Weight loss???
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rueschfamily7
Posts: 3 Member
Hey guys. I'm 292 pounds and looking to lose weight as quickly as possible. Any suggestions??
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Replies
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You need to change your diet. You got to that weight by poor food choices and no accountability. Start by eliminating alcohol, ultra processed carbs (cookies, chips, non diet soda, etc) and liquid calories. You'll concentrate on lean protein sources and veggies. Just doing that will put you on the right path for now. The goal is to take in fewer calories than you burn.
Take a 30 minute walk everyday also.
Once you get going, start counting and tracking your calories0 -
In addition to the above, make healthier substitutions, e.g. plain baked potato instead of loaded, mashed potato from the fast food place instead of fries, half serving of sauce on sandwiches or switch to healthier sauce option completely, lower calorie snack options than ice cream, and so on. At your assumed TDEE it should be easy to find 500+ calories per day to cut, which is one pound per week.0
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My advice would be not to try to lose weight as quickly as possible (especially if not under close medical supervision for deficiencies or health complications).
Losing any meaningful total amount of weight isn't a quick project with a nearby end date, after which things "go back to normal". (That's the recipe for yo-yo dieting, probably the most health-destructive long term route.)
A meaningful total loss itself is a matter of months or even years (if severely overweight) . . . then there's the issue of maintaining that healthy weight long term, ideally forever. Many people say that that's even more difficult than the loss phase, and statistics about regain tend to imply that that's true.
To me, that puts a premium on figuring out how to lose weight sustainably, i.e., via relatively-easy tactics that one can stick with pretty consistently for those months, years, or permanently (with a few extra calories in the picture when maintaining).
I'm talking about eating food the person likes, in calorie-appropriate portions, proportions, and frequencies, with food choices and on an eating schedule that the specific individual person finds practical, affordable, and ideally reasonably nutritious. I'm talking about adding movement to daily life that's ideally pretty fun, and at worst tolerable and convenient - both formal exercise and everyday life movement. Day to day patterns of eating and activity are the big thing. Better routine habits are what really matters, not rare exceptions.
We see a lot of "I'm back, having regained" threads here. Don't be one of them. Find some new habits that you can follow and continue long term nearly on autopilot when life gets complicated, because it for sure will. Exactly what those habits are will vary from one person to the next. Experiment, and find yours.
Context, i.e., why I believe this: I was overweight to class 1 obese for around 30 years, most of my adult life. I've been at a healthy weight for around 7 years now, after most of a year of weight loss.
Best wishes for your success with your goals!5 -
Yep and also at his weight a bigger deficit is fine until he gets leaner. Someone that heavy probably has a maintenance of 4,000+ caloriesRetroguy2000 wrote: »In addition to the above, make healthier substitutions, e.g. plain baked potato instead of loaded, mashed potato from the fast food place instead of fries, half serving of sauce on sandwiches or switch to healthier sauce option completely, lower calorie snack options than ice cream, and so on. At your assumed TDEE it should be easy to find 500+ calories per day to cut, which is one pound per week.
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i was around 240 pounds at the start of the year. i started moving more and eating less and drinking more water (which assists with the eating less)
i set my MFP lifestyle to sedentary, and a 1lb per week loss which gives me a baseline intake to work on. i do a minimum on 30 minutes walking which i track on my garmin, giving me those few extra calories to eat on top of that. but then i try not to be sedentary in my daily routine. i could easily sit at my desk all day and hit the 8k steps mark per day, then do my walk and be at around 11k. but im hitting 14 to 15k steps per day. its not that hard. small things like getting up to stretch your legs every hour or so. and my favourite now, if i go out to the shops or whatever, stop looking for a park at the door. park at the back of the car park and enter the mall or whatever at the opposite end to the shop you want to go to. you can easily add 3 or 4k extra steps to your day without actually doing "exercise"
the more water thing is important, not just for hydration. i would previously snack a lot. i now have a 25oz double insulated water bottle that i keep with me. i constantly take drinks from it and i find that im not snacking as much.
food tracking is important. try not to go over the calories that MFP gives you. but this is going to go against what a lot of people on here say. dont worry if you arent 100% accurate. now thats not to say eat stuff and dont log it. but i dont worry about getting exact weights of what im eating. and if the exact thing im eating isnt there i get the closest match. by setting MFP to sedentary and then being more active outside of tracked exercise, it gives the leeway to not be completely overboard with food tracking.
3 weeks in and im 8 pounds down.2 -
[snip]
food tracking is important. try not to go over the calories that MFP gives you. but this is going to go against what a lot of people on here say. dont worry if you arent 100% accurate. now thats not to say eat stuff and dont log it. but i dont worry about getting exact weights of what im eating. and if the exact thing im eating isnt there i get the closest match. by setting MFP to sedentary and then being more active outside of tracked exercise, it gives the leeway to not be completely overboard with food tracking.
3 weeks in and im 8 pounds down.
It's true that with a lot to lose the level of precision may be less important, because there's a lot of room for a deficit, especially adding exercise in. But if weight loss stalls after a while, for a lot of people, it's because the deficit window is now narrow enough that eyeballing and volume measurements don't cut it anymore. That's when the scale is helpful. The scale isn't perfect either, but it is more precise. That's why it's recommended so much as an option, because calories have less room to "hide" in the diary.
Losing weight at 240 lbs is a lot different than at 180 lbs or 140 lbs or even less (not that everyone needs to get there; they don't.) Do I think the OP needs to get a scale right now? I suppose not. But it's a cheap investment and a good skill to learn now. I think the best way to start is just to honestly log what you eat, not even make any big changes right away, and let the data speak for itself. I would guess that like many of us, the OP would be very surprised.
(To be honest, I really like my scale because it lets me eat *more*. My habit prior to using a scale was serious undereating "just in case," getting a big early drop, then getting very tired and giving up. A scale helped me figure out just how much I could eat and still lose weight at a reasonable, sustainable rate, and not feel totally miserable.)3 -
tomcustombuilder wrote: »You need to change your diet. You got to that weight by poor food choices and no accountability. Start by eliminating alcohol, ultra processed carbs (cookies, chips, non diet soda, etc) and liquid calories. You'll concentrate on lean protein sources and veggies. Just doing that will put you on the right path for now. The goal is to take in fewer calories than you burn.
Take a 30 minute walk everyday also.
Once you get going, start counting and tracking your calories
Yep. Easier said than done, but nevertheless it's the basic path to recovering health, and weight loss is almost a given. Cheers
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While weighing your food is not as important right now, get into the habit. This is portion control. You can see visually what the size compared to weight looks like. Processed food has a lot of additives, especially salts, so limit those, but do not deprive yourself of something you really like. If you deprive yourself, you will just want it more. Portion control is key.
Count every bite, lick and taste. These can add up quickly without you being aware.
Everyone wants to lose quickly, but you did not gain quickly. Lose at a healthly rate.
Also, take your measurements. This can give a better picture than the scale.1 -
tomcustombuilder wrote: »Yep and also at his weight a bigger deficit is fine until he gets leaner. Someone that heavy probably has a maintenance of 4,000+ calories
At 292, which is just a little bit higher than where I was when I first started, he COULD easily hit a TDEE (maintenance) level of 4,000 Calories, *IF* he were active.
I may have FELT that I was active enough when I was 280... but I wasn't. It does depend a lot on degree of obesity, age, and all that jazz.
In terms of advice for someone starting out... log your food. Really log your food. Truly log your food. BEFORE you eat it.
Just logging your food in detail, carefully, without missing anything, even a single bite, BEFORE you eat it... yup, just doing that will result in weight loss.
Because it is time consuming to log carefully in the beginning and you will start thinking whether you even want to go into all the effort to log for just one extra bite of whatever.
And then LOOK at the log. LOOK at it. Were the 485-500 Calories for the large fries worth it? Could you get away with 320-350 Calories and an order of Medium fries and use the "savings" to order a round egg to add to your Big Mac, which would make the Big Mac more satisfying, allowing you to also drop that second big mac, thus saving you over 500 Cal for that meal?
Did you HAVE to eat that second Big Mac at that point of time? Could you wait a bit and see if you still wanted it and then go back to have it if that's the case?
THINK and EVALUATE. I am not saying ditch the fries and move to cauliflower rice on day one -- but I did sure as *kittens* skip the thousand island dressing and the middle bun and grab a mcdouble with extra mustard, slivered onions, lettuce, and a round egg instead of a big mac!
Then look back at your log. Decide what's worth the calories. Ratchet the weight loss a little bit. But do not over ratchet, increasing activity and reducing energy more and more to pursue continuous losses higher than 0.5% to 1% of your body weight per week with better long term (after a few months especially) compliance towards the lower end
To the contrary, for any decision, look at it through the perspective of "can I keep doing this long term?" In the end long term compliance will get you more results than pure speed. And it has more chances to better position you for transition to maintenance4 -
OP, you don’t need to ELIMINATE alcohol, processed carbs, or liquids… you DO need to account for them and make choices. I make room in my diet to allow for some of these things, and I’ve been in maintenance or minor fluctuations for years (except for a post-surgical period that I have since lost).
Weigh or measure everything you eat, in grams if possible, and log it. Everything. At 292 pounds you will still have some room for things you enjoy in your deficit. The best way to lose weight is a sustainable way. Going straight to chicken and broccoli is tough.
Consider a Fitbit and linking it to MFP. I like to set myself as Inactive and the adjustments motivate me to move more. I only eat half of the adjustment it gives me. You don’t have to run on a treadmill, walking is fine, as far as you can/want to. Keep going until you can go further/longer. Consider Walk Away the Pounds videos. At some point consider adding weight training… again, no gym required. Plenty of body weight, dumbbell, or resistance band exercises you can do at home.
Good luck!2
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