I had the exact opposite experience. When exercising regularly, I found that by the time I got out of the gym, my appetite was turbo-charged and I couldn’t function until I had a substantial meal. So I ended up eating too much and more than canceling out whatever I burned off, and my weight didn’t really budge (though I’m sure there were benefits in terms of strength and conditioning, separate from weight loss).
Also failed repeatedly at plans to just eat healthy foods – I’d do ok for a while, but eventually would fall off the wagon and feel like all that effort had been wasted.
The thing that is working for me (~40 lbs. over the past five months) is just simple tracking and calorie counting. No foods are forbidden, but everything is a tradeoff, and moderation is enforced. Compared to other approaches I’ve tried, I find it really freeing to know that if I really want a cheeseburger I can have one (just maybe skip the fries and milkshake, or have a small dinner that night).
Yes, calories tracking is super helpful, but also a lot of labor. Or, at least, I found it labor intensive. I did mine a few years ago but I was always so surprised that there wasn’t a good free app for tracking. Even the pay ones seemed limited. I tend to eat the same things over and over, so I wanted a way to just add up all the calories for, say, a protein shake for breakfast, which would have a few key ingredients (powder, peanut butter, banana, etc) and save it. But all the apps forced me to enter each ingredient, every time. I can’t just save a custom breakfast? No, apparently not.
Also, just to be clear. You’re not doing any workouts, but just losing weight by counting calories? That amazing. So different from my own experience. Good luck, and keep up the good work.
I have had that experience you’re describing with being famished after a workout, or just being totally out of gas at the gym because of not eating/working out too hard. I found that it eventually happened less frequently. It took me about 6 months to get my metabolism going and by then I was in pretty decent shape for a middle-aged guy who smoked cigarettes for most of his life. I think I was eating about 2k calories a day and still losing like 0 - 2 lbs each week. I think I lost about 25 lbs total, a good bit of which I’ve been able to keep off. Although, of course, now I am not losing weight at the same pace. I’m trending down this past year, but it’s much slower. Perhaps I should starting counting calories again.
I’m using this one, which does support both entering custom foods, and saving common meals to re-use as a unit. It’s free, with an optional subscription for a few extra features I don’t really care about.
Pretty much, yeah. And that includes eating pizza close to daily for the last month thanks to a crazy “$50 upfront for 30 daily entrees” deal that a place walking distance from work ran.
It’s made it drastically easier to be mindful of what, when, and how much I’m eating, become conscious of my hunger patterns, and tweak my behavior accordingly and prioritize – which high-calorie foods do I seriously enjoy and miss when I don’t have them, and which ones was I just eating because they’re there?
After a couple of months, I wound up accidentally re-inventing intermittent fasting. I discovered that no matter what I eat or don’t eat through the rest of the day, I’m very hungry in the middle of the day, so I leaned into that and made it my main meal with the bulk of my calorie allotment. By contrast, I’m fine with some salad or other light stuff for dinner, and breakfast is actively counterproductive for me. If I eat at 7:30, it seems to wake up my digestive system, and I’m hungry again by 9:30. But if I skip breakfast, I don’t even wind up thinking about food until 11 or so, and then a piece of fruit is enough to tide me over until lunch.
I tried calorie tracking off-and-on for a long time. Ultimately, it felt like too much busywork, but it did teach me how many calories are in things, which was really valuable. I was kind of gobsmacked to find that the large order of fries I would eat regularly was like two-thirds of my daily goal by itself.
Same. My most successful daily routine had me working out at 7am, having two cups of black coffee in the morning, eating 500-600 calories for lunch at 11, and then eating around 1000 calories for dinner at 6. I wasn’t really ever hungry until 11 – For some reason, the combination of working out and coffee short-circuited my hunger. I didn’t miss having breakfast, and I could have a pretty satisfying lunch and dinner with those calorie budgets.
Interesting how different people are. Working out…at least if it has an aerobic component…dulls hunger for me. Almost never hungry right after. Couple hours later, sure.
I’ve swum for fitness for years (used to be a collegiate swimmer) but had trouble keeping up my motivation. Last year my wife got me a connected bike trainer (varies resistance controlled by an app) and I’ve been doing 3-4 hours a week on that ever since. The app logs all my workouts, and I found that really motivating, so I started logging my swim workouts in Strava as well. I don’t know if its the gamification or just having the record I can chart and graph, but I get more of a sense of accomplishment and want to maintain my level of effort month-to-month.
I will note that since I got the bike trainer, I’ve been burning 2000+ calories a week on it, but haven’t lost significant weight-- I wasn’t really overweight and I make up for it by eating more-- but I’m leaner and have better blood sugar numbers.
Sorry to hear that, @schurem…hope you find some exercise that works for you! A few times in the past I’ve been in a similar place and switched gyms. A change of scenery has helped.
I have a bench with 90lb adjustable dumbells and a pullup bar in my game room. 15-20 mins max daily workout… bench/pull-ups/dips/stiff-legged deadllifts/incline situps while watching tv on the bigscreen… For me, it’s all about making it easy, I get it out of the way asap like homework.
Checking in - age 46, male, and I work out every other day for about 30-40 minutes at the gym. I walk my dogs every day for about that long as well, and on “days off” from the gym I do “fast” walks after work. A combination of this (modest) level of exercise helped me drop ~ 40 lb a few years ago, and I’ve maintained it pretty easily for ~ 3.5 years now. The only time I’ve really limited food intake was when I was actively trying to lose weight.
I cook most of the food I eat, and it’s selected to be pretty healthy - lots of veg, protein, fiber, but low on saturated fat, and minimal sugar. I don’t look to diet books for recipes, because in general those are awful things written by people who consider food flavor to be some sort of tertiary part of the experience. Instead, it’s not hard to find “regular” recipes that happen to be healthy, and keep plenty of healthy stuff that I happen to like around. If you happen to enjoy things like roasted broccoli or brussel sprouts (not with bacon), then you can go pretty crazy eating as much of that stuff as you want, so you don’t feel deprived.
For any sort of workout plan, consistency is key - try to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible, and you’ll have a lot more luck keeping with a plan.
I don’t work out much these days because of the toddler situation. When I do, it’s either a run around the block (4 or 6 miles depending on how frisky I’m feelin’) or a trip to the gym with 4-5 treadmill miles and maybe 30-40 minutes of very simple weight training to remind my pecs/biceps/triceps that they exist.
To those feeling a psychological barrier to working out, I do find it helps a bit to think of it this way: don’t worry about the workout at all. Just worry about getting to the locker room and changing into your shorts and T shirt. Because after that, you will work out. So just get yourself to that point and the rest will start to take care of itself.
That’s the key. If you get to the gym, you will work out. It’s the getting there that’s hard. We can come up with dozens of reasons to put it off.
My ankle is better. Yesterday was the first day I could walk normally. I’m giving it another two weeks before I start working out again. I don’t want the ankle and foot to swell up again.
Good to hear your ankle is getting better Mark. Out of curiosity: are you managing to maintain your current weight, without the daily exercise? If so, it’s a good sign that you have balanced your food intake properly. That is something I still struggle with a bit: I stay the same weight (or drop a little) when playing badminton twice a week, but when that stops, during a holiday or something, I gain weight again because I don’t adjust my eating pattern. Or worse, especially during holidays: increase my food intake…
In my case, this isn’t all that problematic at the moment, as I am only slightly overweight at 102 kg /1.93 m, and quite a bit of that weight is in muscles (legs mostly, no bodybuilder-body here… ;-) ). But I would really like to lose about 10 kg to reduce the weight on my knees during badminton. And I do notice it’s getting much easier to gain weight, while it’s also getting much harder to get rid of it. All this was so easy when I was 20…
Yeah, perhaps another gym will have another atmosphere. I dunno. I really started to hate the solitude of the fitness gym. Everybody just doing their own thing, at most in pairs. Everybody is a stranger.
Compare that to the team I practiced MMA with back when I was a young buck, that had team spirit. We were brothers. We fought one another, respected one another and cared for one another. I miss that.
I don’t recall if you said earlier exactly what you did to the ankle. For almost any ankle injury, you can and should be doing both range-of-motion and strengthening exercises. There are endless videos on youtube by physical therapists showing how to do them.
It’s probably gout. So it’s not a specific injury, though I may have twisted it a bit to cause it to flare up. With gout you can get some medication, but otherwise it’s just doing your best to keep the uric acid crystals at a minimum and waiting for the crystals in the joints to dissipate. Hurts like the dickens when it’s at its worst.
I’m working our last cruise of the season this Friday so I’m taking it easy until the cruise is over, and then I’ll go back to the gym.
Haven’t weighed myself so I wouldn’t know. I need to lose, but I’m believer in not weighing myself but just waiting to see results by how clothes fit. It’s too easy to get discouraged through weighing often. You can work out all week, be careful about what you eat, and then get on the scale and be a half pound heavier for some reason. It makes it easier to give up so I don’t worry about it.
