Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

[cidbahamut]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

So... I am going to turn this thread into a health journal if no one minds. I think it would he good for me, so I can keep track of where I am, and how many days its been. Don't went to lose weight too fast, you know? I will weigh my self every three days for so, and keep it at that. Soooooo... Here we go.

I think to focus on the numerical value of your weight is to miss the point. Perhaps I'm projecting too much here, but I get the sense that when most people express a desire to lose weight, they don't actually mean they want to mathematically weigh less. What they're actually aiming to achieve is to improve their overall physique so that they no longer feel that self loathing that can only come from looking down at one's flabby stomach and lamenting the fact that you aren't keeping your body in better shape. I know my goal isn't to go from weighing X pounds to weighing X - n pounds, rather my goal is to defeat body shame by getting myself to a point where I look like I'm in shape, or at least look like I'm not the out of shape couch potato I have become over the years.

That said, you're probably better off checking your weight once every few weeks or so. You want to identify the trend rather than the day to day fluctuations. Also keep in mind that muscle tends to weigh more than fat, so it's entirely possible to be gaining weight as you go and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think Armando touched on that earlier.

[Taskmage]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

Something I incorporated into my diet is a breakfast smoothie. I use one banana, one cup of greek yogurt, one cup of orange juice, and one cup each of two kinds of frozen fruit. Blend until smooth. Sometimes it's helpful to let it sit on the counter for 20 minutes before you put your blender to work on it, or you can load the fruit and juice the night before and let it sit in your refrigerator until morning. It's about 450 calories, a huge amount of fat-free protein (about half the USRDA), and four servings of fruit. It goes against "don't drink your calories," but I've had a hard time working enough fruit and veg into my diet, adding protein without adding fat and cholesterol, and getting decent breakfasts since I'm usually too lazy to cook in the mornings, so this solved a lot of problems for me.

[DakAttack]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

I think the advice against drinking your calories is mainly for calorie-dense "accessory" drinks. Meal replacement shakes are fine.

[Takelli]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

I think to focus on the numerical value of your weight is to miss the point. Perhaps I'm projecting too much here, but I get the sense that when most people express a desire to lose weight, they don't actually mean they want to mathematically weigh less. What they're actually aiming to achieve is to improve their overall physique so that they no longer feel that self loathing that can only come from looking down at one's flabby stomach and lamenting the fact that you aren't keeping your body in better shape. I know my goal isn't to go from weighing X pounds to weighing X - n pounds, rather my goal is to defeat body shame by getting myself to a point where I look like I'm in shape, or at least look like I'm not the out of shape couch potato I have become over the years.

That said, you're probably better off checking your weight once every few weeks or so. You want to identify the trend rather than the day to day fluctuations. Also keep in mind that muscle tends to weigh more than fat, so it's entirely possible to be gaining weight as you go and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think Armando touched on that earlier.

I can understand the whole not weighing your self all the time. I used to do it on a day to day thing as I was starting to try and lose weight, then I just stopped. Kept getting hungry, kept getting that whole depression thing and such. No matter how bad I felt about my self, I feel hungrier, and hungrier each day. And it continued for a few more years until I decided to say fuck it. Exercise hurts but... I'm going to do it until I can do it comfortably.

Thing is though... I have a lot of muscle naturally. Even when I didn't exercise, I was faster, and stronger than most people that I knew. I was able to lift more, bench-press more and such. The thing is though... I don't want a lot of muscle. Yes, while it is nice, I just want to loose the fat, and get lean. While some muscle is nice, I don't want it. I hear people say that if I got muscle, I could be a body builder... -Shudders-

My body build is that of a football player. The broad shoulders, and the wide chest. It was the body I was born with, and can only do what I can with it.

Something I incorporated into my diet is a breakfast smoothie. I use one banana, one cup of greek yogurt, one cup of orange juice, and one cup each of two kinds of frozen fruit. Blend until smooth. Sometimes it's helpful to let it sit on the counter for 20 minutes before you put your blender to work on it, or you can load the fruit and juice the night before and let it sit in your refrigerator until morning. It's about 450 calories, a huge amount of fat-free protein (about half the USRDA), and four servings of fruit. It goes against "don't drink your calories," but I've had a hard time working enough fruit and veg into my diet, adding protein without adding fat and cholesterol, and getting decent breakfasts since I'm usually too lazy to cook in the mornings, so this solved a lot of problems for me.

The milkshake a day thing would be something to look into. Its a lot of calories, but does it keep you full for a long time?

While the protein is nice, I would like to try and get some fiber in there, and some other stuff to help keep me full for a long period. I get hungry very easily, and fast. Every 2 hours I am hungry... No matter what. I increase my water intake, protein, and fiber, while lowering my fat, sugar, and oils (The bad ones.), and I feel hungry all the time.

I work in a gas station, so I am surrounded by food, all the time. And, when I get hungry... It's hard to fight that urge to get something and eat it, and its all junk food. If we sold fruits and such, I wouldn't mind but... IDK.

My sister has studied food intake, and the health foods, and such, and she is giving me tips on what to eat and what to avoid.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But, I already do feel quite a bit better. My body feels stronger, and I can't sit still for as long as I could before. I want to get up and move around. I feel stronger, and better, even though my body hurts some. haha.

My arms feel stronger, and my back as well. My legs feel lighter from doing endurance training with the jump rope. My stomach feels firmer, and tighter (Even though I still jiggle like santa. lol). But, over all, I feel great.

I try to drink some Orange Juice when I get up in the morning, and get some protein from Eggs, Ham, or something else.

[Feba]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

Weigh often. Two or three weeks is way too far apart; daily weighing is the way to go. Don't WORRY about your weight's fluctuations on a day to day basis, but TRACK them anyway; more data points is always better. Eventually you will learn that weight fluctuates sometimes for no apparent reason, and the random spikes and sudden drops won't bother you-- on the other hand, when you see a slow hump growing over the week, it'll snap you to attention. Two or three weeks is also enough time to lose weight, not realize it, lose motivation, and regain weight; at the end you'll think you haven't made any progress, when in fact you had made progress, and next time you check in you'll actually be gaining weight, since you wouldn't have taken notice of your changed habits.

And don't kid yourself about losing weight too fast. You're not going to. That simple. You might lose what seems like a lot when you just start out, but it'll level off eventually.

[Takelli]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

Thanks Feba. I have been feeling like I want to go out and do more stuff since I started.

I know weight fluctuates a lot. When your system is full, your bowels are voided, your bladder empty/full and such stuff like that. It all is different depending on the person too. Clothes have a huge effect as well. I like collecting Data about my self, so I may be keeping an even more personal record (In writing of course.) for my self. I have felt stronger, felt better, in a better mood and such. Yes, Exhausted, but over all, in a better mood. I can't sit for long any more. Even right now, I've only been sitting for... Maybe 90 minutes, and I'm feeling antsy to get up and move.

The thing that I was worried about loosing weight too fast is that, if it starts dropping too fast, I'll get that "flab", and when it does drop too fast, its not just fat that's going away.

[Armando]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

I think the advice against drinking your calories is mainly for calorie-dense "accessory" drinks. Meal replacement shakes are fine.

Yeah, just avoid anything overly liquid. Commercial weight loss shakes always fail me because though they have plenty of calories it's not too different from drinking a glass of chocolate milk. They always leave me wanting solid food, which defeats the purpose of trying to replace a meal with them. Smoothies are fine if they're thick enough to be filling. I've been adding frozen bananas to the milk + protein powder drink I take after going to the gym to make it thicker myself.

The thing is though... I don't want a lot of muscle.

Then the good news for you is that getting big takes both deliberate effort and a LOT of time. I've read that the most you can expect to bulk up in muscle is about 10 pounds a year, and that's if you do everything right. The thing is, getting bigger muscle requires eating a slight excess of calories (and good nutrition), while losing weight requires eating less calories than you need. The two goals are mostly mutually exclusive. On semesters that I wasn't terribly loaded with college work I'd work out MWF all 6 months and while my strength would go up and I lost some weight, my muscles didn't get much bigger. Lots of women avoid weight lifting like the devil because they're worried they'll get too muscular. If it were that easy I'd be ripped.

While the protein is nice, I would like to try and get some fiber in there, and some other stuff to help keep me full for a long period. I get hungry very easily, and fast. Every 2 hours I am hungry... No matter what. I increase my water intake, protein, and fiber, while lowering my fat, sugar, and oils (The bad ones.), and I feel hungry all the time.

I get hungry about every 3 hours, so I know what you mean. This site is REALLY good for nutritional facts. Not only is it thorough, it also visually displays the ratio of carbs/fat/protein in the food and tells you the quality of the proteins (there are over a dozen essential amino acids; different protein-rich foods provide different amounts of these.)

If you're looking for high fiber fruits, raspberries and blackberries are right up there. Most vegetables are high fiber so no problem there. Make sure you're eating 100% whole grain bread too. Anything that doesn't say whole wheat (or some other grain) as the first ingredient is either white bread or white bread in disguise, even if it looks brown or says stuff like 7-grain or multi-grain. Just because a bread has 7 grains it doesn't mean they're whole. As for cereals, you can either go for those unsweetened shredded wheat squares, or Kashi cereals. Almost every Kashi brand cereal is healthy; I like their Go Lean cereal because it's oddly high-protein for a cereal (13g of protein vs 0-4g on everything else.)

[Taskmage]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

This has been a great thread so far, btw. I don't want to go hit "Like" on every single post, but thanks everyone for adding their own viewpoints, advice and experiences.

[Jarre]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

Don't WORRY about your weight's fluctuations on a day to day basis

Just remember you can loose a couple of pounds just by having a dump.

[Takelli]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

@Armando Thanks for the links and such. I am going to be doing more cooking in the house, so I can control more of what I consume (My family eats together, and its not always healthy.), and that I will be eating more whole grains as well. I had forgotten about those. As for whole grains though... Not all of them are good. You need to see what is written on the box. Along with the whole grains, there could be tons of sugar, and fats that aren't healthy (Such as Trans fats.).

I am trying to stay away from breads, as glutton isn't good to consume a large amount of, and bread has a lot of calories. 200 per slice. My mom recently picked up a package of thin breads, that are whole grain (Only kind that I like.. The others are dry as the desert. lol), and they have about only 100 Calories total (They are sliced in twos already, so you can make a sandwich out of those.). Really good actually.

I didn't know that Raspberrys and blackberrys where high in fiber. Maybe I'll go pick some up and snack on them when I get hungry, thanks!

As for cerial goes... I'm really picky when it comes to it. I don't like "plain" cerials, like chex, Cornpuffs, cornflakes, and the other stuff. It has to have some sugar for me to eat it, so I am staying away from it for now. Cerial never really made me get that full feeling, and I ate a lot of it, and an hour later, I was starving.

I will eat Honeynut Cherrios though, and the other stuff, and used to slice up a bannana into them. Those where always good. Also used to eat graham crackers, and Peanut butter for breakfast.

[Taskmage]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

The milkshake a day thing would be something to look into. Its a lot of calories, but does it keep you full for a long time?

While the protein is nice, I would like to try and get some fiber in there, and some other stuff to help keep me full for a long period. I get hungry very easily, and fast. Every 2 hours I am hungry... No matter what. I increase my water intake, protein, and fiber, while lowering my fat, sugar, and oils (The bad ones.), and I feel hungry all the time.

I added up the nutritional information for my smoothie ingredients, using peaches and mixed berries for the frozen fruit, and got this for one quart:

Calories : 485
Calories from Fat : 3 // All from the banana O_o
Total Carbohydrate : 95g ( 32% )
- Dietary Fiber : 8g ( 32%) // This is evenly split between the banana, peaches, and berries
- Sugars : 65g
Protein : 29g ( 58% ) // Nearly all of this is from the Greek yogurt
Cholesterol : 10mg ( 3% )
Sodium : 110mg ( 5% )
Potassium : 1g ( 28% )
Vitamin A : 12%
Vitamin C : 457% // About 2/3 from the peaches and 1/4 from the OJ
Iron : 8%
Calcium : 34%

These keep me full for a couple hours (it's a quart of fluid after all) and provide a pretty steady burn of energy for the first half of the day. For me it's not quite enough to be a full meal by itself, and needs to be backed up with something solid like some bread, cereal, steamed young soy beans, or sparingly a poached egg.

[Takelli]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

I added up the nutritional information for my smoothie ingredients, using peaches and mixed berries for the frozen fruit, and got this for one quart:

Calories : 485
Calories from Fat : 3 // All from the banana O_o
Total Carbohydrate : 95g ( 32% )
- Dietary Fiber : 8g ( 32%) // This is evenly split between the banana, peaches, and berries
- Sugars : 65g
Protein : 29g ( 58% ) // Nearly all of this is from the Greek yogurt
Cholesterol : 10mg ( 3% )
Sodium : 110mg ( 5% )
Potassium : 1g ( 28% )
Vitamin A : 12%
Vitamin C : 457% // About 2/3 from the peaches and 1/4 from the OJ
Iron : 8%
Calcium : 34%

These keep me full for a couple hours (it's a quart of fluid after all) and provide a pretty steady burn of energy for the first half of the day. For me it's not quite enough to be a full meal by itself, and needs to be backed up with something solid like some bread, cereal, steamed young soy beans, or sparingly a poached egg.

Wow, thanks for the numbers! As for the Vitamin C... Damn... That's a hell of a lot of that. XD


Edit: I've also read that exercise can increase testoerone levels. I kinda don't want to change who I am, so Its like.. Not sure if I want to. I know if it increases, my personality can change.

---------- Post added at 04:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:41 PM ----------

Day 3: Woke up, and didn't feel much of a difference from day 2. The tightness in my stomach, the soar arms, and legs, as well as my feet.

Went to jump rope some, and well, I did better than last time. Think I am starting to get the hang of it. Went longer than the last time with out stepping on the rope nor getting exhausted, although I was still tired from before. Went a good 5 minutes more than last time, until I got tired, and my legs hurt too much to jump any more, causing me to get hit multiple times by the rope as I tried to continue. So, I went inside, rested up, took a shower, and I feel a little lighter on my feet though. I feel this working, but, I know it will take time for me to see any physical results.

[DakAttack]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

A little extra testosterone wont change you.

[Feba]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

A little extra testosterone will make you less of a failure.


On a more serious note, I'm not even talking about the obvious flucuations. If you weigh yourself constantly, you will sometimes notice that your weight apparently increases after you go to the bathroom, that you weigh more or less than you did a couple hours ago despite not ingesting anything, and other oddities that appear to defy the laws of physics. Bodies are weird.

[Takelli]

Re: Time for a change... ((Health stuff.))

A little extra testosterone will make you less of a failure.


On a more serious note, I'm not even talking about the obvious flucuations. If you weigh yourself constantly, you will sometimes notice that your weight apparently increases after you go to the bathroom, that you weigh more or less than you did a couple hours ago despite not ingesting anything, and other oddities that appear to defy the laws of physics. Bodies are weird.

Maybe so. But then again, having a little less helps you think more like a woman. <,.,<

But yea, bodies are really weird. It could be the heat of your body warming up, hence making you lighter or something... IDK. Kinda grasping at strings there.