Calorie Counting

[mookie1995]

This story is ridiculous and obviously made up. You are gullible and your friend knew it.

Just cause it’s batcrap crazy, doesn’t mean it can’t happen

[Kepler]

Re: Calorie Counting

Pre-dinner calories
7/1 1105

Weight
7/1 239.0

BP
7/1 104/61/63

[burd]

Re: Calorie Counting

Mono works! One week, ten pounds. Or, if you've already had mono, try to enlarge your spleen by several times its original size. It's like a stomach band but without the surgery!!!!

Head and throat radiation for throat cancer took me from 210 to 160 in just under 2 months (6'2"). The first 15 lbs was a gift, and I could eat as much chocolate pudding, ice cream, pasta, etc as I wanted for almost a year without putting it on. The low weight alleviated much of my knee and back soreness too. Treatment sucked, but the weight honeymoon was nice while it lasted. Being alive is cool too.

[MissThundercat]

Re: Calorie Counting

Right now, trying not to eat so much in the wake of surgery on my right foot last week. I know I can write and catch up on my reading, but still, I'm bored and all I want to do is either eat or take a nap.

[dxmnkd316]

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.

[Kepler]

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.

This is fantastic! Congrats. Now tell me how you did it because I am going to copy you shamelessly.

I am controlling my diet but without exercise I am getting nowhere, so that's my literal last recourse.

[Deutsche Gopher Fan]

Re: Calorie Counting

Didn’t dx lose some of that weight from his liver issue?

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Calorie Counting

About 10 lbs on the high end it looks like. There’s a steep drop during the peak of the illness.

Otherwise it’s been a steady drop since late October.

We still eat a lot of curries using chicken and quinoa with a lot of veggies (sweet potatoes, peppers, zucchini/squash, carrots, onions). We make a giant batch of it and portion it out for lunches. Chicken breasts are amazing sources of high quality lean protein. Trader Joe’s has an amazing curry sauce in a jar. (https://www.traderjoes.com/digin/pos...y-simmer-sauce). We buy like five or six at a time since we usually go to other grocery stores for the bulk of our buys. It has a lot of fat in it, so you have to be careful. We use a jar for what would amount to like 4 full meals for both of us.

But it’s also been portion control for me. Don’t serve family style. Leave the dam cooking dishes in the kitchen and plate at the stove.

Don’t even walk down the snack aisle. You may have intended to find that healthyish snack, but until you can stop yourself from grabbing a bag of Doritos, just don’t give yourself the chance.

Otherwise we have almost completely subbed out pasta and rice for quinoa. I like Ancient Harvest tricolor, but the differences between them are fairly minimal. Go to Costco to help cut down on price. We still do pasta in a pinch once or twice a month.

Learn to make veggies tasty by trying different cooking techniques. Sauté veggies that tend to get soggy with a small amount of olive oil and high heat. Steam or roast long cookers like carrots and sweet potatoes. Learn to like eating carrots. Sweet but still pretty good for you and better than most granolas. Which reminds me, I’m finding granola isn’t so good for me. I stopped losing weight when I started eating granola as a snack.

Cut out alcohol like beer as much as possible. Stick with dry red wine and try to limit it to like a glass every other day (but live a little sometimes).

Exercise has helped me get over my plateau that lasted the last several weeks. I’m playing soccer every Sunday. My GF and I are planning on doing a combo of p90x and going to the gym. I hate gyms but am willing to try again.

Breakfast I literally eat nothing or if I’m hungry I go with a jimmy dean delight sandwich. It’s 260 calories but has 17 g of protein and they’re convenient. Which is important. I want protein and convenience. They taste pretty decent but they aren’t for everyone.

Lunch I usually have leftovers or a turkey sandwich with carrots. Helps having a deli station at work but kind of expensive.

Anyways, if I was the distill all of this down, it comes down to spending most of your time in the produce section. Find stuff you like and when you’re starting out, try to get something new every time. You learn to cook different things and can get ideas. Season food, for the love of god.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

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