This is the ILX diet support thread

(Unfortunately this is much my attitude year round. But I'm not really eating any more than I ever did, it's just I no longer have anything more interesting to do than sit around all day. Someone open a record shop fifteen minutes' walk away and watch me shed many many pounds of both varieties! Please? You'd have, err, maybe as many as two customers...)

chilled monkey brain served in the skull!!

I lost almost a stone and a half last year, between swimming and eating less. I've put about 10 pounds of that back on (i.e. what I'm hoping to lose), but only when I let myself go. I'm perversely almost looking forward to it.

*Exercise fairly vigorously for an hour EVERY SINGLE DAY, including a continuous half-hour at one activity. ("Fairly vigorous" = "sweat.")

*When you want to eat something between meals, first have a glass of water, which is good for you anyway. If you still want to eat something afterward, go ahead. If you don't, don't.

*No such thing as "forbidden"/"special-occasion-only" foods, as long as you have healthy things to eat on hand, & consider them first. If you want something else, though, go ahead and give your body what it wants.

*When you have had enough to eat, stop.

(I also really must have lost more than half a stone on top of that in 6 months by skipping meals and having the kitchen/TV 2 storeys away from my room and the bathroom. Also i walk everywhere now)

Losing weight shouldn't be a problem, but to maintain your new weight you'll need to keep up the good habits long term. Hopefully you'll WANT to exercise and the need to eat less will come naturally by then. Good luck everyone!

I don't know to what extent I want to lose weight for my health, fitness and well-being and what extent I want to lose weight so that I'll feel more attractive. Feeling more attractive makes me happy and confident, and is obviously so ingrained in me that there's nothing I could do about it even if I wanted to. Does this make me a body and appearance fascist, or does it make me normal?

But anyway, I bought lots of healthy groceries this morning cuz I think if I have healthy stuff around the house and office I'll be less likely to eat chocolate all day. Lots of fruit mostly. Also trying to drink more water and go on walks. Wish me luck!

Day One is always easy though, right?

Has anyone tried this? Was it good?

I don't have a problem with my weight, and I'm pretty happy with the way I look - I think I'd really like to improve my overall level of fitness. I am a chronic asthmatic (though this is well-controlled with inhalers of various colours) so I have always shied away from strenuous exercise and used my inability to breathe as a good excuse.

I would like to tone up a bit, and have my jeans feel a bit looser. And yeah, this is just for me. The Bloke wouldn't care if I doubled in size (in fact, I dare say he wouldn't even notice. Bless him).

If I eat enough of all this fruit, it will cancel out all the chocolate I eat, right? Or at least fill me up so that in the end I am eating less of it... hmmm...

(How's yr finger, btw?)

i reall feel sick now. this is an important part of stopping the xmas binge. no more urge 4 chocolate, will eat healthy now. honest. finger getting better... details on other thread. sorry 2 bring up log but it was sooooooooooo good.

I don't know if I've lost weight or not. I feel like my trousers have got even *tighter* which is worrying.

I'd like to lose 20 pounds myself. My current body just feels wrong - but it is funny how you get used to it even though you don't like it. Whenever I *am* smaller, I feel absolutely fantastic, no sore back, clothes fit better, I have more energy, it's easier on my feet and ankles (I really notice this!) and I'm just more comfortable all around. Yet still - there's a really strange feeling that goes along with being physically less significant than you were. It's an irrational negative, for all the reasons I just listed, yet it is there, and I think it's a subconscious weight loss saboteur.

Then stop eating cake.

Then stop eating cake.

who are you? sophie? yer the one for me, fatty!

The problem was that once she stopped taking them, her weight ballooned again, even though she wasn't eating huge amounts. But there again, she never exercised much, so perhaps therein lies the secret.

I was worried about her because the Diet Clinic just kept selling her the tablets every week, and never bothered to check her blood pressure or anything. These sort of diet pills won't be prescribed by a GP, which makes me wonder how dangerous they really are.

Yeah my big problem has always been portion control - like, I couldn't understand why I had been steadily been gaining weight for 4 years, and then I started MFP and I realized i was eating SO MUCH., even though I was/am far more healthy than I've ever been. I'm about 20-30lbs over the weight that feels comfortable for me.

And thanks! :) it's slow going but I want to be fit and energetic for traveling next year, and this is the only way I know I can get there.

Also, I blame the 90s for my fat-phobia. It's so hard to undo too. It's really weird to actually use things like butter and not automatically go straight towards the FF things.

yeah that's where I definitely find it helpful, managing my portions

also I like getting 'credits' for exercise, it's nice to have something in the 'win' column

ugh yeah I hear you on the beer, ENBB

for me it's coffee.

Coffee? Oh, do you mean coffee drinks and stuff? I drink my with only skim milk so that's one thing I don't really worry about.

Justine - totally wrt portions. I found losing weight really easy in the UK because the portions at restaurants were so much smaller and more reasonable. We tend to go out a lot and the portion sizes here kill me. I'll pretty much eat whatever is put in front of me so that was a huge issue in terms of how much I was eating. Now I will automatically just eat 1/2 of some stuff which I've found helpful.

yeah I tried skim milk but it just made me miserable

I've compromised by drinking less and sticking to 2%

can you use splenda/skim? and e., I basically stopped drinking when i was doing heavy heavy MFP. I think/hope that it's changed my eating habits for good... I'm staying w/in a 5 lb window of my lowest weight, and not slavishly logging calories every day.

however, i've stopped going to gym (new teaching job, no energy, sick), and i that if I don't start again soon, it's gonna creep back on. Good job justine, E.

And veg/ll, I got into the caloric minutae thing in a really positive way... I wouldn't advocate it for anybody else, exactly. It was exciting to me to realize how I could 'pimp' my diet by swapping out (say) a handful of banana chips for a handful of almonds, and watch my protein spike and my sugar plummet. But I'm /always/ low on protein, and high on sugar, no matter what I do. Mainly, I care about getting enough fat and staying w/in 10% of my maintenance calories.

it's hard b/c I never ate traditional 'junk' food that i could just lop out of my diet. no chips, chocolate binges, crackers, sodas... just too many fake healthy foods: granola bars, dried fruit, juices that I really honestly miss.

good luck to y'all, i'm still working on my issue as well (I'm at 153.5, down from 199.8) but feeling flabby and unmotivated. i'm coming to realize recognizing that 'body dysmorphic' isn't so much a clinical issue as much as a tendency toward navel-gazing vanity (literally) coupled with a lifetime of bad habits and poor body-aesthetic models.

sorry for the grammatical atrocity ^ of the above

Blah, I need to do this. Again.

aww yay to hear that you're still doing okay with this, remy (I don't know what else to call you lol sorry)

I know what you mean about fake healthy foods, I'm kind of the same way. I mostly eat pretty well, I just eat waaaay too much of everything.

Coffee's the one thing I'm going to be stubborn on at least for a while. I don't smoke, I hardly drink, I don't even eat out, so it's my one pleasure. I'm willing to reduce it, but I have tried sacrificing taste before and it just made me crave it and try to sneak it in which was really bad.

but I'm working on just an 8oz latte in the morning, and upping my green tea by a couple of cups (I usually only have 1 at night or not at all)

I guess drinking more water and switching around some of the veggies will address the "oxalate" issue I seem to have

i just started a 12-week program that's leading up to me getting the gastric sleeve early next year. before i'm allowed to have surgery, i have to lose 10 percent of my overall body weight. this is a hard time of year to be doing this, with the holidays and my birthday coming up. but i weighed myself today and i gained a few more pounds since my last check-in, so i'm putting my foot down.

my action plan for the week: keep a food diary, cut out juice and soda, check out the pool at the local ymca.

at the same time, i'm still trying to turn my depression, anxiety, and adhd around with the help of medication and therapy. all this stuff is tied together. i've spent the last half-decade or so being lethargic and not eating right, mainly because of life situations that made me feel hopeless.

i've been scared to talk about this, but i need a support system, and the other internet communities out there are full of macro-posting mommyblogger types who can barely put a sentence together.

Food diaries and calorie counting don't seem to work in the long term. What worked for me is large, satiating meals of low-calorie density foods (so your stomach stretch sensors go off with a lesser calorie load). The sort of thing Barbara Rolls has studied and promoted for a few decades. Stuff yourself with what initially appear to be insane amounts low-caloric density fruits, salads, vegetables, and soup (but no drinking calories, fatty dressings, creamy soups, or avocado/nut binges), and you'll simply feel full long before you can tackle any diet breakers. The salad is the main course.

For me (and I'm only 2/3s of my way down to an ideal BMI), it has proven easiest to simply eliminate caloric beverages, baked goods, fried foods, and all animal products from the house. Even potatoes, rice, and pasta have fairly moderate calorie densities compared to diet breakers. Alcohol has been my major lapse (but I'm down from fifths of vodka to a couple beers).

I've lost 40 lbs in a year going paleo, that seems to work wonders for me. I don't ever plan on being thin, though. A large part of my identity is in being fat.

good luck though JBR in whatever you do !

thanks. i guess the problem with diet support threads is you get all these people saying "just do it this way!!!" when individual diet and exercise routines are a very personal thing. i've decided to follow my HMO's advice; it's something that their phalanx of doctors, researchers, and nutritionists have come up with, so i'm fairly confident it's not bunk.

It's certainly not bunk, but there's this received wisdom in the medical profession and among some nutritionists that moderate changes are easier to achieve, when my impression is that absolute dietary rules are much easier to follow for most.

For short term weight loss, Atkins works, Paleo works, low-fat whole-foods vegan works, alternate day fasting works, raw food diets work, 3rd world poverty diets work, but wishy-washy dictates to eat "less fat" or "more fiber" don't translate well into grocery carts or pantry contents. The ranch dressing or late-night toast find their way back in all too easily. One doesn't advise alcoholics to "drink less".

My suggestion is to find some diet with hard rules that puts significant parts of the grocery store and restaurant menus off limits. Whether its low-carb, pre-agricultural, cruelty-free, uncooked, or cheap and unprocessed isn't as important as simply imposing a limitation. In time perhaps you'll investigate the health consequences of the various options, but really some rules, any rules, are perhaps most important at the start.

I think though that for a lot of there is a rebellion against the restriction of particular types of food eventually, often when the weight has come off. People often put it all, and more, back on. For me, the more 'perfectly' I try to eat, the better I feel during the diet and the more I rebound at the end of it. I've given up dieting. That's not to say I've given up on losing some weight at some point, but I'd be happy to do it very slowly.

*a lot of people

good luck get bent; sharing what you're going through and yr successes or failures can be motivating once you get into the swing of it...don't let starting out scare you too much :)

god knows I've started LOTS of times

I'm in acid reflux/GERD world as of two weeks ago & am going in cycles of UGH I HATE THIS WTF and 'hmm it's not so bad'. cooking is hard. it's so depressing having to lose all spicy foods, and removing tomatoes AND coffee from my diet has been really trying. not to mention the whole no fat/low fat struggle because FAT IS THE MAGIC CARPET THAT FLAVOR RIDES UPON ;_; But then I have a day like today when I don't have any attacks and I don't even have to give a second thought to my boiling stomach & I notice that I feel ~healthier~ so that in itself, just those moments when you notice that your changes are working even in small ways, is a good feeling

My friend is a nutritionist-in-training and doing paleo (which I still don't get, sorry everyone) and is on a mission to make people eat MORE fat. Good types of fat, anyway. I try and avoid endless diet conversations (so yknow I have this thread bookmarked) so I haven't asked why.

Yeah, I've lost about 17 pounds since January and did so mostly by cutting way way down on booze and carbs and upping my fats. I'm a vegetarian so I can't cut out carbs completely (nor would i ever want to good god bread the the best thing ever) but I have a lot more vegetable and protein based meals now and snack mostly on nuts and hard boiled eggs rather than something sugary or really processed.

"fatty dressings, creamy soups, or avocado/nut binges"

See these are all things that I eat now (in moderation) that I avoided for years and years because I was afraid of the fat.

idk. different things work for different people I guess.

reducing tomatoes in my diet definitely helped make my crohn's flares more bearable. although... my sandwiches feel so empty now.

good luck get bent, i am trying to diet too

i think cutting out sugary drinks is a good start. i used to drink a triple mocha every day until i realized i could cut out like 2000 calories a week by switching to coffee with a reasonable amount of half and half.

FYI I just found out Starbucks has sugar free mocha syrup during the holiday season. In fact, I'm drinking coffee with it right now and IT IS SO GOOD.

I pretty much refuse to drink calories unless they have alcohol but like I said before I've cut back on that a lot recently.

Also good luck, GB!

pulling tomatoes out of my sandwich = something I never thought I would have to do in my lifetime

i miss you.gif

I've lost a bit of weight I think just because what I can eat is limited now? Although I did discover "coconut cream" which when mixed with hot water makes coconut milk with no guar thickener, so I can make curry with that again.

Would happily take the weight back to be able to drink glasses of milk and eat croissants.

So I decided to try the "Lose It" app (by LIVESTRONG TM). I'm on day 4. I set it to the mid-grade "lose one pound a week" setting. So far I'm not finding it all that hard, just because I think I was filling the gaps in my day with a lot of meaningless calories here and there, and having that "budget" to meet makes me think twice about getting another handful from the candybowl. I haven't had to cut anything out completely so far, I'm just avoiding the extra snacks I don't need.

Like I still get to eat about 2000 (net) calories a day, so it doesn't really feel like a "diet." Plus there's a good motivator in there to exercise -- if you have the extra slice of cake at work, you can just go for a run to make up for it.

I'll have to check that out. I started calorie counting and jogging this year. I gave up the calorie counting after about a month though because I was carrying around a small notebook and pen, which got bulky.

i've lost eight pounds recently. moderate exercise and eating lean cuisine and a lot of fat-free/low-sugar yogurt.

i know lean cuisine is high in sodium and i need to watch that, but my focus is really portion size right now and those meals are so small there's no opportunity to overeat.

10 pounds without even technically 'dieting'...I had to change my portions and my diet because of the whole GERD thing. It's finally kicking in and feeling much more like a lifestyle now, I don't feel quite as bummed out and miserable as I did when I started

Back off carbs/sugars as much as possible. Did really well back in Nov & Dec, but fell off the wagon in Jan/Feb.

if you have the extra slice of cake at work, you can just go for a run to make up for it.

sooo not worth it

I'll have to check that out. I started calorie counting and jogging this year. I gave up the calorie counting after about a month though because I was carrying around a small notebook and pen, which got bulky.

― how's life, Friday, March 21, 2014 1:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah and it tends to get quicker as you use it more too, because once you enter a food, it gets saved, so if you eat a similar breakfast every morning it's easy to reenter it.

I got chocolate hand cream for Christmas, and it makes me NOT want to eat chocolate. In addition to smelling lovely, it takes the craving away. Good. I wonder if there is any real science to this.

do you have any "hacks" for easy calorie counting? i've downloaded livestrong's lose it! app, and it's easy enough to scan barcodes on products, but what do i do with homemade meals? do i have to account for every tablespoon of cooking oil, pinch of salt, etc?

i hate doing this shit but my nutritionist believes it'll really help with my weight loss. so i'm rmde and giving it another shot.

my fitness pal has a p good database of recipes, and you can create your own

the only reason i stopped using it is bc calorie counting made me a bit crazy in a not healthy way

Yeah, I've been doing MFP for 5 years now (intermittently) and can attest to the depth of the database. there's an easy recipe import feature, which I usually just use by c&ping my notes from whatever meal i just made. also, there's a quick-calorie feature if you just want to add in a thumbnail.

I use MFP too. So easy and quick, especially when you eat almost the same thing everyday like I do.

Since I've not been running, I've gone back to tracking food intake again in attempt to get back to fitting in my pants better. I've gone from 176 to 165 in 35 days. I've also drastically cut back on my beer intake. In 2014 I averaged drinking 17 beers a week. Now I only drink once every couple of weeks. That's saving me like 4000 calories a week.

I am on week 4 of the Always Hungry diet @ http://drdavidludwig.com/. Big fan! not losing weight quickly (1 – .25 lbs / week), but I am losing inches off my waist. I am getting denser, I guess?

i've finally caved to the fad diet and am now doing the 3 week diet (not the brian flatt one, the other one). it's basically carb cycling, fasting, protein shakes, which a big part of me screams AWFUL at, but an even bigger part of me (quite literally) is like YES GET THIS FUCKIN EXTRA WEIGHT OFF QUICK I'M TIIIIIIIRED OF IT.

desperate times etc.

i'm so physically uncomfortable at this weight and i don't feel like i can make any progress with my other issues (sleep, energy, general health) till i can get rid of a good chunk of this excess weight that's dragging me down. so, the faster the better. then hopefully i'll have more energy to put into a normal healthy lifestyle change to my diet.

For the lifestyle change part I think this is really good. Ignore the cover - given the disparity between cover and contents, I'm going to chalk that one up to a marketing dept.

Thanks Ljubljana!

I found a diet that works for me: beer