Losing Weight

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Oh, thanks for your advice. I was thinking about losing weight too

A few years ago, I dropped from 245 down to 180 in less than a year. The big secret? I quit drinking Dr. Pepper constantly, eating fast food at least one meal a day, and hitting up the gas station for candy bars etc.

I still grab the occasional candy bar, and I splurge on fast food once or twice a month, and my Diet Dr. Pepper consumption borders on embarrassing ...

I also wanted to start some sort of exercise, but I'm just simply not interested at all in lifting weights, or joining a gym, or anything stereotypically associated with getting in shape. I decided to start walking, and I walk around town every day. Not only is it physical activity (admittedly not much, but better than nothing), but the fresh air is nice, and I really enjoy the chance to "spend time" with my mp3 player uninterrupted.

it depends on what diet pills you're talking about. amphetamine-based diet pills worked because they killed your appetite, there are a few other examples of pills that worked and also had nasty side effects but the vast majority of diet pills just won't do anything.

as for weight loss, someone said eat a lot early and slow down towards the end of the day, i agree wholeheartedly with this. my morning smoothie before rowing is usually around 600-700Cal. after this i eat about every hour and a half, a snack (~300Cal) when i get to work after rowing (i go straight to work after rowing), another one at morning break, lunch, another snack at afternoon break (i love government work and their breaks), with dinner and a snack after work (which one comes first depends on how much time i've got before evening practice). this year i'm not losing weight quite as quickly as last year, but i've got more muscle than i had last year so i've got to cut more fat to get to the same weight. the big difference, however, between this year and last year is my energy level. last year i would go to rowing without eating, i would eat a big breakfast after rowing, eat during work but not as regularly and i wasn't eating as much. I'm much happier this year, i've got more energy, and i'm not burning out as much or as badly as a result (i burnt out a bit the last two weeks because of lack of sleep).

I'm also improving my fitness more as a result of the higher calorie intake. Last year i shaved 2sec off my 2km time on the ergometer (rowing machine) in 4 months of twice daily practices during the summer. in the fall when i improved my diet and had only one practice a day, i cut 4 seconds in two months.

so in order to kick start your day you should have a big meal at the beginning of the day and you should be eating regularly during the day. if you feel hungry you should eat, but eat reasonable, small portions. if you find you don't want to eat much in the morning at first, your body should adjust fairly quickly. i used to not be able to eat in the morning, it would be hard to get the food down and i'd shudder when i tried. now i've been eating so regularly that i get hungry within a half hour of my regular meal time if i haven't eaten, but i've got much more energy and feel much more awake, alert, and lively than i did before.

if you're interested i'm posting a very simple smoothie i've been eating pretty much every morning before rowing since the fall season. I use relatively high calorie ingredients because i need to have a very large meal at the start since i do about 2hrs of cardio before i can eat again (15min bike to rowing, 1-1.5hrs of rowing, 15-20min intense bike to work) so you can (and probably should) choose lower fat ingredients if you want (all quantities are approximated, adjust to get the desired thickness/texture)

Beefy breakfast smoothie:
1/2 cup yogurt (6% fat astro balkan style yogurt or 4% organic yogurt)
1/2 - 1 cup homogenized milk
1/2 cup pasteurized egg whites (approx 4 egg whites, you can't taste the egg and it adds protein)
1 - 2 cups frozen berries

i usually end up with about 1L of smoothie, so it fills me up pretty well, gives me energy, and it's really fast to make, all you have to do is throw everything in a blender and turn it on for a few seconds. this is the best breakfast i've found for my lifestyle since i really don't have much time in the morning (5:15am practice) so this is something i enjoy that also serves my needs really well.

As Scooby from "scoobysworkshop" says, "eat less, exercise more". I try not to go over 2000 calories a day, I try to keep my calorie intake around 1500 or less a day, but I also take karate so I get plenty of excercise, I need to start lifting my weights again though, I've been getting lazy with that.

So yeah, watch your calorie intake and try to get some cardiovascular exercise in as much as you can, that'll maximize your weight lose. I don't really have a specific diet to give though.

Wanna hear a messed up situation When I was five I was 50Lbs then came the diagnosis,and the bad transition of from riddilin which raise the metabolism to respirodol which leads to weight gain and overeating and a slowed metabolism now I a have sleep apena along with RLS So I am usually tired Now I am eating healthier and do exercise hopefully my metabolism will return and I continually have to lose less because I am constantly getting taller hopefully due to my age my skin will snap back so no elephant ears or other bad leftover effects I hope I will be able to lose all my weight or to 150lbs not i am 240lbs or somthing likethat now by my 18th birthday so around this time next year.

I'm back to losing a pound per day, on average. In reality, your body doesn't generally lose weight at a perfectly steady rate, but in spurts.

So, while dieting and exercising the same amounts every day, Monday I'll be 171, Tuesday I'll still be 171, but Wednesday I'll be 169. And that pattern repeats. It's a sort of "No steps forward, two steps forward" progression. Losing weight is all about being sensible and self-disciplined in your diet and your exercise routine. I don't push myself to extremes. For instance, I don't watch my salt and sugar intake, just my calorie and fat intake. I don't gorge on salt and sugar either, I just consume them in normal levels. Make sure you don't make your diet an excessively bitter exerience, or you might end up giving up on it. Keep it enjoyable enough for you to stick with it without feeling miserable. For instance, eat low fat, not non-fat. Eat some extra calories every few days when you feel like it. Treat yourself to a once-per-week food indulgence. But never let that indulgence exceed 300 calories or so; you don't want to backtrack a lot on your progress. And, if you really want an extreme calorie indulgence exceed 300, or even 400 calories, have the responsibility to work it off. If you burn it off, it's guiltless.

On the diet front, I have myself down to an intake of 1,300 - 1,400 calories per day.
On the exercise front, I burn 400 calories daily on the treadmill (which makes up the bulk of my exercise routine). Then, I do a few dumbbell exercises and as many crunches as I can do. (Always do your stretches before any exercise, to avoid soreness the next day.) Dieting and exercising in just those ways daily, I lose, on average, a pound per day. Which is good, because I have 28 more pounds I have to lose until I'm at my "ideal" weight, according to some health websites. I look pregnant right now, but much less pregnant than I used to, and my goal is to eventually have a flat tummy.

Doing them before the workout decreases the contractile strength of the muscle so your workout won't be as productive because your muscles can't work as hard. studies have also shown that stretching before exercise does not decrease the chance of injury, so you should leave the stretching to afterward.

i'm pretty much at my goal of 159.5lbs, i've got about 2lbs to go in 2 weeks. i could probably get down to that weight now if i had a competition by sweating out some water, but i don't want to have to do that so i'd better not gorge.

Maybe, but when you've stretched before exercising, you'll be able to exercise the next day as well, thus boosting your muscles' work amount above just one day's non-stretched exercise, because you won't be hindered by the excessive soreness that occurs for days after an exercise for which you did not stretch. I know whereof I speak. Not stretching delays my next workout by 2 to 3 days depending on the strenuousness of the particular exercise. Which burns more calories: 1. an exercise routine done 1 day out of a 3-day period and without having stretched, or 2. the same exercise routine done all three days, and each done after stretching? The answer is obvious.



That's highly doubtful. Everyone knows that cramps occur most when the person hasn't stretches the muscle before exercising it.

And I suppose animals, which most often stretch before activity, do it for no reason at all? My cat stretches, the dog I used to have stretched, even my parrot stretches. She stretches each leg out at a time while leaning forward and stretching one wing downward at a time, and then she stretches both her wings together above her.




Source: http://www.tutorials.com/05/0503/0503.asp

Somebody gave me a really good tip. Take 8 oz of water. Then take a spoonful of apple cider vinegar, not the stuff you cook with but whole apple cider vinegar that is organic, a company called Bragg makes excellent whole apple cider vinegar. Stir the vinegar into the water. Drink. You may need to add a dab of organic honey or a tiny bit of baking soda if it's too acidic. If you drink that twice a day, and eat a balanced diet of 1500 calories or so, you should eventually lose weight.

Everybody needs to realize (but doesn't) that if you lose fat you will have water rush in to take its place before it drains away. This usually results in wild swings on the scale. If people do the right things, they will have wild swings, and then they will stop doing those things in a panic. Don't panic, just hold it steady. Your body has a "set point" that it will defend. It moves UP easily, but goes DOWN with great difficulty. This was likely so early proto-humans could store fat to nourish them through the winter, like a bear does. The basic problem a human faces in losing fat is this set point. Thus the diet pills.

The problem with all the "herbal" pills sold over the internet is that they come from China, and the Chinese siphon off key ingredients of appetite suppressants like Meridia that are made there and stick them in the pills. Dosages vary widely, and people pop the pills like candy, not knowing what they contain. Whole apple cider vinegar is cheap, only a few dollars a pint. It's food, not a pill.

Eating lots of vegetables will increase your weight -- but only temporarily, as long as you keep exercising. And eating lots of vegetables does not increase your fat. It doesn't increase your weight in any unhealthy way, and it doesn't increase your size at all. And again, it only increase your weight temporarily, if you keep exercising and keep your fat and calorie intake low.

I discovered this concept personally two days ago, when I radically departed from my normal food choices by eating three cans of vegetables in one day. Despite keeping my fat and calorie intake as low as I usually do, and performing my normal workout routine, my weight actually went up two pounds from the day before! But the reason was simple: The quantity of vegetables I consumed simply weighed around two pounds, and hadn't yet left my system. So, while it is a psychological pain to see the scale telling you that you now weigh more after you've eaten and exercised so well on that day, this weight gain is completely superficial and disregardable. Indeed, as I had guessed it would, my weight loss resumed, continuing at its normal rate the following day, even though I ate 2 more cans of vegetables that day.

What pezar wrote is essentially correct: Don't pay much attention to weight fluctuations on the scale if your fat and calorie intake are low every day, and you preform a significant daily exercise routine. Judge the scale weight week by week, not day by day, and you'll see weight loss.

I lost 14 kg in 6 months. Now I am learning it has caused me depression, so it was too much too quickly.

I still wish I could lose some more, but I don't want to ruin my life doing it.

That's about as much as I want to lose from my current weight. And I plan to do it in 45 days.
So I'm curious: How did losing this weight in 6 months cause you depression? Was it the hard work it took?
Simply being 14 kg lighter doesn't make you depressed, does it?

Being ninety pounds lighter has made me feel better in many ways, but it too led to depression. I didn't 'look' right or like the person I knew in the mirror, which was distressing. My body had trouble compensating for the loss, so there was significant pain until I rebuilt and rebalanced some of my muscle groups. Losing 30 pounds in 45 days is a goal that I would not endorse; a healthier and more practical regimen to me would be 30 pounds in 4 months. Still rapid, but the metabolism and physiology has a chance to adjust in step with the loss. Also - the stretching -is- more beneficial after exercise than before, as stretching a cold muscle is as likely if not more to cause damage (think of stretching a cold rubber band vs. a warm one), and the stretching post-exercise helps release the lactic acid build up in the muscles themselves.


M.

What we eat has an effect on our body chemistry. Changing diets can change our moods, too. Its the chemicals, like serotonin, for example.

You obviously missed what i was saying. I didn't say don't stretch, i said stretch after exercising. you're still stretching, you're just not decreasing the effectiveness of your workout by doing it beforehand.

Muscle cramps occur when you're dehydrated or not properly warmed up. you will never see an olympic rower or runner (not including sprinters, they might stretch before, i'm not sure) stretching before a race because it weakens their muscles. these athletes also have multiple races so they need to be fit for subsequent competitions but they won't stretch before racing. A proper warm up will vary based on the exercise being done. to properly warm up for a 2000m rowing race, you actually need to do hard pieces at or above race pace. when you see rowers on the starting line they're breathing heavily and their heart rate is quite high because they've warmed up properly, blood is rushing to their muscles, their lungs are ready to work at maximum capacity, etc.. you do not need to stretch to get blood flowing to your muscles.

Animals aren't exercising with the goal of increasing performance, they don't train like humans do and thus this is irrelevant.

your quote does not say you should stretch before exercise, they simply say you should stretch, which is important. I stretch, but not until i'm done my workout. My coach has a master's degree in kinesiology, she's worked with national team coaches to develop various training methods, and she tells us not to stretch before workouts or before races, but emphasizes that we should stretch afterwards.





a few more links to support my argument (i tried to get the most reliable sources but i'm doing this before work so i only did a quick search):
http://publicaffairs.unlv.edu/news-Medi ... tml?id=671
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/122341.php
http://www.elitesoccerconditioning.com/ ... tching.htm
you can also see the wikipedia article on stretching if you'd like, i didn't include it because it didn't have links to any of the cited articles supporting my claims.

You directly implied stretching only afterwards:

So, for the second time now, you're been incorrect in your response to my post.
Will you make it a third time now, or will you admit you were wrong both times?

My brother is a fitness expert who has performed full daily workout routines for 30+ years, studying the science behind it as he went, and says your claim about not stretching beforehand is preposterous, including your assertion that stretching afterwards is better then doing so before exercising. He wondered if you also thought sprinters' trainers recommend their clients bathe in ice water before running, rather than warm water. Stretching warms up your muscles and increase blood flow to them in preparation for exercise.

So you're just flat wrong. Get over it.



Also untrue. You clearly are not familiar with the science regarding exercise.



I'm working out, not racing. Those pursuits have totally different goals, and their methods differ accordingly.