anapestic Member

Multiple things, especially salt, can cause a temporary spike in your weight. It's always disheartening when that happens, but the good part is that some other day you'll get back on the scale and suddenly that weight will be gone.

If you're not hungry in the morning, and your weight loss is otherwise going okay, then go ahead and skip breakfast. Some people need to eat then, and some people don't. If at some point you start struggling with the weight loss, you might want to consider trying to eat a reasonable breakfast for a week or so to see if…

If you know where you're going in advance, check out the restaurant's website before you leave home. That way you can decide what to order and plan your calories. If you've already made up your mind before you get there, you won't have as much trouble with temptation. Also, if you know what you're eating at dinner, it's…

Everyone here is going to tell you the same thing: if you eat less than you burn, you'll lose weight in time. Either you're ingesting more calories than you think, or you're burning fewer than you think. Try very carefully tracking (measuring and recording everything) for a few weeks and you'll see results. It's not easy,…

Unsweetened passion fruit iced tea lemonade. So good. It's too early in the year for that here, but it's warm there, right?

I think your best bet is to put the apple cider vinegar in a salad dressing and then put it on a big salad. That will curb your hunger, and it tastes a lot better than having it in water. Any time anyone uses the word "cleanse," you should smile and back away slowly.

I like steel cut oats a lot, mostly for the texture. They definitely take longer to prepare, so you either need to presoak them or make them in quantity and parcel them out. I do that when I think to make them on a weekend. I think they're mostly for people who don't mind doing a little cooking. Alton Brown has a really…

Don't beat yourself up over this. A tablespoon of Nutella is 100 calories, so you'd need to eat a little more than two cups of it to gain a pound. Or about 6.5 cups (which I think is about what you'd get from the giant Costco double pack of Nutella) to gain three pounds. So I'm guessing some (most, almost all) of that…

I feel like your commitment to alcohol is not quite where it should be. A fifth of gin, for example, has only about 1,875 calories, which makes it a pretty good day's worth of nutrition. And, heck, it's loaded with botanicals, so it has to be good for you. You can always add in some olives if you feel like solid food needs…

I weigh in every morning. But if I had a lot of carbs or salt late in the previous evening and my weight is up a little, I don't get upset. My method of handling daily fluctuations is to only update my weight when it's lower than the last time I updated my weight. Denial is a powerful tool: master it.

Also: http://www.livestrong.com/article/294839-how-many-calories-are-in-one-bag-of-microwave-popcorn/

12 cups of popcorn is not as much as some of you think it is. Those bags get pretty big in the microwave, and when you dump it out into a bowl, you might very well have 12 cups. If you've ever popped your own popcorn, you know that 2 tablespoons making 4 cups is not at all uncommon. The label is misleading, and the only…

I'm really confused. Light cleaning? Do people actually clean their lights? It seems like you'd get burned.

Congratulations. I typically come in between 2000 and 2200 calories a day, and the difference between that and 1600 calories is the difference between being mindful of what I eat but not feeling terribly deprived, and abject misery. I would totally give up and be eating everything in sight after a few weeks of 1600.

Here's a link to an NPR article that includes information on a recent clinical study: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/09/01/344315405/cutting-back-on-carbs-not-fat-may-lead-to-more-weight-loss The study (published in a peer-reviewed journal) it reports on took two groups of people and put one group on a…

I'm figuring that I'll take a cheat day on Thanksgiving. I've tried to set up my eating habits so that it's really easy for me to log everything I eat, but T-day is usually really busy for me with lots of cooking, etc., and if I have to measure exactly how much cream and butter I put in the mashed potatoes (the way I do…

I did a ten-day juice fast once. Days 2 and 3 were the real killers for me. Anyway, I found that adding some ginger to almost anything I was juicing really helped with the flavor.

Hello, This is my second time around on MFP. The last time was two years ago, and I managed to get to just under the morbid obesity level before I went back to my old habits. I'm trying to do things better this time, and part of that is joining groups. In the past, I've never been much of a joiner, but the past didn't work…

Hi, everyone. SW: 382 CW: 348 GW: 210 (I think) I have gained and lost large amounts several times in the past, so I'm trying really hard to make this a permanent change. It is difficult to have patience. It's also difficult for me to reconcile the notion that this has to be the way I'm going to deal with food for the rest…

You realize that pretty much everything on this site is a first world problem, right?

This is useful information. I eat at Chipotle probably once a week because it's really tasty and because I know how many calories I'm getting. In my experience, the workers seem like they're giving me a spoon of everything, and if they go back with the spoon for a second go, it's usually because they're near the bottom of…

Is the full paper available online somewhere? I don't understand what all the table headings mean, so it's difficult to evaluate. It looks like it's saying that if you eat less you burn fewer calories. Did they control for the possibility of people exercising less because they were eating less?

My sister had weight loss surgery, and as a result, she has entirely changed her eating habits. Also, she's a great deal more active now than she was when she weighed 100+ pounds more. My brother is even more overweight than I am, and he has diabetes. He hasn't had surgery, but I'd guess that over the last ten years the…

My feeling, generally, is that people who say "love the sinner, hate the sin" usually don't really mean that: they don't like either the sinner or the sin. However, with response to your particular argument, while I agree that homosexuality isn't sinful, "love the sinner, hate the sin" could still be valid with respect to…

Making foods in the crockpot is a good idea. Each dish you make in there can probably serve your family for at least three meals. It takes a little while to build up an inventory, but once you have several different dishes in rotation, you only have to make two or three different things a week. I made something recently…

If you get an insulated lunch bag/tote and some cold packs, you should be able to take yogurt and have it be fine after 6 hours. Also, will you have access to a microwave? That would increase your options dramatically since there are plenty of bean dishes you can freeze and then reheat in the microwave.

If you are having trouble just on the days when you don't work out, you could switch to a weekly calorie count, or just take an average. So if you're getting an extra 400 calories 5 days a week, you could eat an extra 300 calories those days, and split the remaining 500 calories between your two off days. It should work…

Whole grains are generally better for you than processed grains, so you might want to think about leaving behind white bread and white rice on a permanent basis, in favor of whole grain bread and brown rice. Personally, while I recognize that what matters in losing weight is the caloric deficit, I find that white bread,…

If I eat something salty or with a lot of carbs (but still within my calorie limit) late in the day, I just don't weigh myself the next morning. It's easier to remember that daily fluctuations aren't what really matter when there isn't a bad number staring me in the face.

Your situation certainly sounds tough, and I wouldn't dream of minimizing your difficulties. It might not help with most of your problems, but starting next year, you should at least be able to get heavily subsidized health insurance.