Struggling w/weight loss!!
Hey everyone I'm in desperate need here as I can't seem to lose the weight I need to lose 25-30 lbs. I want to get down to 175-180 but it is so hard!
I usually have a bowl of cereal (frosted mini wheat or honey bunches of oats) for breakfast and midway to lunch I have a banana or a granola bar or both mostly both. Lunch is usually Subway while at work, I work four 10 hour days from 6:30 - 5:15 tuesday thru friday, with a half hour drive each way. Afternoon break is usually the same as mid morning snack. I try not to drink pop at lunch but if I do it is usually half diet coke and half coke mix. Supper is usually at 7:00pm-7:30pm (which is probaly part of the problem I'm guessing) because I workout when I get home at 5:45pm so I eat right after I workout.
The weekends are pretty much the same for what I eat, I live in a small town so there is only pizza hut and subway here so we don't go out to eat much. Unless we go to the city.
I could really use some advice here, ecspecially when it comes to my mid morning and afternoon snacks. I don't have alot of $$ to spend on supplements but if I had to I would maybe purchase some good powder drinks to mix.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Rich
Comments
Hi Rich,
Questions:
1) How tall are you?
2) When were you last at your goal weight and how long did you hold it?
As Clinton suggested, you need to include carbohydrates, protein and fat with each eating opportunity. If you are trying to lose, I would put starches around your workout when your body will use them most effectively.
If you have some time for reading I'd look at An Athlete's Guide to Making Weight or Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance. I'd look at both if you can and see which makes more sense to you. They are both excellent references.
Hope that helps!
Hey Clinton thanks for the advice, I didn't think I should eat that much at breakfast so that is why I get so hungry mid morning. Just can't seem to fight off the cravings, its hard, I need some thing that lasts along time 'til lunch cause I don't eat lunch until 11:45 and breakfast is at 5:40am. Oh, you should probably stay at Motel 6 they leave the Light on for ya!
Penny I'm 5'10" and my age if that really matters is mid 40's.
The last time I was at 175lbs was in 1998 when I competed in the Mr. Iowa Bodybuilding contest. You would think that after being in one of those where you have to have a % body fat of 5 or lower that this would be a snap for me. As I get older the weight comes on easy and stays!
You also said: If you are trying to lose, I would put starches around your workout when your body will use them most effectively. What do you mean by this?
I'll check those two books out and see what I think. Thanks!
I probably stayed at that weight for a good 2 years or so before I started putting it on.
I'd also recommend logging your food to see what you are eating. fitday.com and dailyplate.com are both excellent sites. Give it some time to get used to using them. Dailyplate is associated with LiveStrong.com and also has an iPhone app if you are into that so you can log on the go as well as at your computer.
Hi Rich - check out those books that Penny suggested, definitely worth the investment! From your post I'm not surprised you're not losing weight - you're having sugary cereal for breakfast and then a granola bar mid-morning - you're probably getting more sugar in your system in a morning than most do in a day! Both will serve to spike your metabolism and burn fast and make you hungry. Lunch, is that bread?? what you having in it?
Ditch the crappy coke!! Full fat coke is like eating a tablespoon of sugar, yuk. Apart from the banana, where's the fruit, nuts etc? Whats the typical dinner? Eating late is the least of your problems!
To compare (not saying I'm an expert Rich) my diet today - breakfast was big bowl of oatmeal with blueberries - mid morning I had an apple with a tablespoon of peanut-butter(microwaved) - Lunch (post wk out today) I had a 2 egg omlette, few veggies with goat feta cheese & I added some leftover new potatoes - mid-afternoon, chopped apple with lo-fat yogurt & almonds - dinner at 7pm (after short run) was big veggie stir-fry with grilled turkey and a small portion of rice (added the rice 'cos I was tired today). Nothing else now untiil brekkie tomorrow.
Feel you just need an overhaul Rich and a bit of planning especially given your schedule -even more important. Food is fuel dude!!
I would highly recommend using a calorie counting/exercise tracking app. The last 4-5wks I've been using LoseIt and it's been eye-opening. I've learned a lot, and gained a lot of discipline, just by counting calories in, out, and see exactly what I was doing vs what I thought was doing. Net is that I've lost about 10lb in the last 6wks.
Bottomline, use one of these aps. Very, very educational.
x2 what Rich said - I did just that for just a week to get a reality-check - feels a bit geeky at the time and a PITA but the upshot fro me was that I was consuming way less carbs than i should be doing given the work-load - maybe pulled me back from the brink of over-training/fatigue.
Post back Rich on how it goes - you:ll soon get what works for you.
I found easy opportunities to cut cals: black coffee vs mocha in the morning, no cheese on a sandwich, stuff like that. Bottomline is that as endurance athletes we are burning some serious cals on the "out" side of the equation but we likely have very little to no real handle on what we're doing on the "in" side. Keep track, learn, and you'll find it's pretty easy to create a 500-1000cal deficit per day without being hungry.
Just a clarification. . .Coke doesn't contain fat. It contains a boatload of sugar. A 12 oz can of coke contains 39 grams of sugar or about 10 teaspoons (3 1/3 tablespoons) or 20 sugar cubes. Want a visual? Check this out: http://newsburglar.com/2008/01/17/sugar-can-coke/
Say Penny, what would you eat right before your workout like say the bike or run then. Sometimes I would have a granola bar or a hammer gel, or sometimes a chocolate chip cookie or two just not very often. Because just before one of these workouts I would have weak feelings and sometimes the shakes and these foods take that away within 5-10 minutes. Then I have a great workout! I'm probably going about that wrong though. And that is a whole lot sugar in the soda, WOW!!
A whole boat load of Great Advice, can't wait to start checking out some of these web sites to count calories and other things.
Mr. Flint is it OK to at least maybe drink a diet coke or does that have alot of sugar in it also? If so I will slowly wean myself of it. You know when I eat at Subway it is bread, should I maybe do a Big Salad instead? I do love nuts and other fruits so I will start doing that again. I'm trying to find all my notes from when I competed in the Mr. Iowa, no luck yet. Probable the wrong type of diet anyway.
Rich I'll start counting calories, but it will probably scare me, and I'll check out LoseIt. And I always have a cup or two or three of good ol black coffee at work. I also always have put cheesse on my sandwich and sometime ranch dressing. Which the ranch I will definately cut. (Honestly, it will be hard though)
Thanks for the link Steve.
You guys and gals have been a great help so far. Good reality check! Got alot of work to do so I better get started.
Thanks everyone!!!!
(Go to bed hungry.)
If I skip dinner (6 o'clock on) and have what the farmers call supper (about 4-5), I drop weight. I also try to make a point to drink lots of water. The rest of the day is all good, good nutrition, I just have a tendency to take on unnecessary calories at night.
Hi Penny, correct and I know that - just using the common Coke marketing approach of 'full fat' or 'low fat' - they seem to do that in EU for some reason, a tad misleading (liek me I guess). Still junk, fat or not isn't it?
@Mr Pross
May be a load of tosh but I read that Diet Coke (or other diet sodas) tend to 'confuse' the body - something on the lines of misleading the system into whats carbs or proteins etc; maybe the chemicals - Penny??
@ David, I am sure Penny has the real facts on diet soft drinks but my "poor man's" version is "you can't get sumptin for nuthin". In other words, there ain't no free lunch! I think the chemicals do confuse the body and quite frankly when I dropped my 2 diet Pepsi consumption/day I lost 5-6 lbs of water weight. Personally, my body appears to carry more water when I drink them either from the sodium and/or to help dilute the toxins. The bottom line is I carry more weight when I drink them and it takes me 3-4 days to lose the water after I quit.
Vince
Sounds like lots of work but maybe some of our members already have daily diet trackers to give others a cliffnotes version of how to eat without putting all the pieces together themselves...making it stoopid easy I guess.
Just a suggestion for those that qualify.
Vince
I'm not doing so well with my eating right now, but I am using LostIt! as well to try and get back on track. One feature of it is that you can add friends and share results via the app. I haven't tried it yet but I'd be willing to test it out if someone else wants to test it with me.
@matt I just got the Touch and I am going to download Loseit to it I will let you know.
You know alot of the diet soda that I do drink does seem to make me feel bloated after I drink it. I will layoff it for a few days and see how things turn out. In the meantime I'll continue counting calories on Fitday.com and go from there. That website sure makes it easy.
It would be interesting to see what some of you are eating to survive. Because it would be nice to drop the pounds and also maintain the same if not more power. I'm still waiting on my powertap though so I'm basing my workouts by feel right now. And I start swimming this week seeing how I haven't swam at all since probably november so this will also help with calorie consuption.
Thanks everyone!!
Rich
As far as soda goes it is bad stuff wether diet or not. Like Penny said lots of sugar in the regular stuff. 10tsps of sugar drops your immunity by about 60% for 6 or so hours. If you are on the edge with training and feeling run down it can easily push you over the edge. To say nothing of all the chemicals. I read somewhere that if you drink 2 soda's a day you drink about 8lbs of chemicals a year. Bottom line there is nothing good for you in soda.
Diet soda's actually help you gain weight, and are toxic to you. Artificial sweetners should never have been approved for human consumption. See link below.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/2/23/diet-soda-now-linked-to-heart-disease.aspx
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/07/09/soda-dangers-part-two.aspx
There is another link that states aspartamine used to be on the army's chemical weapons list before the FDA approved it to be used in food. I can't find it right now.
Anyway for weight loss I would avoid all soda except for rare occasions.
Just to chime in from the moderation side, here's how I think about priorities for weight loss:
The point is that many of the posts here are about the bottom bullet, villifying diet soda. If there are tons of people who've successfully managed weight while drinking some diet soda, then I'd say focus on where the biggest bang for the buck is (bullets 2, 3, 4, in that order).
Lay off the full-sugar soda entirely. If you must drink some diet soda to make the transition, do it.
If all else fails, remember that the food you put in your mouth is also a chemical signal to your body as to what to do with it.
Good luck.
Mike
x2 on the LoseIt app. I downloaded it after several members recommended it to Rich a bit ago. It is such a great app - tracking is such a PITA, but LoseIt makes it almost easy. And it's FREE! I've been using it for 2 weeks and have lost 5 pounds.
Tracking calories is the only way I can consistently lose weight. The nighttime sweet tooth is my killer. And I'm less likely to eat a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies if I actually have to look at the calories.
I'd be in for the "sharing dally calories" experiment. Not sure if I would "qualify", but I'm 6' and 190lbs.
And I'd LOVE to do the LoseIt friends dealio with EN folks. My registered email for LoseIt is: geoffandvirginia at gmail dot com.
Geoff and Matt, I just sent you friend request. I've taken a couple days off though, from training and counting cals so...there you go. About to jump on my bike though.
@Mike very smart post Mike. I have made small changes to my diet and have seen good results. As my wife who is a Weight Watcher leader says moderation, if having a diet soda keeps you going then do it. I can guarantee that its not the diet soda killing anyones diet. Biggest thing to do is keep track of what you eat when you eat and why you are eating it. Also if you are going to have some special do it enjoy it and move on.
As far as eating prior to your workout it depends how long it has been before you last ate, how long/intense your workout is, and what you are consuming during your workout. I think a granola bar and/or hammer gel would be fine as long as you feel like you are not pooping out during the workout. If you're having the shakes your body is saying "FEED ME NOW!" That means your blood sugar is dropping too low. I would encourage you to eat BEFORE you get those shakes.
As others have said, diet sodas don't have sugar but do use artifical sweetener. I'm not a fan, but think if you have 1 - 2 a day it is probably OK. As someone else stated, I don't know what is in them but when I cut them out I'll lose weight.
As far as the Subway question, I would say see what the results are from logging your food. Those online programs can also give you a baseline number of calories for the day so at least you have a ballpark to shoot for.
I was much cleaner with my diet yesterday and dramatically reduced total cals and carbs just because I didnt' want to enter the data...therefore I didn't eat the crap. I was 3.6 lbs lighter today from less water weight.
Nice!
V
Yep. If you eat it, that means you have to log it = admission of defeat/weakness = you don't eat it. That's what I've found.