Just break your stupid caffeine addiction. It’s not hard - a few days of headaches and you’re good to go.
I used to have an awful caffeine addiction; now I just have a cup of coffee in the morning. It’s not that hard.
I go to the gym 6 days a week. Lift three; do cardio the other three. Saturday is my free day and I eat whatever I want, fat content be damned.
I’ve lost 60 pounds doing this.
My problem isn’t soda. Don’t drink it all that often. It’s beer. I love beer.
After much effort I successfully acclimated myself to diet soda, then of course found out about how Aspartame causes aliens to burst out of your chest cavity. I would like to drink water, but I just can’t get excited about having something tasteless with my meals. It remains an unresolved issue.
There’s aspartame-free diet soda like Diet Hansen’s, but something tastes off there. It has almost a “beforetaste” rather than an “aftertaste” if that makes any sense…
I am probably addicted to caffeine too (in soda form; I have no taste for coffee). From time to time I wean myself off it, but I always fall off the wagon. It’s messed up my sleep/biorhythms something awful I fear.
It is not some kind of badge of honor to have a severe caffeine addiction or anything
Damn! And all this time I was chugging Diet Pepsi to impress you. :(
I drink a few cups of coffee in the morning, caffeine free diet soda most of the day at work, and a glass of wine at dinner. I get the best of all poisons!
Drinking water just gives the food more chance to be tasty. When you’re not sugaring it up, you can taste the food a lot better, and it’s nice. If you’re not eating tasty food, then that’s another problem.
(If you’re not drinking enough water, you often feel hungrier than you otherwise would. Also, DILUTE YOUR JUICE if you drink juice – 1/3 juice to 2/3 water is what I’m at now, and it’s a lot more refreshing and thirst-quenching while still being quite juicy. Also also, limit the soda; treat it like a candy bar or something.)
I’m 6’4" and I weighed like 155 pounds all during my twenties. Now, that was TOO skinny – I had to work out to get up to 160 at which point I looked pretty good. (I’m a super super super ectomorph, I’ve got girl wrists, nothing I can do about it.)
Then I got into a late night snacking-n-hacking habit, and I got up to almost 170. It was all in a spare tire around my middle. Thing about being thin is, any flab stands out like crazy. So I cut out the junk food, started drinking water, and presto, I melted back down to 160. (Jogging 3x per week helped too.)
You don’t necessarily have to do that much diet change to shift the equation. Just cut out the utter junk. Promise yourself that once you lose the weight you can treat yourself some more. (Or, lose five or ten pounds, then spend a week snacking in moderation, then get back on the wagon.) Bargaining with yourself is OK.
Flavoured water is a big thing right now. It has a bit of a ‘flat’ taste, but it’s better than nothing in my books. Some are carbonated too, though I’m trying to avoid that over fear of tooth damage.
I really enjoy drinking the carbonated water they have here at work. No flavor, just water with fizz but it works.
Also my problem. Aside from drinking less beer (which sucks, but I’m doing it) it’s sit-ups as penance for any beer I do consume. Luckily beer is worth situps. Beer is my only junk food, aside from ice cream on my birthday. I generally dont eat chips, fast food, soda, candy, snacks, dessert etc… My problem food is purely beer.
Fizzy water has been my moutain dew replacement for like 8 years now. How does carbonation hurt teeth, fugitive? I’ve never ever heard of that?
Probably not, unless you were thinking of this. I didn’t even think it was all that obscure a reference, but as usual I was wrong.
The carbonic acid is, well, an acid. To what degree it’s a risk is debatable, especially after already spending decades drinking soda, but I guess I’m getting more paranoid and cautious as I get older.
Edit: It would depend on how heavily carbonated it is too, probably. I’ve seen drinks where it ranges from very light to explosive. Dammit, I’m going to have to go to Wikipedia now…
Unfortunately there’s no losing weight by physical excercise alone - a change in diet is necessary as well.
Less calories in, more calories out.
It’s not rocketscience and the only reason we pretend it is and keep loads of quacks very wealthy is because the simple solution sucks.
I believe you’re confusing carbonic acid with phosphoric acid, which is present even in diet sodas and is very bad for your teeth. AFAIK, carbonated water is acid-free.
Dirt beer is a killer. The sugars in beer go straight to your gut, and once they’re there they’re terribly hard to make go away.
Best thing I can suggest (and this is from a guy who hasn’t yet worked off his beer gut so grain of salt) is dropping beer entirely til you can lose the weight, then really limiting your intake.
That’s entirely possible, and it looks like Wikipedia has a source that says carbonation alone isn’t a significant factor. Damn you, mental recollection of vague medical information of unknown origin!
I get bored with working out solo but my gym has a bunch of Les Mills group fitness classes which makes the routine fun. Having a cute trainer leading the class helps too.
Goddamn I’m a hardcore Diet Coke/Dr. Pepper addict =\ I drink plain old water during workouts but when I game at the computer I need that splurge of diet colas so I can stay competitive* (except at Starcraft of which I suck royally).
Christ, me too. I fucking hated it during my twenties as it was almost impossible to put on weight in either muscle or fat. Being an ecto sucks because you’ll always have that small wussy frame no matter how much muscle you can put on them bones. That means you’ll never have a menacing physical presence to intimidate other males or attract hot bitches because they know you won’t be able to protect them.
About the only advantage of being an ecto is that you’ll be the only one who can crawl down that 300 meter pipe to patch into the communications dish and remotely pilot a drop ship to your rescue.
Lost around 125-135 pounds when I was 25 (have kept it off now for 8 years), going from around 310 to 180.
I did it purely through reducing my calorie intake to below what I burn. Not being a smart-ass; I knew that I would not exercise regularly, and I also believe that while exercise is nice, what most people really need to do is limit the amount they shovel into their mouths (myself included).
I have popped back up to 180-185 range, formerly always being in the 175-180 range (I’m 6’2"). I plan on cracking down in a similar way again (after I lost the weight I found that I really could eat a fair bit more than most dieters complain skinny people live on) to drop that extra 5-10.
I am thinking about starting to work out a bit, but primarily to gain tone and muscle, not to keep “in shape” from a weight management context.
Uh, no. Calories in vs. calories out is all that matters. If you drop calories in (diet), then you can lose weight. If you increase calories expended (exercise), then you can lose weight. It’s EASIER to lose weight via diet, because not eating a candy bar is basically the same as not having to run on a treadmill for a half hour.
But exercise has other benefits other than raw caloric burn, obviously.
If you want to lose weight, diet & exercise work hand in hand.
To answer the OP: find a physical activity you enjoy and just do it a lot. I have a friend that does intramural basketball and flag football games, and that’s good exercise. I do martial arts training, including a lot of competitive sparring/rolling (which burns a shit ton of calories compared to just standing in place punching the air). Some people mountain bike, etc.
I think this is very important to point out to anyone who has trouble losing weight. I understand and agree up front that exercise has huge benefits. But I think some people sell exercise too much as a weight loss tool, and a lot of people misunderstand the impact that it has versus food.
I obviously can not prove it on a generalized basis, but I think a lot of people who have weight problems overestimate what exercise is doing for them. They work out for 30 minutes a day or perform some other activity that burns 3-400 calories worth of food, and think that then permits them to eat an extra full size bag of Doritos.
I’m always depressed by exercise for dieting sake, because when I really looked into averages of how much certain types of exercise burned, I found that you work awfully damn hard and long to be able to basically eat half of a Dairy Queen Blizzard. I just decided to skip the Blizzard.
There’s a thing called diet soda. Try it sometime!
Beer has a crapload of carbs and empty calories, in fact more than soda.
I don’t eat desert but I eat far too many fatty foods, since I eat out far too often. Close proximity to good grocery stores kinda sucks where I am at, and our fridge is always empty of things to make meals with. That and I can’t cook to save my life.