sympha01 Member

It's VERY hard to do. I started changing my diet over a year ago. At the time I was very hypertensive even though I was maxed out on the dosage of two different BP meds. Reducing sodium was much harder than reducing calories, in the end. It took a longer adjustment period, and more experimenting with my diet and log. 1.…

This X1000. When people talk about "lifting" they really are referring to lifting heavy, which no, you don't really benefit from a lot when you first need to shed a lot of fat mass. But it's a great idea to make sure that your cardio program has a resistance component: for instance, working with lighter weights (which I…

Actually, go back and read the OP. She said her friend "needed" to lose weight. That's a very different statement. You can choose to interpret it as the friend trying unsuccessfully, but you wouldn't necessarily be right. I read it as both friends had probably both talked about wanting to lose weight in the past, but one…

Yeah but. This is gonna sound harsh, so prepare yourself. Very often, people who are losing or trying to lose talk about it ALL THE TIME and can sound pretty narcissistic and annoying. As a current loser myself, I pretty much agree with your friend that the best people to talk to about your weight loss are 1) other people…

That used to bug me too but I've got an answer for that now! Get ready to have your mind blown. Once the stew or chili is done, weigh the whole pot of it. (I ultimately had to get a scale that could weigh up to 7 lbs). Now record the recipe in MFP as that number of ounces or grams or whatever you use. I made chili just the…

I agree with the people here who say that activity tracker folks probably do best if they don't eat calories back based on the activity tracker. I know I stopped doing that once I got my Fitbit. I find the activity tracker is a great way not only to hold myself accountable for meeting a certain (challenging) minimum level…

LOL I agree 100% that MFP's interface for editing recipes sucks dead donkeys sideways. It's utterly absurd that you can't easily change quantities of ingredients after you add them to the recipe. My recipes with meat vary WIDELY in how much meat I add from one time I cook to the next, because I'm usually cutting up a roast…

I weigh everything. I make pretty involved meals, too. It doesn't take a long time at all. It DOES take a little organization, though. It might seem like a PITA if you're a disorganized mess in the kitchen. But frankly if you're preparing meals with a lot of ingredients, if you're any good at it at all you've learned the…

I think boiling it was your big mistake LOL. My easy go-to for eggplants is to roast them (or sometimes I steam them -- it's quicker) to partially cooked. Then I scoop out the flesh (leaving enough flesh in the shell so it'll hold up to re-stuffing) and mix that with sauteed onions and garlic, and stuff all that back into…

There are a number of reasons people can have gallbladder problems. Oftentimes it's from eating too much fat in the diet, but it can also be caused by getting way too LITTLE fat in the diet. That's what happened to me. I am an old and back when I was in my 20s everything was all about very VERY low fat diets if you were…

Yes, it's normal, but making it a habit will eventually make it WAY less of an issue. I started exercising regularly for pretty much the first time in my life last year in August and for the first 4 months or so I absolutely DREADED it every time. But magically, at about the 4 month mark it changed for me. A couple of…

No, it isn't. The whole idea is that number of beats per minute + your body mass gets to a blood volume pumped per minute estimate; that plus an estimate of your fitness level / VO2max (i.e. how efficiently your body transports and uses oxygen in the blood) provides a proxy for how much oxygen your body is using to oxidize…

44 years old, still clinically obese (but I can finally see the light at the end of THAT particular tunnel!) and probably right now in the best physical condition of my adult life due to my newfound exercise habits. Part of me wishes I'd started sooner, but, realistically: the internet research tools available now make it…

Yeah, if you don't habitually cook, you're not going to like working something up to do with the giblets. Many people like to use them to make gravy or to make the stuffing more interesting, which is why the turkey company doesn't throw them out / sell them as animal feed themselves. Definitely throw out the turkey neck --…

Yeah, it's totally cool for anyone who wants or needs to keep their profile private. I get it. But those same people really CAN'T expect other people to accept their friend requests without some sort of a message introducing themselves and why they think they should be friends.

Hmm. Person who feels entitled to have every stranger accept their creepy, random, blank friend request. Has closed profile preventing strangers (oh -- and anyone they send a blank friend request to -- LOL!) from seeing anything about them. Okay.

bump

I tend to weigh pretty precisely (or try to anyway) but I don't find it hard to do a quick reality check. Getting my apple off by 10 grams? A couple of calories, NBD. Getting my peanut butter off by 10 grams? LOLWUT that's over 50 calories. And yet. At the end of the day, 50 calories is nothing. But if I measured all my…

1. I'm reading between the lines on your response here (as well as some things you've said in other comments), but you sound a bit overly concerned to me with "not eating a lot." 1300 calories is rather low for someone your size and activity level. Obviously you want a caloric deficit, but do be careful about attaching…

Sorry if I caused offense the way I worded that. Just be aware there have been some EPIC flamewars right here on MFP from people who really claim to "not believe in counting calories." So while it wouldn't be logical, it's also not necessarily "obviously" why you're here unfortunately. :laugh:

Thanks for opening your diary, it's helpful. A couple of questions: 1. I notice that there's quite a lot of variation in the number of calories you log each day. Based on past conversations I've had with other users, I'm gonna have to ask: is that because you actually eat differently every day, or is it because some days…

(ETA removed request for you to open diary) If you're eating maintenance calories for your weight and walking a few times a week, I'd frankly be surprised you lost as much as you have, as the loss you've generated so far equates to about a little more than a 500 calorie deficit EVERY DAY. Depending on what you weigh,…

Dude, WTF?!? That seems like a really unnecessary thing to say. Obviously you figured out on your own that it's "an intermediate goal," so what on earth is going through your mind to say that to the OP?

LORD YES all the time.

This sums it up pretty well: http://greatist.com/health/understanding-scale-bloat-and-weight-loss But also, if you're weighing at a friend's house whenever you visit, my guess is that you're not weighing at the same time of day each time you weigh. It matters. Think of it this way: drink a 12 oz beverage, and you weigh 3/4…

You need more than 2 weeks to be sure you're not seeing progress. As a woman, I find it's always best to go through one complete menstrual cycle before coming to any conclusions about results from any changes in my regimen, because I have a very clear cyclical pattern relating to my cycle. If it were me, those 2 weeks…

This is a good point. At the age of 44 I have quite suddenly become an eggplant-liker. I disliked cilantro until my mid-30s and now it's something I buy every week. Though there are some people who simply don't like to try new things. Or for that matter, people (like me) who will give something like eggplant a chance, but…

My point wasn't that ALL entries that contain the word "generic" are okay. It was that SOME of them are. Many of them are user-submitted entries. But using the word "generic" in your search will help make sure that the good USDA entries will float towards the top of your search results. Also, the word "USDA" in the…

"Generic" doesn't always mean the same thing. I agree that UNTIL QUITE RECENTLY generic was reliably a flag for extremely poor data. It typically used to mean user-submitted. However, this summer the MFP people seem to have modified ALL the usda entries and added the word "generic" to them. So you have to look for the…

Simplest thing in the world is to just toss the cubes with a LITTLE BIT of olive oil and bake. Also, you can shred them and stir-fry them with onions or scallions and little bit of oil, soy sauce, and lime juice. Easy peasy. Cut into thick slices and boil them in miso soup. Add a bit of spinach, scallions, and some noodles…