Calorie Counting

[trixR4kids]

Re: Calorie Counting

With wine, it's not the wine itself, it's the frequency. When I'm basically drinking a bottle a week...

A bottle a week is what, a glass per (work) day? And if you're including the weekends that doesn't sound that bad... (unless you're really trying to cut out alcohol entirely for health reasons or what have you)

[MissThundercat]

Re: Calorie Counting

I feel like Wine is generally healthier than beer at least and shouldn't have a ton of calories, assuming you aren't getting Arbor Mist or something with a bunch of sugar. Ice Cream and salty snacks are a different story (I went through a chip phase recently but like you said, I generally avoid that aisle).

With wine, it's not the wine itself, it's the frequency. When I'm basically drinking a bottle a week...

[trixR4kids]

Re: Calorie Counting

I feel like Wine is generally healthier than beer at least and shouldn't have a ton of calories, assuming you aren't getting Arbor Mist or something with a bunch of sugar. Ice Cream and salty snacks are a different story (I went through a chip phase recently but like you said, I generally avoid that aisle).

[MissThundercat]

Re: Calorie Counting

Right now, my struggle is this: prior to surgery on my right foot July 2, I was active. I ran, I did HIIT workouts, I did yoga and Pilates, and I was at my physical job Monday through Friday and sometimes Saturday. I ate to match this.

Since surgery, I've had trouble cutting back on what I eat to match the relative inactivity, and what's worse, I've developed a "f-ck it" attitude, which has me wanting salty snacks, ice cream, and wine. At least I cut back on the wine and am learning to scoot (I'm on a knee scooter) past the salty snack aisle.

[trixR4kids]

Re: Calorie Counting

There's nothing villainous about pasta per se, it's the amount of pasta Americans tend to eat that is more of the problem (and never mind that it's mostly the no-fiber, white flour kind). Look at a standard portion of pasta in Italy, or the noodles in a bowl of authentic Japanese ramen (NOT the dried crap you at in your college dorm). Now compare it to the amount of pasta on the plate at an Olive Garden/Macaroni Grill/Carrabba's, or the all-you-can-eat pasta places, or even what your mother gave you as a kid when spaghetti was on the menu at home. The differences in portion size will be pretty obscene. Plus, we drown our pastas in meat sauce and cheese, or in cream sauce which renders any veggies pointless.

Yeah basically pretend the food pyramid never existed.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Calorie Counting

There's nothing villainous about pasta per se, it's the amount of pasta Americans tend to eat that is more of the problem (and never mind that it's mostly the no-fiber, white flour kind). Look at a standard portion of pasta in Italy, or the noodles in a bowl of authentic Japanese ramen (NOT the dried crap you at in your college dorm). Now compare it to the amount of pasta on the plate at an Olive Garden/Macaroni Grill/Carrabba's, or the all-you-can-eat pasta places, or even what your mother gave you as a kid when spaghetti was on the menu at home. The differences in portion size will be pretty obscene. Plus, we drown our pastas in meat sauce and cheese, or in cream sauce which renders any veggies pointless.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Calorie Counting

I was 5-7, 155 in HS and 5-9, 165 in college. Size 30 jeans, and before relaxed fit was a thing. And I held that well into my mid 30s. I stabilized at 185 through my mid 40s. And then I went from 185 to 230 in my early 50s and have been immobile (in so many ways) there ever since. It doesn't show much because my dad gave me very broad shoulders and a good frame to carry extra weight, but I know it can't be healthy and I sometimes have breathless moments that make me aware of it.

Plus Dr. Mrs. is a hot little number and I want to match.

I'm not delusional, I know 185 is gone forever, but I think 199 is doable and that's my aim. This year's goal was to cut out my 8 soda a day habit and I did. I've also cut down on beer severely. But I have a lot I can do with portion control and I'm starting from cold metal zero on exercise so I know there's a lot more I can do.

All I ask is a form of exercise that uses my brain. I'll go through a lot if it's getting me off intellectually; hell, I even do marriage. I should volunteer to be hunted every weekend. I know people who'd be interested.

Go for a walk with Dr. Mrs. My GF and I go for walks a couple times a week. She enjoys raising monarch caterpillars so we walk down to the park after work and get about 0.5-1 miles to get milkweed. Otherwise, yardwork is another great activity. I suck at keeping things alive and she has a green thumb. I can move heavy things and she can plant things. Makes your body and yard look better. We're going to be doing a lot of landscaping this fall. Hopefully. (It's also nice because we can think and discuss what we want to do. We go to Gerten's, a local landscaping and plant megastore, take an hour to walk through to get ideas and take notes. Then we start planning.)

Commit to getting healthier together. Hold each other accountable and don't let it turn into an unhealthy competition or something where you or she is ragging on the other one for not following or meeting goals. Be constructive and supportive.


Oh, I thought of another thing while walking from my car. This has zero nutritional science behind it, but try cutting gluten out of your diet for two weeks. Not because gluten is bad, but it makes you think about every food decision you make. You have to read the ingredients and ask questions. I've become far more in touch with food since my GF and I started dating. We eat less takeout because of it. You can't just order a pizza because it's late and you don't want to cook. Helps us keep things like basic salad ingredients stocked in the house. And it has forced me to cut down significantly on the amount of pasta I've been eating.

[Kepler]

Re: Calorie Counting

Are you just not drinking water or something? Or maybe you can have some minimal amount of cream/sugar in whatever caffeinated drink you have or something...?

Well, when I skip I do tend to fast. So it's possible it's dehydration. Worth a try, anyway.

I drink a lot of water in the p.m. at work -- picked it up as a soda substitute and it's how I keep from snacking.

[trixR4kids]

Re: Calorie Counting

Yeah eating high fiber veggies really helps. I almost always eat a spinach based salad with dinner.

[jerphisch]

Re: Calorie Counting

I'm down about 37 lbs from last Sep and I'd echo a lot of what dx said. The biggest thing for me has been portion control and just accepting that I'm hungry and it's ok. I've really focused on limiting calories, I try to keep it to about 1500 on days I don't go to the gym and 2000 on days I do. I don't really watch WHAT I eat, just how much. But as dx said, that leads to a lot of veggies since they are lower calorie. As for the gym I typically either do an hour long spin class or an hour on the stairclimber about 4 times a week. I like watching food network while I do the stairclimber, keeps me distracted

[trixR4kids]

Re: Calorie Counting

My problem has always been if I miss a meal I get crippling headaches. If I miss breakfast I am f-cked for the rest of the day.

Are you just not drinking water or something? Or maybe you can have some minimal amount of cream/sugar in whatever caffeinated drink you have or something...? Idk for sure how to help you here but I guess I would rule out that it's solely related to caloric intake rather than something else entirely. From what little I'm reading (and I'm no expert obviously) is that it sounds like a blood glucose issue. There's gotta be some way you can do the bare minimum here without eating a ton of calories to avoid the headaches.

Use whatever motivation works.

Pretty much this though I had more success and stuck with it longer when I had an ulterior motive.

I should just bike the 24 miles to work everyday. My co-workers would love that.

I probably could bike to work my only issue is having a laptop I'd need to carry plus work clothes. Maybe if I just left my laptop at my desk I could do it.

[Kepler]

Re: Calorie Counting

I have my sr. year high school football pic, I was 5'10", 185lbs. I was a beanpole, and I'm not saying that relative to my current weight. I was just really thin, and didn't realize it at the time. I had 32" wait jeans, and they fit really well. Then my body matured. And after that I started packing on the weight because I didn't adjust my diet after suffering a few injuries that kept me from the weight room. Now when I was down to 225lbs, I could just barely squeeze into 34" jeans. That didn't last long.

I was 5-7, 155 in HS and 5-9, 165 in college. Size 30 jeans, and before relaxed fit was a thing. And I held that well into my mid 30s. I stabilized at 185 through my mid 40s. And then I went from 185 to 230 in my early 50s and have been immobile (in so many ways) there ever since. It doesn't show much because my dad gave me very broad shoulders and a good frame to carry extra weight, but I know it can't be healthy and I sometimes have breathless moments that make me aware of it.

Plus Dr. Mrs. is a hot little number and I want to match.

I'm not delusional, I know 185 is gone forever, but I think 199 is doable and that's my aim. This year's goal was to cut out my 8 soda a day habit and I did. I've also cut down on beer severely. But I have a lot I can do with portion control and I'm starting from cold metal zero on exercise so I know there's a lot more I can do.

All I ask is a form of exercise that uses my brain. I'll go through a lot if it's getting me off intellectually; hell, I even do marriage. I should volunteer to be hunted every weekend. I know people who'd be interested.

[Kepler]

Re: Calorie Counting

Also I know Kep doesn't want to cut out breakfast but honestly this did wonders for me and usually at that time of day I always felt like I was more forcing down food and didn't really feel all that hungry more often than not. There's gotta be some way around this where you can drink some caffeine w/ minimal calories and just power through until noon (or whenever, maybe you're more of a morning person and eat lunch earlier).

My problem has always been if I miss a meal I get crippling headaches. If I miss breakfast I am f-cked for the rest of the day.

My largest (so to speak) issue is that I hate exercise and I'm not good about portion size. Both are a matter of simple self-discipline: in a word, character. Even when I was active and very fit I hated exercise -- it's the single most boring thing on the face of the earth, edging out commuting. But it's worth not being fat and maybe staying upright. I really want to bury the rest of you f-ckers. Use whatever motivation works.

I should just bike the 24 miles to work everyday. My co-workers would love that.

[trixR4kids]

Re: Calorie Counting

Exercise isn't that bad if you have a purpose for it (outside of solely getting more fit) and you just stick with it for like 2 weeks and make it part of your daily routine. You'll certainly feel better/a noticeable difference if you stick with it and honestly I just trick myself into doing it by packing my gym clothes in the car before the day starts and immediately driving towards the gym after work, no exceptions (I work out at home too certain days but then I just put on the gym clothes right away and start stretching, trying not to procrastinate). For me following a specific training routine allowed me to get stronger, quicker, more flexible and better at playing goalie to the point where I can (sometimes) competently play with semi-recent NCAA D1 guys and can look the part with former D3 guys despite never having played at that level. Also despite getting older, I'm 30 and am better than I was in my early 20's for sure. I actually got to play with a group recently that I probably hadn't played with in at least 5 years and I remember playing with them back before I worked out consistently etc. and got wrecked. This last time I played with them it seemed like a fairly easy game that wasn't nearly as challenging as what I'm used to. Point being, I think for Kep the most difficult thing is going to find an additional purpose/motivation for exercising that'll help him stick to it for good but if you can find it you'll be fine and it won't seem like this horrible daunting thing you have to change. That said getting the diet part right will make a huge difference once you do start exercising because I used to do (more or less) the same workouts I do now with a poor diet and I still gained a bunch of weight and was up to 203 lol (last I checked recently I'm down to like 163-165).

As for diet a lot of what DX said is good, getting rid of useless carbs just cuts out a ton of calories, whether that be beer, noodles, rice, whatever. If you do cardio exercise or even lifting you don't want to go full keto diet imo or you'll lack energy but if I go get a sandwich from Potbelly at lunch for instance I usually do flat bread to cut out 100-200 calories (I usually do the turkey club and it's a fairly low carb high protein meal assuming you don't get a shake/cookie/chips or some other useless junk and just stick with the sandwich). You can have a few days a week where one of your meals in a given day is just meat/veggies and you won't die. Cutting out some useless fats is good too, if I go to Chipotle I generally don't eat guac or sour cream on my burrito bowl (rather than a burrito which has an extra 200 calories from the shell alone) and that helps me not fall asleep at my desk after lunch too . Usually my work lunches for the week are something like buritto bowl @ Chipotle, flatbread sandwich at Potbelly, Chipotle/Qdoba burrito bowl or maybe Panda Express bowl (I would stick with one entree), local Greek place that Rube likes (Gyros with salad or the stir fry, this is the day I do my lifting workout before hockey so I can eat more rice, flat bread, and carbs that day) and then maybe the Greek place again or one of the things I did earlier in the week. Obviously you'll save money and can tailor it however you want if you make your own food but that's one way you can eat out for lunch and be diet conscious.

For dinner I usually do beer can chicken (do a half chicken for a meal), dry rub chicken wings, Italian food of some sort (right now shrimp in red sauce), local pizza place with weird toppings like chicken/brocolli, maybe steak one night, and then maybe I eat out once on the weekend or whatever.

Also I know Kep doesn't want to cut out breakfast but honestly this did wonders for me and usually at that time of day I always felt like I was more forcing down food and didn't really feel all that hungry more often than not. There's gotta be some way around this where you can drink some caffeine w/ minimal calories and just power through until noon (or whenever, maybe you're more of a morning person and eat lunch earlier).

[St. Clown]

Re: Calorie Counting

Down a full 40 lbs from my all time high now. So close to getting back into the 170s. 181.2 is an “all-time” low. I literally do not remember when I was at 181. Certainly pre-2003.

I look back at my photos from last summer and it’s hard to actually look at them.

I have my sr. year high school football pic, I was 5'10", 185lbs. I was a beanpole, and I'm not saying that relative to my current weight. I was just really thin, and didn't realize it at the time. I had 32" wait jeans, and they fit really well. Then my body matured. And after that I started packing on the weight because I didn't adjust my diet after suffering a few injuries that kept me from the weight room. Now when I was down to 225lbs, I could just barely squeeze into 34" jeans. That didn't last long.