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Edited on Wed Mar-15-06 08:38 PM by mike_c
I'm making good progress with my weight loss plan for the first time in several years, and I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned along the way, and ask ya'll for your contributions as well.
1) At first when I thought I was dieting, I wasn't. I spent several frustrating months watching the scale refuse to budge before I tried keeping a food diary-- including weighing EVERYTHING I ate to the gram and measuring it to the tablespoon-- and discovered that even though I thought I was watching my calories, I was still eating 2500-3000 calories a day. I only had to keep the food diary for a week or so to completely change my perspective on my portion sizes and the type of food I was eating (high calorie vs low calorie). Now I'm eating 1200-1800 calories most days.
2) How much you eat really is more important than what you eat, at least in terms of calories. I REALLY wanted to believe that Diet X was the shiznitz, and that if I didn't eat some things, e.g. carbs, or refined oils, etc., I could eat all I wanted of other things. To a limited extent that's true, but only in terms of calories-- I actually CAN eat pretty much all the lettuce and green veggies I want, but only because they are mostly fiber and water, and low calorie. By and large, if you don't have special health needs, specialty diets promising that we can eat all we want and never be hungry do more to enrich their authors than to help overweight people manage their weight. I've gone round and round with this one, and realized that even when I thought I was doing well on a particular diet plan, it was usually because I was actually limiting my calorie intake, even if unintentionally.
3) It's important to manage hunger. I've learned that if I really limit my calorie intake to significantly less than my daily energy expenditure, I WILL be hungry at times. The key is learning not only to tolerate a certain level of hunger, but to manage that hunger, because it's the biggest diet buster of all when it gets out of control. I MUST eat strategic snacks during the day to keep hunger under control. The only times I've had unanticipated "slips" are when I allowed myself to get too hungry before meals. Usually that results in a trip to a restaurant for dinner because I don't feel like cooking or waiting to eat when I get home. Now I ALWAYS carry low calorie snacks and use them to manage hunger. Another good strategy is a pot of late afternoon tea before I start making dinner-- I'm drinking one now while I compose this.
4) Breakfast really is important. Part of the reason is that it helps manage hunger before lunch, but I started losing weight faster when I began making a point of eating something small within one hour of getting up. My doctor tells me it's because eating breakfast keeps my body from going into "starvation mode." It reassures my metabolism that there are nutrients available. A piece of fruit. A fruit smoothie. Half a whole wheat bagel. Fifty grams of cereal with skim milk. Just a small meal to start the day. I drink coffee with breakfast because I like it.
5) Exercise accelerates weight loss, but equally important, it makes me feel good. It burns calories directly, improves fitness and therefore accelerates metabolism, makes my body feel good, and improves my mood tremendously. It was a grind at first. I avoided joining a health club for years, both because I thought it would be boring and because I was vain about being an overweight middle-aged guy. Now I look forward to it all day and guess what?-- health clubs are filled with overweight middle-aged men and women trying to do the same thing I'm trying to do. We encourage one another.
6) Be patient. Accept slow, steady progress. Set reasonable goals. Don't expect overnight results. This is sometimes frustrating because we work so HARD at dieting and working out yet it seems to take so long to lose weight. This has been the hardest lesson for me to learn, and I have to constantly reenforce it. I weigh myself once a week, and since I got serious about dieting and exercise I've lost 2-3 lbs EVERY WEEK, but every time I get on the scale a part of me is disappointed when the loss isn't more dramatic, even though I know it shouldn't be. The same is true at the gym-- I've been going for ten weeks or so and when I compare my cardio workout today to my first session in December the improvement IS dramatic, but from week to week it's not. Change is slow, and requires patient dedication. This is a hard lesson.
7) Losing weight is only part of the equation, and only one of several linked goals. Back when I was on the Atkins diet people in online forums emphasized over and over that it really represented a change of life rather than just a temporary change of diet, i.e. that unless we make long-term changes to address the causes of weight gain we are doomed to repeat the cycle of gain and loss, over and over (or just gain it all back and keep it, as I have done). Now I can see WHY my weight has steadily crept upward for the last several years-- I'm older and less fit, so my metabolism is slower, I'm less active than I used to be, I eat more and richer foods than I once did, over the years that occasional beer turned into a regular cocktail or two at the end of the day, and so on. I have to change those parameters of my life as well as simply losing weight, and adjust to those that I cannot change. I'm not 20 any longer.
Can anyone else add to this list?
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