Need help starting out!

lilie710

Hi everyone! So i am on a mission to lose as much weight and iches as possible in a year. i am giving myself a year because the 3 month goals haven´t been working. I have gone down from 234 to 203 and then up to 220 and now i´m sitting at 212... so... i need some help... any advice as to how i should be going about this? do i REALLY need to weigh and measure my foods? how much a defeceit should i have? what type of exercises at this point are more benficial...cardio or strength training? thanks in advance!

WBB55

Links I recommend:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1175494-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/912920-in-place-of-a-road-map-3-2013
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1234699-logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide

sheldonklein

Question 1: yes.
Question 2: How quickly to lose weight is a very individual question. Some people will quickly crash, burn and binge with an aggressive deficit, others will be buoyed and sustained by quicker results. Only you know you.
Question 3: Both

strong_curves

Read the links WBB55 provided. All your answers are in there.

Patttience

lilie710 wrote: »

Hi everyone! So i am on a mission to lose as much weight and iches as possible in a year. i am giving myself a year because the 3 month goals haven´t been working. I have gone down from 234 to 203 and then up to 220 and now i´m sitting at 212... so... i need some help... any advice as to how i should be going about this? do i REALLY need to weigh and measure my foods? how much a defeceit should i have? what type of exercises at this point are more benficial...cardio or strength training? thanks in advance!

I started my journey in January 2014 and I've been in maintenance since about October 2014. Since then i have ups and downs but nothing like a return to where i started. Never over the upper end of my healthy weight range.

Based on previous experiences i started out the year with a few strategies that I was confident would work for me. One of them was a brand new tactic and that was to not bother too much with exercise. In the past i'd always lost weight with lots of exercise and i could never sustain it beyond a few months. Now i was going to make my diet a priority. It worked. One of the reasons why people give up when they stop intensive exercising is becuase its quite difficult to cut back on your eating when you stop. Your body demands continued high calories but your energy output doesn't match it. You have to be aware of this and allow yourself to transition back and be able to tolerate the ups and downs of that process.

I also went through this process a little though less extreme when i came off a 6 week experiment with low carb last year.

So perhaps the take home message here is if you suddenly stop a strategy/practice that was working for you for a while, find a new strategy and allow yourself a few weeks to adjust but don't give up.

Yes you do need to measure your food. I wouldn't say weighing is essential but it does make it easier to use mpf calorie counter accurately if you are weighing. I have a cute little digital scale that didn't cost much. I only use it when i'm counting calories. Most of the time, i don't count calories, i keep a food diary and log every single thing. The importance of measuruing your food in one way or another is to moderate your portion sizes and to know what you are doing so that when you need to adjust down, you can do it effectively. eg i went from a half cup of oats to 1/3 cup of oats when i eat porridge now.

Depending on your height, you can probably have a deficit that lets you lose about 2 pounds a week. This calorie number is an average so you may lose more in the beginning and when you get to a stall you may want to recalculate. When you are down around 150 pounds, losing at about one pound a week will make more sense.

Also one other important factor is diet fatigue. I've written enough now so if you want to know what i have to say about this, message me and I will reply from my experience of handling this. Its a serious factor and not something i can address briefly.

SueInAz

sheldonklein wrote: »

Question 1: yes.
Question 2: How quickly to lose weight is a very individual question. Some people will quickly crash, burn and binge with an aggressive deficit, others will be buoyed and sustained by quicker results. Only you know you.
Question 3: Both

Seconded.

You need to weigh as much of your food as you can and measure liquids. Portion distortion is a big reason many people slowly put on pounds over the years. Once you get better at understanding how big your portions should be you'll be able to eyeball more of it but weighing is the only way to be really sure. I even use the scale for things like salad dressing and peanut butter which show serving sizes in grams on the label. It's easier and I'm not having to wash measuring spoons and cups all of the time.

Here's a good set of guidelines for how to set MFP based on your current weight and your goal, including how many calories MFP is going to reduce your maintenance intake by to meet your goal:

Pound per week goals
75+ lbs: set to lose 2 lb range (-1000 calories per day)
Between 40 - 75 lbs: set to lose 1.5 lb range (-750 calories per day)
Between 25-40 lbs: set to lose 1 lb range (-750 calories per day)
Between 15-25 lbs: set to lose 1 -.50 lb range (-500 to -250 calories per day)
Less than 15 lbs: set to lose 0.5 lbs range (-250 calories per day)

You're better off losing a little more slowly, although it will likely drop off more quickly at the beginning, regardless. Really strict diets don't usually last very long because they make people unhappy and very few of us will stick with something that makes us unhappy. Allow yourself occasional treats as long as they fit into your calorie goals.

Cardio for fitness and to give yourself more calories to eat, strength training to maintain more of your lean muscle mass. Your body has built up muscle to move around your extra weight. It's much easier to maintain muscle you already have than to build new muscle so if you can maintain more of it while you lose fat you're going to be much happier with how you look once you reach your goal.

Kalikel

No, you don't really need to weigh your food. Bazillions of people have lost weight without weighing food. Of course it's possible to do it without weighing. Weighing will help you get the best calorie estimates, though, so if you're counting calories, it can help.

If you want to count, but not weigh, just start high with the calories and drop 100 off the total every couple weeks until you start losing, then use that number. No matter how you go about your weight loss, you'll be adjusting as you go, so don't count on anything forever.

Cardio and strength are both important for your health, but cardio will burn more calories. Swimming burns a crapton of calories.

My advice is to eat a variety of healthy foods, get some exercise and get enough sleep.

lilie710

Thanks everyone!!! I have been using MFP and it´s helped. I haven´t been measuring or weighing cause i just don´t have the time and honestly... i just don´t want to have to. I have been using a smaller plate, eating more unprocessed foods and fruits. I was eating bread for breakfast (toast with butter), the only real carb all day but i find it´s not helping... so today i began the day with a yogurt, blueberry and granola parfait. i will be changing it up and maybe trying a low glycemic regimine. it´s helped in the past and i´m sure it´ll help now. in regards to exercise... i have been doing a mix of strength, circuit training and cardio...everyday! lol it´s not so bad. but even when i try to work out only one zone like back and arms...i crave for more...so i end up doing squat jumps, mountain climbers and the like. then at the end of each work out i do 15 mins of cardio on my bike. i read it burns more calories because there is a deficeit already. i haven´t lost any weight though like i said... so i don´t know. maybe i will begin to measure and weigh and see if that works.