Is this a good idea?

[*Sixy*]

I'm in the same boat as you only I've had 4 kids, 4 c-sections.

I had gestational diabetes with my last child and was given a stern warning from my doc to lose some weight. I took her seriously and lost 80lbs (5 years ago) and the diet I followed was the diabetic guidelines with cardio and resistance training.

I still had 10lbs to go but in the last year and half I gained back 20lbs while on the pill (NEVER again!) so now I'm working on getting the last 10lbs off PLUS the 20 I gained back!

I cut out soda back when I started losing but I still drink flavored seltzer. Sometimes I just want a cold glass of something bubbly and the Vintage brand is pretty good...love the cherry and mandarin orange (there are no artificial sweeteners in it and it has zero calories).

As for breads, you don't need to cut them out completely, just switch to whole grain. My dh calls our bread "birdseed bread" because it's chock full of grains, very filling and not as bad as white breads.

Stick to low-fat dairy (fat free is just yuck in my opinion), don't use lots of butters and heavy sauces or gravy.

Try to refrain from sweets/baked goods/sugars or eat them in moderation. I will eat a serving size of cookies when I get the hankering (usually a serving is TWO cookies...lol, not the 5-6 I used to grab) and I never pass up birthday cake but I don't make a habit of eating these things every day.

Finally, I KNOW how busy you are with 3 kids but sometimes you need to put yourself first and get your exercise in. I try to walk when my husband gets home from work, after the kids are in bed or early in the morning before he leaves. Get yourself a set of resistance bands...I love using my bands and you can do this in your home at your convenience. You can also get some leg weights or small hand weights and use them on a brisk walk to get the resistance in as well.

Another idea, if your kids play sports instead of sitting at the field in a chair (I was always guilty of using this as my social hour), walk around the field while they are at practice.

It is totally do-able. Don't get discouraged if you don't see rapid weight-loss. You don't want to lose it that fast, 1-2lbs a week is what you are aiming for. It's easier to keep it off if you lose it slowly!

OH, and one last thought. Keep a food journal and write down EVERYTHING that you eat! I was on auto-pilot sometimes and didn't even realize I was grabbing the leftover chicken nugget or spoon of mac and cheese off my kids plates when I was cleaning up. All those "small" things add up, VERY quickly.

Good Luck!

[TXRunner]

Originally Posted by lovemaine

Hi! I cut out bread and most carbs and have lost 55 pounds since the beginning of May. Instead of bread, I eat Joseph's Whole Wheat Pitas. It gives me my bread fix, but with much less carbs. Good luck!

I thought pita bread was bread?

If you start cutting random foods from your diet you probably will lose weight, especially since weight loss mostly has to do with calories and not what type of food you eat. I could eat 5 cookies a day and lose weight. I could just eat bread and lose weight also. If you cut out all liquids I'm sure you will lose weight really fast.

[apy3241]

You can try simple postures of yoga which are helpful in reducing fats. Try bhadrasana! It is a simple posture of sitting where you can feel relaxed and channelize your mind throughout the body.

[sportsgeek20]

@lisalan last time we wrote in the same thread I don't think you liked me very much, probably because you miss-understood me, and because I'm pretty bluntly straighforward. Here is my advice, like it or not, take or leave. The following is BS-free.

*We can have a guesswork if the bread and soda is gonna do or not back and forth all we want. *Taking out the soda or the bread or either of them will work for person A and it will not work for person B. But when weightgain/loss really comes down to the science it's about calories in vs calories out. It works for person A because it gets that particular individual on a calorie shortage, and it does not work for individual B because (s)he is still eats more calories than (s)he burns.

To make sure you succeed with your individual goal you are not going to do what works for your aunts-dogs-former owners-fiances-whatever. What will work for you is what work for you in this particular moment. As you proceed further on your journey you will have to adapt your methods to keep stimulating loss efficiently.

To do this you need to (in general):
1. Monitor your metabolic rate (this changes with bodymass, activity, diet etc)(this means counting calories)
2. Have a look at how much calories you burn through exercise(this changes with intensity and bodymass among other factors)(this means counting calories)
3. Make sure that your body gets its full supplies of micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, omegas, probacteria, antioxidants, etc)(this means investing a couple of hours into researching your needs but you wont have to modify it much once it's been done once)
4. how a look at the sources for your macronutrients, protein, carbs, fats (what kind of fats and carbohydrates do you eat?)(this means counting calories, aswell as researching complex and simple carbs, saturated/unsaturated fats, but is also well worth the time)
5. Monitor your macronutrient balance (what ratio of proteins/carbs/fats do you eat? how do you disperse these over the daily timecykle?)

All of these have to be considered, and adapted in balance relatively to eachother. To just cut your eating may have negative effects on for example the balance of macronutrients or give you deficiencies in micronutrients, your body may adapt, which ends up in a weightplateu and a slow metabolism(making you stuck where you worse off than before). So: don't cut your calories intake too low, burn more instead.

Now comes that part that may be considered incorrect(by some), and thus I'll cut it away from the BS-free section:

Balance may not always be key for weightloss, but it is key for good health in the long run. You want a well balanced diet, rather than a "cut out all the X and Y"-diet, or you may find reaching your goals less satisfying than you anticipated. You need the protein, you need the fats and you need the carbs, but you need the right kinds of the latter two. The micronutrients makes your body work as it is suposed to, without them you are like a broken machine, running out of oil, getting older faster. lack of micro-nutrients may have a bigger effect than you think, not just on your health, but on your weight through metabolism etc.

Weight-loss is best done when a healthy diet is combined with a good exercise plan. Some methods preach it can be done with just this or just that well...Let me make an analogy;
Ancient warships were designed to both be rown and sailed, but they only reached their optimal speed while doing both. Your exercise is your sail, your diet is your set of oars, your sailing your journey in weight-loss, the captain of your ship. The more you optimize your ship the more efficient the journey. You can get to the other side of the sea with either propulsion, but the goal of the journey is to get to the other shore, not to stay at sea for as long as possible. This is why you use both the sail and the oars.

And remember to always adapt what you do individually after you as an individual, you don't want to do what works for your neighbor, you want to do what works for you. There are plenty of parameters to adapt, and they have to be done so in correlation to each other. Each individual also has his/her own obstacles to make the journey challenging(antidepressants for example), this does not call for giving up, it calls for the willpower to win over the obstacle, you can do it, if you really decide to.

Good luck!

[apy3241]

There are so many concerns related to weight loss and diets. I agree with sportsgeek20 who has addressed the issue very well and all the information provided is very helpful.