Thread: Whipping Myself Into Shape

Well the way i see it Scotty
if i never seen this post i would problay have not gone to the
Dr either and would have over look all this...
So on the bright side was a great post for me...
I see the Dr today for a wiegh in..
I was at 144.5 and am now down to 131.5

so every thing is looking great thanks

John

My meals are pretty simple during the day and that is because Im taking advantage of my love of veggies. I buy them in the frozen bags and try to keep a good variety. And I do try to buy fresh veggies once or twice a week. But its simply faster to use the frozen veggies. All I do to them is just boil some water, throw in the veggies just barely long enough to warm through (I hate over cooked veggies) and then drain.

Then once that is done I'll add some cubed tofu. Dont knock it. Eat it raw and you'll never want to taste it again because it is truly bland. But tofu takes on the flavor of anything it is cooked in or soaked in, etc. I'll marinate it in vinegarettes, light sauces, etc. I also cook up some Chicken or Turkey cutlets and chop that up and add it to everything.

When I go to work, I will take three 1-cup servings of veggies mixed with about two tablespoons or so of meat and tofu and then I will drizzle on some type of vinagerette, light dressing, etc to add some flavor to it all and spice it up. I'll take along some snacks as well, something low carb, lean protein, etc. About every 2 to 2-1/2 hours I will eat one of the veggie packs and then something sensible in the eveing after I get off work. It works out pretty well but you have to discipline yourself to prepare in advance. Otherwise you wake up in the morning and its far too easy to say well I dont have that made up or cooked so Im just going to skip today.

I do get thes WICKED cravings at work for Reeses Peanut Butter cups as I really really love peanut butter and chocolate but I usually do well with that as long as I have some veggies as the fiber in them keeps you full. But I cheat every now and then.

The key thing is prepare ahead. Prepare your food in advance or at a minimum have a menu of sorts of what you will eat throughout the week. It seems like a lot of work but it is really a time saver and is very helpful in preventing deviations to things not so good for weight reduction.

Hope that all helps out some. Its slow, and my weight has fluctuated, but Im staying on course and just take it in stride. I come home and I try to stay active outside around the house for an hour or two to help with weight loss. Coming home and plopping on the couch or in front of the PC helped to get me where Im at, so I gotta do the opposite to get where I want to be.

u gotta get smartbalance penut butter with omega 3's, its not bad and has barely any sugar in it, i eat a penut butter sandwich usually before i lift your body uses the fats for energy, usually lift monday-friday about 1-2 hours a day. mon- legs, tues- chest and tricepts wed-back and bicepts, thurs- shoulders, fri- just cardio and abbs cardio 4 times a week for 20-30 minutes, protien before and after u work out, and i eat about 6-8 meals a day to keep the matabolism going strong including 4 protien shakes per day, optimum nutrition 100% whey, that also has virtually no sugar, i eat all complex carbs, fruits, wheat and what not, for protien turkey sandwhich or tender loin, fish something like that, i never cheat, and before bed i eat 1 cup of non salted 1% milk fat cottage cheese, its filled with casien protiens. tastes horrible but its mad good for building muscle. only dark chocolate is supposodly good for your heart but it has sucrose in it. To get in shape u wanna stay away from sucrose and u want natural sugars like fructose, those are good. I used to be tubby too. im 6'3 i used to weigh 270LBS, and 35% body fat 2 years ago. I am now 208LBS and 9.8% body fat. gotta love wieght training!
p.s watch out for certain protien bars, the only one i eat if i have to is the detour low sugar, u can find better shakes usually at a health food store like vitamin shop, isopure is good, and anything else with madd protien and little to now sugar in it. I cut out sucrose sugars completly, dont even put it in coffee.
though id chime in to ur post

Thanks for posting. Ive been trying to watch what I eat. Normally its been a lot of veggies with either chicken or turkey. I hardly ever eat red meat anymore. I had lost about 30lbs but when I was on vacation about a week ago I put some of that back on just because I got lazy and wasnt watching what I was eating as much though I didnt think I had gotten as bad as the scales showed. But the advice here has been not to pay a lot of attention to the scales so while it was discouraging, Im marching on.

I want to start a work out regime but I wanted to get some of my weight off first so that the stress on the body moving all that weight around would not be so bad. I love to run and used to do so quite a bit but now its a bit harder and more impact on the knees with all the weight Im carrying.

Im getting there, its just been REALLY slow going. A lot slower than I would like but I'll keep pressing on trying to get to my goal.

Yeah, Ive been really discouraged the last few weeks. But Ive made some diet changes, scrutinizing more of what I eat and then staying really busy around the house, out in the yard, servicing vehicles as much as I can and so on. It seems to be helping but only time will tell.

how cool!! I can say that I am blessed. I have not nor do I think I will ever be over weight. (6'3" 150lb) But I can say that a month or so before I found this forum that I started running again and doing calistinics (?) and eating better. I have never felt so bad and so good at the same time in my life (including sex), and what extra that I had is now gone and moved to muscle in my legs. So If any of us are ever at an event together I would be more than glad to go running with you. For the record, I've been 150 since I was in the 8th grade, I am now 31.

oh yea, Good luck! and don't stop

where are you at now?

Geesh, someone actually dug this thing up.

Well I ran into a lot of issues, mainly time things with staying on a regular exercise program. That mainly consisted of just getting up in the morning and walking and then working outside as much as I could to stay active after getting home.

I had lost about 25lbs and then it just stayed there. But I was not as disciplined with my eating as I should have been either as much as I tried. Being on the Atkins diet a couple years ago changed my eating habits drastically which was good as long as I stayed on that diet regime. Not on it, it was hard to control my food intake and as much as I tried to eat good things like lots of vegetables and stuff like that, but the junk food was hurting bad from the cravings.

Oddly enough, I lost weight while at the Branson meet and reached my lowest weight during that time.

So in order to retrain my eating habits Im now focusing less on the exercise because of the time constraints and paying much more attention to my calorie intake. I have cut myself down to 2000 calories or less per day, usually around 1600 - 1700. But Im eating really nutrient dense foods like veggies among other things. Some dont care for it, but I love tofu. You dont want to eat it raw cause it is terribly bland, but you can marinade it, or if you cook it with something it takes on the flavor of what you cook it with.

I havent ate anything cooked in oil in a while now.

Ive noticed that I have WAY more energy with the low calorie eating that I did prior to doing so. Ive noticed now also that when I do get up and do anything it doesnt take much for me to start sweating which tells me my metabolism is in a bit higher gear. Im drinking more water too and that could be helping with that also.

Before starting this I gained back about half of what I lost and that ticked me off so I decided to change things up a bit. Several years ago I did a great deal of research into the low calorie diet and was just in awe of all the benefits from it, but I never really followed through with it. I wish I had now. I physically feel better. I wake up and Im not wore out in the morning even though Im not getting much more sleep than before. In the afternoons I would just simply CRASH. Thats not happening anymore.

Ive been preparing my lunches and food for work in advance. The food Ive been fixing is largely vegetables with just a few other things in there like marinated tofu to keep the flavor buds excited. Most of my meals are in the 350 - 400 calorie range and I eat two of those at work with a yogurt or two in between and then I may splurge a bit for dinner but usually not more the 600 - 700 calories.

My fear in doing this was that I would feel completely run down but its very much the opposite. You have to taylor the calorie intake to your individual life though. Im in an office all day working with computers and such so 2000 calories or less works for me but someone that is more active would obviously need more.

I'll know more soon about how all of this is working when it comes time to check my progress. There have been studies that have shown that low calorie diets have a huge impact on aging and longevity. I just wish I had got off my butt and started this sooner. The physical effects are astounding, very impressive.

So there you have it. Im still a work in progress. I hated to show up at Branson as overweight as I am but hopefully I'll be a bit more trim next time around. I have a huge love for vegetables (as odd as that may be) and that fits perfectly in with a low calorie diet. I take a multi-vitamin just in case Im missing something from the food intake. I'll a little lean meat like turkey or some poultry here and there like eggs to make sure I dont go B12 deficient (for those that may not know, you cant get b12 in veggies. Well at least not any that are commonly available).

So stay tuned, hopefully there will be more soon.

good to hear, keep it up

I've lost 25 pounds sine May, now down to 185, aiming for 165