Questions!!!! Help Please!!!

FabulousFifty

Start looking for a "light" menu when going out to eat. More restaurants are offering this. If not, choose a grilled chicken salad. Go light on the dressing. Sometimes I get a regular meal, eat half and take the rest home. The sodium in restaurant food is over the top! Beware!!! It can cause you to hold water.

Otherwise, I would make a taco salad at your in laws. Go light on the cheese and drink a lot of water. You will be modeling good eating habits for your family!

Good luck on this journey to good health! :):)

Dylanss180

Ok I am going to chime in here and Ill give my .02.

Loosing 2 lbs a week is about the max you want to loose. Anything more your body doesn't like. You need to slowly loose it. Just think of it this way. You don't gain a whole bunch of weight in a week, so don't expect to loose a whole bunch either. Also starving yourself to loose the weight will just make you crazy then you will binge eat because you are sick of being hungry. Then you will put the weight back on. Just loose it slowly and you will keep your sanity and the weight off.

Like in earlier posts you need to get up and move. Go for a 1/2 hour walk in the morning and do it again in the evening. Stay active as much as you can. Take the stairs instead of the elevator...etc.

I am a little more strict on diet than most. But, IF you must eat out, stick with grilled protein sources and veggies. Don't eat starchy foods (potatoes: that includes fries and mashed potatoes, pasta, white rice...etc). Eat all the steamed veggies you want but don't add butter. That will just make it worse.

I would highly recommend not eating out and make your own food. I usually make 2 to 3 days worth of food ahead of time.
Also, you need to eat frequently...every 2 to 3 hours. When you don't eat your body goes into starvation mode and your metabolism plummets. When you eat constantly (not lots of food but small portions) your body is constantly being fed and your metabolism goes higher thou out the day.

Also when people say a calorie is a calorie and it doesn't matter where you get it from is completely bogus.

If you eat 2000 calories of just cake that will make you gain in weight vs eating 2000 calories of protein and veggies. You need to keep off the foods that spike your insulin (like mashed potatoes, white rice, bananas, anything with sugar in it) as soon as you spike your insulin you have screwed yourself over. That will just make your body store the food in your fat cells. You need to eat to loose weight. Most people are scared of this but it does work. You just need to eat the right things.

read the first few posts here.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1070522-weight-plateau?page=2

This should help out.

If you are serious about loosing weight you need to make it a priority in your life. Prepare ahead of time and make health a part of your life.

I have done all the diet and workout fads. Most of them are crap or bad for your health. I have starved myself and lost weight but i lost a lot of muscle in the process and I also ruined my metabolism. Believe me I have done it all, learn from my mistakes and take my advice. Don't suffer like I did.

nikki13088

thanks again everyone, im driving myself crazy with watching my sodium more then anything and i dont know why, im never over my calories actually in fact a lot of the time im under 1200 for the day and im starting to think its because im going crazy trying to find all this low sodium stuff, i was living off salads for the first week but ive been craving something hearty. Today my husband wanted to try the firehouse subs by us and i got one a medium sub and i put it in on here and i was under on everything still except the sodium of course, so now i feel like i did something wrong, like i gave it or something, i mean is going over my sodium once in a while going to be a big downfall eventually, i mean now im over my sodium like 400, i had no idea there was gonna be that much sodium in the sub it was corn beef and some other stuff but like i said i was under with everything else so idk im just feeling like im over thinking it.

wahmx3

Great advice given to you but tracking your sodium is VERY important....it can kill weight loss or make you gain very quickly! You may be surprised by the amount of sodium in foods, I certainly was in the beginning. Not sure if anyone mentioned it, but drink LOTS of water daily, especially if you eat out out anywhere, most restaurant food is high in sodium.

redwoodkestrel

Most processed and restaurant food will have a lot of sodium. It doesn't mean you need to avoid them entirely, but make sure you're drinking plenty of water to help with extra sodium. I usually eat out/order take-out only 1 or 2 times a week, if that, and I "budget" for it ahead of time.

Usually if I know I'm going out to eat for a meal, I try to check out the menu online before hand to see what I might want to eat, and look up the nutritional information to see if it fits in my calories for the day. Dinner is the meal I'm most likely to eat out (or order in), so when I know I'm going out I also make sure to watch my calories carefully during the day and to get in some extra exercise for the day so I have extra calories to eat.

For example, tonight my boyfriend wants to order pizza. No problem! I ran ~2 miles this morning, had a brunch-time meal (thanks to daylight savings!), then went on a 5+ mile hike. According to MFP and my Fitbit, I have about 2300 calories left to eat today - though I won't eat them all back, since I know exercise burns are usually overestimated. But it's plenty to have some pizza and beer tonight! :drinker:

Also, a lot of folks here just try to stay within their calories for the week, not necessarily for every single day, so they can have an "over" day on one day and make up for it with being slightly under for the rest of the week. I really try to stay within my calories every day, but the weekly budgeting seems to work too.

Good luck! :happy:

Amelia7779

Everyone has given great advice, but I wanted to add one thing:

If you feel very overwhelmed by eating healthy, or maybe you're just beginning to understand nutrition, it might be helpful to get a basic nutrition book and read it. A lot of the beginner posts on this site (and others) talk a lot about things like macronutrients, tdee, BMR, and lots of other terms that can seem really confusing and new. I've linked to a couple books that are great at explaining nutrition basics. They will explain what carbohydrates, protein, and fat are and why we need them and what our body does with them. They will also explain about calories and how to know how many to eat. They will give you great ideas about which foods are good choices and which ones are better as treats. Most of this information is available online, but it can be really difficult to know what is good info and what is not-so-good info. Good luck!

http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-For-Dummies-Carol-Rinzler/dp/0470932317/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1394415773&sr=8-3&keywords=Basic+nutrition

http://www.amazon.com/American-Dietetic-Association-Complete-Nutrition/dp/0470912073/ref=pd_sim_b_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=0XMXD0MQ3V8YKA42GR19

Btw, I'm an RD, if it matters