and tortillas. The only diary I eat is a small amount of cheese (30g max a day usually) and I have a Lindt mint chocolate bar in the fridge where I can have a square or two if my calories for the day is low. Once supper a week I can cheat, no holes barred, no guilt pig out. Last week was Popeye’s chicken, week before double cheese with fries and non diet Coke at 5 guys, whatever I desire. I try to limit the amount of oil I’m cooking with due to the high fat and high calories. I rather eat something that will fill me up.
I am using My Fitness Pal to count my calories. Starting at 213, 58 years old and semi active and wanting to loose 1.5 pounds a week it recommended 1725 calories a day. Some days it’s easy to be below that and sometimes it’s hard. I never starve myself and if I’m hungry I will go over because it would be too hard to stick to it. It really shows where the calories are coming from and when you have some small treat that has high calories it’s motivating to pass on it knowing you can have extra at supper, be more full and still meet your daily goals.
The internet is great in finding great recipes that are tasty and healthy.
Some of these I will cut back (sometimes WAY back) on the amount of oil and butter. The feta cheese recipe I used 1/3 of the recommended amount. This allows me to have a bigger portion and make sure the fat content isn’t too high. I will also use nutritional yeast in substitution of cheese with oat milk and its quite good.
I do the same thing with the low calorie diet. Was 253 middle of covid and got down to 238. Been working on more but with an ankle surgery and covid itself I was not be able to exercise and felt pretty weak so ended up eating over 2K cals which is my max limit now.
Since the wife does Keto I grab some of her protein shakes/bars/meat and then I’m fairly full and dont get hungry till the next meal time. That helps.
Had to do errands at lunch today or I’d add to my measly 1.5 miles. Now I need to either walk more or work on learning GODOT during lunch breaks…I guess it depends on which thread I look at first in the morning!
That is great! Nice work. I’ve used MyFitnessPal in the past and it is nice. After a month or so of tracking I start to go crazy and end up not logging my food anymore, but it is very useful when I’ve used it.
15 pounds is a nice chunk of change to be down. Keep up the great work!
