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I've stopped battling. I just am focusing right now on cooking more than I eat out and trying to limit the desserts and cut out fast food entirely. I always have an idea of the calories I'm ingesting. I hope to start running again soon, but I've been saying that for a year.
I'm 42 and I have 30 pounds to lose. It's not really a huge concern right now - I'm really liking my life and my weight isn't stopping me from doing anything I enjoy. My doctor also isn't concerned at all, and I'm not getting any bigger.
It's more about good/smart habits right now. Hopefully that will translate into more as I establish new routines. We'll see.
I've stopped battling. I just am focusing right now on cooking more than I eat out and trying to limit the desserts and cut out fast food entirely. I always have an idea of the calories I'm ingesting. I hope to start running again soon, but I've been saying that for a year.
I'm 42 and I have 30 pounds to lose. It's not really a huge concern right now - I'm really liking my life and my weight isn't stopping me from doing anything I enjoy. My doctor also isn't concerned at all, and I'm not getting any bigger.
It's more about good/smart habits right now. Hopefully that will translate into more as I establish new routines. We'll see.
Good luck! Get that 30 pounds off sooner rather than later - it only gets harder to lose - LOL.
Ask me how I know.
Like you, I had 30 pounds to lose and also like you, my doctor wasn't concerned and all my bloodwork and other physical stuff always came back great. And then I noticed that my blood sugar levels were just slowly creeping up. Oh my gosh, it was like I was TRYING to give myself diabetes! Of course, I really wasn't, but it seemed to be the inevitable outcome, especially considering it runs in my family AND I had had gestational diabetes when I was pregnant.
I lost that 30 pounds at age 56 and it was a lot harder than at 46, believe me - and definitely harder than at age 36, though at 36 and 26 and even 46 I wasn't carrying around that extra weight.
Cutting out fast food is a great start. Also, maybe try immediately boxing up half your meal when you eat out - the portions are generally huge anyway, and now you'll have two meals for the price of one! And still have fun eating out.
I've stopped battling. I just am focusing right now on cooking more than I eat out and trying to limit the desserts and cut out fast food entirely. I always have an idea of the calories I'm ingesting. I hope to start running again soon, but I've been saying that for a year.
I'm 42 and I have 30 pounds to lose. It's not really a huge concern right now - I'm really liking my life and my weight isn't stopping me from doing anything I enjoy. My doctor also isn't concerned at all, and I'm not getting any bigger.
It's more about good/smart habits right now. Hopefully that will translate into more as I establish new routines. We'll see.
You're on the right track. As you said, it's all about learning healthier habits rather than just focusing on the scale number. Limiting desserts, cooking more at home, and being aware of what goes into your mouth is a great start.
I don't track calories as religiously as I used to, but I always know how many calories I'm consuming and how much I'm eating.
It's about regaining control.
As for running again, maybe start out slowly. Most people jump into exercise gangbuster style and end up fizzling out. Or, people have big plans to exercise but then don't do anything. Set small goals. i.e. just lacing up your sneakers, and/or putting on your gym attire, and "Just DO IT." Don't aim for five days a week. Just do that one day and see how it goes. I started off slowly, one day a week. I thought I would give up but somehow, I'm still trucking.
I have a VERY hard time believing this unless their criteria for attempting to lose weight would be doing things like eating a piece of fruit or drinking water and even then it would be a stretch to say 1 out of 2 do this. I wonder if someone drinks water claiming to try and lose weight if that counts as actively trying to lose weight with their data?
More likely they try for a week or two and then quit trying because they don't instantly lose 50 pounds. I mean, they did try. They just didn't stick with it. The 50 pounds probably took 10 years to put on but realistically most people are going to need at least six months to lose it, probably more like 1-2 years. But almost none of these people that are "battling" to lose weight will stick with it for anything close to that. They might win a battle but then they throw in the towel and lose the war.
Weight loss isn't a battle. It's a war of attrition. Need to make a commitment to a long-haul lifestyle adjustment. Most of these battlers would have better luck not trying to lose weight at all but just making incremental small adjustments. Maybe stop drinking sodas and frapuccinos and taking a walk in the evening. Might not lose any weight doing that, especially if you replace the soda calories with other (hopefully healthier ones), but it's not like the two-week and quit cycle does either. Just keep making those small incremental changes once the previous ones have become habits and you might still be fat but at least you're getting some exercise, eating better, and likely stopped packing on the weight nearly as quickly.
Sugar, sugar everywhere!! I remember the days I was perusing some forum dedicated to peak-oil and someone brought up ethanol fuel from crops as a solution. Biggest argument people made against it on those threads were food shortages and people either getting too thin or starving.
Eh, I'd go for a little forced portion control for some extra fuel sources.
I don't know how to account for this. We can't blame it on our busy lives - even many people who don't work are overweight. We can't blame sugar - sweets have been around for a long time. Maybe more convenience foods now along with absurdly huge portion sizes?
I don't know, but the commercials for those chain restaurants make me sick. The food looks gross and the portion on the plate is nauseating.
I believe it, just walking around town you can see overweight people. I'm shocked at how much some people at work weigh.
And it's a trend that's been going on for years.
It reminds me of the discussion of why exercise isn't the best option for losing weight.
Never before in our lifetime have we had SO much information on what to eat, what exercise to do, how often, etc., yet we have continued to get fatter and fatter.
It has nothing to do with diet (keto, vegan, etc.), and everything to do with portion control and lack of control in caloric intake. How else to explain those people that went on an experimental diet where they ate nothing but McDonald's everyday for months (not talking about the Super Size Me documentary guy who ate a lot of excess calories per day)? Not only did these people lose weight, they were relatively healthy too. And that's because they actually ate below their caloric needs everyday without feeling hungry.
Not only have serving sizes gone up, we as a society have been conditioned for so many years to stuff our faces until our stomachs ache, that it's hard to back down and eat smaller portions. I don't think many people realize how many calories are in one donut, or one Starbucks frappucino, and that's just for snacks.. They think just because they did an hour on the stair stepper, somehow it magically negates eating excessive calories per day.
I truly wonder how they did that. I mean, one tiny infuriating little hamburger there that's barely even a snack is I think like 480 calories. I rarely eat McDonalds, probably 3-4 times per year at most, but when I do (as with whenever I eat out in general), I disregard calories and just eat enough to be full, which is at McDonalds probably a good solid 2,000 calories. The difference is for me, it's rare to eat there, and 2,000 calories is only about 2/3 of my daily calorie needs, so if I just ate cereal in the morning (500 calories at most) and a protein shake before bed (400 calories), I can still eat McDonalds and not be over my calorie count for the day.
I don't see how those people wouldn't be starving all of the time though if that's all they ate, because 1,000 calories at McDonalds comes nowhere near filling me up. Yet my 400 calorie protein shake makes about three 12-ounce glasses of liquid, which takes a solid 45 minutes to an hour just to drink, and I feel stuffed after it, like sickly full almost sometimes. There are some things that fill you up well but don't have a ton of calories, and then there's McDonalds, where you're like how the heck did they fit 500 calories into this pathetically tiny food item?!
I don't think "portion control" is really the answer for most people, it's really about eating the right foods. If you eat the wrong foods, you'll just never be full, which is frustrating, yet you'll still be over your calorie counts. It must be even more challenging for women, which is borne out by the data (so many obese women), because their daily calorie recommendations are usually way lower, like under 2,000 calories. A short, small girl like my GF is supposed to eat about 1,400 calories per day, which is remarkable to me, whereas I can eat 3,000 calories every day and be just fine because I have an extra 45 pounds of muscle packed onto me from when I was, say, 18 or 19, and my workouts alone burn a ton of calories, not only while I'm doing them, but the afterburn of muscular workouts too. That makes it less "punishing" when I eat out, which is why I never care about the calories in anything I eat at a restaurant. I completely disregard them and never gain a pound because the rest of the time, I'm probably well below my daily calorie needs (I only count my protein per day, which has to hit 100 grams), so I find it if anything a bit challenging to get enough calories without eating out every 2 or 3 days, otherwise left to my own regular food items I'm probably sitting around 2,000 calories per day. I don't have any desire to lose weight, so I go out and get a great meal a few times per week and pack on the calories so I can hold onto what I got. :P
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