Dropped soda completely .. Pounds not falling off??

You didn't quit drinking soda. You traded Mountain Dew for Coke.

^^This! Seriously. Don't title a tread "dropped soda completely" when you have only gone one day without it.

Before you will have any success, you have to learn to be completely honest with yourself. Replacing Mountain Dew with Rum and cokes will get you nowhere.

ETA Also, change your trackers to include Protein. You don't need to have cholesterol on there. Losing weight will take care of your cholesterol. If you don't get enough Protein in your diet, the weight you do lose will be mostly from muscle tissue, which can lower your metabolism and cause you to regain your weight if you go back to eating normal calorie amounts.
A man your size should be eating at least 150g of protein a day.

It looks like you have a carb heavy diet, and yes the sodium will slow your weigh loss down. Try limiting your bread/grains/ potatoes to just once a day. For example if you eat cereal in the morning make sure it is a high fiber/ high protein cereal and lay off the sandwich at lunch and the potato at dinner.

I think the pounds would drop if you cut out the processed foods and ate more fruits and vegetables.

Since you have a newborn (congrats!) and time is an issue you could swap the cereal in the morning for a protein shake, or scrambled eggs, or fruit and yogurt. All of these are quick meals that don't involve too much time in the kitchen. Swap the sandwich and the chips for a salad with chicken or maybe dinner leftovers from the night before. It's all about baby steps. So if the salad is too much trouble at first why not trade the chips for an apple and use whole wheat bread on the sandwich for more fiber? If I had a busy day at the office sometimes I just make an egg white and vegetable omelet for dinner. It's fast and full of protein and vegetables. Those steam fresh bags of vegetables are a great time saver as well.

Best of luck!

Have you looked at the calculators that help you figure out how many calories to eat? 1900 seems low for a 270lb younger man.

Just plugging your age, height and weight in here http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ your BMR is over 2500 calories a day. That's the minimum calories you should be eating.

I was going to mention this too. 1900 cals/day for your sex, height, weight, age seems pretty low. You don't want to eat too far under your BMR unless advised by your doctor. Better to pick a reasonable weight loss rate and bring down the cals slowly as you lose weight.

Starting is always going to be the hardest part. Start out by slowly getting away from processed foods and going to 1-5 ingredient foods like; meat (no lunch meat) fruits and fresh or frozen veggies. Boxed foods, lunch meat and frozen meals are very high in sodium.

Trading one soda for another is not quitting, drink diet soda if you have to have one or try the flavored fizzy water, that helped me kick the Mt. Dew habit and once in while I have diet Dew if I feel the urge. DRINK LOTS OF WATER!!

Once you get past the first few weeks of not having processed foods, you will feel better. The key is to make changes you can live with. Switching things around, finding new ways to love food for food.

Learn to read labels, this has helped me a lot. Get away from white anything including; rice, white bread and sugar. Try whole wheat 100% bread, brown rice, and try a sugar substitute like Stevia.

My macro's are set at 50% protein, 30% carbs and 20% fat - try that for a while. My cravings for sugary foods are nearly gone!

These are things that have helped me along way. And I have to say it is a process! You are NOT going to lose the weight overnight and your head must be in the game. You can't lose the weight if you are really not wanting to give it 100%!

*disclaimer - I am no expert, I myself have lots to lose..... Everyone has to find what works for them, their reason why.

Good luck to you.

Okay, you have a brand new baby, congratulation!

1. Buy a food scale. A lot of you diary entries are cups, etc. Weigh your solids, start now and make that a habit. Only measure your liquids.
2. Read the guide to sexy pants and all of the links in it, twice if necessary.
3. Drink a lot more water. If you can't kick the soda at least get diet, or unsweetened tea, or use crystal light packets and put in water for now. It will also help your body process all the sodium. I drink 130 oz. of water a day.
4. If you want lunch meat, buy reduced sodium. In fact buy reduced sodium everything!
5. Instead of adding salt to your meals, add spices instead.
6. Eats more fruits and vegetables, instead of a 44oz. soda for breakfast grab an apple or banana instead. That will satisfy your sweet tooth and be much more satisfying. Eat salads, instead of dressing squeeze some lemon juice because dressings are high in sodium as well. Or dip your fork into the dressing instead of pouring the dressing onto the salad.
7. Get some protein with every meal if you can. It will help curb your appetite.
8. Don't forget fiber.

This is not about denying yourself in anyway. It's about a lifestyle change and one you can stick to. Like just about everyone has said, 6lbs a week is too much. You may lose that for the first couple of weeks but that will be water weight. And like another person said, use MFP to figure out a calorie goal based on a reasonable deficit, when you start exercising, eat back your exercise calories (or at least 1/2 of them), log your food accurately, and you should start seeing the pounds drop off.

This is also not a race, it's a marathon. It's simple but certainly not easy. Good luck.

I'm not sure how much you're paying for your deli meat, but look into making your own so you can control the sodium and probably save a few bucks too. I recently found eye of round roast on sale for $4/lb where the deli meats ran $5-$10+/lb depending on brand and if you get it from the deli counter or pre-packaged Oscar Mayer type. It was really easy to season and cook and it's some of the best roast beef I'd had on a sandwich in a long time. I did the same with chicken breast and will cook some turkey breast here soon. When I sliced it, I portioned out enough for a week and froze the rest.

For dinner, do you have time on the weekends to do crockpot meals that can be saved for later in the week? Even if it's only one or two meals, it's still better than nothing. This is how I do most of my cooking for dinners. You can find crockpot recipes out there and make adjustments for no/low sodium items - dry beans instead of canned beans for chili; no sodium/low sodium stock/broth/bouillon, etc.

Try googling for freezer meals and see what you can find. I've seen many blogs/pinterest pins where folks prepped many meals in one day, froze them in freezer bags (for stir fry and crockpot meals type meals) or casserole dishes so that all they had to do in the week is take one out the night before to thaw and then cook/reheat during the week. You'd probably the same amount of prep time for slicing, dicing, measuring as it would be during the week, but instead of turning to take out/delivery when you're exhausted because the baby kept you up the night before, you can put a casserole in the oven and be done. Also another way you can control sodium.

Have you tried diet soda? Took me a while to get used to it but now I like it.

Have you tried diet soda? Took me a while to get used to it but now I like it.

do NOT switch to diet soda - it is absolutely HORRIBLE for you.

Have you tried diet soda? Took me a while to get used to it but now I like it.

do NOT switch to diet soda - it is absolutely HORRIBLE for you.

Yes, thank you for your sage advice. It is clearly well-based in science and personal success.

Seriously. Diet soda is 100% fine. Let's not hijack this guy's excellent helpful thread with a pointless argument over soda.

Have you tried diet soda? Took me a while to get used to it but now I like it.

do NOT switch to diet soda - it is absolutely HORRIBLE for you.

Hi Josh,

As of now I am not exercising yet.. Plan to start but just haven't yet. Will this help..

Yes.

Also I am consuming a large amount of sodium in my daily diet.. Can this cause me to hold water / consume alot of water?

Yes. Reduce your sodium intake and increase your potassium. You could have dieter's edema. Drinking lots of water will not correct a sodium imbalance because you will ultimately flush out all of your other electrolytes along with the sodium.

My blood pressure has been extremely high lately (144/99 is most recent reading) , can this be tied to the lack of caffeine? Dietary Change?

It's the excess sodium combined with a lack of potassium.

How can I lessen my sodium intake?

I usually eat a bowl of cereal for b-fast, a deli meat sandwich and a serving of chips for lunch, and some sort of meat/potato/salad for dinner..

Read your nutrition labels. Buy only low-sodium deli products. Eat more high potassium foods. Fresh fruits and vegetables need to be in your diet, but to address the current excess, I would recommend making yourself some tomato soup with a couple of cans of tomato paste, water, and I like to add a frozen soup vegetable mix. It gives you copious amounts of potassium and will help your electrolytes to balance out.

I am a whole food plant based eater - alot of what you eat (meat, dairy, oil and processed food) will give your body a ton of inflammation, even at a reduced calorie intake, not to mention contribute to so many diseases like heart issues, cancer, diabetes and more.

I became certified in WFPB nutrition from eCornell and if you really want to see your body respond, eat only a whole food plant based lifestyle and watch - I switched about a year ago, am launching a business in PA but plan to remote help patients with Skype or any other video means as well and can help guide you to transitioning to much better food while your body responds and lets go of the weight you want to see come off - esp if your pic with that little baby is yours - you want to live a long time for your kids......

Just my 2 cents - try renting the movie Forks Over Knives on Netflix or Amazon Video - it is what got me to change overnight after a lifetime of illness that was getting worse and worse by the day!

:huh:

You could have dieter's edema.

[your high BP is the result of] excess sodium combined with a lack of potassium.

Thanks Dr Husky. Most physicians could really benefit from your incredible internet diagnostic skills.

Seriously. Don't tell someone what their high BP is from. You don't know. Don't also provisionally offer diagnoses like dieter's edema when you have no idea.

This stuff does no one any good.

First off, I didn't diagnose anyone. I said "could". I had dieter's edema when I first started. I'm only sharing from my experience.

If you think OP should see a doctor, then by all means, advise him as such. But there isn't any false information in my post.