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As mentioned by SuburbanGuy. Keeping a log of everything you eat makes all the difference.
I have been a gym rat off and ob over the last 30 years. But this time around losing the weight has been much more difficult. I have not been able to just melt the calories with cardio and weight lifting. I bought a cheap diet scale for 10 bucks and started keeping a daily log of everything I eat. I made a list of all the foods I typically eat for quick reference and look up anything different I try.
At age 61 it seems I only need around 2000 calories a day to maintain. So I try to stay between 1500 and 2000. So far I am losing about 1 -1.5 pounds a week. Not a lot but I am trying to maintain muscle mass as best as I can. I am down 20 pounds from where I started and another 15 to go. By looking up the calories and keeping a log it becomes very apparent where changes need to be made. My coffee with sugar is the biggest culprit. I drank it several times a day. Now only one cup in the morning.
If your metabolism only allows you 2000 calories a day, that pretty much eliminates any fast food, chips, etc. The main foods I eliminated are bread, milk and processed sugars. The exception is an energy bar before each ride. To try and raise my metabolism I bought a hybrid bike. The shop properly fit it to my body and I have been riding almost every day. I am up to 14 miles. And I am enjoying the rides even though it is exercise.
I don't think it is laziness. I think a lot of people want to lose and get healthy again but the lack of knowledge and a good plan leads to poor results and frustration. And all the misinformation from people wanting to sell you something contributes to our angst. Maybe if somebody could package knowledge and willpower into a magic pill?
I am also 61 and, boy, the game has changed, hasn't it? I recently retired and I have been swimming over a mile in the mornings 5 days a week and walking on park trails at least 10 miles a week, in addition to the activity associated with having recently moved and getting resettled. Still, the weight loss is a challenge. I only want to lose 7 pounds, for goodness sakes!! But it is so hard even with watching my diet! I was recently reading how the distance activities I am doing can actually encourage your body to store fat, so I am ready to incorporate some weight training. It does take determination and persistence. I think too many people just give up kind of easily and really sacrifice quality of life as a result.
You were lucky and our kids took the same route with their kids: no forcing them to eat what they didn't llke and no forcing to clean your plate. of course this has resulted in our oldest grand daughter being one of the pickiest eater I have ever known.
When those of us born before say, the mid 50s were growing up it was the normal routine: eat what is on your plate. I know of very few families where this was not the norm.
We had 4 kids and Dad was a teacher. We almost never went to "sit-down" restaurants. That was too costly. Most meals were at home. Ordering a pizza delivered was a huge treat. So, yes, they wanted us to clean our plates, but there weren't huge piles of food on them. It was very simple, a meat, a vegetable, a potato. No fat laden casseroles or boxed "helpers' or Mac and cheese. It was the 1960's and what was on our plates was very different from what most kids get today.
Americans never had a healthy diet. They always ate high fat, high salt diets.
The big difference today is the incredibly increased sugar intake in our foods and drinks, considerably increased portion sizes, combined with less physical jobs & activities. One or the other we could handle, but combined have created a witches brew of obesity.
Food is more than carbs and calories. It's emotional. It's comforting. It's entertainment. It's always there for us. We can depend on a hamburger to make us feel good even when our lives suck.
Watch any TV commercial about food, whether it's Olive Garden, McDonald's, Wendy's, any food commercial. The food always looks scrumptious, colorful, steaming hot; and the people eating it always look ecstatic. Food commercials promote love, happiness, and joy, all centered around eating food. Sex and food, happy family and food; those things are always connected in food commercials. Everything you want out of life, you can get by eating this food, according to commercials.
Eating is love, eating is life, eating is joy--that's the message we see every day on commercials, and that food is always around us, always available to us. Any kind of food we want, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, fast food, it's right there where we are, always. If we want to enjoy life, and be happy, all we need to do is eat something that tastes good. And eat we do.
Last edited by oldgardener; 08-20-2018 at 11:22 AM..
A kilocalorie is a unit of measurement equal to 1000 calories. A "kilo"-anything is 1000 of them.
So 7 kilocalories is 7000 calories. Lots to eat in one day, methinks!
A kcal is the energy necessary to raise a liter of water one degree centigrade. In food we call a kcal a Calorie, so 7 kilocalories is 7 food Calories which is the same thing as 7,000 calories (with a small c). Why? Because 'Merica. Then we usually don't capitalize it and just understand we're actually talking about 1,000 calories when we talk about a calorie/Calorie.
Food is more than carbs and calories. It's emotional. It's comforting. It's entertainment. It's always there for us. We can depend on a hamburger to make us feel good even when our lives suck.
Watch any TV commercial about food, whether it's Olive Garden, McDonald's, Wendy's, any food commercial. The food always looks scrumptious, colorful, steaming hot; and the people eating it always look ecstatic. Food commercials promote love, happiness, and joy, all centered around eating food. Sex and food, happy family and food; those things are always connected in food commercials. Everything you want out of life, you can get by eating this food, according to commercials.
Eating is love, eating is life, eating is joy--that's the message we see every day on commercials, and that food is always around us, always available to us. Any kind of food we want, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, fast food, it's right there where we are, always. If we want to enjoy life, and be happy, all we need to do is eat something that tastes good. And eat we do.
I am a vegan and "foods" that I used to find mouthwatering, I now find disgusting and heartbreaking. Where I used to eat hamburgers, now I find them totally repulsive. People can train themselves to think in different ways.
From the article:
"...food companies have invested heavily in designing products that use sugar to bypass our natural appetite control mechanisms, and in packaging and promoting these products to break down what remains of our defences, including through the use of subliminal scents. They employ an army of food scientists and psychologists to trick us into eating more than we need, while their advertisers use the latest findings in neuroscience to overcome our resistance."
Not just people, but pets too. I have visited four homes homes recently with cats. Giant, fat cats that barely moved. And these were common cats -- Tabbies, etc. --not Maine Coons (which are larger than normal).
I had cats growing up and one, we thought, was overweight. However, she was slim compared to these monsters. Animals generally do not overeat so it is obviously something in their food.
My cats have always been free fed and never overweight. I have noticed that the same people usually get overweight cats over and over. A lot of it has to have something to do with the pawrents.
Interesting about the people food. A-holes. But people who make their own food can avoid most of this.
A kcal is the energy necessary to raise a liter of water one degree centigrade. In food we call a kcal a Calorie, so 7 kilocalories is 7 food Calories which is the same thing as 7,000 calories (with a small c). Why? Because 'Merica. Then we usually don't capitalize it and just understand we're actually talking about 1,000 calories when we talk about a calorie/Calorie.
Yes, food is measured in kcals, or Calories, but exercise is measured in regular old small-c calories. So if you burn a thousand calories by running, you've used up one Calorie of food.
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