Plenty to Lose

1) a regime that was sustainable, I put it on slowly so taking it off slowly was my objective.

2) Its all about energy in versus energy out, if you burn more that you consume then you'll loose weight.

3)Eating the right food, protein lots of veges and fruit and when you eat carbohydrate make sure that it has a low glycemic index. That's that rate at which you're body turns the carb to glucose. If you eat low GI food you wont feel as hungry. If you eat high GI food then what happens is that your body quickly coverts it to glucose, if your not doing any physical exercise to burn that energy off then the body produces a dump of insulin to deal with it. This only makes you feel weak and hungry and so you crave quick relief i.e. hi GI carbs and the cycle begins again. That unused energy is stored as fat ( thats near enough the process anyway).

4) No snacking between meals, if I'm hungry I just eat an apple or some other fruit.

I just worked out the amount of calories I need to operate and make sure that by doing a 30 min walk during my lunch hour I'm always burning just a little bit more than I'm consuming, not a great deal more but enough to loose that extra. By taking it easy but steady it's not so onerous that I want to give up on it.

Anyway thats what worked for me.

Paul

Great post Paul.

You nailed with much less wordage than I did. :)

It's absolutely all about energy in versus energy out. As Vic commented, the approach that my wife and I used can seem a touch on the "over-fussy" side (even to me) but as he said the preparation and planning really paid off. It was a smooth and steady run down, because we actually had real information about what we were doing as opposed to guesswork and voodoo...

I only used all the figures and stuff for a few weeks, but many months later the value of what we learned is still paying dividends. If I get a "snack attack" for instance I don't just give in - I fill up on something that I know is low calory (like certain fruit and vegies or whatever) then if I'm really keen on a bit of chocolate I have a small bit instead of a whole bar of it. But because it's now under control I could eat the whole bar too, if I felt like it, I just now know how often I can do that.

There are also sites that give you a rating for exercise. So half an hour of walking allows you to add so much more food back onto your budget figure, or whatever. I didn't do that - I treated the exercise as a 'bonus' - and Vicki did no real extra exercise at all. But we have friends who are exercise freaks (one whole room in their house is a gym) and they log everything! :shock:

Good luck to everbody,

Cheers,

Chris

I'm 5'7 and know I am trying to convert my 90 kilos into pounds for you all ...mmmm..

From school I think I remember it right ..

1 kilograms = 2.20462262 pounds

So if I have this right I am
which equals 198.4160358 pounds gee that seems alot ...

I do have a rather growing girth measurement ......

When I played football I was only 145.50509292 pounds using the calculations from my old teacher { This is of course I have it right }

mmmm coca-cola , beer , fish and chips { fries}, Pies , pizzas are all my demons ...

2007 I will endevour to stop eating so much fast food and eat a balanced diet and do something I have not done for over 20 years join a gym ...

Hang on if I do that when will there be time for my Guitar and song writting ..

problem....

Although we've both started smoking again....lack of support from family was one factor, next time we quit this house will be a strictly no-smoking household....we've continued to eat healthily, with a lot more fruit and veg than before...

Sorry to hear that the fags got you back in their grip Vic, but don't worry - you'll nail it next time. It took me two solid attempts to quit (after a flurry of short failed tries). After doing a good job once, and then slipping back a few months later, I made sure that the next time I really throttled it.

MOTIVATION:

As with eating, getting your motivation clear can be a big help. So here are some different strategies that friends used to give up smoking. They can be adapted for diet changing too:

1. Play on your own vanity (or whatever you'd like to call it). I used this one. I did a lot of 'self talk' along the lines of "You think you're fairly smart, you think you know how to achieve things, yet you let a stupid little thing like a cigarette rule your life. You think you have strength, but show you an empty packet after the pubs have shut and you go to water.." and so on. Similar for food - "You really don't have the discipline to eat a little less?" etc?

2. Reframe what you're doing. Don't see it as 'giving up' see it as gaining (which it is). gaining health, gaining longer life, gaining the ability to save more, gaining better breathing and so on. I also used self brainwashing by doing a lot of negative imagining around fags - thinking about some dirty old wino sitting on the street coughing his heart out, sucking on a scrounged butt. Thinking about piled up ashtrays after a party with butts floating in stale beer... all the negative imagery I could think of. Then I contrasted it with an image of the healthy enthusiastic person I wanted to be. I also certainly had no problem with working on negative imagery about how how slower and less healthy I was being overweight either, and what it was costing me in quality of life.

3. Penalties. A friend who is a Psychology professor used this one. He took an organisation that he loathes and wrote out a substantial cheque to them. He put it in an envelope, addressed it and put a stamp on it. Then he stuck it on his mantlepiece and told his partner and all his friends that if they saw him smoking they were to post it. :shock: He's an honourable guy and would have posted it himself. But of course that was never required. He quit. Easy to do the same for an eating/exercise plan.

4. Short Term Rewards. Another friend who quit fags put a jar in the kitchen. Every day he'd put the cash that he wasn't spending on fags into the jar. When it built up a bit - which it did very quickly - he would buy something for his family that they could see and use. So the kids got computers, they bought a big TV and so on. It doesn't have to be consumer goods you could donate to charity, repaint the house, or whatever. But, hey, put a couple of bucks into a jar for every day you stick to your eating plan and think of the guitar you could buy.... :twisted: We set aside some cash for Vicki to buy new dresses and stuff when she hit the target, and so on.

5. Long Term Rewards This can be materialistic or not, as you like. It could mean saving for something big, supporting a cause you believe in, getting your kids a better education or whatever. But whether it's fags or food there are savings and benefits than can be translated into a long term monetary gain. My Dad once worked out that over the years he'd not been a smoker he'd saved enough to buy a new Jaguar. So he bought one. I gave up 25 years ago, and what I've saved would also easily pay for a new sports car or whatever by now. It's whatever appeals to the individual I suppose.

I'm sure that there are other motivators. Anybody got any that work for them?

Cheers,

Chris

Hey Dogbite, I'm 6'3" and hovering around 235 now. A black bear about my size that I ran into while out on my exercise walk Saturday night turned and ran from me. :lol:

Hey Dogbite, I'm 6'3" and hovering around 235 now. A black bear about my size that I ran into while out on my exercise walk Saturday night turned and ran from me. :lol:

It was the "grizzled" beard! Don't expect the same treatment from his western cousins, they think you look delicious. :wink:

Yeah, I wasn't worried about the black bear. It's an adolescent that got booted out by his mom last spring, and he showed up in my neighborhood in June pulling down bird feeders and peeping in windows. Got some of my neighbors hysterical. One guy called the newspaper and got it on the front page. The women whose window he peeped in were telling stories about the biggest monster bear anybody had ever seen. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency sent a guy in who set up a trap in their backyard because the people were so disturbed. The bear pulled down a bird feeder of mine, and left a paw print about the size of my outstretched hand. I knew it was the time of year for half-grown bears to get kicked out on their own and we'd had a couple of others by here before. I called the TWRA guy just to let him know the bear had been here. He said I sounded sensible and asked me to try to get the neighbors just to take in their pet food, bird feeders and garbage so the bear would go away. Wasn't any use, though. One drunk was sitting out on his deck burning steaks on the grill with a rifle in his lap, hoping to lure the bear in. "I've got to protect my family!," he said! (He'd've likely done jail time if his ill-conceived plan had worked.) So I don't want to stir up a fuss about the bear again among the neighbors, but they'll find out soon enough if he's back to his old tricks.

I was out walking the neighborhood and as I approached the turnoff to a steep hilly street on my route, a black animal darted across the road in front of me, in the shadows. I thought it was a small black dog that lives at the house there. As I turned and started up the steep hill, I watched below me in the driveway where the animal had gone. As I got to a patch of woods, I heard the animal in the woods on the bank next to me and was watching for him. When he leapt out of the brush in front of me and started up the road, I called "Hey pup!" He stopped and turned around to look at me, and I said, "Hey, BEAR!" I kept walking fast straight toward him, talking to him, never breaking stride. He cocked his head sideways and stared at me for a second or two with a "What the hell?!..." expression, then turned around and loped off up the road ahead of me. He was absolutely silent, just like watching an owl take off. Max, the evil Doberman who always barks at me, was really barking at the bear. He barked at me, too, of course. About 300 yards up the road he turned and went downhill in the woods between two houses, causing the little dogs below to go nuts. As I finished the loop around the neighborhood and headed back by there below where he'd been, the dogs were still excited and I heard him rustle a little in the woods.

He's just an adolescent bear about my size, and obviously no threat to humans. I was thrilled to see him up close! I'm used to seeing deer, raccoons, possums, foxes and such on my walks, but not bears. He's probably still wondering just what the crazy guy with the goofy grin and Santa hat might have intended to do to him. He wasn't about to stick around and find out.
:lol:
The most potentially hazardous animal encounter I've had lately was with the skunk in my yard. He's a regular. I've gone out and crouched down 12-15 feet away from him and talked softly to him on a number of occasions as he dug for grubs under my bird feeder. He'll keep doing what he's doing, glancing up occasionally at me, then decide it's time to leave and hurry across the street, not in a panicked rush. I've got 'coons that are a real nuisance, and for a while they were really wreaking havoc with my feeders, worse than the bear. I came out front, saw something under the tree that I interpreted as a feeder on the ground, and rushed across the yard to pick it up, cursing the 'coons all the way. I got there and realized I was looking down at the skunk right in front of my feet, and I had not approached in a friendly, nonthreatening manner. He looked up at me and took off loping across the street. I got a good look at his lovely, sleek, shiny fur, and was grateful that he didn't spray me. I also owe him thanks for running away the 'coons from the bird feeder tree. I think he sprayed them. I don't like the 'coons. They're destructive and have an arrogant attitude.

Ricochet wrote: The most potentially hazardous animal encounter I've had lately was with the skunk in my yard. He's a regular. I've gone out and crouched down 12-15 feet away from him and talked softly to him on a number of occasions as he dug for grubs under my bird feeder.
:shock: What are ya, NUTS?!

We should start a pool. How close can Ricochet get before getting sprayed? I've got 5 feet. :lol:

Margaret

I'm not going to antagonize the skunk, but he's not aggressive. I was closer than 5 feet when I'd gone charging across the yard cussing, then had that sinking "uh-oh" feeling when I realized what I'd done. He just looked surprised and ran off.

Anything that tangles with him is going to lose, though. He's got the "nuclear" weapon!

Fantastic bear and skunk stories Ricochet - you lucky lad. :) Mostly what I see around here is kangaroos, possums, bandicoots, etc and the odd fox. Although I did have a close encounter with a very large snake which was pretty cool. But we do have a good selection of colourful parrots and quite a range of friendly resident birds.
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.

Hi TwistyLefty, thanks for the kind words. :) The sheets I've still got aren't exactly menus or recipes that would be easy for somebody else to follow. They're more like lists of ingredients that we referred to, and a couple of sheets to show how we kept simple totals.

I just copied some into a Word document and put it on my web space. So anybody interested can download or open it by clicking on this link. I did include a few complete meals (mostly enough for 2 people).

Nothing earth shattering - and it's all in grams and mils as we don't use pounds and pints here. So you won't get much of a feel for what the amounts are like if you're used to ounces and pounds.

Click here for Word Document - 7 sheets. 42k

Sorry folks for so much waffling from me, but if any of it helps somebody then it's been worth all the typing. :wink:

Cheers,

Chris

Awesome bruise Chris, ouch!
Thanks for the kind words of encouragement, glad your wife Vicki has done so well, good on her!
Great bear story. We had a King Brown snake come into our loo once, during one of the droughts,
very scary as you can die in ten minutes if bitten by one. :)

:D great story Ricochet, you must live in a beautiful area. wish i lived near so much activity as you and Chris.
thanx for the stuff reguardless Chris i'll check it out soon when i get a chance.

Love your new Mountain Daredevils avatar TwistyLefty. :D

We've got that "Men from Earth" album on a old vinyl LP somewhere.... must get the turntable working again...

Cheers,

Chris

If I go walking and see a 'roo, I might not tell y'all about it.

I have seen pastures full of zebras and ostriches in the Northeast Tennessee hills, though.

The good news is, I saw a new recent low on the scales this morning. The walking helps. Bears and evil Dobermans distract me from the fatigue of hoofing it uphill.

The belt I have on this morning needs more holes punched in it. I've punched a couple of new ones already, and it's a little too loose.

I weighed in this morning, and I can now claim 50 lbs lost.

I have visited the scale very infrequently through this process, so I can't say exactly where I was when I joined this thread sometime in January, but I am down 50 since December 2005.

This has been discussed here before, but in case anyone new is joining the effort, or if you need a reminder......The scale is NOT your friend. The scale is a sabotaging, misery-loving devil. :evil:

Therefore, it is important to weigh yourself only occasionally so as not to become discouraged with the little ups and downs that occur. I only weigh in when I am fairly certain I will see success, such as when I begin to notice my clothes getting looser. Seeing the numbers go down 3-5 lbs at a time (instead of down 1, up 2, down 2, etc) serves as a great motivator.

OK, so who has been eating their oatmeal and veggies this week?? :lol:

Margaret

I weighed in this morning, and I can now claim 50 lbs lost.

Outstanding work Margaret! 8)

That's a seriously large bag of potatoes to have put down.

Most amused by your view of the essentially evil and untrustworthy nature of weighing scales. :D My wife was exactly the same - treated them like snakes. Whereas I hopped on them very regularly - often more than once a day. I was intrigued, from a technical point of view, to try and observe how the fluctuations worked. Maybe it's a woman thing, this deep distrust of scales...

Anyway, brilliant stuff. That's a heck of an achievement.