My journey to drop the weight

Droppin the weight hasnt ever been too crazy hard for me. Ive dropped 50+ lbs 3 times before. Last time was this time last year. Ive officially been in the maintaining program for a year now and have been doing the best ive ever done before. Its tough though, really still have to watch what i eat/drink and most importantly ive been able to maintain getting exercise on a consistent basis. My problem in the past was i would drop the weight but then go back to old and bad habits. Im determined to keep it off this time and to continue good habits(most of the time anyway) and hopefully be able to maintain til i keel.

 
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Stumpy1 said:
I have a great cutting diet if you need one. I was able to shed 25lbs in 8 weeks. The key is to get your metabolism up and going and not let it stop till you go to bed. This is easily accomplished by strength training, like Creighton said, and by eating healthy foods every 2-3 hrs while your awake. The diet goes off macros and not calories.
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I'd be interested in this if you wouldn't mind sharing.
 
I developed the beef jerky and cocaine diet years ago, it is hailed by nutritionist everywhere as the most effective and easiest to stick to diet our there.

 
Landlord of Memorial Stadium said:
This is my first time ever viewing this thread but thanks everyone for the contributions.

Since sophomore year of college I have always hovered a little over 200, whilst eating absolute garbage all the time and not being all that physically active. Even once I was out of school I still stayed around the same weight, and even after getting my wisdom teeth taken out and drinking nothing but fruit smoothies for a week and a half, I didn't lose a single pound.

But I've been gaining a bit of weight over the last 8-10 months. I'm sure part of it is just my habits catching up with me, but I think a big part of it has been a physiological response to stress and anxiety in my life as well.

Anyways, I was back home for the weekend and stepped on my mom's scale. I weigh 246 pounds. Anyone that was at the tailgate is probably surprised by this because I'm a thicker guy but I don't look anywhere near that amount of weight.

So I've been fasting from fast food and pop for the last few weeks, trying to eat less, and have been playing basketball and going for runs. Never thought I'd be on a concentrated weight loss kick, but here I am.
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Would you believe I weight 310 pounds?

 
Weighed myself today, 208.......but I'm also 5'7. Up 5lbs from 2 months ago but thats 2 months of working out again so I don't mind being up a bit.

Yeah metabolism is a beyotch. I lost mine altogether around 2005 after a year of D'Leons Carne Asada Quesedillas washed down with Dairy Queen Triple Chocolate Utopias. Looking back I can't believe I'm not dead.

Got my blood drawn 2 years in a row now. Last year my Cholesterol was at 209 I think, which is awful. I changed my eating habits to more comfortably fit my picky nature (ie more fruit, smaller portions, less dark beer etc etc.) This year, up to 246.................chalking this one up to sh**ty genetics.

So, drinking even less beer, eating even more fruit, taking more fish oil pills, working out even more. Hope next year is different but I doubt it. My family just has bad cholesterol.

 
I'm not actually sure portion size matters. Don't forget to get lots of fiber, eat your whole grains and vegetables. Fruit is probably easy to go excess with since they taste so good - and make sure you're not getting the fruit servings from juices, etc. Good luck with that cholesterol homie!

Oh yea re: fish oil, hopefully I'm not spewing out bad information (seems all too easy with nutrition stuff), it's more like in a typical modern diet, it's too easy to get excess omega-6 fatty acids (which are also necessary), in addition to too few omega-3s. So it makes sense to try and avoid the omega-6 excess. Some fish oil supplements I've seen actually include both omega-3 and omega-6...which sounds like a poor way to go.

 
Glad you said something, these only have Omega 3. Supposed to help with Triglyceride levels as well. My count on that was 600 and its not supposed to be above 200, I was down slightly but not nearly enough.

Im really bad with vegetables. Tomatoes seriously make me puke certain texrures just turn my stomach. Id better grab a v8.

 
Cholesterol is a tricky issue. I'm no expert, but from what I've read and the little I've researched, higher cholesterol levels are not necessarily an arbiter of poor health. A risk factor in heart disease, yes, but other factors such as high triglycerides and HDL being too low are even stronger factors. My cholesterol tends to be rather high, and it doesn't change very much regardless of how good of shape I'm in, my weight, or my dietary habits from time to time. Cholesterol is largely genetic. So take care of yourself, eat your veggies, drop a few pounds, get some exercise: we all need to do those things, but don't worry too much about cholesterol levels if you are doing well otherwise.

And for fish oil: I've also read on bodybuilding sites that if they were limited to only take one supplement ever, they would choose fish oil. It's anti-inflammatory properties are great, and if you think about it so many debilitating diseases (heart attacks, strokes, not to mention muscle and joint injuries) are related to inflammation. But if your fish oil contains Omega 6, that's the bad stuff. Get Omega 3 only.

 
Portion size does matter, but only in that most people eat portions that are far, far too large for their daily caloric intake requirement. In other words, for many people, their overly large portions are usually providing them with far more calories than they burn in a day (basal metablolism + activity). So for a lot of people, simply reducing portion size to a more reasonable level will result in weight loss without any other changes. Of course, dietary changes are also a good thing for a number of reasons, and also help with overall health, as does exercise (which serves to raise the amount of calories you burn, not to mention promote overall health in many ways).

So your portion size and dietary intake need to be matched with what you're trying to accomplish and how much activity/exercise you're involved with each day. Someone lifting weights and attempting to bulk up is going to have a very different diet and caloric intake than someone just looking to tone up and get in better shape. A sedentary person that does little but sit at a desk all day and then go home and flop on the couch is going to need far less caloric intake than someone working construction, or someone that comes home from a desk job and works out hard or plays multiple times per week.

As for Omega-6 fatty acids, it's true that the average American diet contains far more than you need. Fish oil supplements that contain just Omega-3, as mentioned, are the way to go (they're easy to find). Specifically, you would want something that provides good amounts of EPA and DHA, as those are what really matters. Omega-3 supplements have a lot of probable benefits - in my view, it's one of the very few supplements that are actually worth taking every day for the average, reasonably healthy person. Check with your doctor first, though, if you take any prescription meds - especially anything that thins your blood or promotes bleeding.

Honestly, though, excercise is the key. Exercise, exercise, exercise. That, more than anything else, will help lower your cholesterol and improve your overall health. I would rather be a person that eats junk food all the time but exercises hard each day than a person that doens't exercise but eats "healthy." A balance of the two is ideal, but for most people, exercise is needed most. And yes, walking 30 minutes a day will help if you're sedentary, and it's better than nothing, but I'm talking about real exercise.

 
There are three measures of cholesterol that should be paid attention to - overall cholesterol, "good" cholesterol (HDL), and "bad" cholesterol (LDL). You do want to keep your overall cholesterol to a reasonable level, but the real risk is in the levels of your HDL and LDL. It's perfectly possible (and not uncommon) to have normal cholesterol levels, but have an off the charts risk for heart disease because you have extremely low HDL and very high LDL.

If you take moderate steps to watch your cholestrol intake, that will always help a little, and not much has to be done for most people to make a little difference. As mentioned, though, many people are burdened with genetics that predispose them to wacked out cholesterol. However, once again, exercise (real, serious exercise) is the main way to alter your cholesterol levels on your own. It's possible to have genetics where you can't do enough to reach desired levels of cholestrol by today's standards, but many people can with enough exercise and some dietary changes. But most people don't want to bother, and just go onto the drugs. Meh.

Another thing to keep in mind with all of this is to drink lots of water. Most people don't get enough water through a day, but it's important, and will help with all the things being discussed, including weight loss.

 
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