Weight loss advice (i realise juicing is hated here)
Replies
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juggernaut1974 wrote: »juggernaut1974 wrote: »I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
Well...not to be harsh...but those are all nothing but excuses.
How badly do you want to lose the weight?
As to the comment about "probably eating less than half of a male daily calorie count"...no you're not...or you'd be losing weight now.
Actually, I think he said he "probably" needs less than half of a male daily calorie count, I'm guessing because he thinks he's too sedentary. Still not correct, though. No need to eat that few calories. But, he's not going to know any calorie range until he starts weighing and logging food.
Ahh true dat...I misread it.
TY for the correction.
No worries! I do that a lot due to reading too fast.0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
I am not being sarcastic or snarky in saying this: If you are at a computer all day, then you have the time and the access to enter your information into MFP.
The recipe builder is pretty easy to use, so you can keep track of all the from scratch cooking you do. Once you enter a recipe, it is there for you to use over and over again.
The first week or two of tracking is the hardest; then you build up a personal database of the foods you use most often and it becomes easier. I hardly think about it anymore. It's just another part of my day.0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
I'm behind a computer most of the day and I still lose at exactly how much I should lose at. You just need to tell the calculator you're sedentary and everything's good.0 -
I cook fresh. It's not that hard to log it. Get a pair of food scales and take advantage of the meals and recipes functions of MFP. I was daunted at first, but it was actually easier than I thought.
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I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
I am not being sarcastic or snarky in saying this: If you are at a computer all day, then you have the time and the access to enter your information into MFP.
The recipe builder is pretty easy to use, so you can keep track of all the from scratch cooking you do. Once you enter a recipe, it is there for you to use over and over again.
The first week or two of tracking is the hardest; then you build up a personal database of the foods you use most often and it becomes easier. I hardly think about it anymore. It's just another part of my day.
I didn't know it was that advanced, i am a web developer and still have no idea how twitter works... (maybe it's me that is not as advanced)
I am thinking of trying this for a month, i would like to see about 4lb a week loss though which i'm happy to do the excercise for if it's just a case of dong more exercise?0 -
tashspring68 wrote: »I cook fresh. It's not that hard to log it. Get a pair of food scales and take advantage of the meals and recipes functions of MFP. I was daunted at first, but it was actually easier than I thought.
I think we have a set, i did not know you could do it by weight, last time i looked at it was 2011.0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I cook most things like this. I also get most of my meat and produce from a farm during this time of year. It's still easy to log it on MFP, as MFP has the USDA database with information on the calories in whatever it is.I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
Seems unlikely it would be that much less, but if you tell MFP you are sedentary it takes that into account.0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
I am not being sarcastic or snarky in saying this: If you are at a computer all day, then you have the time and the access to enter your information into MFP.
The recipe builder is pretty easy to use, so you can keep track of all the from scratch cooking you do. Once you enter a recipe, it is there for you to use over and over again.
The first week or two of tracking is the hardest; then you build up a personal database of the foods you use most often and it becomes easier. I hardly think about it anymore. It's just another part of my day.
I didn't know it was that advanced, i am a web developer and still have no idea how twitter works... (maybe it's me that is not as advanced)
I am thinking of trying this for a month, i would like to see about 4lb a week loss though which i'm happy to do the excercise for if it's just a case of dong more exercise?
4lbs a week is double the recommended safe level of weight loss. Aim for 2lbs a week.
You cannot out-exercise a bad diet. You need to eat less. Exercise is really more for fitness and health, not weight loss, though it helps.0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
I am not being sarcastic or snarky in saying this: If you are at a computer all day, then you have the time and the access to enter your information into MFP.
The recipe builder is pretty easy to use, so you can keep track of all the from scratch cooking you do. Once you enter a recipe, it is there for you to use over and over again.
The first week or two of tracking is the hardest; then you build up a personal database of the foods you use most often and it becomes easier. I hardly think about it anymore. It's just another part of my day.
I am thinking of trying this for a month, i would like to see about 4lb a week loss though which i'm happy to do the excercise for if it's just a case of dong more exercise?
You may get a big drop the first week, but with less than 100 pounds to lose, a consistent loss of 4 pounds per week is way too aggressive. Patience, grasshopper. You didn't gain it in a few months, and it will take time to safely and sustainably lose it.0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
I am not being sarcastic or snarky in saying this: If you are at a computer all day, then you have the time and the access to enter your information into MFP.
The recipe builder is pretty easy to use, so you can keep track of all the from scratch cooking you do. Once you enter a recipe, it is there for you to use over and over again.
The first week or two of tracking is the hardest; then you build up a personal database of the foods you use most often and it becomes easier. I hardly think about it anymore. It's just another part of my day.
I didn't know it was that advanced, i am a web developer and still have no idea how twitter works... (maybe it's me that is not as advanced)
I am thinking of trying this for a month, i would like to see about 4lb a week loss though which i'm happy to do the excercise for if it's just a case of dong more exercise?
Heck, I still don't understand how a landline telephone works, let alone the internets. If I can use this website/app, anyone can.
Weight loss really is just about eating fewer calories. Enter your stats into MFP, eat at or just below the number of calories it tells you to. Log as accurately as possible (cross reference your initial entries with the USDA or nutrition labels). Do not eat back all of the exercise calories that MFP calculates (aim for 50-60%). Watch the scale go down. It won't go down every day or week, but it will trend down.
Like others said, 4 lbs a week is too aggressive. Why make this any harder on yourself than it already is? Weight loss is a mental and physical journey. Equip yourself to succeed, with reasonable goals and expectations...don't set yourself up for struggle or disappointment.0 -
Ok, you're looking for advice. I don't always give awesome advice, but that hasn't stopped me from trying! XD
1. Weigh and log EVERYTHING. Yes, it's a pain in the Justin Timberlake, but it's necessary. You need to know what your baseline is and what your patterns are. If you don't know this, you don't know what exactly to adjust. Once you start entering things, you'll build up a recent foods list of things you eat a lot and logging becomes easier. And if you've been doing it for a few years, you'll learn what proper portions look like and will be able to closely estimate calories, so you won't need to use the scale very often any more. You don't HAVE to log for the rest of your life you are confident of keeping the weight off once you get there. I will be logging for the long term, mostly with estimates, just as a way to double check myself.
2. If you want to juice, then do so. It is a good way to supplement your vitamins and nutrition your body needs, kinda like taking a multi-vitamin. However, it's not really a good idea to do meal replacement juicing. You'll find that you'll be hungry more often, which makes it harder to avoid over eating later in the day. As long as you account for the calories in your daily calorie goal, juice your heart out.
3. Set all your stats in MFP honestly, and set it to sedentary. If your calorie goal looks too high or too low to you, double check on some other online calculators. Granted, other calculators have their own idea of what sedentary means in terms of calories burned, but they should all be fairly close.
4. You don't have to cut everything at once! It's ok to start slow, with one or two things, and give yourself time to get used to them. You didn't gain the weight in a couple of weeks, so it's going to take more than a couple of weeks to lose it. Sorry for the cliche, but slow and steady really does win this race.
5. Weight loss happens in the kitchen. You can lose weight with JUST cutting calories. Basically, weight loss happens when you burn more calories than you consume. You can do that by cutting the amount of calories you consume, upping the amount of calories you burn, or a combination of both. So exercise isn't really required for weight loss. Now, it's good for other things, so if you can add it, do so. But don't count on it for your weight loss.
6. This is a SLOW process. I know you want fast weight loss, but that's what yo-yo dieting does. If you focus on doing everything you can to lose weight fast, when you get to your goal and go off that diet, the weight will come back. By going the slow route of gradually lowering your calories consumed, you are teaching yourself better eating habits, as well as retraining your brain and body to what a normal portion of food is. This way, when you hit your target, you have the tools and knowledge to STAY in your target range.
I guess, when all is said and done, you have to ask yourself why you're losing weight. Don't rely on what others say or what you think it should be; why do YOU want to lose weight? Take a good, honest look at yourself and figure that out. Once you do that, you'll find it much easier to keep logging, to forgive yourself and move on after an off day, and in general, stay on this path. But you have to want it, and it has to be for YOUR reason. We can give you all the advice in the world, but we can't force you to do this. Only you can.0 -
Ok, you're looking for advice. I don't always give awesome advice, but that hasn't stopped me from trying! XD
1. Weigh and log EVERYTHING. Yes, it's a pain in the Justin Timberlake, but it's necessary. You need to know what your baseline is and what your patterns are. If you don't know this, you don't know what exactly to adjust. Once you start entering things, you'll build up a recent foods list of things you eat a lot and logging becomes easier. And if you've been doing it for a few years, you'll learn what proper portions look like and will be able to closely estimate calories, so you won't need to use the scale very often any more. You don't HAVE to log for the rest of your life you are confident of keeping the weight off once you get there. I will be logging for the long term, mostly with estimates, just as a way to double check myself.
2. If you want to juice, then do so. It is a good way to supplement your vitamins and nutrition your body needs, kinda like taking a multi-vitamin. However, it's not really a good idea to do meal replacement juicing. You'll find that you'll be hungry more often, which makes it harder to avoid over eating later in the day. As long as you account for the calories in your daily calorie goal, juice your heart out.
3. Set all your stats in MFP honestly, and set it to sedentary. If your calorie goal looks too high or too low to you, double check on some other online calculators. Granted, other calculators have their own idea of what sedentary means in terms of calories burned, but they should all be fairly close.
4. You don't have to cut everything at once! It's ok to start slow, with one or two things, and give yourself time to get used to them. You didn't gain the weight in a couple of weeks, so it's going to take more than a couple of weeks to lose it. Sorry for the cliche, but slow and steady really does win this race.
5. Weight loss happens in the kitchen. You can lose weight with JUST cutting calories. Basically, weight loss happens when you burn more calories than you consume. You can do that by cutting the amount of calories you consume, upping the amount of calories you burn, or a combination of both. So exercise isn't really required for weight loss. Now, it's good for other things, so if you can add it, do so. But don't count on it for your weight loss.
6. This is a SLOW process. I know you want fast weight loss, but that's what yo-yo dieting does. If you focus on doing everything you can to lose weight fast, when you get to your goal and go off that diet, the weight will come back. By going the slow route of gradually lowering your calories consumed, you are teaching yourself better eating habits, as well as retraining your brain and body to what a normal portion of food is. This way, when you hit your target, you have the tools and knowledge to STAY in your target range.
I guess, when all is said and done, you have to ask yourself why you're losing weight. Don't rely on what others say or what you think it should be; why do YOU want to lose weight? Take a good, honest look at yourself and figure that out. Once you do that, you'll find it much easier to keep logging, to forgive yourself and move on after an off day, and in general, stay on this path. But you have to want it, and it has to be for YOUR reason. We can give you all the advice in the world, but we can't force you to do this. Only you can.
Thank you for the advice! i like that quote "Weight loss happens in the kitchen."
Ok i'll try it this way for 4 weeks and see how i get on, hopefully i can lose more than 2lb a week and build my fitness at the same time. I hope to get back into football when i'm fit enough. I used to play football 6 days a week and could pretty much eat a house and not put anything on...0 -
Ok, you're looking for advice. I don't always give awesome advice, but that hasn't stopped me from trying! XD
1. Weigh and log EVERYTHING. Yes, it's a pain in the Justin Timberlake, but it's necessary. You need to know what your baseline is and what your patterns are. If you don't know this, you don't know what exactly to adjust. Once you start entering things, you'll build up a recent foods list of things you eat a lot and logging becomes easier. And if you've been doing it for a few years, you'll learn what proper portions look like and will be able to closely estimate calories, so you won't need to use the scale very often any more. You don't HAVE to log for the rest of your life you are confident of keeping the weight off once you get there. I will be logging for the long term, mostly with estimates, just as a way to double check myself.
2. If you want to juice, then do so. It is a good way to supplement your vitamins and nutrition your body needs, kinda like taking a multi-vitamin. However, it's not really a good idea to do meal replacement juicing. You'll find that you'll be hungry more often, which makes it harder to avoid over eating later in the day. As long as you account for the calories in your daily calorie goal, juice your heart out.
3. Set all your stats in MFP honestly, and set it to sedentary. If your calorie goal looks too high or too low to you, double check on some other online calculators. Granted, other calculators have their own idea of what sedentary means in terms of calories burned, but they should all be fairly close.
4. You don't have to cut everything at once! It's ok to start slow, with one or two things, and give yourself time to get used to them. You didn't gain the weight in a couple of weeks, so it's going to take more than a couple of weeks to lose it. Sorry for the cliche, but slow and steady really does win this race.
5. Weight loss happens in the kitchen. You can lose weight with JUST cutting calories. Basically, weight loss happens when you burn more calories than you consume. You can do that by cutting the amount of calories you consume, upping the amount of calories you burn, or a combination of both. So exercise isn't really required for weight loss. Now, it's good for other things, so if you can add it, do so. But don't count on it for your weight loss.
6. This is a SLOW process. I know you want fast weight loss, but that's what yo-yo dieting does. If you focus on doing everything you can to lose weight fast, when you get to your goal and go off that diet, the weight will come back. By going the slow route of gradually lowering your calories consumed, you are teaching yourself better eating habits, as well as retraining your brain and body to what a normal portion of food is. This way, when you hit your target, you have the tools and knowledge to STAY in your target range.
I guess, when all is said and done, you have to ask yourself why you're losing weight. Don't rely on what others say or what you think it should be; why do YOU want to lose weight? Take a good, honest look at yourself and figure that out. Once you do that, you'll find it much easier to keep logging, to forgive yourself and move on after an off day, and in general, stay on this path. But you have to want it, and it has to be for YOUR reason. We can give you all the advice in the world, but we can't force you to do this. Only you can.
Thank you for the advice! i like that quote "Weight loss happens in the kitchen."
Ok i'll try it this way for 4 weeks and see how i get on, hopefully i can lose more than 2lb a week and build my fitness at the same time. I hope to get back into football when i'm fit enough. I used to play football 6 days a week and could pretty much eat a house and not put anything on...
I honestly wouldn't recommend more than 2lbs a week, and that is dependent on how much you actually have to loose. And playing football most of the week is why you didn't put on weight before; exercise isn't needed for weight loss, but keeping active can be helpful. ^_^ I know I didn't really start to gain weight until I took a full time desk job. I didn't adjust my eating to account for that, so hello weight! I never did 'exercise', but I was working in a restaurant and that's definitely a calorie burn job. XD0 -
just an fyi, this calculator will pretty much figure everything out for you in RE to calorie targets....all you have to do is put your info in and rate of loss goals and this calculator will calculate a calorie target based on those goals...your target will include your weight loss deficit WITHOUT exercise as MFP just uses your day to day in your activity level.
This is why people say things like weight loss happens in the kitchen...it's far more efficient to create a calorie (energy) deficit in your diet than it is to create one through exercise. Exercise is great and IMO, essential to overall health and wellness, not to mention fitness...it isn't at all necessary to lose weight though. As an example of that, I do a lot of cycling...I try to get in around 80 miles per week on the bike...I also try to get in a 5K run once per week and do a bit of swimming and hiking and I lift 2-3x per week....I have lost weight, maintained weight, and gained weight doing all of those things...the difference in weight being the amount of energy (calories) I was consuming.
As juicing goes, I do it (though I don't do homemade)...but it's to supplement my fruit and veg intake...I don't do it exclusive of eating actual food and certainly wouldn't recommend anything like 30 days. I have changed my diet quite a bit since starting this whole good livin' thing over three years ago, but it was a lot of baby steps. I eat much more healthfully now and there was never a need to detox anything. I just started eating better and eating in amounts that were appropriate and exercising regularly...there wasn't any more magic than that.0 -
@blitz2011 You're me... kinda. Coming from 278lbs, 6'2", fully sedentary (we can talk, but I've got'cha beat for no movement) -- started my logging about Christmas, I'm hitting 225 this week and I've fully been slacking off (again), or I'd be below 200. So we began about the same place, except I'm 20-years older than you (read that as lower hormone levels and a longer history of being a fat-*kitten* = some seriously old fat I need to burn without your levels of testosterone ...
I sent a friend request so you can run through my logs and see how easy it can be. The advice in this post is solid, but I'd like to add a bit of observational reality -- You won't be perfect at logging, eating, portioning, weighing, or anything tonight. You're a relatively large guy, giving you an advantage of being able to start-out a bit sloppy, and slowly gain accuracy as you form new habits. With a half-assed effort on your part, you could be around 200lbs and looking smaller than that by June!
(There are a lot of good reads here in the MFP community, this is one I like: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1161603/so-you-want-a-nice-stomach )
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Welcome back bliz. You seem like a real determined guy. Once you make up your mind, it's hard to shake it loose. I would suggest that you channel all that lovely determination under your hood into calorie counting---no more excuses. You can do this. What is this "I'm going to try it for a month" business? This is the rest of your life we're talking about. Time to get serious. You never give up here--just keep going no matter what. I'm sure you'll be a success. I'll be looking for your story.
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" Follow MFP's calorie guidelines" where is that? What is the maximum recommended weekly lose?
Would you say weights are better than cardio or swimming or is that just to mimimise muscle loss?
When you enter your personal information (current weight, height, gender, etc.) into MFP, you'll choose a weight loss rate of one half to 2 pounds per week. MFP will then give you a calorie goal to eat each day so you can reach that goal each week.
The maximum you can choose is 2 pounds per week and that's really only viable for people who are more than 75 pounds over a healthy weight. You might go with that for a short time but you'll need to switch to a slower rate as you lose pounds.
Lifting weights in a progressively heavier fashion is the best way to maintain muscle mass while losing weight, however, you also have to be eating enough protein to support that. You also can't be losing weight too quickly which is another reason to follow the calorie goal MFP gives you.0 -
snowflake954 wrote: »Welcome back bliz. You seem like a real determined guy. Once you make up your mind, it's hard to shake it loose. I would suggest that you channel all that lovely determination under your hood into calorie counting---no more excuses. You can do this. What is this "I'm going to try it for a month" business? This is the rest of your life we're talking about. Time to get serious. You never give up here--just keep going no matter what. I'm sure you'll be a success. I'll be looking for your story.
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I love you rabbit, you make me laugh.
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Blitz, I'm going to share a little secret with you that might help you to change your mind on the quick weight loss but it depends on a bit on your end goal. Do you just want to drop a bunch of weight quickly to get to a number on the scale or do you want to have a body that looks good without clothes on and maintain your weight loss for the long term? Most of us want the second thing so I'm going to assume you do, too.
I highly suggest strength training as soon as you can begin and eating at a reasonable deficit to lose less than 1% of your body weight each week (as we've all been saying). I know that most people with a lot of weight to lose want to just focus on seeing the number on the scale get smaller, and I get that, but being significantly overweight actually has some advantages when it comes to strength training. I'll explain....
When we lose "weight" the pounds we lose are made up of a combination of water, fat and muscle. The faster you lose weight, the more of that lost weight will be from muscle because our bodies are looking to preserve as much stored energy as possible against a future starvation period. Unused lean muscle mass is an easy target for this because as you shed pounds, you need less muscle to move your mass around so your body will break it down and it'll be gone. A wasted opportunity.
Strength training forces us to use our muscles in such a way as to signal to the body that we need them. This limits muscle breakdown for energy and helps to retain the muscle you already have. I will tell you that it's much easier to maintain your current muscle mass than it is to build new muscle later (just for starters, building new muscle involves gaining weight!) and here is where those advantages I mentioned come in. As I said earlier, when we lose weight it's a combination of muscle, fat and water. The opposite is true, too! Your current muscle mass is significantly greater than someone who is smaller because while you've been gaining weight over the years some of what you gained was extra muscle so that you could simply move around your extra weight. That's a huge advantage if you're willing to capitalize on it!
Strength training and eating right now will allow you to keep a lot of the extra muscle rather than losing it along with the fat and water. This means more of your weight loss will be strictly from fat and that's what you really want to lose. It also means that when you reach the weight you want to be that your body fat percentage will be much lower than it would have been and you'll be much firmer than if you simply "lost weight" to get there.
In the end, it's your body and your choice but if I was able to go back and do it all over again, I'd have started strength training right away and not wasted all of that time and lost muscle.0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
I am not being sarcastic or snarky in saying this: If you are at a computer all day, then you have the time and the access to enter your information into MFP.
The recipe builder is pretty easy to use, so you can keep track of all the from scratch cooking you do. Once you enter a recipe, it is there for you to use over and over again.
The first week or two of tracking is the hardest; then you build up a personal database of the foods you use most often and it becomes easier. I hardly think about it anymore. It's just another part of my day.
I didn't know it was that advanced, i am a web developer and still have no idea how twitter works... (maybe it's me that is not as advanced)
I am thinking of trying this for a month, i would like to see about 4lb a week loss though which i'm happy to do the excercise for if it's just a case of dong more exercise?
Why so fast???
The recommended maximum healthy rate to lose weight is 2lbs/week.
Losing it quickly means more dramatic changes to the way you eat. The bigger the change, the less likely you will stick to it which is why you keep going back to your old habits. You can juice, reduce your calories massively, lose 50lbs in 2 months, go on holiday and put it all back on!
Losing it is easy, keeping it off is hard.
You need to learn the skills for keeping the weight off during your weight loss process, or you will forever yo-yo and each time you lose and regain, you make losing a little bit more difficult.
Set MFP setting to lose 2lbs/week and log your food and exercise. Eat back half of your exercise calories. Be patient. If you and your other half want to have dinner guests over, eat a little less the rest of the week so you can eat more with your guests guilt free.
If you fancy a night out with friends, pre-log the number of drinks you will be having, so you know exactly how much you can have and not mess up your weight loss journey. If needed, eat a little bit less the rest of the week so you can eat a bit more on that one weekend day.
Same with takeaways.
Because are you going to never have a takeaway again in your life? Never go out drinking with your friends, or let yourself go a little on holiday? Realistically, you will go through these things in life and the weight loss journey is supposed to help you learn the skills to still be able to do these things, but make it fit in to your overall plan. Juicing or restricting too much will not help you learn these skills, so you may be able to sustain it for months, but as soon as you slip once, you will go back to your old habits.
Do listen to all the people who are speaking from experience. GO to the success stories section, befriend them and ask how they did it.
Do focus on keeping it off as much as loosing it.
Good luck!!0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
I am not being sarcastic or snarky in saying this: If you are at a computer all day, then you have the time and the access to enter your information into MFP.
The recipe builder is pretty easy to use, so you can keep track of all the from scratch cooking you do. Once you enter a recipe, it is there for you to use over and over again.
The first week or two of tracking is the hardest; then you build up a personal database of the foods you use most often and it becomes easier. I hardly think about it anymore. It's just another part of my day.
I didn't know it was that advanced, i am a web developer and still have no idea how twitter works... (maybe it's me that is not as advanced)
I am thinking of trying this for a month, i would like to see about 4lb a week loss though which i'm happy to do the excercise for if it's just a case of dong more exercise?
Why so fast???
The recommended maximum healthy rate to lose weight is 2lbs/week.
Losing it quickly means more dramatic changes to the way you eat. The bigger the change, the less likely you will stick to it which is why you keep going back to your old habits. You can juice, reduce your calories massively, lose 50lbs in 2 months, go on holiday and put it all back on!
Losing it is easy, keeping it off is hard.
You need to learn the skills for keeping the weight off during your weight loss process, or you will forever yo-yo and each time you lose and regain, you make losing a little bit more difficult.
Set MFP setting to lose 2lbs/week and log your food and exercise. Eat back half of your exercise calories. Be patient. If you and your other half want to have dinner guests over, eat a little less the rest of the week so you can eat more with your guests guilt free.
If you fancy a night out with friends, pre-log the number of drinks you will be having, so you know exactly how much you can have and not mess up your weight loss journey. If needed, eat a little bit less the rest of the week so you can eat a bit more on that one weekend day.
Same with takeaways.
Because are you going to never have a takeaway again in your life? Never go out drinking with your friends, or let yourself go a little on holiday? Realistically, you will go through these things in life and the weight loss journey is supposed to help you learn the skills to still be able to do these things, but make it fit in to your overall plan. Juicing or restricting too much will not help you learn these skills, so you may be able to sustain it for months, but as soon as you slip once, you will go back to your old habits.
Do listen to all the people who are speaking from experience. GO to the success stories section, befriend them and ask how they did it.
Do focus on keeping it off as much as loosing it.
Good luck!!
Bliz--this is excellent advice. Take it and you'll be glad you did.0 -
Ok, you're looking for advice. I don't always give awesome advice, but that hasn't stopped me from trying! XD
1. Weigh and log EVERYTHING. Yes, it's a pain in the Justin Timberlake, but it's necessary. You need to know what your baseline is and what your patterns are. If you don't know this, you don't know what exactly to adjust. Once you start entering things, you'll build up a recent foods list of things you eat a lot and logging becomes easier. And if you've been doing it for a few years, you'll learn what proper portions look like and will be able to closely estimate calories, so you won't need to use the scale very often any more. You don't HAVE to log for the rest of your life you are confident of keeping the weight off once you get there. I will be logging for the long term, mostly with estimates, just as a way to double check myself.
2. If you want to juice, then do so. It is a good way to supplement your vitamins and nutrition your body needs, kinda like taking a multi-vitamin. However, it's not really a good idea to do meal replacement juicing. You'll find that you'll be hungry more often, which makes it harder to avoid over eating later in the day. As long as you account for the calories in your daily calorie goal, juice your heart out.
3. Set all your stats in MFP honestly, and set it to sedentary. If your calorie goal looks too high or too low to you, double check on some other online calculators. Granted, other calculators have their own idea of what sedentary means in terms of calories burned, but they should all be fairly close.
4. You don't have to cut everything at once! It's ok to start slow, with one or two things, and give yourself time to get used to them. You didn't gain the weight in a couple of weeks, so it's going to take more than a couple of weeks to lose it. Sorry for the cliche, but slow and steady really does win this race.
5. Weight loss happens in the kitchen. You can lose weight with JUST cutting calories. Basically, weight loss happens when you burn more calories than you consume. You can do that by cutting the amount of calories you consume, upping the amount of calories you burn, or a combination of both. So exercise isn't really required for weight loss. Now, it's good for other things, so if you can add it, do so. But don't count on it for your weight loss.
6. This is a SLOW process. I know you want fast weight loss, but that's what yo-yo dieting does. If you focus on doing everything you can to lose weight fast, when you get to your goal and go off that diet, the weight will come back. By going the slow route of gradually lowering your calories consumed, you are teaching yourself better eating habits, as well as retraining your brain and body to what a normal portion of food is. This way, when you hit your target, you have the tools and knowledge to STAY in your target range.
I guess, when all is said and done, you have to ask yourself why you're losing weight. Don't rely on what others say or what you think it should be; why do YOU want to lose weight? Take a good, honest look at yourself and figure that out. Once you do that, you'll find it much easier to keep logging, to forgive yourself and move on after an off day, and in general, stay on this path. But you have to want it, and it has to be for YOUR reason. We can give you all the advice in the world, but we can't force you to do this. Only you can.
Thank you for the advice! i like that quote "Weight loss happens in the kitchen."
Ok i'll try it this way for 4 weeks and see how i get on, hopefully i can lose more than 2lb a week and build my fitness at the same time. I hope to get back into football when i'm fit enough. I used to play football 6 days a week and could pretty much eat a house and not put anything on...
How many people have told you that over 2 lb is too aggressive?
Only 4 weeks? It's obvious you're just looking for a crash diet.
Good luck with that, and have fun gaining it all back again and more just as quickly, as is inevitable (if you don't listen to all the excellent advice you're ignoring).
Best wishes.0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else." Follow MFP's calorie guidelines" where is that? What is the maximum recommended weekly lose?
Would you say weights are better than cardio or swimming or is that just to mimimise muscle loss?
Go to MyHome (look at the top of the page)
Go to Goals
Enter your information and set your goals
You're the third person to ask a question along these lines ... are these not visible in a different version of Windows or something?
As for logging your food, it's not that hard. I eat a lot of fresh food too, and once you've entered banana, you don't have to enter it day after day, you just select it. Just a tick of a box.
0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
I am not being sarcastic or snarky in saying this: If you are at a computer all day, then you have the time and the access to enter your information into MFP.
The recipe builder is pretty easy to use, so you can keep track of all the from scratch cooking you do. Once you enter a recipe, it is there for you to use over and over again.
The first week or two of tracking is the hardest; then you build up a personal database of the foods you use most often and it becomes easier. I hardly think about it anymore. It's just another part of my day.
I didn't know it was that advanced, i am a web developer and still have no idea how twitter works... (maybe it's me that is not as advanced)
I am thinking of trying this for a month, i would like to see about 4lb a week loss though which i'm happy to do the excercise for if it's just a case of dong more exercise?
This is how it often goes: maybe three or four pounds for the the first week due to your body adjusting to the changes.
It is realistic to have your goals set to one pound a week.
Most people eat the same foods over and over again.
Logging into the diary is easy after the first two weeks.0 -
Four weeks? Are you just looking for ridiculous results, like dropping 50lbs in a month? This isn't the site for that.
As others have said, this should be a lifetime commitment, not four weeks. Learn to eat within a calorie limit and not just yo-yo up and down in weight. Your health will thank you for it.0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
Perhaps calorie counting isn't the approach for you.0 -
I'd suggest plugging your info into the MFP, then using their calorie number as your goal.
Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep.
https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2013/04/HEPApr2013.jpg0 -
I find it hard to enter everything i'm eating, usually i cook from fresh and not everything has labels.
I sit behind a computer all day, i'm sure i probably need half (if not less) of a male daily calorie count just to stay the same.
I do use the app to track my weight, but not much else.
Google the fresh food you are eating, ex: "apple nutrition", and google will comes up with the nutrition label on the right side of the screen. Make sure you type "nutrition" at the end of the item. If there isn't anything in MFP that matches what google gives you can make your own under My Foods, in your food diary- you can pull that entry any time you have to log that item. If nothing comes up on google or you want to be more specific try this site nutritiondata.self.com/.
It does take some work in the beginning but once you have all the foods you normally eat figured out it goes much smoother. I also work a desk job and had to get used to eating less! Not impossible if you put your mind to it and be consistent.0 -
Having to lose weight is not an excuse to end eating great tasting food. I eat chocolate. A lot. And pasta. And Chinese. All you need to do is figure out how much you should be eating at (you can enter in your activity level -- I use sedentary as a default and adjust my calories accordingly). Weigh your food. The recipe calculator is awesome for when you want to figure out how much a home cooked meal is gonna be calorie wise.
Not to say yay or nay on juicing, but it's just not necessary for weight loss or detox. Drink a lot of water. There's your detox, for free. Good luck!0
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