weight loss

margaretclare

I've never tried the inhalors, I found the the chewing gum quite good (and the patches useless!) but unfortunately I doubt I'll be able to properly quit until something clicks and I really want to stop, rather than just thinking, 'hmm, I guess I should stop smoking as I know it's not good for me', if you know what I mean. Maybe I need to work out how much money I'll save - that should give me a bit of motivation!

Motivation is everything. Without it no one would ever do anything, change anything, achieve anything.

I went through years of this with my first husband. He was told to stop smoking, oh, I don't know how many times. More times than he'd had hot dinners. Different people, qualified professionals, many many people. No one ever managed to get it through his head, he never took it on board himself, and until he did, whatever anyone else said was useless. I am firmly convinced that he'd be here today, fit and healthy and being able to do all the things he wanted to do, if it hadn't been for smoking. He wasn't the only one. I have seen so many people whose health has been irreparably damaged by that habit.

It's the same with losing weight, although less likely to kill you (although even that can be arguable). I used to go on to a site where people were supposedly 'calorie counting' and they'd come back and say 'oh I can't give up my chocolate' or 'oh I went out and my friends persuaded me to drink wine and vodka, and then we went for a curry' or 'my mum said, go on, a little bit won't hurt...' or 'just one more biscuit (or three)' and you could tell, there was just not enough motivation there. I'm as bad. I've been fr*gging about trying to lose weight for sooooo long, I've finally decided to take it by the scruff of the neck and really DO it. I'm coming up to my 76th birthday in a couple of weeks' time and I do NOT want to get to 80 and still be trying to lose weight.

I agree, some people can decide on a thing and do it whereas others just can't get their head into it and do what is required. My DH had a scare many years ago, a sudden chest infection which 'frit the life out of him' as he says. He never smoked from that day on, remembering the feel of not being able to breathe. Yet, how many scares did my first husband have - myocardial infarction, coronary bypass, later on, strokes. Not one of those scares nor anything anyone said actually got through to him, because he never found the motivation within himself.

ladytubedriver

Hello - room for another? I have been losing weight (albeit slowly) with Slimming World over the last year, and I'm 2st 7.5lb down so far, with about another 6.5st to go. You can see from the username what I do for a living, it's possibly the most sedentary job out there, so I have to physically force myself to exercise!

I have recently switched to Weight Watchers, I prefer the portion control, I was eating way too much on Slimming World, free food or not, it all has calories, and I was well overdoing it!

I am hoping to visit my best friend in Australia next November, so it gives me 16 months to get to my target weight. I reckon that's do-able!

Nice to meet you all! x

beanielou

Great loss Margaret Claire :j

victory

margaretclare wrote: »

71.1 kg this morning. That's 1.3 kg less than a week ago.

I've never before lost so much in one week. This converts to 11 stone 2 pounds. Or almost 3 pounds lost.

Swimming for 30 minutes yesterday.

I feel good!

:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j

margaretclare

ladytubedriver wrote: »

Hello - room for another? I have been losing weight (albeit slowly) with Slimming World over the last year, and I'm 2st 7.5lb down so far, with about another 6.5st to go. You can see from the username what I do for a living, it's possibly the most sedentary job out there, so I have to physically force myself to exercise!

I have recently switched to Weight Watchers, I prefer the portion control, I was eating way too much on Slimming World, free food or not, it all has calories, and I was well overdoing it!

I am hoping to visit my best friend in Australia next November, so it gives me 16 months to get to my target weight. I reckon that's do-able!

Nice to meet you all! x

Different things for different people. I couldn't make any sense of either WW or Slimming World, although my stepdaughter has recently lost 7 1/2 stone with SW. She has a fairly high-powered but not physically demanding job - although she does ride motor-bikes for recreation, which according to her Dad, my DH, do require some physical effort to control them.

I've just - within the last few days literally - discovered the Dukan diet and that's what I'm doing. After sticking around the same weight for so long, I've lost almost 3 pounds since starting it.

Eric, Dr Dukan has reviewed a lot of the diet systems and diet books and he does say that his system comes closest to the 'paleo' diet. Here's what he writes:

"In our western societies governed by economic priorities and the obligation to produce and consume, feeding ourselves is no longer dictated by necessity or secular traditions; everything is possible and permitted. Loren Cordain expresses something that is so terribly obvious that it convinces us: it is quite natural to put on weight given the conditions of our current culture as we are programmed to go wherever there is pleasure. And losing weight, terribly against our nature has also become just as difficult. Evidence shows that since 1950 each year there are more overweight and obese people throughout the world. And confronted with the human and economic cost of these weight problems, no scientific or medical solution, no medicine has managed to even just slow down this phenomenon. Loren Cordain, seeing just how much we have lost our way suggests the simplest and most obvious method to lose weight, during the period when we are actively trying to get rid of excess pounds we should limit our food to what is natural to man, to what the first humans enjoyed eating when our species came into being, i.e. animal flesh, vegetables and what served as fruit, wild berries packed with fibre. Apart from the wild berries, this is very much what my own diet suggests whilst presenting it in as structured a way as possible so as to reduce the frustrations that come from all the temptations of our environment. So, I totally sign up to this method's philosophy, "lose weight by becoming human again."

Eric_Pisch

margaretclare wrote: »

Different things for different people. I couldn't make any sense of either WW or Slimming World, although my stepdaughter has recently lost 7 1/2 stone with SW. She has a fairly high-powered but not physically demanding job - although she does ride motor-bikes for recreation, which according to her Dad, my DH, do require some physical effort to control them.

I've just - within the last few days literally - discovered the Dukan diet and that's what I'm doing. After sticking around the same weight for so long, I've lost almost 3 pounds since starting it.

Eric, Dr Dukan has reviewed a lot of the diet systems and diet books and he does say that his system comes closest to the 'paleo' diet. Here's what he writes:

"In our western societies governed by economic priorities and the obligation to produce and consume, feeding ourselves is no longer dictated by necessity or secular traditions; everything is possible and permitted. Loren Cordain expresses something that is so terribly obvious that it convinces us: it is quite natural to put on weight given the conditions of our current culture as we are programmed to go wherever there is pleasure. And losing weight, terribly against our nature has also become just as difficult. Evidence shows that since 1950 each year there are more overweight and obese people throughout the world. And confronted with the human and economic cost of these weight problems, no scientific or medical solution, no medicine has managed to even just slow down this phenomenon. Loren Cordain, seeing just how much we have lost our way suggests the simplest and most obvious method to lose weight, during the period when we are actively trying to get rid of excess pounds we should limit our food to what is natural to man, to what the first humans enjoyed eating when our species came into being, i.e. animal flesh, vegetables and what served as fruit, wild berries packed with fibre. Apart from the wild berries, this is very much what my own diet suggests whilst presenting it in as structured a way as possible so as to reduce the frustrations that come from all the temptations of our environment. So, I totally sign up to this method's philosophy, "lose weight by becoming human again."

i need to find the dukan book and have a read on it, if it is a scripted diet (ie they tell you what to eat) it will fail i suspect as do all such diet types, but i do know there is a lot of sense in there, i stand by what all the evidence says, diets do not work, it has to be a lifestyle change and that means you have to be able to live with it forever, and that means no scripted meals and phases imo

the weight gain in the population since the 50s overlays exactly with the increase in refined carbs and reduction in fat, as fat intake goes down and refined carb intake goes up obesity increases to match it, as does the increase with CVD and diabetes

i am looking forward to following your progress

world_of_tights

I gave up smoking 2.5 years ago. I just woke up one morning and decided I didn't want to smoke anymore, and that was that. Actually, one of the main factors that caused the light bulb moment was when I was watching something and it said that if you had a history of certain cancers in your family then you are more likely to get it yourself. And I thought 'whew, no one in my family has had it, thank goodness', but then I thought 'd'oh!' - it didn't matter if there wasn't a history of it, I was doing something that would drastically increase my chances of getting it. And then I just didn't smoke anymore.

But like with everything else, there has to be the light bulb moment. My mum still smokes, between 3-5 cigs a day - but she won't quite because she 'doesn't want to'.

I don't know if I have had my weight loss light bulb moment yet though. I know that I have A LOT of weight to lose, I've lost 45+lbs so far, but I still don't feel like I have made my 'life change'. I still want to be able to eat exactly what I want, when I want - and I don't know if I will ever feel any different. It's scary as well because it is usually around the 50lbs lost mark that I get fed up with it, give up and pile all of the weight back on plus more. So I'm not really sure what to do about that.

mandz1

Happy to annonce that i have lost -3lbs this week.
Dont know how, but am quite happy to accept it. :j

margaretclare

world_of_tights wrote: »

I gave up smoking 2.5 years ago. I just woke up one morning and decided I didn't want to smoke anymore, and that was that. Actually, one of the main factors that caused the light bulb moment was when I was watching something and it said that if you had a history of certain cancers in your family then you are more likely to get it yourself. And I thought 'whew, no one in my family has had it, thank goodness', but then I thought 'd'oh!' - it didn't matter if there wasn't a history of it, I was doing something that would drastically increase my chances of getting it. And then I just didn't smoke anymore.

But like with everything else, there has to be the light bulb moment. My mum still smokes, between 3-5 cigs a day - but she won't quit because she 'doesn't want to'.

I don't know if I have had my weight loss light bulb moment yet though. I know that I have A LOT of weight to lose, I've lost 45+lbs so far, but I still don't feel like I have made my 'life change'. I still want to be able to eat exactly what I want, when I want - and I don't know if I will ever feel any different. It's scary as well because it is usually around the 50lbs lost mark that I get fed up with it, give up and pile all of the weight back on plus more. So I'm not really sure what to do about that.

Yes, it's the 'light bulb moment' that kicks off the motivation. Mum will never give up her smoking habit as long as she says she 'doesn't want to'. If she doesn't want to, that's it, no one can make her or convince her. It has to be inside her own head. In that, she's not unlike my first husband. When we moved here he never smoked indoors and never smoked in my presence. But I know darned well he smoked the moment I went to work, because I used to find fag-ends in the garden. So, probably in his mind he smoked much less than he'd ever done in his life, but he still smoked - and 18 months later he was dead.

Regarding yourself, if you 'still want to eat exactly what you want, when you want', there's no answer to that. It's a bit like those 'diets' which say 'you can still have your chocolate, you can still have your glass of wine, just so long as you build it into your allowance'. The trouble with that idea is that one piece of chocolate doesn't stay at one, nor does one glass of wine stay at one. I once looked at the Tescodiet, which promised to be easy because a shopping list was worked out for you and all the items could be delivered to your door. No effort involved. The trouble was, one of the items on the list was - a pack of Jaffacakes and 'you were allowed one as a treat'. How many people - realistically - could have an opened packet of Jaffacakes in the cupboard and not eat the rest of them??

margaretclare

Eric_Pisch wrote: »

i need to find the dukan book and have a read on it, if it is a scripted diet (ie they tell you what to eat) it will fail i suspect as do all such diet types, but i do know there is a lot of sense in there, i stand by what all the evidence says, diets do not work, it has to be a lifestyle change and that means you have to be able to live with it forever, and that means no scripted meals and phases imo

the weight gain in the population since the 50s overlays exactly with the increase in refined carbs and reduction in fat, as fat intake goes down and refined carb intake goes up obesity increases to match it, as does the increase with CVD and diabetes

i am looking forward to following your progress

Thank you, Eric. Yes, it does have to be a lifestyle change. It's the very opposite of 'lose weight and then go back to how you were'. Or, 'you can still lose weight and have your chocolate or glass of wine'. I believe that further along he does build in what he calls a 'celebration meal' in which wine is allowed - well, it would be, being French. What I did starting Sunday was protein only with very low fats, that lasted 2 days. Then alternate protein-only days and protein with vegetables days. This will last until mid-October. No fruits until much later, and if anything, that's what I'm finding difficult. But hey, my remote ancestors wouldn't have had all the fruits available to them that there are now. I doubt if they ever saw an orange, much less a banana. Actually, bananas are an absolute no-no according to Dukan, because they're highest in sugar of any of the fruits.

What I ate yesterday was scrambled egg, then sirloin steak with broccoli for lunch, stewed rhubarb with Greek-style yogurt, then later I made a pancake of one egg with oat bran and I had that with sweetener, lemon juice and fromage frais. Oh, and we had mushrooms, although it was a bit strange eating them without toast! I've stopped adding Robinson's no added sugar to water and now add a slice of lemon. The only thing really that you must have is 2 tablespoons of oat bran daily and that can be made into a little pancake with a beaten egg (I'm allowed 2 eggs a day) or made into porridge. And drink at least 1.5 litres of water a day. And there's exercise built into it - again, our remote ancestors would have been active as a matter of course, wouldn't they, and the decrease in normal physical activity over the last 50 or so years must have been a contributory factor.

This morning I've so far had a one-egg omelette with prawns and my usual 2 cups of coffee.

There's a report where you submit your daily weight and measurements. This is completely converse to what others have told me - only weigh once a week. I've been weighing daily for a long time because I like to, but it has been frowned on.