Where do I begin........literally?

Where do you begin? Either at the sexy pants thread listed above, or with my post here: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10257474/starting-out-restarting-basics-inside#latest

Baby steps. Make a decision to make better choices. You don't need to be perfect. You just need to improve. Cut yourself some slack. None of us are perfect.

Don't make drastic changes. Eat less; but choose a calorie goal you can live with for awhile.

Don't eliminate foods you love. That can lead to binges. I love chocolate. So I allow myself a square of dark chocolate everyday. Ghiradelli squares are individually wrapped, so they work great for me.

Veggies are low calorie and high volume. I add veggies to lunch and dinner. Choose different varieties, cook them different ways, add different spices and they won't be boring.

Protein, fat and fiber are filling. I like Greek yogurt with berries, nuts, and Fiber One for breakfast.

After the food thing is in hand, make a plan to move more. If you don't have a pedometer you might want to invest in one. This may motivate you to move more. Find an activity that you enjoy. This will make you more consistent.

Good Luck East! So much great advice here. I especially like the logging for a week before making drastic changes. Just being aware of calories and nutritional content will help you make better choices. Start small, then as you get more informed you can make more changes. It's a marathon, not a sprint... This is for the long haul!

There's nothing wrong with snacking all day rather than eating actual meals. Overall calories are what count, not when you eat them.

There's a lot of good advice in this thread but OP I will also emphasize:

Try not to make too many big changes all at once. If you aren't currently exercising, maybe just focus on tracking your food at first. A lot of people spend a couple of weeks just tracking your normal food intake to get an idea of how many calories you are currently consuming so you have a better idea of what deficit you'll be creating, whether you are way over on sugars, etc. Others jump right in with the recommendations from MFP and that's good too.

Along with the series of small changes, you don't have to be perfect all the time. For example, some people say they can't eat a cookie because it isn't healthy. Well sure, eating nothing but cookies isn't healthy, but if you are eating a balanced diet with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, and healthy fats, there's nothing wrong with eating a cookie too. There are no unhealthy foods, there are unhealthy diets.

There's nothing wrong with convenience foods. There are a lot of them which have a good balance of nutrients for the calories, they are convenient, and can help with portion control. I eat those Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches and bowls pretty regularly. The bowl with egg whites, turkey sausage, potatoes and cheddar cheese is filling and tasty and has 24 g of protein. Greek yogurt and oats is good too, but don't shy away from some of those things because someone told you processed food is bad. Both yogurt and oats are processed!

Good luck! You're off to a great start!

I made a motivation board in my bedroom...so the first thing I see when I open my eyes is the reason im doing this in the first place...and its not because of the hot guy in the bed next to me who lifts weights 4 days a week without complaining and finding excuses...although he could be part of my motivation I find that my board of photos of what I want to look like quotes to inspire me and a visual tracking of pounds and inches lost forces me to stay on track because its visible....im accountable to myself and he's watching too...and so are my kids...they come in and see how mom is making out...did she lose this week, did she lift more on chest press than last week...or did she fail...and honestly that word "FAIL" is the big thing keeping me going....also you need encouragement and congrats from people...that keeps you going too...just remember it takes 4 weeks to make a change and make it stick...8 weeks for your body to actually notice and 12 weeks for anyone close to you...as my boyfriend says its not a sprint...its a damn marathon and a long one! DON'T GIVE UP!

TeaBea wrote: »

Baby steps. Make a decision to make better choices. You don't need to be perfect. You just need to improve. Cut yourself some slack . None of us are perfect.

Don't make drastic changes. Eat less; but choose a calorie goal you can live with for awhile.

Don't eliminate foods you love. That can lead to binges love chocolate. So I allow myself a square of dark chocolate everyday. Ghiradelli squares are individually wrapped, so they work great for me.

Veggies are low calorie and high volume. I add veggies to lunch and dinner. Choose different varieties, cook them different ways, add different spices and they won't be boring.

Protein, fat and fiber are filling. I like Greek yogurt with berries, nuts, and Fiber One for breakfast.

After the food thing is in hand, make a plan to move more. If you don't have a pedometer you might want to invest in one. This may motivate you to move more. Find an activity that you enjoy. This will make you more consistent.

I agree with EVERYTHING above especially the bolded items.

Most people that fail think they are going to from sitting on their a** everyday on the couch stuffing their face with Doritos to ripped aps in 6 months. That just isn't realistic. You aren't going to undo years of bad exercise and/or eating choices immediately. Small changes you make and STICK TO will yield dividends over time.

I will suggest two relatively small changes you can make to begin with:
1) Park farther from the door..every door. When you go shopping...to work...to church..grandma's house...wherever. That will immediately add some more steps to your day. Tell yourself it's to keep other people from banging your doors if that helps.
2) Don't drink your calories. It's OK to have the have the occasional Starbucks Mocha Frappucino extra whipped cream (tasty) calorie bomb but if this is an everyday thing for you, it will make it more likely for you to be "hangry" while on a calorie deficit...simply because there are fewer calories left for actual food if you're spending 400-500 on that drink...or on soda...or sweet tea..or a sugary smoothie.

And yes, read the stickies...lots of good info in there.

Loads of great ideas!!!

seska422 wrote: »

Third thing: start making small changes that you'll be comfortable sticking with forever.

That's the rub. The catch 22. Your life must change. As soon as you accept that you'll be successful. I miss the days of sitting on the couch eating a half package of Oreo's and milk watching movies with the kids. I miss selecting the snacks for the weekend that we'd all munch on while watching our favorite shows for the week (usually chips and dip). I miss little chocolate doughnuts every morning with my extra sweet coffee. I want to just say screw it and go back to that as I pass by the new flavors of chips in the store each week or the new Oreo flavors or the freshly made doughnuts or cinnamon rolls in the bakery. But I choose not to go down that road ever again. I give myself holidays now, and that's it. On holidays I still log everything but I indulge as much as my stomach will take. I then feel guilty as hell and go back to my routine afterward. I just finished giving away all the leftover sweets and crap we made for Christmas this year to co-workers, friends, and family yesterday. I did it so that I would not be tempted going forward. New Year's Eve is this week, and I'll be dieting. I'll be cooking a big breakfast on New Years day, but then I'll be doing an extra long workout that day to make up for it. It's a way of life you have to adopt. But you can't just take away everything you love about food, you simply have to make smarter choices, learn to love your scale, and adjust recipes to be more healthy. You'll probably find that you like some recipes even more with substitutions, and you'll find new recipes that are better for you and taste good. You'll also discover snacks that you can eat without guilt.

The first thing I gave up was sugar. That white granulated stuff. I figured it was going to be the most difficult thing to give up, so I started with it. I now add it to nothing, and if I need extra sweetness I add Stevia or Truvia. But, I dislike the aftertaste that most sweeteners have, so I rarely use them. I simply go without. A few months of that and I realized that many things have their own sweetness, especially vegetables. Their sweetness was masked by the sugar all these years. The second thing I did was adopt a daily exercise program. For me it was walking, and now it's using a Bowflex M5 in the Winter, but I'll go back to walking in the spring most likely. I set MFP at a 2lb loss per week and added in the exercise and managed to lose 90 lbs in 10 months. That's pretty extreme, and I was not able to maintain that rate of loss forever I'm just demonstrating that it can be done. Trying to maintain that rate of loss actually put me in a ton of pain because I managed to re-injure my back and ended up with sciatica this last summer and fall (twice!) just from being stubborn and doing too much (I was walking 4 miles a day at 3.5-4mph before breakfast each morning). I also started lifting weights, and doing other general body-weight exercises. I now keep my calories adjusted to about a .5lb/week loss on MFP and do about 500 cals of exercise a day on top of that and am stuck. But that happens and you just have to ignore it and keep on going.

But back to the point. You have to change. Make a conscious decision to make the change and start small. One thing at a time. Try to take things steadily and give yourself holidays (birthdays, etc.) as days off your diet. Log everything on those days as well so that you know how much extra work you need to do to make up for it. Think of things in terms of weeks instead of days. If you binge for a day with 1000 extra calories over your goal, divide that by 7 and try to put yourself at an extra 150 calories per day for the next seven days and you've undone what you did on the holiday. It's much more simple when you think about it that way.

The next question for me is once I lose this last 10-20lbs, how do I maintain it? I'm going to be so used to dieting at a deficit it's going to be tough. But I will simply do the same thing I've always done. Adjust a little bit at a time until I find the right amount of exercise and calories to keep me at my desired weight.

Good luck! You CAN do it.

Oh and by the way: I eat ice cream, deserts, etc. all the time. I simply log them, deduct the calories, and adjust the total I eat each day accordingly. Snacks like that are ok to eat as long as you realize they are pretty much empty calories. You're going to want them, so eat them when you have the extra calories left so that you won't be so tempted to binge later.