Losing Hope

Weigh your food and log everything you eat. "Trying" to watch calories won't give you the same results as actually tracking them accurately. Do you have a digital scale to weigh food with?

Start logging accurately. This means logging everything that goes into your mouth, using a food scale to weigh and determine your serving size. If you eat your exercise calories back, try to do no more than half of them.

Once you can actually document what you are eating and track its impact on your hunger and vitality it becomes clear how to succeed. This community has found success documenting everything you eat/drink. Coming here saying you haven't done what has brought so many people success means you have taken a half measure. You want to lose weight but are not committing to it.

Commit. Buy a kitchen scale. Track everything you eat. Track your workouts. You WILL have success.

One of the most important things you can do is LOG EVERYTHING. It can be very surprising just how many calories are in something.

Also, keep in mind that just because the scale is not moving does NOT mean you are not losing inches!!!

Besides the weight, have you started to notice any benefits from the exercise? Are you stronger? Can you do things today that you couldn't do when you started?

KristaQuinn1 wrote: »

Okay So Im JUST starting out, literally only 2 days in, but i was going to go the count calories track...but im seeing a lot of input about weighing food. Which is better? Or should they both be used? Maybe a good example of your normal food prep?

I think calorie counting is the same as weighing your food. Instead of selecting an eyeball measurement (1 cup, 1/2 cup), use the scale and pick the measure. For instance if the food shows calories in grams, enter the number of grams you ate.

KristaQuinn1 wrote: »

Okay So Im JUST starting out, literally only 2 days in, but i was going to go the count calories track...but im seeing a lot of input about weighing food. Which is better? Or should they both be used? Maybe a good example of your normal food prep?

Weighing food is just a way to ensure your calorie counts are accurate. For example, instead of putting 1/2 of beans, you would weigh the beans and enter that as your serving size. If you eat a banana, instead of entering "1 banana," you would enter the weight in grams. For accuracy, all solid foods should be weighed.

Buy a food scale, weigh and log everything.

Do cardio if you want, and if you do, only eat back 50% of your calories (if you are losing faster than expected after logging for a few weeks, then up the % you eat back). Lift weights and hit your protein goal to help maintain muscle mass while losing.

Cheat meals that take you over maintenance will sabotage your efforts. Log the cheat meals too (falls under the 'log everything' rule).

Eat anything you want in moderation, keeping in mind that your diet will be easier to stick with if you chose foods that make it easier to stay under your calories without feeling hungry.

Also it would be a good idea to read some of the best forum posts such as:
Calorie Counting 101
Logging Accuracy, Consistency, & You're Probably Eating More Than You Think
A Guide To Get You Started on Your Path To Sexy Pants

schmittou731 wrote: »

I work out 2-3 a week more if I can, try to eat somewhat healthy and watch my calories, but I seem to be gaining weight. Feeling very defeated at this time.

"Do or do not, there is no try" - Yoda.

janejellyroll wrote: »

KristaQuinn1 wrote: »

Okay So Im JUST starting out, literally only 2 days in, but i was going to go the count calories track...but im seeing a lot of input about weighing food. Which is better? Or should they both be used? Maybe a good example of your normal food prep?

Weighing food is just a way to ensure your calorie counts are accurate. For example, instead of putting 1/2 of beans, you would weigh the beans and enter that as your serving size. If you eat a banana, instead of entering "1 banana," you would enter the weight in grams. For accuracy, all solid foods should be weighed.

This. Weighing and measuring your food accurately is the best way to count your calories.

Food scales are inexpensive and easy to find. Once you have one, counting calories is easy, especially with My Fitness Pal. Weigh all your solid food, measure all your liquids (including beverages, cooking oils, and condiments), log and track it in the calorie counter, and stay under your daily goal, and it makes losing weight into arithmetic. It's really that simple if you log as accurately as possible and don't overestimate your exercise.

Read this link and all of the blue links in the middle. If you really want to do this, and this works, you have to invest time, and research. This is a great place to begin:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

In addition to weighing solid food and accurately/honestly tracking nutrition (not just calories), my advice is to pay attention to the ingredients in the food you're eating. Unless it's a natural food (fruit, veggies, nuts), it could be loaded with sugar, which at the end of the day is the biggest opponent to losing weight. The WHO recommends no more than 30g of sugar in a day (fyi: there's 30g sugar in one small bag of M&Ms) because excess fructose intake causes visceral fat cells to rapidly mature - which is directly tied to belly fat.

The bad news: sugar is hiding in most processed/packaged products and it goes by many names. The food industry's marketing experts have done a fantastic job of posing "raw cane sugar" and other healthy-sounding names as "good" sugars, but truth be told, sugar is sugar is sugar. With the exception of sugar found in fruits and vegetables (which have the adequate amount of fiber needed to aid in digestion and prevent the sugar from turning into insulin), there is no such thing as good sugar. Be on the lookout for these ingredients on food packages before you eat what's inside:

• barley malt
• beet sugar
• molasses
• brown rice syrup
• brown sugar
• cane juice
• caramel
• carob syrup
• castor sugar
• crystaline fructose
• date sugar
• demerera sugar
• dextran
• diastatic malt
• diataste
• ethyl maltol
• evaporated cane juice
• fructose
• galactose
• glucose
• maltodextrin
• muscovado sugar
• panela
• sorghum
• sucrose
• treacle

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but you get the idea. Pretty much be wary of anything ending in "-ose" and a good rule of thumb that I follow is if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it. There's a really great documentary called "Fed Up" with Katie Couric that delves into a lot more detail than I can on this forum - it's available for streaming on Netflix or for purchase on Amazon Instant Video.

I know it sounds kind of daunting to think of cutting back on sugar, but I started slowly cutting back about a year ago and have seen a drastic improvement since: lost waist inches, lost pounds, and increased my run pace. And by no means do I eat fewer calories, just less sugar. If it helps, here's a real-world idea of how you can eat a low-sugar diet without cutting back on food in general (my personal food log from yesterday): two cups of black coffee + two eggs + 85g apple-chicken sausage link + 1 tbsp butter for breakfast; banana for mid-morning snack; 4-oz chicken breast + 2 tbsp bbq sauce + 8-oz sweet potato + salad with tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, 1/4 avocado, 1/8-cup crumbled pecans, 1 tbsp olive oil, and a squeeze of lemon juice with salt for lunch; 2 cups "Heavenly Light Popcorn" for mid-afternoon snack; jalapeno kielbasa + baked tomatoes, mushrooms, and red onion with 1 tbsp basil-infused olive oil + 5-oz glass of wine for dinner. All of that comes to 40g sugar, but if you take out the sugar that came from fruits and veggies, that's only 14g sugar that came from processed foods.

Anyway, I know that's probably a lot more info than you were looking for, but hope it helps!

(Oh, one more thing! Water is key - aim to drink half of your body weight in ounces of water every day; i.e. 150lbs = 75oz.)