Weight Loss Discussion Thread

[Butterfly]

Sometimes thin people who find it easy/don't have to worry about it just make me angry instead, and that's very motivating.
Obviously, I'm just jealous.

If it's any consolation, I certainly haven't found it easy to get my weight back into the "healthy" range and it has taken a long time. And I know that a lapse in concentration would see me soon put it all back on again.

I like food too much. And beer Strawberry milkshake. It will never be easy for me to maintain a healthy weight.

d.

Ditto.

[trixie]

For more consolation...and explanation..I was an overweight pudding as a child, mercilessly teased by others at school (as only children know how) and at 10/11 years old weighed just about the same as I do now.

That's why it's important to me to keep it down.

[Wendy]

If you look at my average speed, you'll realise that I don't breeze through the miles at all.  And I'm suffering with a swollen knee where the bikes fell on me on the train.  My job is sedimentary, 'tis true, but most of my riding is commuting.

Well, you certainly look like you're dealing with it all a lot more easily than I am. *IZ TEH JEALOUS*

[simonp]

he Frontal Surface Area (FSA) is an estimation of the degree to which your body shape effects wind resistance. The greater the calculated value the greater the wind resistance. For you this equates to 0.42m2 which compares poorly to elite road cyclists who score 0.32m2. A key factor in this analysis is the percentage body fat with elite males having an average value of 11.0%, although this has been shown to increase to around 13.4% during the off season. Your score is currently 18.0% which is higher than would be expected for a road cyclist. Therefore by reducing your fat mass and maintaining your aerobic fitness you will automatically become a more economical athlete. There are two options: firstly consider your diet and examine the total amount of calories that are being consumed in the form of saturated/trans fats. Secondly the levels of fat mass may be a consequence of the training phase that you are currently in. Therefore if the volume of training was to increase fat mass would decrease.

That's my reason for losing weight.

[SlowCoach]

Sometimes thin people who find it easy/don't have to worry about it just make me angry instead, and that's very motivating.
Obviously, I'm just jealous.

If it's any consolation, I certainly haven't found it easy to get my weight back into the "healthy" range and it has taken a long time. And I know that a lapse in concentration would see me soon put it all back on again.

I like food too much. And beer. It will never be easy for me to maintain a healthy weight.

d.

I'm in the same boat as citoyen and Butterfly. I was well into the overweight category and moving towards obese when I decided I ought to something about it. That was some 20 months ago. Since then, I've slowly managed to shed over 20% of my body weigh so I'm now sitting at a BMI of 22.

Now I'm down (within the past couple of weeks) to my target weight and I desperately want to stay there. I've just upped my calorie count (from 1520 to 1980 per day) as I'm moving into "maintenance" mode. I know that if I stop counting though, I'll be adding the lard back on at a rate of knots so I'm still using MFP to monitor my eating habits.

I don't actually see myself as being in much of a different position to you, boab. We are both on the same road - I'm just a bit further along it. You are still heading up the hill whilst I'm starting to ease off as I plateau out. I apologise if this sounds that I'm gloating, but I'm really not. I feel for you - I've been there, and don't want to regress back there again. I'm still just as conscious of the issues as I used to be - you don't stop thinking about things because you've reached your target. The only way I got to where I am now was by making some life style changes, and I'm as sure as hell not going let things slide back. Let's just say that I'm a lot happier now then I was before, but I still think about the menu choices when I go out for a meal (and we still have a bread ban in the house for Monday to  Friday). Some people find it hard to lose weight. Some people find it very hard. I don't think that anyone does it easily. It's certainly not been my intention to rub things in by posting here, but only to try and return some of the support that others have given to me (even if they don't realise they've been doing it because I've just been lurking).

[CrinklyLion]

It would appear that the "heartbreak and fags diet" (_tm fboab) works then.  I appear to have dropped 7+kg since The Desk happened and am now only about half a stone above my dun run weight - and a mere 5 stone into the obese category for someone as shortarsed as me.

Not really the way to go about it thobut.

[mcshroom]

At least it is a positive result which may be a tiny bit of a silver lining

I've just rediscovered again that I have no will power when easy food is available in the house. Bread and crisps will have to go again

On a brighter note I suppose I have now dropped over half a stone since New Year's Day , so only 6st 4lb above a healthy BMI

[spenceey]

The hardest thing for me is saying no to free food at work. Just got given a chocolate bar did I eat it, course I did. Now I'll have a smaller evening meal tonight and NO DESERT!!

[Feline]

he Frontal Surface Area (FSA) is an estimation of the degree to which your body shape effects wind resistance. The greater the calculated value the greater the wind resistance. For you this equates to 0.42m2 which compares poorly to elite road cyclists who score 0.32m2. A key factor in this analysis is the percentage body fat with elite males having an average value of 11.0%, although this has been shown to increase to around 13.4% during the off season. Your score is currently 18.0% which is higher than would be expected for a road cyclist. Therefore by reducing your fat mass and maintaining your aerobic fitness you will automatically become a more economical athlete. There are two options: firstly consider your diet and examine the total amount of calories that are being consumed in the form of saturated/trans fats. Secondly the levels of fat mass may be a consequence of the training phase that you are currently in. Therefore if the volume of training was to increase fat mass would decrease.

That's my reason for losing weight.

I could use this as a perfect excuse not to lose weight, since I intend using you as a human wind break!

I make no apologies for posting on this thread because I have valid reasons (I believe) for wanting to lose the weight I recently gained, and this is the weight loss thread so where better to discuss/learn about it? There is a wealth of information and support here that many of us can benefit from, and I don't think that having a BMI below the obese category should mean we can't post here. That said, I would not go onto a Weight Watchers (or similar) web site to discuss my own weight loss, because here many of us are interested in loss for fairly athletic reasons which is a whole different kettle of fish to being obese and needing to lose it to be averagely healthy.

These are my main reasons for wanting to lose weight:
1. I can't afford a new wardrobe and my clothes fit me better when I am sub-60kg
2. I start getting depressed when I put on weight, and I have previously been nearly fatally clinically depressed so this is a bad_thing
3. I need to have goals and targets in my life or things tend to start going to shit
4. I want to get faster on my bike, which for me includes being lighter and having more muscle and less fat
5. Health reasons. I am severely asthmatic and find that the fitter/lighter I am the fewer chest infections I get and the fewer courses of steroids I end up needing.
6. I try to set my kids a good example with exercise and diet choices because I don't want them to grow up using food for something other than nutrition. I've seen the heartache that comfort eating can cause people.

[jimbhoy]

Some of my reasons, in fact all of them mirror Feline's comments above. I to suffer quite badly from deep dark depresion sometimes and turn to food to remedy this, however after doing so it only makes my mood worse.So i really need to get back to a more sensible weight for mental as well as physical reasons, which particuarly this week i'm finding increasingly difficult as i'm finding my calorie target on MFP really hard to stick to. As a big lad i've always had a big appetite so trying to live on smaller portions and fewer cals is very hard, although i have been losing weight i feel i'm struggling to avoid the the food i really love, crisps,biscuits, bread and chocolate 

[L CC]

I'm just being an intolerant grumpy bastard.
You're all free to post wherever you like, and don't have to justify to me or anyone why you feel you need to lose weight.

If it really starts getting to me I'll just start a new thread : Weight loss discussion for fat bastards. Then I can wallow in my lardiness alone. Or man the fuck up and ignore all the skinny athletes (damn their toned thighs).

As a last resort I can always leave the forum for a while again. That's what I generally do when the level of irritation rises above the level of entertainment/assistance/support.

As an aside, a friend reported that when she came off her antidepressants she lost weight. If I was 'well' enough to do that I might try it, but I doubt I ever will be and I'm certainly not willing to take the chance.
You can lose a lot of weight if you're too depressed to eat, but as everything is too much effort (washing, for instance, let alone cycling) I suspect it may be counter productive.

[Auntie Helen]

fboab, when you feel gloomy about your lardiness, just look up my figures on the Weight Loss Graphs and you'll see there's some way to go to out-lard me.

And remember, you sent back my Vaude waterproof jacket because it was way too big for you. It was tight on me!

[Pedaldog.]

I just weighed in, I've missed caring for a week or so due to other health scares. 130.8kg! That is another one in the wrong direction and it actually puts my BMI at 43.8

I need to start to actually think about what I eat, when I eat, how much I eat and then do some exercise as well. I have managed to log a total of 69 miles so far in February and all of them were too much!

I know the main areas of food Items that I am pigging out on are exactly the ones I should eat very little of but the Self Sabotage is obviously at work here and I don't know how to get round that.

I'll try and do better next Wednesday's score time.

[zigzag]

i've mentioned mfp to my mrs and she's logging her food now, just says it takes a bit long to find non-standard items. she's on 1410kcal per day and ideally wants to lose 5kg by summer. she looks perfect to me as she is, but discussing woman's weight is can be dangerous business, so it's up to her.
regarding my weight - i'm happy how i am now, but if wanted to step into athlete's category i'd benefit from losing 4-5kg of fat. that'd make me ripped!
sorry to annoy some by posting on this thread, but my reasons for keeping an eye on my weight is that i feel good when my bmi is 21-22. (and no way i'm be buying bigger trousers if my waist expands!).
this thread has a wealth of information and taught me a lot.

keep up good work everyone!

[Ashaman42]

Also better this week.  Despite the cakes brought by a friend over the weekend which he refused to take away with him, the curry on Sunday evening, and the M&S eat in for £20 Valentine's meal last night.

S

I noticed that Tesco's two dine for £10 offer was £15 during the Valentine's week despite the meal choices being the same. Did M&S also go for a similar cheeky price hike?

[mcshroom]

I just weighed in, I've missed caring for a week or so due to other health scares. 130.8kg! That is another one in the wrong direction and it actually puts my BMI at 43.8

I need to start to actually think about what I eat, when I eat, how much I eat and then do some exercise as well. I have managed to log a total of 69 miles so far in February and all of them were too much!

I know the main areas of food Items that I am pigging out on are exactly the ones I should eat very little of but the Self Sabotage is obviously at work here and I don't know how to get round that.

I'll try and do better next Wednesday's score time.

Don't be hard on yourself, just resolve to get back on track next week. You can't change the past so there's no point getting down about it

I will recommend using an online diary thingy like Myfitnesspal. You don't need to prescribe a diet as such, and the database has a pretty good idea about what nutritional values.

I find just consciously following everything I put in my gob seems to have an effect of making me eat less

Oh and I'm a BMI of 37.4  , so we're not all superfit athletes

[Pedaldog.]

Thanks.  I tend to have trouble following the MFP type stuff.
I'll do what I used to do years ago and just do a word document listing everything I eat and drink in a day. It did help me figure out the trends of BAD and showed me the timeline when things were going well.
Just planning to do that has made me think of the eating this past couple of weeks and made me realise there's an awfully large amount of Bread and bread products, not to mention the CHEEZE!
I have stocks of "Not Good" that I can't afford not to use so I'll try some damage limitation and make the next shopping trip a more thoughtful one.

[mcshroom]

I've determined I have a seriously unhealthy snacking problem when there's bread in the flat (or anything else that I can eat without having to prepare it too much).

[Marmitegeoff]

I've determined I have a seriously unhealthy snacking problem when there's bread in the flat (or anything else that I can eat without having to prepare it too much).

Cheese on toast last night.  After I had closed my diary so was not counted in MFP.

and while my BMI is now down to 26.9  I was certainly up in the high 30's several years ago.  There is no short term solution, but just keep plugging away, and do the exercise.  It all helps.

Geoff

[simonp]

I've determined I have a seriously unhealthy snacking problem when there's bread in the flat (or anything else that I can eat without having to prepare it too much).

Cheese on toast last night.  After I had closed my diary so was not counted in MFP.

and while my BMI is now down to 26.9  I was certainly up in the high 30's several years ago.  There is no short term solution, but just keep plugging away, and do the exercise.  It all helps.

Geoff

You can still edit a completed diary entry if you missed something.

[mattc]

If it really starts getting to me I'll just start a new thread : Weight loss discussion for fat bastards.

Or
"You may be thin, but I cruised round PBP carrying all this. Ha!"

[citoyen]

I'll do what I used to do years ago and just do a word document listing everything I eat and drink in a day. It did help me figure out the trends of BAD and showed me the timeline when things were going well.

Do what works for you. But whatever you do, the important thing is to be scrupulously honest and record everything. If you cheat by not recording that sneaky biscuit (or whole pack of biscuits, as the case might sometimes be - BTDTGTTS), it's only yourself you're cheating.

d.

[DrMekon]

Definitely. Its the tediousness of recording it that helps  the cutting down.

[spenceey]

Not a bad day today really. With dinner I'm going to be over my count but hopefully only by a couple of hundred, now I'm not exercising (bar walking and hopefully swimming before long) it means I'm really finding it hard to stay within my daily limit.

I'm going to start with the cycling again though but be sure to use/take ibuprofen with me for my knee until I see the physio. I just can't wait for my knee to be fixed so I can enjoy running and cycling again with out being in a lot of pain the day after.

[Marmitegeoff]

I've determined I have a seriously unhealthy snacking problem when there's bread in the flat (or anything else that I can eat without having to prepare it too much).

Cheese on toast last night.  After I had closed my diary so was not counted in MFP.

and while my BMI is now down to 26.9  I was certainly up in the high 30's several years ago.  There is no short term solution, but just keep plugging away, and do the exercise.  It all helps.

Geoff

You can still edit a completed diary entry if you missed something.

I know but it was after a couple of hours sleep and then woke up and could not go back to sleep.  I could not then be bothered to fire up the computer.  So in my heart I was over on the calories, but MFP was on my side and below target.

Geoff