Losing Weight: Tips and Tricks
27 Comments Published by Joel October 16th, 2006 in Fitness. Share ThisThe Basics
• Losing a pound a week takes a deficit of around 3,500 calories. That means, more or less, that falling off the horse even once can set you back a whole week. Don’t do it.
• Don’t eat while doing something else. Stop and pay attention to each bite. Even though it tastes awful.
• If you’re eating something out of a box, like chips, count out your portion and put it in a bowl or on a paper towel. Put away the box before eating your portion.
• Drink water all the time. You should probably keep a jug near you.
• If you don’t count every calorie for at least two weeks, you’re screwing up. Don’t sabotage yourself.
Eating Out
• If you have to go out to a restaurant, try this: Order whatever you want (be reasonable), but only eat half of it. Immediately after, go online and try to see if you can figure out how many calories you just wolfed down. (Most chain restaurants have that information on their websites.)
This will help you avoid ribbing from your buddies about why you’re eating a salad. (Although, really, screw them if they think trying to lose weight is silly.)
• No matter what you are eating, leave at least some of the food on your plate. Even a single bite is fine. You may be surprised how hard it is for you to let food go to waste.
Safe Foods
Some foods have few calories. Most of them are disgusting. These aren’t:
• Diet Soda: Coke Zero, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet A&W are all choke-down-able.
• Green Tea. (Bonus: It actually helps you lose weight.)
• Jello Sugar-Free Pudding with Skim Milk. Freeze it in ice trays for delicious, rock-hard pudding nodules.
• Baked Wheat Thins. 16 to a serving, so be careful.
Booze
• Alcohol has calories. If you plan on drinking, plan accordingly, even if that means skipping a meal (or two). A pint of beer is roughly 200 calories, while a shot (not a glass!) of booze is about 100.
• You may not have to cut out beer entirely, but you’re going to have to plan around drinking. That means having a six pack every night is out of the question, probably. This is perhaps the worst thing ever.
Okay, I think that’s about it on weight loss for now, but I’d love to hear both the tricks you all have used to keep yourself on track as well as low-calorie foods that are easy and accessible.
Eat stuff with a lot of fiber. The more, the better. Regulatory effects aside, it has the benefit of filling you up.
Don’t remove fat entirely. Your body craves it, and frankly, you need some. Eat a little now and again, because it takes the edge off.
If you like it, you can slide a small chunk of dark chocolate in daily. This has nearly zero effect on your efforts, but makes a big difference in terms of how it feels to be dieting.
I’m sure Joel’s working up to this, but working out…even if it’s just a walk around the block, helps. It’s easy to calculate your calorie burn from a given workout, and whatever you burn you can add back to your daily intake (or take as a bonus in your efforts to lose.
Also, try to keep in mind that you don’t have to keep eating like you’re dieting forever. Eating at a loss level is only necessary as long as you need to lose weight. After that, you can eat at a maintenance level, which is MUCH easier…you just have to watch out for habitual and stress eating.
Last, don’t be too drastic in cutting your calorie counts at first, if you feel like it’s going to be uncomfortable. Even cutting to a little bit below your basic daily requirements will produce benefits, and you can cut more calories as you feel more confident. There’s nothing wrong with starting slow.
If you want a nice little calculator to help you figure out how much you need to eat each day just to survive, and how much you can eat for weight loss, try this.
Two very easy steps:
1. Chew and swallow each bite before even cutting or forking the next. Many people eat so quickly that they don’t even know that they’re full.
2. Take smaller bites of food. This takes #1 a step further. Smaller bites allows your body more time to process how much food you need. Additionally, it’s easy to simiply get tired of eating this way.
What really worked for me (and dealt with being healthier than losing weight) was creating a little checklist of items I needed to eat each week. I based it off of the insanely confusing ‘mypyramid.gov’ site. Every time I ate something, I’d check off the number of oz eaten. The advantage of this method is that I realized how few fruits and veggies I had been eating.
Cheers.
I’m a big guy, and I was always confused as to how I could be gaining weight. I drink 1% milk, I don’t eat huge portions, I get full quickly, etc., etc. However, due to my work schedule I tend to only eat one meal a day, and because I had to be at work at 3am, I drank a lot of soda to keep myself awake.
I mean a LOT of soda. I’d go through six cans of Coke in a two and a half hour period to keep my throat from drying out from all the shot calling I had to do for the morning news. Throughout the rest of the workday I’d down another 3-4 cans because honestly, I’m a habitual drinker (which is another reason I don’t drink alcohol). That comes out to around 6000 calories a week!
People never think about how many calories they’re absent-mindedly drinking, but since switching over to water in December of last year I’ve lost 53 pounds without changing anything else. I was a complete bear to be around for the first couple of weeks but I think it was worth it. I’ve gone from snug 5XL shirts to loose 3XL shirts. Now that you’re doing a weight-loss theme, I think I’ll start looking at other things I can change about my diet.
Thanks Joel.
In regards to diet soda…
1. Diet Rite has some flavors that don’t taste awful. In fact, when I drink them regular I have a hard time drinking normal coke. It tastes disgusting to me right now.
2. Minute Maid Lite drinks are OK and have the added benefit of having no carbonation. I especially like the Mango flavor. The other ones are meh if I recall.
3. Fresca’s Sparkling soda line is pretty good. I don’t drink it much because I’m trying to stay away from carbonation, but I recall it being good.
While it’s imporant to watch what we eat, we shouldn’t demonize food. That’s a big psychological problem people have, and it leads to failure.
Also, try to keep the diet soda to one can a day. The phosphorus in it is shown to leech calcium from bones.
Damnit this took forever to write.
Work out before you eat breakfast, Eat six small meals a day. separate fats a carbohydrates in your meals. Work out and put on muscle like you were going out for your high school football team. Eating breakfast is really important. Stay away from Coffee it. Memorize the Glycemic index.
These amongst other things are what lost me 150 lbs in a year.
Check out the Men’s Health “Belly Off Club” articles for lots of tips. They’re distilled from guys who’ve taken off some impressive weight. I go there for “it can be done” inspiration.
I drink the hell out of diet soda. I still have no idea how on earth something with 0 calories and no nutritional value at all has any taste at all, but it’s fantastic.
I actually prefer most diet soda varieties to their loaded counterparts. Drinking regular pepsi or coke makes me feel like I’m drinking straight syrup.
Carl,
What’s the theory behind seperating carbs and fats in your meals?
Feel hungry? Drink some water. You may be confusing hunger with thirst.
150 pounds in a year?? thats about 2.5 pounds a day. not possible, and not healthy at all. you’re body will fluctuate about a pound every day on its own anyways. cofffee has many health benefits and should not be put on the list of things of avoid. just dont load them with sweeteners made of who knows what. and all those starbucks drinks, yeah, those dont count as coffee, those are sugar, sugar, sugar and some coffee.
http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/80/96454.htm
moderation of any kind of food is a key. ive never understood the love of pop of people here in america, but its borderline pathetic. working out and increasing your muscle mass will help boost your metabolism, so make time for it. cook your own food, the olive garden is not healthy, end of story.
Paul,
It is possible. I lost about that (probably more) in less than a year. (Read my blog for details)
When you start off very obese, as I was, you will loose at that rate or faster. As my doctor explained to me, it’s not a hard “one pound per day” kind rule, it’s more a percentage of body weight thing. At my top weight, 2.5-3 pounds was not a significant percentage of my body weight. As I lost, me rate of loss slowed.
So, it’s possible he’s on the level.
Also, while coffee does have some health benefits, it’s also a diuretic (I know I didn’t spell that right) so you need to counter it with more water.
150 pounds in a year?? thats about 2.5 pounds a day. not possible, and not healthy at all.
Umm, Paul? I’m no math whiz, but I’m coming out with ~.4 lbs/day, averaged over the year.
My plan is the easiest yet! None of that calorie counting malarky! Just eat 1 meal per day, cut out all softdrinks and chocolate and go jogging once every other day. You can go out drinking maybe once a week, continue this for as long as you want to loose weight. Its tough at first but you just get used to it! Also you loose weight pretty fast this way.
Good point, Brian. Accoriding to my calculator, 2.5 pounds per day for one year (2.5 x 365) is 912.50 pounds. So in that, Paul is correct. It is impossible to lose 2.5 pounds per day, but since the guy didn’t lose 2.5 pounds per day, or 912.50 pounds in a year, Paul’s point is completely invalidated.
A really hard but successful process for me was eating little snacks throughout the day. A few edamame every hour kick started my metabolism like no other. I was constantly hungry.
In college, I did the Diet Coke and cigarette diet. it worked well.
3 words: cigarettes, tape worms.
Diet (read: light) beerwise, I’m all about the Beck’s Light right now: 64 calories, 3.9 carbs… Damn impressive.
Brian, whoops, my bad on the math, heh, late night last night.
James B, congrats then on losing the weight.
to AdamOndi, i still stand by my other comments
I’ve always have to make sure how many carbs I consume (diabetic), and you can look up most nutritional information for fast food and such quickly at…
http://www.calorieking.com
1) Go vegetarian.
2) Blow up your car and ride a bike.
3) Watch the flab fly.
Diet soda will give you cancer long before obesity kills you.
Better to cut out soft drinks entirely (except tea) than drink Diet.
Ingredient to watch for: aspartame
Google it, and find out how easily it can make you sick.
Wow lots of responses. so here we go.
James.
When you separate fats and carbohydrates you prevent insulin from shuttiling fat into adipose cells. Insulin is the hormone that feeds your cells, it takes the amino acids, glycogen and tryglicerides in your blood stream and puts them where they should go. depending on your insulin sensitivity your body will uptake macro nutrients differently. hence you have you Mesomorphs who can eat anything they want and get huge yet stay lean, your Endomorphs who gains fat very easily and your ectomorphs who are perpetually skinny. Since the trigger for Insulin is Glucose (hence the need to memorize the glycemic index) when Carbs and fats are present together the fat is moves into fat cells before skelatal and smooth muscle can use it for energy. No Fat no insulin spike.
The Long Island diet works well.. Cocaine Xenadrine and Water.
Jesus:
I’m veggie, I walk six kilometres a day, and I’m still 25lbs overweight. So while I agree in general that your suggestions are great, there can be more to it than that. I find the particular contributors to my guy are:
- getting less than my 7.5hrs sleep (which I’ve determined is pretty much my sweet spot)
- stress
- stress eating
Its something: when I go on extended vacations, even to places like France where I ate like mad, the pounds just melt off. I’m convinced its because I’m relaxed, I eat DELIBERATELY, and I sleep well.
Carl: But doesn’t insulin shuttle both fat AND sugar to the fat cells? I understand that the fat cells may be stored as fat easier, less converstion, but sugar get’s stored there pretty eaiser as well.
What about just reduced carb? That’s what I’ve been doing, (NO! Not Atkins!) and my insulin response is pretty low when I eat anything.
Jesus,
Being a vegitarian does not mean you will be thin or even healthy. Veggie’s can over-eat just as much as anyone and the lower amount of protien they get means muscle mass takes longer to form.
And yes, I know you can eat soy. Did you know that soy is chemically very similar to estrogen? That’s why you will NEVER be able to put the amount of muscle on with soy that you will with meat; your body is working at cross purposes.