Having promised, a post or two ago, never to comment on the subject again I find that a commenter (somebody who reads this blog, and must therefore have petals strewn at her feet and have every whim catered for) has asked for more.
So Melissa (on the assumption anyone else will have bailed out by now) - a few random and slightly more positive thoughts about weightloss:
1) Knowing your BMI is brilliant, because it shocked me into action in the first place and gives useful waymarks as to how one is doing, plus a wise and reasonable target weight at which you can level out. Trust me, I was fat for years and made every excuse in the book (including "I'm big-boned" and "muscle weighs more than fat" and "I'm a bit plump but not actually obese" and "I don't really eat that much"). All of these are untrue for *any* overweight person, btw. I finally worked out my BMI in the expectation it would come out as "pleasantly cuddly but nothing to worry about" and found I was clinically obese at a health-threatening level. I then made targets out of each full point of BMI I dropped (from well over 30 to 24, where I am now). This was helpful as it kept giving me small victories rather than having me chase a seemingly unobtainable big target.
2) Diets don't work. I dropped 4 stone (56 lbs if you're American, 27 kg if you live in the metric world) without going on "a diet", or giving anything up. Habit-changing was what worked for me. For example, I used to drink too much coffee, and every cup I had contained about 3-4 tsp of sugar. One day I actually put my daily intake of sugar from coffee along into a bowl and looked at it. It horrified me. I retrained my tastebuds to like black coffee without sugar and also cut down the number of cups per day I was drinking, and in a negligible amount of time had cut several hundred calories a day out of my regular intake without really noticing. If you are overweight, there will be 'savings' like that in your in your daily intake you can make. I did similar things with chocolate, snacks and meat (meat especially is key - be a vegetarian at least 6 days a week and you'll be amazed by the difference it makes). Replacing cakes, biscuits and chocolate with dried fruit or seeds is great as well.
3) More exercise is good. When you are overweight it's gruelling and painful on the joints and tires you out. When you get down to the right weight it energises you. And you don't feel nearly so self-conscious at the swimming pool or out jogging.
4) When you reach your target weight, buy new clothes and send the tents to charity shops. You look better, feel better and don't have the option of your weight going back up again.
Hope this is of some interest. Please feel free to share your experiences knowing that I will take an intelligent interest...
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4 comments:
You are lucky you didn't end up with diabetes.
I think you should post about your new regime as much as you like, because everything you say is perfect sense and is not based on a silly faddy diet.
Sx
Oh, good for you!
I've recently developed some bad habits in the way of pastries, ie eating them. Not my style, but I've been under some stress.
Stress, I tell you.
Winter is coming, of course, and now sweaters and gravies come into play.
Sigh.
Pearl
Well done Gyp! I've been ingesting helium for a while now to try to reduce my weight a bit, but now I think I'm going to try your common-sense approach instead.
Drinking black sugarless coffee in the first place, not eating snacks, eating butterless bread all gave me less to give up. So the only option was to eat less overall. Recognising when I've had enough, even though I could eat more, was what did it for me. Intermittent periods of unhappiness helped because I lost my appetite altogether. And exercise by itself doesn't make you lose weight unless you do a vast amount of it (whereupon you eat more anyway) but moderate exercise raises your metabolism so it's easier to diet.
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