Melampus Member

It is very much possible to loose weight without doing extra exercise. I have lost quite a bit of weight with diet as the main mechanism and I am very pleased with the results. As far as muscle mass is concerned there is a state of equilibrium where your body maintains enough muscle to support the activities you normally…

The term "cheat" is interesting. If you cheat in a competition with a prize it is possible to get a prize you are not entitled to for which you may feel good or bad. On the other hand if you are trying to be fit and healthy, reduce your risk of chronic diseases and maybe improve self image or attractiveness, as I assume…

Does anyone have any evidence that what we traditionally regard as breakfast foods is based on any sound scientific research or is it, as I suspect, just a matter of fashion and subject to variations over time and place? There is a fashion in the UK amongst some to eat a breakfast consisting mainly of fried meat (called…

I often choose the last meal of a day to balance the day based on what I have already eaten and you could certainly do the same but the other way round, i.e. estimate what you would eat in the evening and then adjust your other meals accordingly. In the end I would not get stressed about the occasional meal. Logging meals…

Your mother is overweight in whose opinion? If you have previously had an eating disorder I wouldn't trust your judgement if it was based on how you look rather than on something concrete like BMI. If you don't trust your mother's judgement then you need a third party. Certainly a doctor may be good if you can get his…

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if you lost weight while sick even without doing much exercise. Even a short cold seems to have a noticeable effect for me. I can only assume fighting the infection uses a significant number of calories. I'd also suggest that getting rid of the infection is temporarily higher priority than…

This is certainly not the first article I have seen that suggests current ideas about cholesterol and saturated fat being bad for us are based on bad science and some of the other ones are based on the results of named studies with much better reasoning than this rather alarmist article. For the claim that skimmed milk is…

Non-diet carbonated soft drinks. If you believe those who claim that sugar and high fructose corn syrup are particularly fattening this would make these an obvious thing to avoid and even just looking at calories on the basis that all calories are equal I just never have enough spare calories to have one of these even as a…

On the sudden change of behaviour I'd second the caution from other people that this may be a sign he is seeing someone else, maybe even his ex. wife. Sometimes people make great lovers for each other but terrible long term partners. Is he like that with his ex wife? Is that why they divorced? For every old flame there has…

I have tried the link to the group above and it takes me to a page in which it says I have not subscribed to any groups. I am sure when I tried this yesterday it worked - have you changed the setting since? For the time being here is my weigh in photo - I hope obviously to put this in the proper place later:

Well I can have a go at this. How do I register?

I have just noticed that we are into September already so the challenge has started. For reference my weight on 1st Sept was 81.6kg, which is about 179.9lbs.

You can eat vegetables instead of fruit to eat less sugar but looking at your food diary you aren't eating lots of sugar from processed foods so it seems strange to have a sugar target so low you cannot eat a little fruit. Where did the target come from? I just checked my diary and I am eating more sugar than you and still…

Although a little competition can be motivating I am losing weight to improve my health rather than to outdo anyone else. As such I would not regard having surgery as cheating in the same way that drug taking in sport is cheating. On the other hand surgery has it's own risks, complications and time required to recover and…

Further to my previous message I should say that we don't levy any punishment for failing to eat. I don't want meal times to become a stressful battle and I also don't want to encourage forcing food in even when not hungry. What I am keen to avoid is one or both of our children learning they can reject a meal they don't…

That was the line my parents took with me. My parents also lived through the second world war and food rationing so in their case this approach was of necessity. Times have changed and food is more plentiful now but that doesn't mean I should spend my money buying it and my time preparing it for my children to tell me they…

Well I had been fat previously but came out of hospital after an illness much thinner and also much weaker and very hungry. I ate three good meals a day and then found myself raiding the fridge in the evenings and snacking on things like cheese and lime pickle sandwiches along with lots of chocolate. Sometime later I…

When I was very much younger and also got my driving license I found an interesting thing. If I started a social evening with an alcoholic drink and then switched to soft drinks that seemed enough to relax me and enable me to have a good time with friends who were getting quite drunk and it was almost like I was drunk too…

I am not far off the same age as you and I am losing weight and feel like I have more energy. Best wished with your effort.

Sleeping is good exercise for fat burning. OK, is is a sensationalist comment but unless you are on a very low calorie diet then during the day you are eating calories at a higher rate than you are using them, i.e. putting on fat and then at night while you are asleep you are not taking in calories but you are still using…

I'll join you.

I don't add sugar to my coffee. A long time ago I got used to the taste of coffee without sugar because the tea & coffee club we had at work never kept sugar and I never remembered to bring my own. I also like semi-skimmed milk in mine and have not really gone to any trouble to find a lower calorie alternative. For me that…

French press? Is that what we know here as a cafetiere, a glass jar into which you put ground coffee and hot water with a filter on a stalk which you then push down into the beaker so it pushes the grounds to the bottom leaving you to pour off the liquor?

I am intrigued by this statement. My limited understanding is that ketosis is the breaking down of the bodies fat stores so the fat can be used for energy. Surely that would mean any diet or other regime that results in a reduction in body fat, the weight that goes with it and obesity, must include an element of ketosis.…

I guess I am slightly unusual in that I have not tried the fad diets before. The things I have seen and heard - banned foods, tiny meals, people feeling hungry etc. along with people putting the weight back on again have always put me off. I ended up here because I have know for some time that I should lose weight and then…

Welcome aboard. An initial weight goal is interesting. I went for something that felt like I had lost a significant amount but was actually still slightly above what the BMI calculations says I should weigh. The idea is when I get to that initial goal weight I will see what I look like and work out where to go from there.…

How often are you weighing? If daily the fluctuations due to the amount of water in your body will likely exceed the amount you are losing on average each day so you really need to look at the graph and confirm whether the trend is downwards.

You do need to want to get fit and things you do for exercise need to be things you either enjoy for their own sake, like the archery you mention, or something where you want to see the job finished like weeding the garden. The way your body maintains muscles is an equilibrium in which they are exactly sufficient for what…

I would not be overly concerned by the sugar total. Yes, everything else being equal between two foods except one has lots of sugar and one has more complex carbs that will digest slower and be released more gradually the one with complex carbs is the better bet. On the other hand if you are trying to keep to a calorie…

Without knowing how much protein you eat already it is hard to give an opinion but you do need to eat enough protein. Not eating enough can leave you feeling hungry and thus more inclined to snacking, or in more extreme cases have other health implications. Are you logging what you eat? If so what does myfitnesspal say…