2013 RJ Weight Loss Challenge - Jan 1 to Apr 1 (and beyond)

[Teenwolf]

I can see where you're coming from, and I would agree that it's more a stepping stone than a solution. Problem is, empty calories are empty calories so you'll still be hungrier faster than if those 100 calories were from fruits or nuts.

Nuts are a great snack since they provide a decent amount of nutrition and actually taste good while also filling you up. Almonds are ideal, but I'm not a big fan so I mostly stick with cashews. I drive a lot for work so I just keep a zip-lock bag of them in my console and snack on them whenever I'm feeling a bit peckish. Light yogurt is another good one that tastes good. Vegetables are always ideal, but aren't always the best snack since they can be bland when not cooked.

This is fantastic advice.

I used to have a major problem with gas station "food". Working as a landscaper, I would spend $10/day on junk. Every day, one bag of chips, one choc. bar, one licorice, one pop, one misc. item. Every single working day, this was my bare minimum reward to myself for putting up with work.

The best advice I was given in my path to eating healthier was "anytime you're buying food in a gas station, buy nuts." It's pretty much the only healthy thing you can buy from a convenience store, they do a great job of making you feel full, and they're quick and easy.

I like the sweet vanilla sugary almonds, which taste pretty indulgent. Baby steps is a great way to weight loss, and trail mix (nuts, fruit, choc.) is a great way to enact your baby step plans. Slowly but surely, you can take the amount of indulgent stuff (choc, sugar coated nuts) down, and make your mix even healthier. But even a less healthy trail mix is miles ahead of a 100 calorie bag of oreos or what have you.

[Teenwolf]

One more piece of advice: make friends with kale. It's extremely healthy, and the taste and texture are interesting.

It's super easy to cook. Just fry it up in a pan with olive oil and light spices. The texture is very chewy/crunchy, and it actually takes a lot of mouth-work to chomp this particular green. This makes it taste and feel more substantial than your typical leafy green, almost like chewing meat. You can also steam it, but try not to boil kale, as that saps some of its nutritional content (and would also turn it into a green slimy ball, I would imagine). Great addition to any stir-fry.

Here are the listed benefits from wiki:

Kale is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and rich in calcium. Kale, as with broccoli and other brassicas, contains sulforaphane (particularly when chopped or minced), a chemical with potent anti-cancer properties.[1] Boiling decreases the level of sulforaphane; however, steaming, microwaving, or stir frying do not result in significant loss.[2] Along with other brassica vegetables, kale is also a source of indole-3-carbinol, a chemical which boosts DNA repair in cells and appears to block the growth of cancer cells.[3][4] Kale is also a good source of carotenoids.

Last thing, quickly. Strip the stems of the curly leafy formations. You don't want the stems, just the leafy bit. This may sound obvious if you're familiar, but I didn't know what kale was until less than a year ago, so I figure it couldn't hurt.

[Judge Jude]

Yes, natural healthful foods are even better than 100-calorie processed versions. If you can find something like that, which feels like a treat while you are learning/relearning to moderate your portions overall, you are even further ahead of the game!

That said, the 100-calorie bags also tend to be psychologically filling and satisfying, which is part of the process as well. And it's become clear to me that it's harder for people to get started on the right road than it is for them to fill in missing pieces later....

[Mithrandir]

One more piece of advice: make friends with kale. It's extremely healthy, and the taste and texture are interesting.

It's super easy to cook. Just fry it up in a pan with olive oil and light spices. The texture is very chewy/crunchy, and it actually takes a lot of mouth-work to chomp this particular green. This makes it taste and feel more substantial than your typical leafy green, almost like chewing meat. You can also steam it, but try not to boil kale, as that saps some of its nutritional content (and would also turn it into a green slimy ball, I would imagine). Great addition to any stir-fry.

Here are the listed benefits from wiki:



Last thing, quickly. Strip the stems of the curly leafy formations. You don't want the stems, just the leafy bit. This may sound obvious if you're familiar, but I didn't know what kale was until less than a year ago, so I figure it couldn't hurt.

Great call on the kale! I use it in the salads i make. I alternate kale and spinach. i buy a bag of spinach and when that runs out i go with kale..and so on.

You want to lose weight and eat healthy? Salads..salads,,salads!! with a healthy dressing or at least a dressing that isn't full of crap (i.e anything creamy). best is to make your own dressing or use oil and vinegar with some spices added in.

And by salad i mean kale, spinach, some type of lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, cukes, peppers, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, etc...and throw some sunflower seeds, chickpeas, beans, etc...

[Mithrandir]

Teenwolf,

I'm not the only one here thrilled to hear about your success!

I know women like to gather in groups and bare their souls and cry on each other shoulders at Weight Watchers and all that, but well, we're wired a little different.

The first one of these in 2004 (I forget exactly how it started, but I do know I got really into it immediately), I was amazed that the key for me and many of us was.... accountability. Every Monday, as Bill Parcells almost said, you were what the scale said you were. no excuses.

It doesn't work for everyone, but it works for a LOT of people. And if anyone hasn't wandered in previously, not too late. Just post your opening weight (and no, nobody gives a crap if it's 160 or 360 - ok, if you're over 6 feet and 160, take it to another thread, lol. but otherwise....).

Once you do, you have one week to try to improve. Biology dictates that you may not have a 'win' each week, but you should lose an average of about 2 lbs a week typically if you do most things right. Lots of us have already offered amateur tips that - well, they're not Olympic athlete-level healthful, but they ARE realistic and mostly healthful. Then you're on to the next week, and another 'weigh-in.'

There's a cumulative effect, pretty quickly. I had one good week, and I hiked one modest mile today even though it was dreary and getting dark. Walked up my 4 flights home tonight. Neither is a big deal, but they add up.

P.S. If you're focused more on exercise than diet, and hit it hard, you will likely lose weight a bit slowly but you'll lose waist size quicker and have many other benefits. The weight loss will come, too, and the increasing looks you get in the gym are worth more than a couple of diet-focused extra pounds for sure....

Exactly!! I was around 220 when we did the first one of these. I lost about 25 pounds during the time frame we established. I have since been down to around 170. Right now around 180 so i want to lose about 10 pounds.

[Teenwolf]

Yes, natural healthful foods are even better than 100-calorie processed versions. If you can find something like that, which feels like a treat while you are learning/relearning to moderate your portions overall, you are even further ahead of the game!

That said, the 100-calorie bags also tend to be psychologically filling and satisfying, which is part of the process as well. And it's become clear to me that it's harder for people to get started on the right road than it is for them to fill in missing pieces later....

This isn't meant to be harsh, but how many years have you been swearing by 100-calorie bags now?

How has 100-calorie bags led you on the path to better eating habits in the long-term?

People don't seem to understand, when you eat as if you're starving yourself (100 calorie bags of oreos, pudding + carrot sticks for lunch, etc.) then you will NEVER equate losing weight and eating healthy with positive feelings. The key to losing weight is finding foods that do a better job of filling you up, allowing you to make the transition to a healthier lifestyle. If the whole point of these threads is to simply spend a few months losing weight until the next Weight Loss thread, then why does anybody do them? Who are you fooling? You need more than band-aid solutions, and that's what all of these things are. They are NOT baby-steps towards something better and healthier.

I know that as men, we can sometimes tend to be result-oriented. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But let me tell you, most of you are broken, whether you realize it or not. I spent probably 10 YEARS in these threads, doing all of the RJ tips and tricks (drink tons of water, carrot sticks, calorie rationing, etc) and I've lost (and re-gained) 20-50 lbs several times. Why would anybody, with all of the amazing food that exists in the world, not want to at least TRY to find healthier solutions that they enjoy eating? Well, I don't have the answer to that, as it took me my entire life up to 29 to figure out just how important FOOD is in staying healthy.

But I've lost 50 lbs, and it's stayed off entirely for 6 months. I eat a mostly healthy vegan diet, but I indulge too. I still eat Oreos (the real ones, not that 100 calorie bag crap) and chips (usually less terrible chips, but also the occasional bag of Doritos) and vegan cinnamon buns (sometimes a bag of 5 day-olds if I'm feeling celebratory)... The point is, eating healthy gives you the leeway to snack like a king. For real. Screw 100 calorie bags, or 60 cal. puddings... You want to get to a point where you can eat anything you want without noticing it on the scale, right? So then why not get to the root of the problem?

[Judge Jude]

That's a fair critique.

But sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. Meaning, if someone sees an example of a completely proper lifestyle that seems too daunting, they may not even begin to try. I don't know about your situation, but I think even some who have lost weight and regained a lot at least know now that it's possible to do something about their lot in life. And that's a good thing.

In the years at a time that I have kept off the weight, no, I am not buying 100-calorie bags. I'm not even using them currently. But the first time I tried to get anywhere in losing weight, I know they helped a lot. It was all part of understanding calorie levels, which is important. And I never felt in eating those bags that I was depriving myself. If anything, the opposite - I did NOT feel deprived, while eating a snack with less than half the usual calories of other snacks.

I don't think we're on opposite sides of the fence, necessarily. I just think this is a site where there are a lot of overweight guys who don't even know where to begin - and that is a very, very bad place to be. If they can wake up one day and decide that kale is the way to go, I applaud that. I'm just not sure how common that revelation is likely to be right off the bat.

[overkill94]

While I've never had a problem with weight, I did realize a handful of years ago that I wasn't really eating as healthy as I should. At first it just meant buying those salad packages at the grocery that come with toppings and dressing - still not the healthiest thing, but at least I was introducing some leafy greens to my diet. From there it's been a bunch of small changes - eating more mixed vegetables instead of pasta, cutting down on soda, adding more fruit, adding more fish, cutting down on the frozen dinner-type meals, going from regular chips to Baked Lays, etc. Eventually it gets to the point where you don't really have to think about what you're eating because you've already figured out what's good for you. Like Teenwolf said, it then allows you to splurge every now and again without feeling guilty. It might take some longer than others to get to that point, but the key is to make the small changes permanent along the way.

My girlfriend had been skinny all her life while eating whatever she wanted, then the last few years it caught up with her. She's still not overweight, just carrying a little extra in the midsection. She knew she needed to start eating better (her diet was more than 1/2 fast food before we met) and she was pretty resistant to certain changes at first - she loved slathering things in ranch, dousing her coffee with sugar, still eating a lot of fast food for lunch, etc. Gradually she's cut out the ranch, only puts creamer in her coffee, keeps the fast food to a minimum, and together we've found a lot of healthy dinners to cook together. She still has fast food cravings but has been much better at thinking about what she eats.

[Teenwolf]

It took me several months to transition into veganism (without really trying). But it's been life-changing, moreso than appearance changing.

Life-lengthening, also.

[hacko]

All this is good stuff but old age is a bitch for weight - Most people don't think of me as overweight because I am Tall but unfortunatily it all goes to the midsection so I am overweight. When i was young i was a stick figure (and ate everything and anything) then in my 30 to early 40 wasn't to bad (same eating habits) but the 50 it is a constant battle to keep the weight under control even with better ,(not perfect eating habits) and I now go to the gym plus do bike riding and walks. Much harder for us old guys Dammit!!! That is my current pic to left in the middle of all those grandkids so you can see the bird legs and chicken arms

[Steve]

Jan 14 - 221 pounds
Jan 21 - 220 pounds
Jan 28 - 218 pounds

[Judge Jude]

JAN 7 - 208.5
JAN 14 - 204.5
JAN 21 - 201.5
JAN 28 - 200.0

pleasant surprise!
The Mrs just had to order a pizza Friday night, which is brutal for me since she also gets a salad and then eats only one or two slices (one this time).
At least I insisted on thin crust and plain. But I ate FOUR slices, which is awful (even that took a little willpower for me; I am immune to stuff like bagels and pastries in front of me, but don't leave an extra pizza slice around). Interesting that my body didn't exactly react joyfully to this indulgence later - that's a good sign, as it is morphing out of such behavior.

Yesterday I did my first 2-mile hike in weeks due to a previous illness. And other than that one slipup, I was very happy with the week overall foodwise. Thought I might flatline for the week anyway; I won't be able to keep avging 3 lbs lost a week, but that's ok. 1.5 to 2 per week would be steady as she goes.

[heyelander]

I only made it to the gym once last week and did manage to have fish once as well, but still more regular eating (too much eating?) days than healthy days. I think the most successful thing I did for my weigh-in was take a healthy constitutional yesterday.

1/7 212
1/14 210.5
1/21 211
1/28 210

[Vecmizer]

1/14 193.2
1/21 189.0
1/28 189.8

Not a good week. Breakfast and Lunches were good and snacking (with the exception of Wednesday-The Mrs. wanted me to bring home candy. I did and helped myself too.) was great. Things went south on Friday when we went out for my Birthday. Saturday and Sunday were tough because we had family gatherings due to death anniversaries of two of our grandkids. I can be an emotional eater and it got me on Saturday when I had a double bacon cheeseburger. Sunday was slightly better I had salmon but then had a small sundae (Little Kate loved her sweets so we all had sundaes in her honor).

I tried to slip in two extra workouts but quickly learned Sunday morning that a double bacon cheeseburger is not good fuel for a workout. So now I have something else to incorporate as a reason to stay on the right path. I did wokr out again in the afternoon but still struggled with that. Good lesson for how eating and exercise are so intertwined.

[hacko]

1/14 233

1/21 = 232

1/28
- 230 - GOOD NEWS - Getting back to gym 3 times last week - Bad news is work schedule sucked.