Dieting question...

[Phantom Blooper]

Buy a hacksaw blade and a drill bit.

Cut the tines on the fork off about 3/4"....cut the knife blade in 1/2....drill a hole in the spoon.....

Burn more calories than you take in with sensible exercise and you should be fine!

You have good information on this thread...also do a search....there are numerous foods out there to HELP lose weight.

But if you diet you MUST do exercise....and use common sense!

[alicia1984]

I'm coming out of the lurking shadows to pass on the advice and knowledge I've gained through countless amounts of research and the advice of a diet and exercise expert I chat with. Prepare for a long post but this is everything I've been doing for the past month and a half and so far I've lost around 12 pounds. And that was with being sidelined with a horrible cold for roughly two weeks.

For a male and a male of your size 1800 is way to low. I eat more than that and I'm a female and while I've got weight to lose I'm by no means huge. Food is not the enemy. Bad food and eating too much of it is the problem. You need food to fuel your body and repair all the damage you're doing to it while exercising. NoRemorse is definitely on point with his advice. What you need to do is google BMR calculator and put in all your stats like height, weight, and age. BMR is your basal metabolic rate which is basically what you burn just by existing. If you were to lay in bed all day and do nothing you'd burn this amount of calories. Then you want to google TDEE which is total daily energy expenditure. It's just going to give you several options in regards to activity level. With each activity level there will be a number like 1.2 or 1.5. You take that number that correlates with your activity and multiply it by your BMR. That will give you the amount of calories you need in a day to MAINTAIN. You then want to take that number and drop about 500 calories from it and shoot for that during the day. You don't want to drop your calories down too low all at once.

As far as diet goes don't cut out carbs completely because you need them for energy. I don't know what the percentages for a male would be but my protein, carb, and fat intake percentages are about evenly split. Men tend to need more protein over carbs but not greatly I don't believe. I don't even bother keeping strict track of my carb, protein, fat intake with the exception of fat. I keep that lower than the other two. For now you just need a calorie deficit to lose the weight.

Now meals again like someone said eat smaller meals through out the day. But also what you want to do is at EVERY meal incorporate fat, protein and carbs into it because it will keep your blood sugar even and keep you full longer. Counting calories can be a pain but you start to remember things as you do it longer so it gets easier and honestly it's necessary. You want to eat lean meats, whole grains, fruits and veggies, and for healthy fat you want to get something like almonds or throw some peanut butter on whole wheat bread. Nuts are good for fat and protein in a snack. I usually eat a piece of fruit and some nuts for snacks but watch how many you eat because they're high in calories. You need to be measuring things out because people don't realize how many calories they throw away with things like condiments or they don't realize just how small portion sizes are because they never paid attention to the box before. I suggest investing in a food scale. I got one for like 25 dollars on amazon and it has a feature to subtract the weight of the container the food is in.

I don't remember what you said as far as your exercising habits are but make sure you're lifting weights. Muscle is the biggest fat burner we have and the more of it you have the more fat you're going to burn while at rest. As far as cardio goes for me all I do is about 30 minutes on the treadmill doing HIIT two to three times a week. I plan to incorporate endurance runs outside pretty soon though.

You want to make sure you lose the weight the healthy way even if it takes a little longer because if you don't you'll screw with your metabolism or you'll burn off muscle along with fat which you don't want. If you do all the things I laid out for you now there's no reason you shouldn't see the same results I did unless you have some medical condition that's keeping you from dropping weight. You'll probably see results even faster than me seeing as how you're a guy and have more weight to lose.

My last piece of advice is weigh yourself once a week on the same exact day at the same time. I do Sundays immediately upon waking. But don't always look to the scale for evidence that what you're doing is working. Some weeks you may see big losses and others you might not. A healthy weight loss per week is 1.5 to 2 pounds. There are other factors that can throw off the scale. It can't account for water retention and muscle gain. If you do all the right things and don't give up it'll come off.

[New York]

STAY AWAY FROM THE CARBOHYDRATES.


With that said, you have understand a simple rule to all of this, abuse of over eating is the 2nd main cause of being overweight. 1st is complex processed foods (Fast FOOD, cold-cuts, microwaveable meals and veggies and etc).

Keep this in mind when eating meals, exercising accounts for 30% of your day's daily make up, 70% is the other nearly 3/4 of your day, this means EATING.

So if you eat wrong 70% of the time, guess what? EXCESS body weight build up. If you eat right and balanced meals you allow your body to recover properly and manage its metabolism accordingly to your bodies make up.

Everyone is different, no one person is the same. Some can exercise less and see results, some may need to exercise more to see the same amount of results a person who does it less. Just the way it is, genetics play a big part and also your style plays the others.

If you've lead a inactive life style from early on, then into adulthood, the chances are you will continue to do so. And so long as you follow the same trend your health along with your body will be plummeting sharply downward.

You have to eat FRESH, and also consume lean meats (ideally chicken/fish). Cooking from scratch means eliminating agents that are hidden weight gaining factors. These are present in processed foods you buy. Just READ the ingredients out loud and ask yourself in a seriously tone "WHAT THE HELL ARE SOME OF THESE CHEMICALS??", enough said. Cooking low sodium and preparing lean meals along with a STRICT exercise plan will get you in shape physically and mentally in no time.

Try to eat more egg whites with one or two yolks in your breakfast. Consume less carbs at breakfast, you can still eat 'white bread', meaning bakery made bread from simple ingredients of such flour, yeast, water, eggs and sugar/salt. Nothing commercially or mass produced PROCESSED breads. You can make omelets with vegetables (tomatoes, green peppers and garlic) using good extra virgin olive oil as a base coat to cook the veggies first then the eggs on top.

For Lunch, Dinner or whatever, try pan-fried(corn oil) chicken seasoned with black pepper, garlic powder, mild salt and Italian herbs if you prefer. Eat that with a side of salad. Formed with Roman lettuce, tomatoes, red onions and make a dressing with lemon juice with extra virgin olive oil seasoned with salt/pepper to taste. Go for some 'Sub-way' if you have to and get a Tuna sandwich with green peppers, lettuce and a dressing of their 'Oil-Vinegar' on a 6 inch wheat bread.

Alton Brown is my favorite CHEF, http://www.foodnetwork.com/good-eats/index.html, try his recipes for ideas on what to have.

But foodnetwork.com in general has tons of great recipe ideas for anything, plus its good healthy eats.

If you have any more questions, just PM and ask here, I am more than happy to help you or others.

I can go on and on, but you have to understand eating along is not gonna solve or shed the pounds off. Proper and intense exercising/physical activity will also jump start your body to where it should be a healthy body standard.

Don't push yourself to hard since it could be a shock-n-awe effect on your body (this is a negative). This could cause unforeseen damages since your body is not use to this type of accelerated activity all of the sudden. Build up to your peek and at the same time learn what is not working and what is.

Remember now, you have to understand this is another sort of commitment. If you give up or don't follow through with the strict indoctrination, you will not only fail yourself but your health as well at the same time. Get rid of the old eating habits and form new and healthy ones.