Weight Loss thread....

[dukesean]

had a day from heck yesterday at work. I didnt get to eat my lunch until 4:30 and i was running around trying to get to altex electronics and back for this emergancy i was trying to fix. I stoppped by taco bell and grabbed 3 of their 79c burritos

Melkor41, I know it's tough to resist the taco bell, but if you absolutely must get your burrito fix, remember to ask for it WITHOUT sour cream and cheese. That will save you tons of fat and calories. It's still a taco bell 79c burrito, but it's not nearly as unhealthy as it was.

[Tactical_Texan_CHL]

Wow, mel, that's a rough day. I get the 7 oz. packages of tuna. I usually eat them straight with some Mrs. Dash chipotle stuff on it. It's a little dry, but pretty good for you. I also get the teriaki fillet packages sometimes.

[melkor41]

back on track, 264.2 almost a lb down from yesterday.

My martial arts instructor is going for his next dan(rank) friday night so i was helping him review all his material.

May or may not have an intense workout tonnight, depends on if he wants to just relax and stretch and prepare mentaly, or work on last minute physical stuff.

today it was two of those packets of tuna for lunch, one lemon pepper and one sweet and spicy. The sweet and spicy one was excellent. It did not leave the dry stuck to your mouth taste most tuna does.

I got the south beach books last night from my mother. If i do loose the 8-12lb in the first week like the book says I will back below where i lost it last time. Looks like i lifestyle i can live with. I was previously doing high protien lean meat, lots of brown rice, lots of beans previously and it worked well. This will also let me get some of their south beach premade meals so i wont get off track on crazy days/nights when i reallllly dont feel like messing with food.

[Tactical_Texan_CHL]

I like the heavy metals in my diet, so when I'm watching what I eat, it's alot of tuna. Try taking a tomato, slice it up, put 1 serving of fat free cottage cheese on there, a package of tuna, and a couple of table spoons of relish. It's kinda like a stuffed tomato, without the trouble of cleaning it out and stuffing it.

[melkor41]

One of the problems I have is that I can not eat most veggies, and i cant eat any fruit.

I get a gag reflex and out it goes....

It has to do with the textures of the foods.

I can not eat a sliced tomato... but i can eat salsa or tomato sauce with no issues.

Fresh green beans are a no no... but canned cooked grean beans are ok.

Same for carrots... cant just sit and eat a carrot. But sliced carrots that have been cooked in a stew are fine.

It has seriously cut down on the amount of "heathly" snacks in my life.

I love tuna, i just cant eat it alone, it has to have spices or salsa or something mixed with it.

[jbirds1210]

This will also let me get some of their south beach premade meals so i wont get off track on crazy days/nights when i reallllly dont feel like messing with food.

I would really use caution buying those meals. Kraft owns South Beach now and uses many of the very ingredients that the original author says not to eat. South Beach is a great way to eat, but not a temporary and quick one.

Always remember that South Beach was designed by a cardiologist to improve heart health. It was actually suggestions by this cardiologist that were featured in a Miami newspaper that got very popular and turned into the book you just borrowed. It is very poorly written, but has some fascinating material about what makes us eat the way we like to eat.

Jason

[saj111]

what my wife and i have been doing is on sunday grill a few chicken breasts or lean pork chops. take in your lunch during the week with raw vegetables. makes a good lunch and you'll be surprised how fast the weight comes off.

another good lunch to take is sliced turkey breast and cheese ( i prefer provolone) from the deli at the grocery store. i take large leaves of lettuce to wrap it in with a pickle. also we make chipotle mayo by grinding up chipotles in the food processor and stirring it into mayo. makes lettuce wraps extra good. adding spices makes diet foods easier to eat regularly.

with the south beach diet you are cutting out the starches and sugars but not neccessarilary most of the fats so you can still feel satisfied when you eat. also keep some nuts on hand as they will satisfy cravings.

we have each lost over fifty pounds and i don't think i will ever go back to the way i ate before.

keep at it and good luck.

[melkor41]

same weight today...

going grocery shopping when i get home, going to try to get as many meals laid out and frozen as i can ahead of time.

I am the uke (training dummy) for my instructors rank advancement test tonnight so i may not get a good workout but i should get some pretty bruses

[melkor41]

I only ended up with some bruses and scratches

Spent the long weekend cooking and cleaning. I made 20 meals and froze them, mostly chicken with some sort of veggie or bean with it. scale says 262.0 this morning. Feeling pretty good. Going without carbs or sugars for 2 weeks.

[Tactical_Texan_CHL]

Down 6 pounds from my first post. I cut out soft drinks cold turkey, and I think that made a big difference in the beginning. Had a very active weekend at the lake. Did a ton of walking and climbing and assorted outdoor stuff. Still doing well with the junk food thing. I have all kinds of good stuff in the office instead of junk now. My wife is all kinds of happy that I'm trying harder to stick with it this time instead of her dieting alone. We went grocery shopping yesterday and got tons of good, fresh stuff for the next week or so. We've now ditched most of the junk food in the whole house.

[dukesean]

Down 6 pounds from my first post. I cut out soft drinks cold turkey, and I think that made a big difference in the beginning. Had a very active weekend at the lake. Did a ton of walking and climbing and assorted outdoor stuff. Still doing well with the junk food thing. I have all kinds of good stuff in the office instead of junk now. My wife is all kinds of happy that I'm trying harder to stick with it this time instead of her dieting alone. We went grocery shopping yesterday and got tons of good, fresh stuff for the next week or so. We've now ditched most of the junk food in the whole house.

Good going there...If you go from an avg of 2 soft drinks per day down to zero, you've effectively cut out 300 calories per day, or 2,100 calories per week (that is like cutting out an entire days worth of calories).

Keep it up

[TexasComputerDude]

have any of yall considered having lapband? I may be having that this summer if my insurance decides to cover it.

I have gone from 1.5 2 liters of coke per day to none. I guess thats a whole lot o calories lol.

so far in the past 9 months I've lost 50lbs, gained back 30lbs in the last 2 months, and lost 5lbs in the past couple days. I got off my diet when some gang bangers shot my little brother (ok he's 22) in the chest with a shotgun from around 15 yards, which incidentally lead me here and 100% made me stop screwing around at applying for my CHL. He's a lucky man to have survived. I took the class 3 weeks after he was shot.

[chewy555]

have any of yall considered having lapband? I may be having that this summer if my insurance decides to cover it.

I have gone from 1.5 2 liters of coke per day to none. I guess thats a whole lot o calories lol.

so far in the past 9 months I've lost 50lbs, gained back 30lbs in the last 2 months, and lost 5lbs in the past couple days. I got off my diet when some gang bangers shot my little brother (ok he's 22) in the chest with a shotgun from around 15 yards, which incidentally lead me here and 100% made me stop screwing around at applying for my CHL. He's a lucky man to have survived. I took the class 3 weeks after he was shot.

I have had the lapband surgery. And so far it has not worked for me. In fact I am just about what my pre-surgery weight was. I lost between 40 and 50 in the first 6 months after surgery. But have gained back between 35 and 40 in the last year or so. I am at 18 months since surgery. Part of my problem is that I did not listen to what all the doctor told me before hand.
If you are going to do the surgery, then do everything that the doctor tells you to do and when they tell you to do it. Check in your area for a support group of other people that have had the lapband, so that you can talk to them about it.
I need to go in and have another fill. The fills hurt, at least for me they do. I have had 3 and passed out during all 3 of them. That why I have not had more.

PM me if you have any questions about the lapband.

[melkor41]

have any of yall considered having lapband? I may be having that this summer if my insurance decides to cover it.

I have gone from 1.5 2 liters of coke per day to none. I guess thats a whole lot o calories lol.

so far in the past 9 months I've lost 50lbs, gained back 30lbs in the last 2 months, and lost 5lbs in the past couple days. I got off my diet when some gang bangers shot my little brother (ok he's 22) in the chest with a shotgun from around 15 yards, which incidentally lead me here and 100% made me stop screwing around at applying for my CHL. He's a lucky man to have survived. I took the class 3 weeks after he was shot.

Sorry to hear about your brother.


As far as lapband goes, im not into it. It requires a lifestyle change to work right and if im going to commit to my lifestyle change then i might as well loose it naturally.

[The Annoyed Man]

At my Weight Watcher's class, there are 3 or 4 folks there who have had lapband or gastric bypass surgery. The official position of our class leader is that WW wants to support people who make this decision as a last resort, but that the surgery is not a substitute for the lifestyle change that is necessary to making the surgery work. My wife's cousin, and a close family friend have both had the bypass surgery. For one of them, it was successful; for the other it wasn't. The reason is that one used the surgery as an opportunity to change the way she regarded food and its place in her life; and the other took the surgery as permission to eat whatever she wanted. Guess which one has kept the weight off, and which one has gained a significant amount of her weight back?

In August of 2004, I had back surgery to remove a disc and fuse two vertebrae. I was in the hospital for only 5 days (they had booked the room for me for 7 days, so I actually went home 2 days early), and my roommate at the time was in for gastric bypass. He had already been there for a week or so when I checked in, and when I left, he was still there. He suffered horribly. When you are so obese that bypass surgery is necessary to saving your life, you are also so obese that surgery and its recovery are terribly hard on the body, and fraught with risks.

2 weeks ago, our WW meeting was very emotional because, within a couple of days of one another, our class leader lost one of the women in another class she leads, a young woman in her late 20s with a 2 year old child who had the bypass surgery because she wanted to live long and healthy for her child, and who died on the operating table; and another couple of women in the class lost a close friend of theirs to gastric bypass surgery, who died of complications a few days after the operation. This stuff is dangerous, and the decision to go ahead with it should be taken only after sober reflection and a realistic self-assessment. Too often in our society, we tend to see surgery as the quick fix, and we are either emotionally or psychologically beyond where we can see the possibility of successfully turning our lives around without it.

The guy who always sits behind me at my WW class had lapband surgery. It has taken him several years to lose 50 pounds, during which time other people in the class have lost 100 or more pounds without the surgery. This guy only recently got his weight loss back on track, and he is now losing a steady pound or so each week. Ditto for the guy who always sits 3 chairs over to his left. The difference? They both stopped thinking of the lapband as the solution and lifestyle change as just an adjunct to the solution, and both started thinking instead of the lapband as just an adjunct to their primary goal of lifestyle change.

My point in all this is, if you really believe that you cannot lose weight without surgical assistance, and you have already tried everything else, then do what you have to do. Just be aware that one of the solutions is downright dangerous, and neither surgical solution will be successful unless you make the commitment to changing the way you view food, and changing the way you live your life. I don't mean to keep plugging Weight Watchers here, but the whole point of it is NOT to diet, but to change your life. Diets won't work if you don't change your life. Surgery won't work if you don't change your life. None of that stuff is worth a cup of warm spit if you aren't willing to make some fundamental changes to the way you regard food and exercise.

Losing weight is not easy. It can really become an uphill battle if your families and friends are not on board with you in your effort. But there is a lot of satisfaction in success. I'm very proud of the 40 pounds I've lost since the first of the year. And, for what it's worth, I'm very proud of all the other "losers" out there. Way to go, and keep up the good work. But please, exercise wisdom and judgment in how you approach it.

Sorry for the rant, but this topic is one that is close to my heart, and it is so, so important.