carlageek Member

One way that I did it was to dive into Indian cooking and develop a very heavy hand with spices. Restaurant Indian food (like all restaurant food) is finished with lots of fat to make it rich and shiny, but as a home cook it is not necessary to do this. Restaurant Indian food is also served with enormous quantities of…

I suppose you have a better sense of what goes on in your mind than I do. But I am wary of the "emotional eating" label. It seems a way to turn something that gives you pleasure into a pathology - a way to beat up on yourself, a way to convince yourself that whatever you are doing for your weight loss is somehow not good…

There is no reason to beat up on yourself for loving food and loving to cook. You can love to cook and love to eat without constantly overeating. You just have to be mindful of what you are eating and how much of it. But losing weight and maintaining weight loss does not require giving up your love of food. Thank goodness!…

I'm 40 and I've lost over 100 pounds. Key for me has been developing patience, and the nice thing about being a little older is that it's a little easier to do that. I've been in an active weight-loss process for more than 3 years. But those three years have gone by lightning-quick - you know how quickly time goes by as…

How much weight I use depends, of course, upon what exercise I am doing. But I like to lift heavy and think you should too. What "lifting heavy" means to me is this: For any particular exercise, choose a weight at which you can do 5-8 reps while preserving good form. If you can do more than 10 reps without fatigue, you…

I drink loads of coffee (several-to-many cups per day) and have all the way through my weight loss process. When I started losing weight I took milk in my coffee and thought that was non-negotiable. I dutifully counted the calories in the milk I used. Eventually, as I got closer to a healthy weight, I was looking for ways…

I've been working on them for months and months, and I am pretty darn strong for a girl - and I still can't do even one pull-up without the assist machine at the gym. The assist machine allows me to set a counterweight that effectively reduces the amount of weight I am pulling up. Right now I can do my body weight minus…

It is a big change an you look super. Look at the curve of your bicep - it's convex now, instead of concave. RAWR. I love lifting. <3

I just want to let you know that I also started at 275 pounds, and I lost weight at an average of a pound a week for more than two years - it slowed down considerably over the last year. I've been at this three years and I'm still not done with active weight loss - I would like to go a little further. If I'd thought about…

Like others have said, I don't try to "make up" for off-plan choices - I just get right back on plan with the very next choice. I have found that trying to make up for things leads to starve/binge cycles, or at least to more instability, more off-plan choices, and more trouble staying on plan. Just put the one day behind…

... but if you find that working out at time A fits into your schedule and is doable on a regular basis, while working out at time B is really inconvenient and you consistently skip workouts because of that, the results of the study are pretty much irrelevant. I stand by my original statement: The best time to work out is…

The best time to work out is whatever time you will actually do it. If there are marginal differences in effectiveness based upon time of day, they are tiny and completely negligible compared to the binary of getting your workout in vs. not getting it in.

I have been there. Just do the best you can to put it behind you and get right back on your plan today. Do not try to "make up" for the off day by overly restricting what you eat - that is a dangerous road that leads to unproductive binge-starve cycles. You've done yourself a favor by logging what you ate yesterday and…

Agreed - a pound per week is an excellent average rate of loss. Instead of being pissed off that it isn't going faster, kiss those pounds goodbye and be proud of yourself for losing them. Look around you and think about how many people don't even get as far as you have, and just keep gaining, gaining ... Your process is…

I have eaten a lot of fruit throughout my weight loss process. By "a lot", I mean up to 5 pieces of fruit a day - usually 2-3 apples, a banana, and an orange (though sometimes other types of fruits also). For myself I have always agreed with what the OP said, that I didn't get fat by eating too much fruit. However, I do…

I don't track coffee because I drink it black, though it probably adds up to about 30 calories per day because I drink a lot of it! However: if you are putting 1% milk in it, I would DEFINITELY recommend track it. That is calories, fat, and protein you want included in your diary.

With patience. Some weeks you lose, some weeks you don't. Some weeks you can even gain. Here are some words I posted about this the other day: It would be nice if your weight just marched cooperatively downward week after week but that simply isn't the way your body works. Nearly everyone loses in fits and starts. Your…

Thanks; it's taken me almost 2.5 years so far. I didn't join MFP until this past fall - when I started getting close to a healthy weight I needed more rigor in my calorie counting and FitDay's ancient and featureless interface just wasn't doing it for me anymore, so I switched to MFP then.

I was having a lot of trouble hitting even 1300 calories. I ended up changing my target to 1/2 pound loss per week instead of 1 pound loss per week so I'd have a few hundred more calories to play with. No sense in being in a rush if it leads to a miserably restrictive plan I have trouble sticking to!

Some weeks you just aren't going to see weight loss. It would be nice if your weight just marched cooperatively downward week after week but that simply isn't the way your body works. Nearly everyone loses in fits and starts. Your body weight depends upon more than just what you eat and how much fat you burn. It depends…

I eat a lot of fruit too, but I find the best snacks for holding me over provide a mixture of fat, protein, and fiber. So - a piece of fruit and an egg; a piece of fruit and a little cheese; greek yogurt; some sliced turkey with a sliced tomato; you get the idea. Some people swear by nuts and they do have all the elements…

I haven't worried about sugars at any point in my process. I eat a ton of fruit - up to 5 pieces of fruit a day, usually apples, oranges, and bananas. I also get a little sugar from dairy sources. Beyond that I don't have many sources of sugar in my diet. Still, with all the fruit I eat, I get plenty of sugar and it hasn't…

If you don't like protein shakes, you can always eat food instead. Chicken, fish, greek yogurt, eggs, nuts, legumes ... the world is bursting with real actual nutritious foods that are rich in protein. I don't really understand the fascination with protein shakes, myself. Personally, I'd much rather eat food. In fact I've…

Everyone's needs are different, of course, and I have heard that some people find they have to restrict sugars even from natural, unprocessed sources like fruit in order to curb cravings and have effective weight loss. But, I have to say that I've been quite happily losing weight for more than two years on a plan that…

Goals like "lose X weight by Y date" suck, because what you weigh and how fast you lose depends upon a whole host of factors you cannot control. I much prefer to set goals whose achievement (or not) is ENTIRELY within my control: Eat on plan every day this week. Work out six times. Goals that I can meet, that don't depend…

Kelekat, a few weeks ago I experienced a 5-pound gain over about two days. I don't know what caused it - hormones, a sore muscle that needed healing, the weather, something I ate, an unholy combination of all of those factors. It took nearly a week for that bloat to subside, and it drove me crazy while it was happening.…

A week isn't really enough time to resolve meaningful changes in your body weight. You might have lost a pound or two of fat in that week. But, your total body weight depends upon more than just the amount of fat you have. Fluid-weight swings of 2-4 pounds are very common. Some of the causes of fluid retention are within…

I have been working at decoupling my eating habits from the vocabulary of moral lapses. Eating off plan isn't "cheating", it isn't "bad", it isn't a crime or a sin. It's not something for which one needs to be punished, or do penance. That kind of thinking leads me right to starve-and-binge cycles, even minor ones, and…

It's very difficult and requires you to find great reserves of patience or discipline, but I would wait to see at least 3-4 weeks of on-plan behavior with no loss on the scale, before making changes to your plan. For most of my process, I have at an average rate of about a pound a week. But that was an average, and I…

When you say "I'm not losing," what sort of time scale are you talking about? How long has it been since you've seen a loss? How close to a healthy weight are you already?