As I mentioned in another thread, I was told I was pre-diabetic in April and to lose weight, exercise more and eat better or risk full-blown diabetes a year down the road. What I did:
switched to a nearly zero-sugar diet. Nothing I eat has sugar added to it. I mainly eat lean meats (chicken, turkey), fish, vegetables and nuts, with a few apples or other fruit tossed in. I eat no junk food and no fast food at all. That was a big change and a critical one. The only beverage I drink is water. Boring but easy to do.
got a bike and dumbbells. Ride the bike to work (homebound is probably about one-third uphill, a pretty decent workout), use the dumbbells a few times a week.
In a few months I dropped over 20 pounds, mostly belly fat. I also spent (and still spend) time reading up on good eating habits and how the body processes food. The most important things I would stress are getting as much sugar out of your diet as possible and stick to whatever exercise regime you choose. Eat sensibly and exercise, you will lose weight. It’s not a tricky thing to do, it’s just hard to get started and sometimes hard to stick to.
As with anything though, you can’t go too far. The body does need sugar, particularly the brain.
I just do the Michael Pollan plan which is eating real food in reasonable quantities, using meat as a side dish rather than the main event, and mainly drinking water. I eat plenty of sugar (I use cane sugar in my coffee and on my cereal, for example) on this diet and I’ve still lost over 30 pounds. I barely exercise.
Truth be told, I’m sort of hitting a wall right now and will have to incorporate some exercise to keep things moving.
The hilarious part of all this is that since we went to a real food diet I eat WAY better than I ever did before (in terms of flavor as well as nutrition). I regret all those years I threw away on fast food and packaged food-like items.
The brain needs glucose – sugar, to me, implies refined sugar like table sugar. A diet with nuts, fruits, and vegetables should have plenty enough carbs to convert to glucose for your brain.
Incorrect. The body can easily break down the complex carbohydrates in vegetables to produce enough glucose for proper brain function. For that matter, your body can survive indefinitely on a diet of just protein and fat - the liver can convert amino acids in protein into glucose through a process called “gluconeogenesis”.
In any event, I believe Creole Ned was saying that you should avoid all foods with added and/or processed sugars, and that’s really good advice.
Incorrect. The body can easily break down the complex carbohydrates in vegetables to produce enough glucose for proper brain function. For that matter, your body can survive indefinitely on a diet of just protein and fat - the liver can convert amino acids in protein into glucose through a process called “gluconeogenesis”.
Sure, obviously the brain doesn’t absorb actual sugar crystals. My point was that it isn’t wise to go too far in any given direction when dieting (no carbs, no fats, no sugars, no whatever). The body needs balance.
Water for me is just to dull to drink in large quantities. What is the consensus on things like Crystal Light (5 cal, no sugar, but has the artificial sweeteners? Those little add-in packs for your water bottle are great. But I wouldn’t want to sabotage anything either…
I’ve been trying to figure out this whole weight loss thing for a couple of years now. I’ve tried Atkins, Zone, starving myself and lots of other weird stuff. For some reason I’d resisted counting calories and moderating my intake. My mom did that in the 70’s - surely we have better weight loss technology now right?
Turns out, for me, I was wrong. I had a friend link me to The Hacker’s Diet by John Walker, founder of Autodesk. His approach is relatively simple (and free!): weigh yourself daily, count the calories you eat, plan meals so you eat a certain calorie amount each day and use your weight trend to determine if you are on track or not. He recommends losing a pound a week.
It looks really solid and sensible so far. I’ll report back after I’ve done this a bit.
I’ve lost slightly over 30 pounds since late May and grown quite a bit of muscle. Not bad for a bit of working out and a diet change. I stopped eating fast food and drinking soda.
Well, I don’t know about in a living room with a sturdy chair, but you’re right that free weights are the way to go. You can pretty much do everything you need with three things:
Barbell plus weight plates
Power rack
Bench
The power rack will let you squat safely. Squatting is the best exercise in the history of the universe. It will also allow you to rack the bar at shoulder height so you can do overhead presses.
The bench, surprise surprise, will let you bench press. Set the bench in the power rack with the pins at just a hair above chest level and you don’t need a spotter.
The other big exercises are done from the ground: deadlifts, power cleans, bent-over rows. Use the rack pins to do chinups. If they’re close enough together, do dips.
Sounds like you are getting some good advice Phil. I’d just like to say that running can be quite fun! I like the travelling aspect and I like listening to podcasts as I go. Even better, if you get sick of running half way out you have to get home again and you can’t just jump off the treadmill hehe.
One thing I would say is if you decide to try adding a bit of running to your regime then make sure you go buys new pair of trainers and have them professionally fitted at a running store using fancy machines or video. That helped me avoid injury a lot. You may also want to hire a personal trainer to put you through some leg strengthening routines every couple of weeks, which should help fendnoff knee injury etc. IMHO.
One question for the masses. I seem to hit a wall with running. I get pretty pleased with myself and am easily able to run for 60 to 90 minutes (including some Wellington hills)
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, but I seem to run for about 3 months and them am struck down with increasingly sore legs of the shin-splint variety. This isn’t as bad as before the fitted shoes (not by a long shot) but it really flummoxes me and takes away the mood to train. Any thoughts as to prevention?
I do something similar only with weekly weighing rather than daily.
I turned my desire for weight loss into a daily quest. I actually decided it was time to lose weight when I was actually considering changing into sweat pants to make my WoW session more enjoyable (waistline tension). One that I could win or lose on a given day rather than wait for a few weeks to start seeing results. This is what I came up with. I’m not dieting, I still eat junk foods, but now I measure the quantities and calories in a food journal (www.fitday.com).
The daily food recording is pretty easy after you enter in custom foods for the first few weeks and develop a backlog of items to pull from. Now the calorie allowances on fitday are completely out of whack (3,000 a day for a desk job). So I had to find a different target. Some random website said the simplest calculation is for a man, who does not exercise, can consume 12 times their weight in calories and not gain weight that day. For women the magic number is 11 time their weight.
So I started at 225 lbs x 12 = 2700 per day. So I started teaching myself how to count calories and have a grand old time as long as I didn’t go over 2700 calories in a day.
Then I set targets like 215 lbs x 12 = 2580 calories per day and 200 lbs x 12 = 2400 calories per day. Because I had a food journal I could see where to make cuts (soda/sweet tea at restaurants, daily M&Ms, 2 burgers for dinner when 1 would do…). Because I wasn’t dieting I was still eating things I wanted to, just in reasonable portions. Then one day it occurs to you that you don’t really want food that will bust your budget because eating just carrots for dinner is less than pleasurable.
So I started thinking like this in January and I have since lost over 30 pounds. My current target is 180 pounds so that means if I eat less than 2160 calories in a day than I am incrementally working towards that goal. And if it is a holiday and I do want to go upto 2400, that is fine, I understand the consequences…it is just a one day occurrence. Actually I would probably feel overstuffed these days
And lastly the weight loss was not just from knowing how many calories I was eating, I also walk 1.5 to 2 miles at lunch at least twice a week. So if I still kept myself at the x12 target, then the walking was just bonus weight loss. As with WoW, I’m not much a of min/maxer. I just grind caloric intake reduction and avoid instances such as gyms or pilates classes.
If you’re only doing one or the other, you’re doing yourself a disservice, making the process a whole lot longer than it should be, and ultimately you will be dissatisfied with the mediocre results.
Cut the crap out of your diet. Fast food. Frozen dinners. Whatever. If it includes an ingredient you can’t pronounce, it’s not on your menu. Lots of veggies, some meat, some carbs. Complex carbs only.
Portion. Aim for 2000 calories per day. It’s easy, you just need to put some effort into the math, big boy. Try to eat 5 times per day, at regularly scheduled intervals. Eat whether you feel hungry or not, because if you miss a meal, you will be fucking ravenous afterwards and you’ll gorge yourself on something nasty and then you’ll regret it and it will kill your motivation.
Exercise. I don’t care how, but if you’re not sweating and breathing hard, you’re doing it wrong. Squats, push-ups, burpees, sit-ups, lunges, leg raises, box jumps, wind sprints. All shit you can do at home without a gym membership or special equipment. A gym makes things more interesting, but it’s not necessary.
Don’t fucking cheat. Don’t skip workouts, don’t have a donut, and get those pudgy fingers off that latte.
You’re thirsty? Drink water. Going out with the buddies for beer? Guess what, you’re DD and you get water. Having a fine dinner with the wife at a fancy restaurant, what kind of wine would you like? The kind before Jesus does his miracle. Wake up groggy in the morning and start reaching for coffee? Slap that hand away, fat boy, you’re drinking water.
Remember: 1lb of fat = 3500 calories. Any time you want to eat something, look at the label. Look at the portion size. Ask yourself if it’s right to eat. You have a doubt, don’t eat it, find something else.
A donut a day for about 9 days is a pound of fat. I don’t know about you, but when I’m hungry, I can pack down 3, 4, even half a dozen donuts in a sitting if that’s all I have available. Try stuffing down a half dozen bananas. I dare you. Fewer calories and they fill you up good.
It gets really fun when you step on the scale and see amazing results :)
I half-assed weight loss for two years (I’d been saying “I’m trying to lose weight” for many more without actually doing shit), and in retrospect I’m annoyed that I hadn’t simply done the right thing from the start. Everything else is a waste of time.
Seriously though, what’s so bad about switching to food you cooked yourself, going to the gym an hour a day 4-5 times a week (or working out by yourself for that time), and drinking water? You get used to it so fast and once your weight is down, you can throw in some junk every now and then as long as you moderate it.
I was up in Alaska for 3 weeks this summer working in the office at our fish processing plant.
It was so insanely busy, I’d miss one or two of the three meals every day…but I also had to walk an enormous amount around the plant looking for people, getting supplies, etc.
I went from 235 to 222 in those 3 weeks. So, eating less, exercising more was the perfect key…as it is for all dieting…eat less calories than you burn…period.
I’m now back up to 228 cause of my fiances cooking and sitting at my desk all damn day but, hey, my diet will be on again…next summer in Alaska!
Seriously though, what’s so bad about switching to food you cooked yourself, going to the gym an hour a day 4-5 times a week (or working out by yourself for that time), and drinking water?
This is pretty much exactly what you need to do. I’ve lost 120 lbs over the past several years and this is it in a nutshell. However, in Jakub’s other post he makes it sound like you can never eat junk food or drink beer ever again. I “cheat” all the fuckin’ time, I just don’t keep that kind of thing around the house. If I’m going out, I’m just going to enjoy the meal and not nitpick about every little thing I eat. Just changing what you keep in your fridge at home can make a world of difference.
But I do about 45 minutes of muscle training and 45 minutes of cardio 5 days a week. That, too, can make a world of difference.
Really, the key thing for me was just building the right habits. And you do have to BUILD them. Eating right and exercising is really hard at first. So you have to find something small you can change and do that until it’s just part of your daily routine and you don’t even think about it, and then you add something else on to that. You just keep doing that and it keeps accelerating until you’re eating foods that you never would have eaten years previously, and don’t even blink at the thought of going to the gym in the mornings. That’s really what worked for me.
