BritanniAmerica

Well, I'm about to embark on a weight loss quest. My goal is to drop 80lbs by 2011. It should be do-able if I can maintain an average loss of 2lbs/week..

So what are your healthy tips?

The nurse gave me a great suggestion today - make up a pot of vegetable soup, then puree it. Anytime you feel the munchies, heat up a cup of soup, because vegetables don't have any calories!

I am a big proponent of exercise. Along with eating right, you have to move. It's great for the body, mind and soul and one of the best stress relievers. I have dropped 40 pounds since I came back to the UK on my visa last April. I don't prescribe to any certain diet or eating plan. I try to eat only when I'm hungry (not perfect but I have cut out a lot of needless snacking), I cut out a lot of processed foods and stick more to whole foods and I don't eat big portions. But I know that I would not have lost as much as I have without hitting the gym about 3 times a week. (I'd like to go more, but work and life get in the way) I can't imagine how much more I could have lost if I had combined the gym with restricting my calorie intake!

And p.s. - The best of luck on this journey ahead of you!!!

A friend of mine lost (and kept off) quite a bit of weight by doing a few things.. The major ones were she drinks no soda, only drinks calories in alcohol, eats no sweets, nor does she eat anything with trans fat. She also eats a lot of rice.

Best of luck in your weight loss goals and healthy eating goals!

I love the idea of the veggie soup! You don't have to puree it though unless you want it thick. There are some calories in veggies though I wouldn't worry too much about that since veggies are the best thing in the world for you!

I wouldn't cut out sweets entirely unless you have willpower of steel. You will only end up bingeing if you try to do that!

I am by no means slim (I'd be thinner if I moved more!), but have been quite a bit heavier in the past. What has and continues to work for me are these tips:

1. I am vegetarian (no eggs, but some dairy). Even if you don't want to go veggie, by simply incorporating loads more veggies and fruits and whole grains into your diet you can lose weight. For example--you can still have pizza--just less of it. Have it with a huge salad or a big bowlful of steamed brocolli or other veggies. That way you get the taste of the pizza (or other yummy, but not low-cal food), but you feel full and satisfied because the fiber from the veggies has filled you up. Also, of course the nutritional value of the veggies is huge.

2. Lots of water! Aim for two litres a day. Water helps your body to flush out toxins. Not to mention our bodies are mostly water and we need it!

3. Breakfast is important. My job can be physical so without eating something in the morning I'd end up passing out later on. Lunch for me is normally fresh fruit, a granola bar, some oatcakes, maybe yogurt.

4. It's best to have your dinner be not too late at night. This is hard for me because I do end up waiting for hubby when he's working late, but that's a comprimise I've chosen to make. When I was on my own, I definitely ate dinner a lot earlier.

Andee, I'm a former vegetarian, so eating veggies isn't hard for me!

But I don't like fruit. I know, I'm weird. I just can't find any fruit I really enjoy eating.

Great you're a former veggie--it'll be a piece of cake (pardon the pun!) incorporating more veggies into your diet.

That is weird about you not liking fruit! Not even blueberries? Yummy sweet oranges? Juicy plums? Fuzzy kiwis?

When did you stop being a vegetarian, Becca? I thought you still were!

And what about watermelon? Strawberries? Grapes? Those are my favourites...

How about fruit in smoothies? They're easy to make and fun to eat.

I lost about 50 lbs. a few years ago... What I did differently was:

1. Use far less oil or butter when cooking. When you're using non-stick pans, a spray works just fine anyway. But usually I just drizzle in a tiny tiny bit of oil. Like, less than 1/2 tsp. usually.
2. Made more vegetarian meals/more soups. You'd be surprised how many things actually taste better Veggie! (Well, at least to me anyway.) I made my vegetarian fajitas alongside my chicken fajitas one day for my parents, and my mom asked for the veggie ones every time after that. I use things like zucchini or eggplant instead of meat, but that could be the Italian in me! I also made veggie burgers for myself, even when I went to visit Vincent, and would eat them while he ate his meaty ones. Recipe I used:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Aunt-Marys ... etail.aspx
I just flatten and bake them instead.
3. When I cook a meal for Vincent and myself, I usually use 1 chicken breast instead of 2, and make up the bulk with veggies or beans.
4. Stir fries! Stir fries are an awesome and WAY low fat food, and they taste great. This one is a great starter if you haven't made many stir fries before:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chicken-Br ... etail.aspx
That's what I started with, but now I never follow a recipe. It's really easy to adapt.
5. Ever hear of the 3-a-day-dairy thing? I think it was in commercials a while ago that 3 low to no-fat servings of dairy per day boost your metabolism, so I gave that a shot as well.
6. While we're on metabolism, I did some research about how to boost my metabolism. This includes #5, but also Exercise! This doesn't have to be boring exercise - I played DDR. Another good way to boost metabolism is - rather than eating a couple large meals a day, spread it out throughout the day and eat them in smaller portions. So you eat twice as often and are rarely hungry, and it keeps your metabolism going! Win-win!


I hope this helps. Good luck! It can be so hard when you first start out, but it will get easier once you start to see some progress.

Oh, thought of another. Try using ground turkey in lieu of ground beef. It tastes the same in most recipes (though my meaty pasta sauce never comes out right without beef). Tacos, Meatloaf, Chili, Burgers - all awesome with ground turkey. Hubby can't really tell the difference, so he doesn't mind!

PrincesLemons - Oh, I don't eat beef to begin with, so we're good on that front

Mezoti - I keep it under wraps on my blog and LJ because I am friends with a few die hard vegans and I didn't want to hear crap from them, but I've been eating meat (poultry & fish with a little pork) since last year. I was never veggie for the animals, only because I didn't like the taste of meat...but when I was cooking it, I liked what I cooked.

Andee - Ok, you got me. Blueberries are yummy. I don't like any of the acidic/citrus fruits on their own or even the juice...or even the flavour! Anything orange flavour is ick to me. Bananas and I have a love/hate relationship. Somedays I can eat them with no problems, other days they make me sick. Apples are okay as long as they're tart and if I cut them up first. I do like all kinds of berries though! And I discovered those innocent brand smoothies recently, and they have a lime, kiwi, and apple smoothie that is super tasty!

No real tips Becca but just to say good on. It sounds do-able.

Perhaps, but for me personally, when I did lose weight and got rid of the high cholesterol, I just didn't keep any crap like biscuits, crisps, general snack foods and comfort food in the house. If it's there, I WILL eat it.

Oh yeah. I handed an almost full bottle of wine to my MIL to get it out. We don't keep things like crisps and biscuits usually, so we're okay on that front.

Day 1 and I've discovered I don't eat enough carbs.

So what is your plan of attack, Becca?

I wouldn't think not getting in enough carbs would be a problem. Usually it's the opposite that leads to problems.

That's what I was thinking regards the carbs.

But I have been really bad lately. My weakness is salt&vinegar crisps and bloomin' Somerfield were selling off bags of McCoy's Salt&Vinegar for 10p!! Now I will have to be real careful with my willpower and try and limit myself to one bag a day. Yea in the bad old days before this damn thing called cholesterol came along, I used to eat 5-6 bags a day along with a pack of digestives (yes chocolate), 4 - 5 4-bars of Kit Kats and the rest. Plus lunch and dinner. Most of this was office boredom food. Yea I was a walking cholesterol factory.

I'm hoping to lose some weight (about 30lbs) now that I've moved here. So far I haven't really done much (no gym membership yet, haven't altered my eating habits), but once I'm more settled I'm planning on using SparkPeople to plan my diet each week and online grocery ordering so that I stick to that diet. I'm already way more physically active thanks to walking around and not having a car, but if it works out time/finance-wise, I may join a gym as well.

I've been trying to snack in healthy ways - there's fresh fruit occasionally at the office, and I've been buying yogurt as well for when I have the munchies. I've also bought a few candy bars and some crisps , but at least I'm trying.

The nurse has me on 1200 calories/day, but according to the plan I'm supposed to have 3 proteins and 8 carbs from these lists each day.

Becca, this is an amazing site:

www.sparkpeople.com

I lost over a stone last year using that site. I just logged in my foods in there to get an idea of the calories and protein/carbs, etc. I was eating and just kept the calorie count to 1200-1550 calories per day with certain levels of fat, protein, etc. It really does work, and there are a lot of other great things on that site, too, like recipes and stuff like that. Also, since you cook at home quite a bit, you can enter in the ingredients of your recipes and it will give you all the nutritional info per serving. I found that since I tended to cook a lot of the same dishes that it was easy to then just log in "my spaghetti" or whatever for dinner that night. You can save all the foods you enter specifically (like that smoothie you like, for instance) if it isn't in the database already and then just add it in whenever you have it. It can be a bit time-consuming at first, but gets much easier as you go along. Also, it's a social networking site and you can join teams that have the same goals as you and make friends and try to stay motivated. I know I totally sound like a cheerleader, but it honestly is an excellent tool, and it's free. And they didn't pay me to say any of this.

I've used sparkpeople in the past, and I'll be honest, I wasn't all that thrilled with it beyond using it to keep track of what I was eating. I hated being on teams. It's not that I'm not a social person, I just really disliked the attitude of a lot of the people I interacted with.