Anyone want to do a weight loss challenge?

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I think losing weight, is when you lose weight.

a weight loss challenge, is when you lose weight with others and keep tabs on how each is getting on.

Yeah, it's a little too loosely defined - a challenge is that - when you don't just lose it on your own, but you rope a bunch of other people into it and people compare results so that they get a reminder from their group about what they're doing and what their goals are.
 
ABC's spot on the leisure world (which changed its name since that's very 70s sounding)....data collection. One hopes the producers didn't massage the message enough to make it misleading.



 
Here's a starting point in the video about alcohol, vitamins, etc.



(social activity and moderate exercise before this were noted to have a strong effect on increasing life expectancy, but this is well known. Strenuous long duration exercise offers no benefit.

Anyone want to use hand tools? You can get a very pleasant moderate 45 minutes a day if you can find something to do with about 1400 board feet of dimensioned lumber a year).
 
If I didn't regulate my eating I would look like Mr Creosote - I have no limit to my ability to eat all of the things, all the time.

Things I have found help my personal way of life: eat once a day, and no snacking. Eat a stupendous amount at one sitting, but it still is difficult to overeat at just one meal. 3 course meals because a day without pud is a day without sunshine. It works for me.

Eat potatoes rather than flour, pasta or rice. The good new is that if you subscribe to the Glycaemic Index theory, chips are better than mashed, boiled or baked. It's my theory, and I'm sticking to it because I eat chips (french fries for our colonial chums) 5 times a week.

Load your plate with veg - eat the veg and there is less room for the chips.

Weigh your carbohydrate and restrict that - fats and proteins are good for you, so eat lots. Grow your own meat because that way you can afford to eat a lot more of it. If you are not losing weight, restrict your carbs more, but have more of other stuff on your plate (mmm...broccoli).

Finally, Saturday is Faturday: no restrictions, no rules - go nuts (within reason). Eat what you want, when you want once a week otherwise you will slowly go back to grazing on Mars bars and big macs.

Ymmv
 
What you're mentioning is part of my changes - but it's never really been bread or pasta or any of that stuff that keeps my weight up. It's bored eating at night or between meals.

But I never found much favor in the nonsense that "potatoes are bad" or this or that type of food based on a specific statistic (presumably, white potatoes are a simple carbohydrate, but ever try to eat 500 calories of them with salt and pepper five days in a row? It's not like pasta, bread and cookies where you'll start to get the urge to do it).

So the late night eating goes to fruit and vegetables, bulk added the day with things like a bag of cooked vegetables - not as an obligation, just when there's an urge to eat, and care taken not to eat enormous amounts of bulk and almost no calories (not looking to have days with fewer than 1800 calories). If I could have a littel robot that popped out baked potatoes, they'd be a bigger part of the whole plan - as it is, though, they're not that convenient (takes an hour to bake them, or a little less to boil then transition to bake, and then reheating them is a bit of a nuisance if you're not standing around for five minutes while the bulk finally heats).

One thing I never liked about certain diets (like drink 2 gallons of water or whatever the fad is at a given time) is that adding things on is an obligation. I'm going to do less of things and swap some. it's less effort -and less effort is important. There's a little planning on the front end (veggies don't store as well if they're fresh, and they take up a lot of space, but that's not that big of a deal).

The rest of this stuff I think differs by individual. My spouse gets pineappled all the time because she thinks that you just continue doing whatever you were doing but eat smaller portions. There are certain things that I don't enjoy doing that with (most junk food, etc) - I'd rather swap the entire class of foods for something else instead and have none of it. So no cheat days, etc, I don't have the bone that needs that, but recognize that it's needed for some folks who do. Once on to something, it's like being on a bee line and I don't like purposely place bumps in the middle of the bee line (part of it is not getting tired of food, either - e.g., if late night chips are replaced with a container of cooked broccoli, I could eat broccoli 25 days in a row and not care (actually kind of like that).

My spouse is more like:

"we can't have pizza, we had it tuesday last week for lunch".

??
 
You can get every nutrient you need from a balanced vegetarian diet, without any supplements.

sorry sporky but I have to take issue with that statement ....it is factually incorrect and misleading. its the sort of unsubstantiated nonsense that has caused most of the Worlds chronic illness in the past 40 years.

I would strongly recommend that you do a little basic research into 'essential minerals and Vitamins' find out what they are,...how many there are, ... why we need them and where we need to get them from.
 
sorry sporky but I have to take issue with that statement ....it is factually incorrect and misleading. its the sort of unsubstantiated nonsense that has caused most of the Worlds chronic illness in the past 40 years.

There are billions of vegetarians who've proved you wrong every day of the last several hundred (if not thousand) years.

Perhaps you could list the nutrients you think aren't included in a vegetarian diet, and I'll list where they can be had.
 
I do have soya milk, may have added supplements.
But I've never felt I had to take anything, feel fit as a fiddle, run most days.
 
We all have individual food likes and dislikes. For me protein works, vegetables only in sauces and soups, carbohydrates are fine.

Controlling weight rather than letting appetite control you, needs behaviour change. Crash diets fail most of the time.

There are lots of different techniques - you need to find the one that works for you - weighing ingredients, calorie counting, splurge on Saturday and salad the rest of the week, cut out individual food groups etc.

For me - cut out all cake, sweets, biscuits, cut out sugar in drinks. Moderate carbohydrate intake - bread normally only for breakfast, measure rice, pasta, potatoes before cooking. If I get the urge to snack, eat an apple or banana. Accept that Xmas or going out is an acceptable excuse for gluttony and revert to "normal" afterwards. Lost 6kg in 3 months.
 
There are billions of vegetarians who've proved you wrong every day of the last several hundred (if not thousand) years.

Perhaps you could list the nutrients you think aren't included in a vegetarian diet, and I'll list where they can be had.

Watch the video I gave a link to and your questions will be answered

Alternatively do a google search on 'essential vitamins and minerals' if you genuinely wish to be informed .
, you might learn something about nutrition to your benefit although somehow I doubt it .
 
for anyone interested in Nutrition here is Zoe Harcombe's full submission to The National Food Strategy for England ....a Government led initiative to to devise a National Food Strategy for England . Zoe Harcombe is a PhD and one of the Countrys leading nutritionists
It includes a complete chart of the 3x macronutrients and all essential vitamins and minerals and the best sources for those nutrients . National Food Strategy – call for evidence – Zoë Harcombe
 
I'm probably a little more than halfway through my lifespan this year, and tip the scales at 212 pounds. If you think I'm fat, I don't care.

I'm in for about 40 pounds by June -I doubt that will happen, but that's what I'm going for.

Ultimately, I'd like to be 150-160 (the low side of that may be a bit idealistic and is probably below where I should be - 160 would be good).

Here's the kicker - I eat so much garbage that I think I can hit the goal without much exercise, and I would go so far as to say that if you're going to drop 10 pounds a month, lots of exercise isn't a great idea. I'm going to do nothing more than eat healthy. And then if successful, have to buy a bunch of clothes (not that excited about that).

Anyone else in?
I used a free app called myfitnespal and lost quite a few kilos over a few months. You out in your age height and weight. Then what weight you want to be and how soon you want to achieve it. It tells you how many calories you can eat in a day. It works (if you are honest about what you are eating), by basically pointing out the rubbish. I realised that zi could have a big bowl of vegetable soup rather than 2cbags if crisps. Or gammon steak, potatoes and carrots was around the same as a large bag of dry salted peanuts. You scan the bar codes of what you eat. Or search for the food on the app. At the end of each day it tells you what weight you will be in 5 weeks.
 
Running for 30 minutes burns about the same calories as a McD burger. Not eating a burger is easier than running for 30 minutes.

Genetics may be associated an equilibrium weight and shape - but simple physics suggests that:

energy (food in) minus energy out (keeping warm and exercise) = weight gain or loss

The solution, as you say, is stop eating rubbish, stop eating as much (eat when hungry, not when you don't feel full), exercise if really motivated (but see first para).

Change behaviours to to make sensible consumption the norm - cut out cakes, sweets, biscuits, desserts, late night snacks. Make pizza and takeaway a treat not routine. Convince yourself to pay for quality over volume (a bit like tools - by cheap, buy twice).

If you deviate - feel guilty and chastise yourself. Don't justify it as deserved "because you have worked so hard". Self delusion is seductive.

40 pounds in 6 months would be impressive - good luck.
I lost 36 pounds in 10 weeks on Ketogenic diet.
 
Watch the video I gave a link to and your questions will be answered

Alternatively do a google search on 'essential vitamins and minerals' if you genuinely wish to be informed .
, you might learn something about nutrition to your benefit although somehow I doubt it .

Give me the list of nutrients you think you can't get from a vegetarian diet, and I'll tell you how you can. :)
 
It always makes me smile when I read carnivores informing non meat eaters they aren't getting essential nutrients & yet study after study has shown non meat eaters have a longer life span 🤷‍♂️
 
I do remember from my time as a veggie that there was a particular sort of non-veggie who seemed to take it as a personal slight, and would spout (but refuse to substantiate) all sorts of untrue claims. There was something of a correlation between that group and people who bang on about militant vegetarians - my experience (and having asked my never-was-a-vegetarian wife hers is the same) is that there are many, many more militant anti-veggies than there are militant veggies.

There are, of course, plenty of reliable sources and studies demonstrating that it is not difficult to get every nutrient required from a veggie diet.
 
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