hamoncan Member

Commit to logging every day even if you don't eat right. Not liking the numbers you see on your high calorie days will help keep you motivated. Not logging = lying to yourself about your calorie intake. When you think about it, lying to yourself / fooling yourself / denial is kind of ridiculous.

Every day is a new day. You can't undo the past. Put it behind you. Consider if there's something going on in your life that is triggering this and get some support to deal with it if need be.

The way I think about it is I've made a deal with myself If... I don't lie to myself by skipping logging or logging inaccurately so I can try escape the guilt from over-indulging and in return... I don't guilt trip myself for the occasions I exceed my calorie goal Life happens, live it and enjoy yourself - you don't have…

What is your height and weight? 1200 is probably too low for any growing 18 yr old guy! I'm worried any guy your age thinking like this has body image issues. Don't try to be someone your genes would never let you be. Be the healthiest version of you that you can be.

I find the only thing that allows me to overeat more than occasionally is skipping logging. Not sure if it works for everyone, but for me its pretty much impossible to put those numbers down and see the excess calories adding up and not make changes. Don't lie to yourself, log it, accept you're off track, then put it…

Or... if you just want to be lean and fit, do something not involving weights or a machine at a gym - get active and take up a sport, team or individual - you're 19, you can do anything

Your scale is the best calorie calculator.

I have a hard time considering someone active if they aren't taking at least 10,000 steps per day but I have a bit of a walking bias.

Few things impress me more than accomplishments like this.

Do you eat a lot of the same foods? - for some reason mixing things up seems to have helped me a few times - eating closer to maintenance calories with higher fat foods for a few days broke the plateau for me a few times now - I know its all about the numbers, but there you are FWIW

I'll ditto the comments on adding higher fat content - I find trail mix with extra dried cranberries does wonderful things ;)

And yeah, non-hardcore posters do find a lot of the comments on these boards snarky for some strange reason - I'm guessing some feel entitled to be snippy because they read and write thousands of posts and have no patience for those who don't

Bad days happen - log every calorie though, seeing your calories and where they will take you if you don't do something about it you seems to help the motivation - if you can't eat at your deficit every day, try stay in deficit at least for the week - it seems to get easier over time - forgive yourself and move on

He's in his teens still? It couldn't be good for a growing 6+ ft. boy to bring his weight down that low.

Not a science nerd - just trying a purely speculative common sense analysis - you eat at a calorie deficit so that you are taking in less "food fuel" than your body is burning - during the day when your are eating regularly you are burning your food fuel - but at night you take in none - so for some period of time in your…

I want my back and joints to last so if something hurts them I just don't do it - simple compound workouts at home and lots of walking - not much to brag about, but being fit and painfree is awesome

Wow, looks like you lost about 10 yrs too

Yup - I've always figured that it was more that extra weight hides wrinkles so losing it is just un-hiding them - no matter, take the wrinkles, lose the weight

Oh yeah, SALT - wean yourself off that junk - slowly you'll actually start to dislike it

I've always been borderline high blood pressure, but last time in the Doc pushed it a bit that it would be really beneficial for my BP if I lost at least 10 or 15 lbs (he's so mild mannered) - hopefully he's impressed next time I'm in and it's significantly more than that (35 is my goal, almost halfway there)

Generally #1 is a myth, although up until my pre-teens I was embarrassingly skelaton skinny no matter how much I ate, and I ate a lot to try and gain weight - double portions for me at dinner - it made it hard to adjust my intake when I finally did start gaining weight in my teens and beyond - not sure how that fits in

Interesting - so maintenance calories one day and minimal calories the other? You just have to have willpower on the light days or does your body (/mind) get used to it?

Don't get too far ahead of yourself - there's a good chance there'll be a bit of a bounce back over the next week or so - regardless, it's a good problem to have

^THIS! Its taken some time for me to lose some of my bad habits (or at least lessen them) - its gotten a lot better since I started forcing myself to log it all anyways rather than write the day off and ditch the log for the day in denial / disgust - just log those days and realize its no big deal, you can't be perfect -…

Keep it going! Beside counting your calories, be sure to improve the quality of the food you're eating and be careful about how many calories you add/eat back from exercise.

I BBQ up huge batches of chicken breasts and freeze them individually and then find different ways to make them into meals.

Make yourself big batches of good food ahead of time and freeze them - having good food to eat is the better part of the battle for me

Lifting is great but you don't need to do it to get lean - it will affect how much muscle you'll see when you get leaner

I'm mid 40's and running, too much biking and similar stuff is just too hard on the joints and back - my primary exercise has got to be walking and short simple workouts if I want my joints and back to be pain free - getting old sucks ;)

Whatever works for you - I find I do best with a very defined structure for meals and snacks with consistent calorie counts - the days I wing it or just let it happen tend to be the days I eat too much