I'm Thinking About Losing Weight

[Bartmanhomer]

I'm thinking about losing weight and starting today, I'm exercising and eating healthy. I weighed 245 pounds and my older brother told me to lose weight yesterday. So I'm making a change.

[HandofShadows]

Congrats on starting. It's a long road and plan for it to be longer than you think. But in the end you will be better for it.

[Bartmanhomer]

Congrats on starting. It's a long road and plan for it to be longer than you think. But in the end, you will be better for it.

Thank you and I appreciate your kind comments. I know it won't be easy but in the long run, I'll feel better.

[caden_varn]

Best of luck to you -0 hope it all goes well.
With exercise, I do recommend trying different activities to find something you enjoy doing. It's a lot easier to motivate yourself to do something you enjoy rather than something you just feel you should do.
Also can be helpful to exercise with a partner, as they can help motivate (and make it a bit more difficult to cancel ).
If feasible, building exercise into your daily regime, like walking/cycling to work can be a good way to start.

[Bartmanhomer]

Best of luck to you -0 hope it all goes well.
With exercise, I do recommend trying different activities to find something you enjoy doing. It's a lot easier to motivate yourself to do something you enjoy rather than something you just feel you should do.
Also can be helpful to exercise with a partner, as they can help motivate (and make it a bit more difficult to cancel ).
If feasible, building exercise into your daily regime, like walking/cycling to work can be a good way to start.

Well I do enjoy walking and running. That's a start.

[snowblizz]

I was gonna suggest getting some test done so it's possible to check if somethign turns up during the process.

Friend of mine started a pretty ambitious 100 pounds in 50 weeks and about half-way they found he had kidney cancer cause numbers were going so wonky.

Probably not a bad idea to have a baseline to work off.

[Kyrell1978]

Good for you. The key is to not think about this as a "diet" but as a lifestyle change. There is a fitness thread on here also that TVTyrant started at the beginning of the year. I check it pretty regularly and try to help where I can as does he. Good luck in accomplishing your goals.

[GloatingSwine]

Good for you. The key is to not think about this as a "diet" but as a lifestyle change.

Yeah, the best way to make a lasting change is to plan your food intake to be something you can keep doing forever. Cutting down sharply for a short time is likely to make you bounce back up again when you stop.

So have a plan of what you're going to eat that allows you some of all the things you like, but is less overall than you're having now.

Focus on habits not individual acts as well. What you do every day is more important than what you do once a month.

[Magic_Hat]

I'm thinking about losing weight and starting today, I'm exercising and eating healthy. I weighed 245 pounds and my older brother told me to lose weight yesterday. So I'm making a change.

Just try to stand more during activities you usually sit like watching TV, internet videos, playing video games, reading, etc.

[Manga Shoggoth]

If you can, incorporate exercise into your daily schedule - I have sections of the route into work (London Bridge to City Hall (both
directions) and Station to Home) that I run rather than walk. It makes it easy to keep doing the exercise as I have to walk those sections anyway, so I might as well run them.

That's kept me on the exercise schedule for three years, whereas most of my workmates exercise for a while then stop when bored with it. Since I have to exercise (post heart attack) I really don't want excuses to stop.

[truemane]

Exercise is great for a lot of things. Health. Not dying of heart disease. Overall fitness. A good, firm sense of control over your life and pride in your own body. But when it comes to losing weight, it's all about diet.

Fitness nerds say "You can't outrun your fork." And it's true.

If you run 5 km (~3.2 miles in about 30 minutes, you've burned about 450 calories. A bag of Cheetohs has 425 calories. So, if you want to lose a pound of body fat a week (one pound of body fat = 3500 calories), you can EITHER ruin 5k every day, or not eat a bag of Cheetohs every day.

And it's common to be hungrier when you exercise, so it's very easy to actually eat more extra calories than you burned because you're starving and also feel like you 'deserve a treat' because you worked out. But if you go to the gym and then hit McDonald's on the way home, you'd have been better off staying at home.

Not that I'm saying don't exercise. Definitely exercise. Regular exercise will improve your quality of life in SO MANY ways that have nothing to do with your waist-line.

But for losing weight, specifically? Concentrate on getting your diet under control. Track your calories consumed for a month or two, even if you don't make any changes. Just write it all down. Then you can look at it, see some patterns, decide where you can make some changes. Try one of the very many options for controlling food intake: CICO, Intermittent Fasting, Keto, Paleo, whichever. There's no single magic bullet, but the more attention you pay to it, the more consciously you eat, the better off you'll be.

[darkrose50]

I need to loose some weight myself.

In the past grilled chicken with mushrooms fried in butter worked for me.

Ensure shakes. Drink one and go from hungry to not in 3-seconds. Honestly it is magical. It also quenches your thirst so it turns off the hungry/thirsty signals that sometimes can become crossed. Basically it stops me from over eating, or drinking too much milk with something sweet.

Drinking water is the best.

Cutting out milk works for me. The French have a saying that goes "cheese or desert". There are lots of calories in that stuff.

[Tvtyrant]

So healthy eating is about a couple things. Micro nutrients, Macro nutrients, and calories.

Foods like acai and blue berries are useful for getting micro nutrients in to your diet. These are the vitamins and minerals that make your heart best properly, keep your bones strong, etc.

Then there is four macro nutrients thst break down into calories. Fat, carbohydrates, protein and alcohol. These breakdown into calories ar different rates and effect your liver and blood sugar differently as a result. You need protein to rebuild muscle as a separate concern.

The primary goal is to eat macros that break down slowly except before intense exercise, so fat, protein and complex carbs in larger amounts and limit fruit and starches as much as possible. Another way to do this is to focus on the glyemic index, which tells you how much food effects your blood sugar.

You want to move your blood sugar as little as possible because of the insulin cycle. When you make too much blood sugar your body releases insulin which turns it into glycogen, then your body has too little blood sugar so it tells you to eat more even though you have plenty of spare calories. So normally you want to slowest blood sugar release possible.

Calories are the total amount of energy you get from food, and to lose weight you want to take in less energy then you spend. Most diets are about getting your body not to panic or insist on eating the difference, another reason to eat low glycemic foods. Overweight people tend to have overactive insulin responses, you it is especially important to avoid over active insulin responses until you have trained your body.

In the case of acai berries I would avoid them in the early days, try to get your sugars and simple carbs as low as possible at first.

Copy pasting myself here. I will also add try to not drink calories, soda and sugary drinks add a lot of calories to an otherwise okay diet.

Edit: For instance most fruit juice is terrible from a losing weight perspective due to the massive amounts of sugar. The healthy ones tend not to tastw great, like beetroot juice.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

For most people the trick is not losing weight, it's keeping it off.

Losing weight is a matter of doing things different for a few months, helped by positive feedback every time you step on a scale or someone makes a comment about how you look thinner.

Keeping it off is about changing patterns forever with no real encouragement at all while your body insists all those old fat cells need to be filled.

What I found works for me is counting my slices of bread. Instead of just eating breakfast untill I'm full I get four slices on a day where I don't do anything intensive, and two more for lunch. Both meals get one slice extra on a day where for instance I spend a whole day at work (and ride my bike there). Those numbers probably still seem like huge meals for many people here, and I still eat things like fruit in between meals, and I break the pattern when I get hungry, and occasionally I still gorge on something unhealthy, and I allow myself specific exceptions on days where I simply don't want to run out of energy (like during outdoor weekends), and... But I have lost maybe a bit over 10kg/more than 20 pounds since starting this habit about a year and a half ago. And while I do yoyo up and down a bit above and below that new normal, I seem to be staying in my new range pretty well.

Looking at me you'd still call me a big dude, a change like this did not turn me into the sexiest guy in the local pool. That's why it can be more satisfying to go on a crash diet, lose 40kg, have abs for one summer and then slip back into old habits. But health wise "my way" is probably in the long run a better bet.

Make a change you can make forever, and don't pick up any new unhealthy habits in return. That's my secret to small amounts of semi-durable weight loss.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Just so this thread doesn't end on my lifelog, an addition.

I've advocated above for small, if possible daily changes you can keep changed forever. My example was being more aware of how much you eat for breakfast and lunch. Some other options that may or make not work for any particular reader are:
- Turn vegetarian
- Replace pork with chicken
- Ride a bicycle to work or school rather than a car or bus
- Take the dog for an extra lap every evening
- Make sure vegetables are a substantial part of every dinner
- Limit the amount of food you have in your house that you might be tempted to stuff into your face at night
- Get out of the building for a short walk every lunch break at school/work
- Take up sports at a level you can enjoy for a longer period. Even just joining the scout movement or a table tennis club increases your activity.
- Buy and eat lighter snacks, like fresh fruit or grain bars rather than chocolate (I'm on the fence about diet products with lots of artificial sweeteners, there's some evidence that they increase your hunger for sugar and in the end might even have a negative effect. Snacking on meat or cheese is also not always the best switch. While better for your teeth, they contain plenty of fat and energy. Honey is another regularly cited alternative that is basically just sugar and not an improvement from a weight loss perspective.)

Basically: any change that does not feel like completely turning your life around. Be honest to yourself, are you really going to use the last ten months of that year long gym membership? That's my recommendation.

[thompur]

Also, don't try to lose weight too fast. A pound or two a month is a reasonable goal. Although you may lose weight faster the first month or so, don't get discouraged when the weight loss slows down.
The last time I had to lose weight, I was 300+ lbs. My doctor put me on a 1500 calorie/2000 milligram sodium diet. When I saw her 1 month later, I had lost 24lbs. Her reaction was "that's too fast!" LOL
As some have mentioned above, it's a lifestyle change, not a temporary fix. Since you enjoy walking and running, you are ahead of the game!
Good luck

[Rynjin]

Just being aware of what you're eating can help. A couple years back I was at the 5' 9"/245 lb mark myself.

Just paying attention to how much I was eating and WHAT I was eating helped immensely. I'm not fitness god by any means (I don't work out enough...having a pool at my old place was a large portion of my exercise =() but I've trimmed down to 209 just by consistently not over-eating and sticking to a fairly strict "one soda a week" rule.

My goal is to be around 185, but I'm not in a huge rush to get there, and I don't think there's really any need for anybody to really race to some weight goal.

Weird one re: snacks, a lot of people advocate for keeping snacks out of the house, but I find that leads to trouble more often than not. If I have a box of Oreos in the house, for example, I can happily eat a single Oreo every evening until the box is gone and be quite happy with myself, no craving for more snackage (okay, I'll occasionally indulge in two).

If my house is entirely bereft of munchables though I'll go without, and without, and without...until I find myself eating an entire pint of ice cream or something one evening and still craving more.

My advice: buy snacks with some kind of discrete measurement to them. A single Oreo or two is a snack. Two squares of a Hershey bar can stave off that craving for chocolate. A handful of Cheezits or pretzels is only ~100 calories, and is easily grabbed, eaten, and then moved on from. Most 'unhealthy' snacks really aren't that bad calorie-wise if you stick to the suggested serving size or below, the issue is that people will eat like an entire bag of chips by themselves, when something around 12 chips is a serving size. This goes for "healthy" snacks too. Sun Chips are better for you than some others, but that doesn't mean eating the whole bag is good.


Avoid buying like...a cake, or a pie except on special occasions. Because then you'll be like "I need to eat a slice a night or this will go bad, and that's a waste". At least for me.

[Bartmanhomer]

Also, don't try to lose weight too fast. A pound or two a month is a reasonable goal. Although you may lose weight faster the first month or so, don't get discouraged when the weight loss slows down.
The last time I had to lose weight, I was 300+ lbs. My doctor put me on a 1500 calorie/2000 milligram sodium diet. When I saw her 1 month later, I had lost 24lbs. Her reaction was "that's too fast!" LOL
As some have mentioned above, it's a lifestyle change, not a temporary fix. Since you enjoy walking and running, you are ahead of the game!
Good luck

At least you lost weight which is pretty good.

[Rynjin]

At least you lost weight which is pretty good.

That's not necessarily the case; losing water weight is basically meaningless, and losing weight too fast can be downright dangerous. Your organs are NOT happy with rapid changes in your body composition, and will let you know it.

[Bartmanhomer]

That's not necessarily the case; losing water weight is basically meaningless, and losing weight too fast can be downright dangerous. Your organs are NOT happy with rapid changes in your body composition, and will let you know it.

Oh really? I didn't know that.

[Tvtyrant]

You also won't absorb excess skin if you lose a lot of weight and you aren't young. I have 30 pounds of hanging skin left from losing 170 pounds that have to be cut.

[El'the Ellie]

losing water weight is basically meaningless

This is very true, and can be killer on moral if you're not thinking. Keep in mind that a normal healthy person* will urinate between .8 and 2 liters per day! That's between 1.76 and 4.4 pounds! You'll lose some extra water to sweating and exhaling normally throughout the day.

It's also recommended to drink around 2 liters of water per day. All this means that depending on how much you've drank, peed and sweat in one day, your weight can vary by almost 8 lbs. It probably won't be this extreme because people tend to replace the water they lost bit by bit, rather than gaining and losing it all in one go. A good recommendation is to weigh yourself regularly every few days or so and look at the average weight, and how it changes over time.

If you're like me and drink a lot of water when working out, its entirely possible to come back from the gym weighing more than when you left. Keep in mind that the weight you lose from sweating is just water that you will replace the next time you drink. The actual 'permanent' weight that you lose is actually exhaled.

*Actual experience may vary

[darkrose50]

I'm thinking about losing weight and starting today, I'm exercising and eating healthy. I weighed 245 pounds and my older brother told me to lose weight yesterday. So I'm making a change.

My sister, her husband, and her two teenaged boys went on the ketogenic diet. They lost a lot of weight over two-weeks. This diet is ~80% fat (and basically almost no carbs), and also apparently causes you to burn 300 more calories per day (that is substantial, if true).

I was essentially on this diet for a while.

For lunch I ate: (a) chicken-breasts grilled on the George Foreman grill, (b) mushrooms fried in butter over the top of the chicken, and (c) peas fried in butter. This was my main meal for the day (lunch). I lost weight doing this.

[Rynjin]

One thing to note about a keto diet is that from what I understand "once you go keto, you never go back-o".

It basically flips your body's metabolism, so there's no effective way to cease the diet without regaining a lot of weight in the process.

On the bright side, it's not just a fad diet, so it is sustainable long term.

[Tvtyrant]

One thing to note about a keto diet is that from what I understand "once you go keto, you never go back-o".

It basically flips your body's metabolism, so there's no effective way to cease the diet without regaining a lot of weight in the process.

On the bright side, it's not just a fad diet, so it is sustainable long term.

Not quite true, I quit Keto 7 months ago after being on it for 1.5 years, I gained about 20 pounds (intentionally.)

The thing about losing weight is once you do you have to be cognizant of what you eat forever. You can't go back to just eating when and what you feel like, as you lose muscle when you lose weight and gaining the weight back will be worse then if you never lost it at all.

I eat a diet with lots of legumes and nuts where I used to eat starches, they are healthier and more filling. Starches are only for heavy labor, like potatoes on leg day.

[Bartmanhomer]

My sister, her husband, and her two teenaged boys went on the ketogenic diet. They lost a lot of weight over two-weeks. This diet is ~80% fat (and basically almost no carbs), and also apparently causes you to burn 300 more calories per day (that is substantial, if true).

I was essentially on this diet for a while.

For lunch I ate: (a) chicken-breasts grilled on the George Foreman grill, (b) mushrooms fried in butter over the top of the chicken, and (c) peas fried in butter. This was my main meal for the day (lunch). I lost weight doing this.

Wow.That's wonderful.

Not quite true, I quit Keto 7 months ago after being on it for 1.5 years, I gained about 20 pounds (intentionally.)

The thing about losing weight is once you do you have to be cognizant of what you eat forever. You can't go back to just eating when and what you feel like, as you lose muscle when you lose weight and gaining the weight back will be worse then if you never lost it at all.

I eat a diet with lots of legumes and nuts where I used to eat starches, they are healthier and more filling. Starches are only for heavy labor, like potatoes on leg day.

I've been eating fruits and vegetables lately. Also legumes and nuts are great.

[Lemmy]

Also, IIRC, depending on the type of exercise you do, you can suffer a "false positive" of sorts due to a rapid increase in muscle mass...

Because muscle is more dense than fat, if you gain a lot of muscle mass while lowering your total body fat, you actually gain weight, despite having become thiner and healthier (which are less obvious changes than seeing a different number showing up in the scale).

[AMFV]

Also, IIRC, depending on the type of exercise you do, you can suffer a "false positive" of sorts due to a rapid increase in muscle mass...

Because muscle is more dense than fat, if you gain a lot of muscle mass while lowering your total body fat, you actually gain weight, despite having become thiner and healthier (which are less obvious changes than seeing a different number showing up in the scale).

To be fair lots of muscle can have a lot of the same problems as lots of fat though.

[Frogsama]

One of the most important things is that you don't change too much at the same time.

Many people who want to lose weight do everything. Cut sugar, work out 5 times a week, less meals per day. That's why they grt frustrated easily.

Discipline is a muscle that needs to be trained.
I would recommend cutting sodas 6 days a week.
After three weeks of doing that, work out twice a week. After three weeks doing that, cut Snacks between meals.

When you improve your habits step by step, its way easier to maintain a healthy lifestyle

[Tvtyrant]

One of the most important things is that you don't change too much at the same time.

Many people who want to lose weight do everything. Cut sugar, work out 5 times a week, less meals per day. That's why they grt frustrated easily.

Discipline is a muscle that needs to be trained.
I would recommend cutting sodas 6 days a week.
After three weeks of doing that, work out twice a week. After three weeks doing that, cut Snacks between meals.

When you improve your habits step by step, its way easier to maintain a healthy lifestyle

I had the opposite experience. I have problems with binge eating, and going on a very strict diet helped me to avoid my binge triggers. Quitting a bit at a time would have been nearly impossible, because my eating habits had more in common with a drug problem then just overeating.

I also was diagosed with celiac's right before I started, but I could have easily swapped pasta for potatoes and remained just as heavy.