I need to lose about 50 pounds to get to a healthy weight. Anyone else out there needing to lose weight too? My problem is that I love food too much, and I don't enjoy exercising (plus it's hard to get out and exercise when your 18 month old isn't cooperating). I thought we could use this forum to share ideas. What has worked for you in losing weight? No fad diet stuff; Just healthy changes you have made to your life that are managable. Now that I've put this out there, I don't have any choice but to lose weight! Maybe this forum will help me stick with a healthy lifestyle so I can get down to a healthy weight.
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I'll start with the idea sharing. I'm currently reading Made to crave: satisfying your deepest desire with God, not food by Lysa TerKeurst. It has some great insight. One thing I try to remember is "Everything is permissable, but not everything is beneficial." So yes, I can eat every piece of chocolate in my house, but how will that benefit me? It won't!
well, Melissa, I think you and I are on the same page.
First - Admitting - saying it aloud and telling someone else can be helpful, I've been in denial for years about needing to lose weight (I knew I needed to do it but just never said it aloud, wasn't true if I didn't say it aloud, right?)
Second - making a plan - it's odd that just this morning I did say aloud to my husband that I needed to lose weight (he was surprised, but then he needs to lose as well) and then come in to work and there's an email about the MoveIt! program. Is someone out there telling me something? Well, here's the MoveIt program and the ActiPed to help - a plan and support to help me along, plus a co-worker mentioned it as well, someone to be accountable to.
Third - action - I did it then - registered for the MoveIt! program and paid my $25 for the ActiPed - a monetary committment to go with my written one. Plus there's some monetary incentive, $50 gift card and prizes each week.
So, now to put the action into the next step. And I'm like you, I love food too much to quit eating but really feel if I could get more exercise, (without it being icky sweaty exercise, sounds too much like that awful four letter word WORK) I could lose the weight. Mainly, because I don't get much exercise other than walking while at work from desk to desk and you get the picture.
so, I'm willing to commit to being a support person for you and I don't know what it is going to take, just know I need to do something so I feel better and hopefully losing some of the extra bulk I've been carrying around for the last 10 years will help me do that. It certainly has been proven to help.
I have another grandbaby coming in Oct and really need to be in better shape to keep up with my son's two year old and another little one when we go visit them. Retirement is starting to call and I want to be able to enjoy life- travel and have fun with my grandkiddos, all 7 of them.
I love your enthusiasm for the Moveit Challenge, Debbie!! :D
If anyone has questions about the Moveit Challenge or the ActiPed+ Activity Monitors please direct them to a new forum topic we have set up just for that purpose: http://my.metrolibrary.info/drupal/forum-topic/moveit-challenge
To Your Good Health,
Wellness Works!
I have been using a website and app called my fitness pal. www.myfitnesspal.com
It is free, and calculates how many calories you should be eating per day based on your height, weight, gender, etc to still lose weight on a consistent basis. It has a huge database of foods in system that you can add in to track your calories daily, or use the i-phone scanner function to scan a barcode of prepackaged snacks. You can also add calories back in for exercise (which I admit I rarely do.) I found it very helpful last year when I lost 14.2 lbs, and have only recently restarted this. You can "friend" people and message them encouragement or share recipes and things as well. I thought you guys might like it too.
hey, thanks. i'm already registered and putting in what I ate today. I can do this!
Alright ladies, let's do this! We can be an encouragement to each other. My friend and I used Myfitnesspal several months ago. It really worked great to keep me eating healthier food that were in my calorie range. Sadly, I think I got ahold of a lot of sugery desserts, and when I started, I couldn't stop. :-( I stopped using myfitnesspal because I didn't want to see how bad I was doing. So today I'm starting to log in again! My username is meldiggity if you want to "friend" me.
I'm always craving sweets in the evening. A few months ago, I started having a cup of decaff coffee with splenda and sugar free creamer (Aldi has a great sugar free creamer, but sometimes you have to dig for it because there are very few in with the regular ones) instead of eating sweets. It really helped, so I need to start doing that again. I also need to stop buying sweets at the grocery store. If they are in my house, I WILL eat them.
Melissa - I'm dear1953 on myfitnesspal, just sent your a friend request. anybody else can add me, too.
A couple of months ago I stumbled upon Lisa Leake's blog 100 Days of Real Food ( http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/ ) and it has changed my life. Basically, Lisa and her family vowed to spent 100 days following the simple rules in Michael Pollan's book Food Rules (which we have in the system and it is SO worth the 30 minutes or so it takes to read!). For 100 days, Lisa's family gave up processed and fast foods, something my husband and I had been struggling to do for years. If you have a few hours, you really should take a look at her website. Most shockingly, she explains why you should never eat anything that says "low fat/fat free/non-fat/reduced fat/light/lite" (they take out the fat, but replace it with more salt, sugar, carbs, or trans fats to make it taste good -- same goes for skim milk!). I had been eating low fat/fat free stuff for years and never lost an ounce! Now I know why!
Since switching to a more "real food" diet, my husband and I have more energy and we just FEEL better. I've been working out at least four times/week for the last year and not making much progress. When we switched to a real food diet, I immediately started losing inches and my weightlifting became more productive. But, whether you work out or not, cutting out processed foods is going to help you.
I think that's another big problem I have - eating too much processed foods. we're both tired and just fix something that quick and easy - processed food from the freezer. I checked out the Food Rules book so will read it over the weekend.
I've been reading so much about the benefits of walking (Thanks Celebrity Apprentice), that I got out my pedometer last week and started walking everywhere. I try to park far away, I walk at lunch (yes, sometimes to Taco Bell... but that's better than driving there). I walk to Walmart from my house, unless I have to get a bunch of stuff or a 40lb bag of topsoil. I just started, so we'll see how it goes.
I love MyFitnessPal. I also use Nike+ to track my runs. And we've had homemade dinners for 3 weeks now thanks to Pinterest, which helps me keep track of all the healthy receipes to try!
OKC is having a weigh loss challenge. The first prize is a new car! You have to weigh in at a YMCA April 20 to May 7. Then 12 weeks to the day you first weighed in, you go back to weigh in again to see how much you lost. The person with the highest percentage weight loss wins. There are other prizes as well. A new car is pretty good incentive! The website is below.
http://okcweightlosschallenge.com/
I am puddytat7 if anyone wants to friend me.
If you're anything like me...walking is a great exercise, but I get really bored with it. I've tried going at different times and to different parks and even in my neighborhood. What I started doing, and you would have to have a Wii/PS3/Xbox, is doing the Just Dance games. What I like about them is they have this feature called Just Sweat and you basically dance to a bunch of songs until you get to the amount of "sweat points" you want. The great thing too is that the games are not too expensive and there are at least 4 games out right now. And you can download extras from the web (if you're connected). I've been doing this for about 7 weeks now and I've noticed a big change. I'm much more flexible and boy does it make you sweat!! What's great about this too is that the game "scores" you and that makes you want to do better the next time to get the "high score". I haven't weighed myself since week 3, but I did lose 8 lbs during that time! Of course I've been eating better as well! And the best thing of all...you can do it in the comfort of your own house with/without someone watching. So it doesn't matter how well you do or what you look like while you're doing it!!
I didn't get to go to the fitness at work class they had, but I've created my own little desk exercises. I just did about 20 minutes of "step aerobics" while reading some things that had been piling on my desk. Matthew from IT came in to work on someone's computer and saw my head popping up above my cubicle wall! :-) I have a little step stool that I used. It wasn't anything overly active, or else I wouldn't have been able to read. You wouldn't be able to do this at the reference desk, but if you work in one of the offices or are working in the backroom of a library, you could do it.
I've recently read Fit2Fat2Fit which is a book by a very healthy guy who couldn't figure out why the overweight people he did personal training for couldn't stick with it and lose weight. He decided to stop excersizing and eat whatever he wanted for 6 months. He gained 70 pounds and then he figured out that it IS hard to get the weight off. I'm doing his suggestion of eating 5 small meals a day. I can tell my stomach has shrunk. I feel full throughout most of the day. I eat about every 3 hours. I bring a lot of healthy snacks to work. I made his Best Spinach Shake Ever, which is a protein shake and it is actually REALLY good. You can't taste the spinach. My boys tried it and now they whine if I don't give them any of it. I find it helpful to take the shake to church with me so I'm not tempted to eat donuts.