Weight loss and weight management catch-all!

sh*t. Almost 3 months into my new job. Have only been to the gym 4 times. Pretty much completely fallen off except for two different weeks I tried to be motivated and went a couple days.

I know I've put on weight but haven't stepped on the scale to see how much.

Got to get back on track somehow. But the new job is double the commute each way. And whereas I would sometimes go to my old work gym on the weekend, I won't drive 30 min to my new job for it. And with the commute I don't want to spend extra time on site each night.

Maybe time for home weight set or planet fitness since it's 5 min from house. Any other suggestions?

Has anyone had success with intermittent fasting? I have days where I am feeling kind of blah and bloated and I skip breakfast and eat a late lunch and I feel much better. I know this is kind of a fad right now, but when I looked into it I found some fairly well researched articles about the benefits to blood sugar, but to fasting at night. The idea being that you have a hearty breakfast and lunch and then taper down and have a light, early dinner. Then basically go 12 hours without food.

I did IF while keto from October of last year to March of this year, then eating normally on weekends, and lost 20 lbs in the first 2 months. My version was eating only from 12noon to 8pm (16 hours of fasting, but usually half of that I was asleep), pulling food from the keto "pool" and was fairly successful with it. I went back to having carbs after I got into heavier weightlifting, needing the additional calories so I dropped the IF as well, otherwise it's difficult to build muscle on restrictive caloric intake.

When IF, I was hungry for breakfast for the first week or so, but it soon subsided and I actually wasn't starving come lunch time.

All of this has taught me to watch my sugar intake and I eat a lot more fiber and whole grains.

DSGamer wrote:

Has anyone had success with intermittent fasting? I have days where I am feeling kind of blah and bloated and I skip breakfast and eat a late lunch and I feel much better. I know this is kind of a fad right now, but when I looked into it I found some fairly well researched articles about the benefits to blood sugar, but to fasting at night. The idea being that you have a hearty breakfast and lunch and then taper down and have a light, early dinner. Then basically go 12 hours without food.

My brother easts 2 days, 1 day schedule.

Het eats two days, and 1 day nothing... except for some salad if he is really hungry. Tea and water.

He claims it is easier because he doesn't have to think about which food he takes, he claims he sleeps very well the day he does not eat (maybe one or two hours earlier than normal), and he claims he never overcompensates the other days in eating for his 1 day fasting.

Must say, he looks better than ever.

DSGamer wrote:

Has anyone had success with intermittent fasting? I have days where I am feeling kind of blah and bloated and I skip breakfast and eat a late lunch and I feel much better. I know this is kind of a fad right now, but when I looked into it I found some fairly well researched articles about the benefits to blood sugar, but to fasting at night. The idea being that you have a hearty breakfast and lunch and then taper down and have a light, early dinner. Then basically go 12 hours without food.

A lot of people have success with IF, but not because it's some magical fad diet, it works because it can provide a framework for managing overall food intake for people that fits some people's overall lifestyle. If you're one of those people and feel like IF might fit you, give it a shot.

I think there was some discussion of IF earlier in the thread that might be worth digging up for some more detailed opinions.

Well, so I answered Farley about Noom in pm. Short story, 12 pounds down in a bit over 6 months, hit a sort of steady state for a few months, and just in the last few days starting losing again, after getting an injection that wiped out some painful bursitis and improved my walking/exercise and sleep capabilities. TL;DR - Give it a shot, it's a great system that helps you deal mentally with the issues related to weight loss, not just gives you the tools to do it.

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Yes. I had lost some weight in the year before I started, but not for a few months. I dropped about 7 pounds in 2 months with Noom, then plateaued. A lot of folks in my group did better, but I was under stress from various sources. But I had hit the weight I was in 2004, which is a good start. And last week, I got rid of some chronic pain and I'm dropping again. Very excited.

Noom starts you out with big principles, and compensations to help you put them into effect. Then each week it explores one or two of them in detail, adding all sorts of techniques you can use to implement them. It provides you with tracking systems for your weight and food intake and exercise. It gives you a group of people who started when you did and are sharing the experience, so you have folks to talk to. And every day there's an exercise or two that you can do to help cement the things you've learned.

They really do use CBT methods in the program, and that helps a lot. Not only do you change habits and develop new ones, but it supports you when you do it. You have a personal guide you can text with, and there's the group, which also has its own facilitator. So it's like having a nutritionist and a psychologist on-call to answer questions and help you figure ways to cope when you're having issues.

Eventually, they throw the kitchen sink at you, which is a great thing. The reason is that you'll find that some things you learn will work well for you, and some won't, so the more tricks and tips and data you get, the more you can build something that works for you as the program goes on. It's awesome in that regard. You'll craft your own changes and make them work, without judgement by anyone else, just support. If you miss a bit, or you gain weight, or you have trouble getting into a groove, well, tomorrow's another day. They constantly remind you that no one ever just loses weight. Even with strong lifestyle changes, your weight will fluctuate. The important thing is to not give up and let the food compensate for the weight gain that leads to giving up, if that makes sense. And they do a great job of it.

I'm in the situation now where, in the last two years, I've gone from 245 to 215. I started Noom at about 227 (okay, hmmm, that's more than 7 pounds since December, isn't it? More like 12 at this point.). My blood pressure is pretty normal; it started high but I have greatly reduced my salt, sugar and caffeine intake. Inflammation of my legs is gone (it wasn't terrible, but it was consistent and worrying). I'm not constantly feeling full, so I can work out for 5 or 10 minute sessions when I can get them, during the day (they have a whole library of exercises, bodyweight and otherwise, and teach the HIT exercise method). My endurance is up, my steps per day have doubled even after walking the dogs, and I'm getting ready to start a regular MA class again. And as I said, since I got rid of a spot of bursitis, and I've got this nice system of eating much more healthy stuff I fix myself going, my desire to snack is way down and I'm losing again.

I love this program. It's easy, it's friendly, it teaches you how to make it work and then you can sort it out in your own head. I am very impressed.

I think they have a four or six month program? Mine was not very expensive. Also, some companies will pay you to do the program, or at least repay you. You should check that.

Good luck whatever you choose!

I'm convinced that any change that is not permanent will not create results that last. Change habits, change thinking, change behavior. Just changing one of those won't do it... If you sign up for a different diet, or a reduction in calories, or whatever, you've got to make it second nature, and for the rest of your (hopefully healthier) life. Anything where you think "Oh, I'll hit my target and then go back to my normal life" is mistaken... You'll only change by establishing a new normal. That's the real secret.

I posted a little while ago about planning to see a dietitian to get another perspective on weight issues. I've now had 4 or 5 appointments over the last few months and plan to continue monthly going forward, but it's been going pretty great.

For the initial meeting, I did a metabolic test and a body composition test. The metabolic test concluded that, given my height/weight/age/sex, I should be burning ~2300 calories a day, but my metabolism was actually only burning around 1800 calories a day. I then spoke with the dietitian about my eating habits, and told her my long and generally positive history with low carb diets. The main takeaway from my visit was a)I needed to eat more, aiming for around 2200 calories a day when I'd previously been aiming for 1800, b)I should add 3 servings of carbs per day, and c)I needed to shift my consumption habits so that I get more calories in morning and afternoon and fewer at the end of the day, as my slower metabolism may be attributed to me training my body to hold onto the energy I was giving it since I was taking in the bulk of my calories at the end of the day.

After 3-4 weeks of this, I had gained 3 pounds, which didn't feel encouraging, but the body composition tests indicated it was all lean tissue/muscle gain (i.e. not fat). Also, having spent much of the past 7 or 8 years viewing carbs as the devil, the fact that I was successfully eating things like oatmeal, greek yogurt, fresh fruits, etc. without my weight ballooning up more than that was really nice. After another month of sticking to the plan, I've lost those 3 pounds plus another 5-6 pounds, with all of the weight loss coming from burning fat.

The thing that always appealed to me about low carb dieting was that it felt relatively easy to me. Sure I'd love some pizza or cookies or whatever else, but being able to eat steak and bacon really made up for it, and the fact that my weight would fly up every time I ventured back into carb-land made the idea of abandoning the diet unthinkable. But now I'm finding this diet even easier. I'm eating about 2200 calories a day, divided pretty equally throughout the day into 3 meals and 2 snacks, generally limiting myself to 2-3 servings of carbs, but taking in more like 100-120 grams of carbs per day as opposed to the ~20 I used to aim for. Best of all, having a more carb flexible diet, I've felt more comfortable allowing occasional treats--ice cream on my birthday, a slice of pizza when the kids' leftovers were looking especially tempting--and they have not impeded my progress at all. I always felt like my low carb dieting was a pretty sustainable and low-effort lifestyle, but this new approach is even easier and feels even more sustainable.

If anyone is thinking about seeing a dietitian, I recommend it. I decided to do it after I was feeling a bit stuck on my weight despite using the techniques that had worked well for me in the past. Thinking about how to break my plateau, I remembered I had heard good things about Intermittent Fasting, and I found myself reading stuff on Reddit, and as I was considering adopting this somewhat unusual diet strategy on the basis of the advice of random Redditors, it occurred to me that if this were any other are of health, the idea of following the advice of strangers on the internet over a licensed professional would be unthinkable to me.

Ok, I signed up for Noom. It seems like a great way to try to get off this extra weight. Sometimes I don't know what I can do because I feel I eat well but I am betting when I really look at it I will see a lot of small ways I add in calories that I just gloss over.

220 today. Noom says I can hit my goal of 180 by sometime in November.

Good luck Farley!

So, I hit a real bad stretch of a few years where I got injured and went way off the rails with eating and alcohol consumption and zero practical physical activity.

I ballooned up to 270. TBH, I was pretty comfortable with myself as a person and wasn't experiencing the major depression I had in the past.

However, I began experiencing physical pain related to the weight in the feet, knees, hips, and back. I also had several incidents at work where a physical response was indicated and I came up lacking.

So, I set myself on a path to get my sh*t together. I am seeing a VA dietician and I have followed an activity guideline where I am up to engaging in 75 minutes of moderate physical activity 4x weekly.

I am down 23 lbs (247) at about two months. I am going to have monthly visits with the dietician and primary care as needed.

Tracking all food is annoying. I know it is needed but what it really tells me is I need to figure out what to stop eating.

By that I mean, on a day when I have pretty normal meals I am still right at the top of my limit so in order to really lose I will have to cut out something. For example, yesterday I had two slices of whole wheat bread with peanut butter for breakfast, a serving of triskits for snack, a smart ones heat/eat/ for lunch, and a lean piece of beef, baked potato, and broccoli for supper. That put me right up to the limit of my calories. While I didn't feel hungry that also wasn't a lot of food.

So to lose weight I will have to cut out a meal. It isn't horrible. I am not really hungry until 10 am-ish so cutting out breakfast will not be hard but will give me some spare calories if I want a snack at night or something.

This is what worked well for me years ago on Weight Watchers and I bet it will work again. It just doesn't feel like anything I ate in my example was all that horrible.

farley3k wrote:

Tracking all food is annoying. I know it is needed but what it really tells me is I need to figure out what to stop eating.

By that I mean, on a day when I have pretty normal meals I am still right at the top of my limit so in order to really lose I will have to cut out something. For example, yesterday I had two slices of whole wheat bread with peanut butter for breakfast, a serving of triskits for snack, a smart ones heat/eat/ for lunch, and a lean piece of beef, baked potato, and broccoli for supper. That put me right up to the limit of my calories. While I didn't feel hungry that also wasn't a lot of food.

So to lose weight I will have to cut out a meal. It isn't horrible. I am not really hungry until 10 am-ish so cutting out breakfast will not be hard but will give me some spare calories if I want a snack at night or something.

This is what worked well for me years ago on Weight Watchers and I bet it will work again. It just doesn't feel like anything I ate in my example was all that horrible.

Not sure if you're looking for pointers, but here's a couple ideas....

I disagree that you need to cut out a meal, though that's a perfectly cromulent approach if that works for you.

If you want alternatives to pad your diet out, focus on substitutions for the empty carbs, ideally with vegetables. Swap the triskets for carrots and boom - you've freed up 100 calories. Bin the baked potato and swap in a massive green salad.

I've had success with a "snack all you want, but only on veg" approach. I've taken a huge box of spinach to work and just grazed on it all day. No hunger whatsoever, huge amount of vitamins, and barely any calories. Additional bonus - comedy green poops!

True. But I know what really makes me feel happy and full and while I can go veggies I do love my carbs! So knowing that I feel like it works more for me to cut something I really don't care about so I can have more of what I want.

I pretty much have gotten around to the idea that I can eat what I want, but make sensible choices when it comes to eating "right". More veggies, less fried food and if I have fish and chips for lunch (which I just did) I will make up for it by including an additional set of weight lifting this evening and tack on another 10 minutes or so on the elliptical to help defray some of the additional calories.

DSGamer wrote:

Has anyone had success with intermittent fasting? I have days where I am feeling kind of blah and bloated and I skip breakfast and eat a late lunch and I feel much better. I know this is kind of a fad right now, but when I looked into it I found some fairly well researched articles about the benefits to blood sugar, but to fasting at night. The idea being that you have a hearty breakfast and lunch and then taper down and have a light, early dinner. Then basically go 12 hours without food.

I've been eating low-carb for about 10 months now - I lost a bunch, then plateaued. Switching my eating to 8 hrs on, 16 off definitely helped me break through and I've lost about 10 additional pounds since. I feel like IF is much easier to handle on a low carb diet - my blood sugar isn't all over and so I don't get that ravenous feeling anymore.

Random update:

Day 122

Starting weight: 270 lbs.
Current weight: 233 lbs.

Feels good to have continual progress.

Can anyone recommend a good calorie counter? Preferably one where I can put in recipes of stuff I often make, get the total calories and then just say how much of that I ate. I also would love it if it had a database of common fast food stuff. For example we get a papa murphy's pizza every Tuesday and I eat 1/4 of it so I would like to just be able to look that up rather than have to figure out the dough, pepperoni, green peppers, sausage, etc. calorie value.

This is basically all I use Noom for so when my subscription runs out I intend to drop it. Don't get me wrong it is wonderful in many ways but I haven't read any of their information that I didn't already know really.

Is Calorie King still around? That was a popular app for this a few years back.

I still use MyFitnessPal. It's riddled with issues and things to get you to pay a subscription, but for my tracking needs, it's served okay.

I'm down 20-25 pounds since April, about halfway to my ultimate goal, though I've landed on a plateau for the past month or so that's been hard to break. 200 - 205 depending on the day/time.

Ugh, I wish there was something better, but after trying out a few alternatives, I think MyFitnessPal is still the best and easiest to use. My only real beef is the garbage crowd-sourced data. There is a lot of good info in there, but a lot of junk comes up in the less-than-optimal search (2 tbsp fresh grated ginger is more likely to give you a list of ginger ales than anything from the produce aisle, and for a long, long time the default for chopped garlic was an erroneous entry that assigned a clove of garlic something like 600 calories).

But, the recipe builder is otherwise good and has an import feature that's handy if you cook off internet recipes. The data is just full of frustrating crowd-sourced junk that crowds out the good data and it affects daily logs and recipe building both.

Other pluses: pretty good macro tracking, even in the free version, and the bar code scanner is super-handy when you are dealing with packaged food.

I also find it helps the tedium of calorie tracking to just repeat a lot of meals. There's a quick right-swipe you can do to repeat yesterday's lunch, for example. If you cook alot and do meal prep (get a kitchen scale) this helps a ton.

So, I have been using MFP but more as a personal accountability tool than rigid calorie counting.

It is full of dumb, bad entries but if you have a base knowledge of what typical calorie counts are for items you typically eat, you will be fine.

One piece of advice I have gotten that has helped me recently is to cut back / eliminate processed (sausages, etc) and cured meats. I think of it now more like candy. It's a treat once in a while.

Morning all, my wife is currently trying to lose the weight that she was left with following the birth of our son a couple of years ago, unfortunately without a huge amount of success so far.

She has been successful in changing her diet (smaller portions, more salad, etc) but struggles to be physically active due, mostly, to our son requiring the majority of her, limited, energy.

Essentially what I'm looking for is recommendations for a workout app - just very simple body weight stuff - to help her get into a routine. None of the apps I've found so far have really caught my eye. We need something that has the very basics of how to do each activity and can start very simply. Again just to get into the routine to start with, vice finishing feeling tired.

I decided 2 weekends ago to try and get myself together. Diet had gone south and due to illnesses and mental health I'd barely exercised all year. All resulting in putting on about 30kg. So I set some rules for myself: exercise at least 5 times a week (preferably 30minutes+), all home cooked meals full of vegies, only fruits/vegies/nuts for snacks, no drinks other than tea and water (occasional juice allowed).

Got myself two accountability partners and so far it's going well. Started biking to work so I'm tricking myself into exercise, getting in to work in half the time, and saving about $8 per day on public transport fees. Stocked my desk drawer with oats and granola for lunches, add some fruit and it's pretty darn tasty. On day 12 now and so far I've not broken any of the rules, I'm starting to feel a lot better, and I've lost about 3kg.

Alyosius wrote:

Morning all, my wife is currently trying to lose the weight that she was left with following the birth of our son a couple of years ago, unfortunately without a huge amount of success so far.

She has been successful in changing her diet (smaller portions, more salad, etc) but struggles to be physically active due, mostly, to our son requiring the majority of her, limited, energy.

Essentially what I'm looking for is recommendations for a workout app - just very simple body weight stuff - to help her get into a routine. None of the apps I've found so far have really caught my eye. We need something that has the very basics of how to do each activity and can start very simply. Again just to get into the routine to start with, vice finishing feeling tired.

My wife really likes Aaptiv. It's a subscription, but I think you get the first 90 days free. There are a lot of options, including outdoor and at home workouts. I don't have personal experience with it, but she's really stuck with it and enjoyed it.

Four weeks down. Exercised on 22 of those days, 5kg lost so far.

nm

Since you removed your post, I'll remove my answer.

Apologies.

I find calorie tracking apps way too much work. Either that or everything needs a login to up sell you and wants to track everything else too. A quick scan of the top 15 apps didn’t fit the bill.

For what I’m looking for a spreadsheet would work just as well. I just don’t have the time and patience to set up and research every piece of food I eat because all of my meals would be custom. I hardly ever eat out and when I do it’s not at chains.

The calorie tracking apps have extensive lists of food as well as ingredients. Huge numbers of branded and non-branded foods. There's almost zero need to research or check the packages.

Noom takes me about a minute per meal. Maybe two. Even if I break down a ham sandwich into bread, mustard, ham and cheese, it's all right there.