Plenty to Lose

Thank you, Bish and Geoo, for the kind words.

Geoo, I hope you will take full advantage of the nutritionist/diabetic educator's assistance. Having support and someone to whom you are accountable can be a big help. Stick with it--as I recall you have a couple of boys who need you around for a long time to come. Keep us posted on your program--doesn't even have to be a "diet", just health improvement. This forum thread really helped me this year with inspiration and camaraderie.

Congratulations, Chris C, and to your wife, as well! Don't keep us in suspense....tell us how you went about beating (not just meeting) your goals.

Margaret

Congratulations, Chris C, and to your wife, as well! Don't keep us in suspense....tell us how you went about beating (not just meeting) your goals.

Margaret

Hi Margaret,

It will probably take me a while to write it up in a readable form - and I also want to flip through some of the past posts to make sure I'm not treading on any toes... (although at my current weight, it wouldn't hurt much... :D ).

The heart of it is though, that we didn't "go on a Diet" as such, but we did change the way we ate and the way we go about some things. Having had experiences when she was younger of trying this or that "Diet" and then putting the weight right back on again later, Vicki didn't want to hear me trot out the latest fad diet. But she was happy to "make changes to the way we eat"... :wink:

It's perhaps a subtle difference, but we have permanently changed our diet, with a small d (as in 'what we eat') rather than "Gone on the XYZ Diet".

Probably the single most important thing we did was to concentrate on eating "Better" not just "less". This did not just mean eating lettuce leaves and lentils instead of steak and chips. far from it - our diet includes wine, beer, steaks, fish and chips, and so on. Just not the way they were before. :)

I actually made a deliberate decision to go UP market with all the produce, not just healthier. So instead of big fat greasy steaks I'd buy a couple of pieces of fillet steak. It's the most expensive but the cuts are much smaller. So it ends up costing about the same, because you eat a lot less. You also feel positively spoiled and affluent, not deprived at all!!

Fish and chips? Well the greasy old deep fried stuff went out the window. I now do oven baked chips that are cooked with no fat at all. And the fish is usually top quality steaks of smoked salmon. Small of course, but boy what a cartload of intense flavour!

Wine? Yes, we still enjoy that, but the old "Chateau Cardboard" casks and plonk in a flagon have long been banished and replaced with good stuff in a bottle. Again, less quantity but better quality. Maybe I should call this the "Feel like Kings and Queens Diet..." :P 8)

It's not all about small portions either. There are some things, particularly in the vegie line, that you can eat a heap of without gaining weight. So if you balance the quantity with those items, and the quality with the others, then you're laughing...

Exercise? Yes that's handy too, but like fad diets it's not good to just go nuts on something you know darned well you won't keep up. You need some long term changes. And they can be fairly subtle too. The emphasis should be on getting your energy and enthusiasm for life back. When you get fat and sluggish there's hundreds of small movements each day that you just don't do any more. You start getting 'economical' with your movements, and putting off doing things because of the extra effort it costs to do them. You can greatly increase you daily exercise without ever putting on your joggers or track pants...

Anyway, I'll think it out and begin at the beginning. Perhaps tomorrow or later today.

Cheers,

Chris

Chris,

I'm in 100% agreement with what you've said so far. In fact, what I've done sounds very similar. Although I may do less red meat as it's not my favorite.

Better food choices and higher quality food, that's how I've framed my change in eating, too.

One key for me has been my veggies--no more frozen or canned veggies for me. So what if the fresh cost more? I'm the only one in the family who eats them anyway :roll: so I buy fresh, sometimes organic, and cook them lightly, add a little salt and pepper and occasionally a little real butter or cheese. I've fallen in love with my veggies this way, and eat a large bowl of fresh cooked veggies every day, usually broccoli, cauliflower or green beans, my top three.

Tonight I bought parsnips--my mom slices them and cooks them in a skillet with butter, so we'll see if I can make them turn out edible. I also adore carrots cooked in a roasting pan alongside beef, pork or chicken. This summer I tried fresh brussels sprouts, but can't say I'd be in any hurry to do them again. :twisted:

Higher quality food and better nutrition equals more satisfaction and less tendency to gorge on empty calories, IMO.

I still have a stubborn 10-15 lbs I'd like to pare away, but won't trim my food intake further and risk feeling deprived. It's still coming off, just very slowly, which is ok too. Looking forward to hearing more when you get the time.

Margaret

What Chris said is pretty much what I am trying to do now also. I can eat anything I like, pretty much, but I am lowering the quantities of the big fat/calorie items and, like Margaret, using more veggies (Although I combine fresh and frozen) to make me feel fuller so I don't eat as much.

The planning of all this is very difficult for me right now, but I am hoping in time it gets easier.

I made a shrimp stir fry last night that wasn't in any way healthy (Other than it had veggies) and I am paying for it with high blood sugars this morning but lately things have been a little better in my glucose dept.

Margaret, you remember correctly and I want to be around for my boys for a long time. However, diabetes is psychologically a very depressing disease and I haven't had the best of healthcare professionals in that area. Bad advice, inconsistent advice (Which ticks me off the most), condemnation about my lack of testing, condemnation about me testing to much, and it gets very tough to even know what you are doing right or wrong. I think I have found a decent team now, so.. we'll see.

Jim

I forgot to mention one thing about eating veggies, just in case anyone is listening to my preaching about them. :lol:

I always eat them first - sometimes I cook them and eat them before I even prepare the rest of my meal. They taste the best when you are the hungriest, and eating them first eliminates the tendency to fill up on the other stuff, leaving no room for the #1 priority veggies.

Works for me.

Margaret

First off – congratulations to all those who are already working towards their goals. Congrats especially to Nick for a wonderful result - those before and after pix were awesome.

I think most of what I'm going to post has been covered or touched on by others. I'm just offering a rather fuller version. There's also some links to sites with useful information.

Apologies if it's all a bit long, but maybe some part of it will help somebody.

Getting Set

OK, the day comes when you face the fact that you're overweight. You make some sort of commitment to do something about it. What do you do next?

Well, a bit of motivation is always a good place to begin. In my case not dying too young seemed a big enough carrot, but I'll admit to throwing a little vanity into the mix as well. I was getting a lot too flubbery for my liking, and I just seemed to have got…well, slow…. For Vicki it was a mix of wanting to be healthier, maybe a touch of desire to put one over the other solid women at work…. and the promise of a couple of grand set aside to pay for a new set of clothes. It's whatever floats your boat, but getting some clear motivators and goals is a good start.

The first problem is that we're all different. Some of us are more overweight than others, some have a strong streak of self-discipline while others don't. Some know a fair bit about food and food preparation while others know next to nothing, and so on.

So all I can do is recount what worked for us, and hope that some of the tips and strategies can be adapted to work for others too.

You can make whatever excuses you like about big bones, poor metabolism, etc but the plain fact is that all the fat on your body initially came in through your mouth as food. Fat is the body's way of storing surplus food energy, and the way to get rid of it is to eat better (which usually means less as well) and/or to exercise more. The good news is that that doesn't mean that you have to starve yourself, or do punishing physical workouts. Indeed, if you do take those paths you'll have a greater chance of sliding back again later – as you are unlikely to maintain them. So…

First step is to gather some information.

It's hard to make useful changes to what you eat unless you know what is good and what is bad. Or more realistically, how much of XY or Z you can have before it becomes a ‘bad' amount.

Some people will already be throwing their hands up at this point and saying “I'm not counting calories!!” or “I'm not going to weigh my food and all that stuff – it's far too anal and nerdy for me..” and so on. Fine, you can follow eating plans that others have mapped out if you like, but the more you know for yourself the better equipped you will be in the long run. Think of it like music theory. You can learn to play without knowing any music theory, or having a teacher. But if you're prepared to put some work in initially to get the knowledge it will pay handsomely in the long run, even though it might seem boring and unnecessary at first.

More to come...

Gathering Information 1.

First let's find out just how overweight we are. :shock:

If you can afford to invest a bit in this enterprise then I'd suggest that two pieces of equipment will be useful. The first is a set of good accurate scales for weighing yourself. It's not essential but, if you can manage the expense, then I'd suggest lashing out on the type that also gives you a body fat reading. This reading is not the same as BMI (body mass index) - which is a figure calculated using your height and weight - but an actual assessment of your percentage of body fat. It does this by sending a small electric pulse (you can't feel it) through your feet. The scales have metal pads on, and of course you will be weighing with bare feet. Bare everything actually.

Women have a much higher body fat rating than men (and that's OK) and your percentage will also vary with age. But it is a significant health factor. Vicki's was alarmingly high when we started – it's now down to less than 60% of what it first was, and is now well inside recommended levels for her age and height.

It doesn't matter exactly when you weigh yourself, or how often, but it is still a good idea to do it at the same time of day each time as you will vary quite a bit throughout the day. Vicki chose early evening – when she got home from work and was changing clothes anyway – but before she ate. And she refused to weigh herself any more than once a month. In her ‘plump' days she refused to get on a scales at all. By contrast, I'd usually weigh myself when I first got up, and possibly during the day as well, just out of interested to see how it fluctuated up and down. And I did it every day! Previously, I'd only weighed myself maybe once or twice a year, out of casual curiosity.

Tip: Don't panic if you seem to lose less in one session. Just stick to the plan. Weight can vary greatly due to factors like water retention on a given day. A mug of coffee can contain half a pound of water. There might be 0 calories in water, but it still adds half a pound to you until you burn it off or pee it out again. :)

The second piece of equipment is a small set of scales for weighing your food. Yes, for the first few weeks (I found that a month was plenty) we actually went to the trouble of weighing and writing down what we ate. I think it's far better to KNOW what the value of what you eat is, rather than use the ‘guess and hope' method. I'd recommend the sort of digital scales that can be zeroed at any point. I.e. you can put any bowl or container on top (with or without some ingredients already in) and set the scale to zero before you add what you're weighing.

OK. Now get an accurate measurement of your height, and then on to the next stage…

Gathering Information 2.

There are many places on the net that can give you the bad news about just how overweight you are. They may well even tell you that you're obese, even though you're pretty sure you're only a little bit overweight, and obese only means those really huge people you see struggling slowly round the mall….

Here's one I used

Click for Diet calculator

Be honest – don't fudge your height, your current weight or how much you exercise. Nobody cares if you lie, except you.

OK that was probably a bit of shock. “I need to be HOW LIGHT to be in the ‘normal range'. Hmmpph, not normal round here buddy…” etc..

At this point you should set yourself a target. We aimed at the top end of the normal range. You may want to aim a little higher to start with, but be realistic and then set a new target later if you wish. We both ended up revising the target downwards and both ended up about 13 – 14 lbs under the top end of what they called normal.

More coming

Gathering Information 3.

Now the hard part. Finding out what is really in the food we eat, and what should be eased off on and what can be shovelled in…..

My initial push towards changing my diet came from two friends who had become quite obsessed by it all. They had run a Computer Games shop for over seven years, which meant working seven days a week.

Understandably this had meant that their diet had been…well, not quite what it could have been. When they sold the business they decided to look into a healthy diet. So they found the site that I'm about to link to, bought the electronic diary, and went full bore at the recommended strategy.

I'm not pushing this site and have no connection to it. It's one of many on the net, but it just happened to be one that seemed to have most of the info I needed, without having to join anything. In fact much of what you need is also printed on the back of packets and jars (at least it is in Australia) so you may only just need some additional figures for meat and fresh fruit and vegetables.

Naturally it worked for my friends. It was a short journey in their case, but they still religiously fill in their charts, weigh themselves, plan their meals and so on.

By contrast we didn't buy the diary (we don't use credit cards) but we did use the information from the site, and other sites, and followed the general principles. I weighed and logged everything we ate for close to a month. After that I felt that I knew pretty much what I needed to know. I haven't weighed anything or written anything down since. We all have different ways of going about it. But I'd heartily recommend doing it for a while, even if it bores the pants off you, just for what you'll learn along the way. Think of it as getting a degree in Staying Alive For a Bit Longer.

Lose weight site - Australia
The Details _ Oz food

The American version
US Details

yet more to come... :shock:

Putting it into Practice

Right. We've found somewhere to tell us how much energy is in what we eat (measured either in kilojoules or calories) and the calculator gave us a daily budget to stick to. It's up to us how we spend that budget, but there's no point in kidding yourself – EVERYTHING that you eat and drink counts. Check the budget again here:

Diet calculator

When I first started planning something out to fit my budget I said to Vicki "I've worked mine out – it's twenty glasses of wine and an apple. And I reckon that if I manage the first part I'll probably be able to skip the apple…" So we had a bit of fun balancing out what to eat and how to prepare it. But, as we both cook, that part was pretty simple. It just meant a return to the days when we used to weigh things to follow a recipe, instead of doing it by eye and feel. Only this time we weighed everything, calculated the total food value of all the ingredients, and then wrote it down.

I was more aggressive about it, and always went under budget, and also tried to do a bit more exercise, whilst Vicki took the slow and steady approach. To be honest I wanted a good solid return on my effort before I got bored with it, as I'd never tried anything like it before and had never worried about weight.

So I was losing about 3- 4 lbs a week – whereas it's suggested that 1.5 lbs is plenty. Vicki felt that it was healthier to lose it slowly (which many agree with) and anyway, it didn't matter how long it took as she had changed her eating pattern for good, and was happy to give her body a chance to adjust as it got smaller. In the end she lost at about the recommended rate of 1.5 lbs a week and in six months she lost over 40 lbs, and went from a size 18 in dresses to a size 10 (local sizes). I also lost over 40 lbs, but did it faster. Neither of us have put any of it back on since.

Initially, all that weighing and calculating might be a bit of a pain for some, although it never bothered me to do it. But you don't need to redo everything every day, and you soon have figures for all your regular stuff like cups of tea and coffee, bowls of cereal, favourites meals, etc. I found that we quite quickly settled into a pattern whereby we were just calculating a few new things each week, and mostly jotting down repeat figures from previous weeks.

After a month or so I just stopped all the logging as I could assess accurately enough what we were eating. Others may prefer longer times or somewhat different approaches.

Not much more to come... :wink:

Exercise:

It goes without saying that it's good to do more exercise for your overall health and well-being. But I don't believe that it's essential in order to lose weight – just beneficial when you can manage it. Vicki lost all her weight without doing any special extra exercise at all. And she has a mostly sedentary desk job.

Again, I took a different path to her. But I also refused to do any ‘out of the ordinary' gym type exercise programs.

About a decade ago I was lucky to survive a major artery blockage. I now have a metal stent in my main artery. I also nearly karked it as a result of over a decade of very high blood pressure (eventually diagnosed as Conn's Syndrome and largely cured by surgery – removal of an adrenal gland). So I'd had quite an exercise jag for a while after the two bouts of surgery. I joined a gym and bought a treadmill. After a few months I got pretty fit, but I also started road running and stuffed a knee up. After that I lost interest, and the exercise routine went out the window.

So this time I wasn't going to rely on something that I knew might eventually fail. So I decided that I would only do exercise that was either fun or useful. Now I'm not much of a team sportsman, and there's only so much sex and dancing you can fit into a week, so much of it falls into the ‘useful' category.

I live on a five acre block, so I've got into more useful stuff like landscaping, wood chopping, gardening etc (growing our own vegies now of course), and I also do a bit of walking – but only when I feel like it, not as in "time for my daily health walk". We also bought a kayak which we take to the local lake, but nothing has been made off-putting by attaching any kind of ‘must do' target to it (unlike the food side of things which was very rigorously targeted).

This is entirely personal of course. Some people would find it easier to target a more precise exercise regime, and be less strict about the food. The thing is you need to work out your own strengths and weakness and choose a path that you can stick to – not just for a couple of weeks or months, but always.

Where I did make big gains on the exercise front was in the sort of small and apparently insignificant daily movements that we all make. When you get a bit tubbier and more sluggish there is a big tendency to start economising on your movements, because moving around requires effort.

Slowly but surely your whole pattern of being slows down. You don't need to be huge for this effect to start happening. You just stop bending down as often and you don't bother with non essential small journeys from room to room. You ask somebody to throw you the remote instead of getting up, and so on.

I decided to turn that around, and view all those slightly irksome little movements as "Exercise Opportunities". Did somebody call from another room? I'd get up and go, instead of shouting "come here if you want something…". Coffee? "Sure, I'll make it", instead of "isn't it your turn…". Left something upstairs that I didn't really need? Well I'd zip up and get it anyway, and so on.

Slowly but surely, I reclaimed much of the enthusiasm and youthfulness that used to be my style, but had slowly ebbed away.

If you doubt that weight makes you sluggish try this. Take whatever weight you think you'd like to lose – say as little as ten pounds. Now find some bags of potatoes or something that weighs that much, and carry it around with you for an hour or so. Just standing up becomes more of an effort, so you're more likely to stay in your seat, and so on. So how much more energetic would you feel after putting down forty pounds….

I now have a lot more enthusiasm and joie de vivre than I had a year ago, and I get more done. It started out as a deliberate strategy, and needed effort to get started, but it sort of slowly snowballed until it became how I am again. :D

Last post coming up... whoopee... :wink:

Maintenance:

I won't kid you - this is where many people fail. They desperately crash diet for as long as it takes, but then relapse and swing right back up again. That's why the "rest of life" approach is far better than the "XYZ Diet". You also need to prepare yourself for stopping the losing phase and going into maintenance mode.

As I suspected, it wasn't easy to actually stop losing weight. Once you get in the groove it's rewarding to see a little more trimmed off the weight number each week. And it's quite scary to think of stopping or even gaining a bit back. I ended up about 5 pounds below my ‘final' goal before I finally put the brakes on. Same with Vicki.

But sooner or later you have to try eating more and getting out of the loss groove. You also need to experience putting a pound or two back on, and then trimming it off again. Physically it's not hard to do, but oddly enough it's mentally quite tough, and it takes quite a few weeks before you fully trust that you aren't going to balloon out again and not be able to get back down again.

It's easier if you have support from friends and/or family members too. Long term changes work better if you're not trying to make them alone, while everyone around you sticks with the bad old ways.

End result:

Over forty pounds lighter. I'm now a bit over 165 lbs. The supposed top of the recommended range for my height (5' 10.5” ) is just under 180 lbs. So do I look a bit drawn and scrawny now? Well judge for yourself – here's a revealing but suitably small and blurry pic taken on the way to the weigh in…

But is it art?

I'd like to get a bit fitter too, but I'm building up to that slowly with an eye to exercise that I won't drop in a few months time. Natural stuff like dog walking, playing with kids, digging the garden, a mile or two on the mountain bike, and so on.

I've been able to throw away the cholesterol lowering pills, and the last of the blood pressure medication. And the pills that the doc recommended for a while to ward off a touch of depression that I seemed to be suffering from. No pills at all now. But the most important thing is that I seem to have got my life back. I won't be letting it go again.

I've still got some of my old daily menu sheets, so can post some samples if anybody's interested.

Good luck to you all in finding your own particular way to your goals.

That's all.. sorry it was so long... but doing a job properly is rarely quick. :wink:

Chris, what an excellent post. Thanks. You are way to brave too (Posting your after pic) although after taking off your "40 pounds of potatos" you probably feel pretty comfortable taking that pics.

My nutritionalist suggested CalorieKing too and actually gave me one of their books. I had though about paying the 45/year to subscribe to their site.

I am very encouraged from the previous posts and I think I might go buy me some good scales. I use the ones at work currently but I may be losing this job anyway... not by choice. Possible layoffs :(

Thanks again
Jim

Great posts Chris,
you have reinspired me to tackle this beast and get my weight back under control again.
i started off with steady results early on but fell off the wagon for various petty reasons.
seeing all the success of many of you was/is inspiring also.

please post the menu sheets/recipes or email them if it's not too much trouble.
truly great to have you back mate.
hope you stay :wink:

btw is that a new A/E dred you're hiding behind?

Thanks for posting the story of how you and your wife did this. Lots of good info and inspiration there. Wonderful that you eliminated the need for the meds!

There are many common factors between your weight loss methods and mine. However, I didn't do any food measuring or logs. I've always been interested in health food and good nutrition and had kept food logs in the past, so I already had an in-depth knowledge of caloric content, carb content, portion size, etc. I knew I had to reduce the carbs (though I've always been into whole grains), increase the protein, increase the vegetables (already ate plenty of fruit), curtail snacking after supper, and control portion sizes.
Chris C wrote: Some people would find it easier to target a more precise exercise regime, and be less strict about the food.
That applies to me. Love that treadmill! Movies and music make the time go fast. Started with 30 minutes a day, now up to 45 minutes and anywhere from 2.5 - 3.0 miles daily.
Chris C wrote: it wasn't easy to actually stop losing weight
Consider yourself lucky! Many of us hit a final plateau and find it difficult to get below that point. Unfortunately, that plateau is not usually as low as we'd like it to be. :evil:
Chris C wrote: If you doubt that weight makes you sluggish try this. Take whatever weight you think you'd like to lose – say as little as ten pounds. Now find some bags of potatoes or something that weighs that much, and carry it around with you for an hour or so. Just standing up becomes more of an effort, so you're more likely to stay in your seat, and so on. So how much more energetic would you feel after putting down forty pounds….
I think about that exact thing frequently. Considering how much a 40-lb. bag of dog food weighs (well, 40 lbs! :lol: ), I can't believe I carried that much more around with me every second of every day. I'm not a strong person--how on earth did I do it?? No wonder my knees and ankles were complaining. (They're much better now!)
Chris C wrote: I now have a lot more enthusiasm and joie de vivre than I had a year ago, and I get more done. It started out as a deliberate strategy, and needed effort to get started, but it sort of slowly snowballed until it became how I am again.
That is just the best! Congrats, and again, thanks for sharing.

Oh, and my parsnips turned out delicious! Had to stop myself and save half for tomorrow. :D

Margaret