A few months ago we moved and I made major changes in my life. I have been walking my kids to school and back since we moved here in September, every single day. It is half a mile there and half a mile back. (We clocked it). So total I've been walking 2 miles a day. Also I cut out all soda, I drink cold bottled water all day with all meals. I used to drink 2-3 liters of soda every day. I thought that this would be enough to at least lose SOME weight. But I lost like 3lbs and stopped. This is a huge change in my life, I used to eat all day and do absolutely nothing as far as exercise. But I still can't lose weight! It's been 4 and a half months. I know I have not increased my eating at all. I also stopped smoking about 9 months ago and I heard that this could cause weight gain, is this possible? Thanks!
After 9 months, I doubt you could blame quitting smoking for not losing. What you have done is not a lot of exercise and you probably are not walking really fast since you have the children with you. We could be a lot more help if you would post exactly what you eat in a day, including accurate quantities.
Are you logging everything you put into your mouth on Fitday or something similar? Because you would be surprised at how many more calories you consume when you aren't logging. How much water are you drinking? They say you should drink 1/2 your weight in water (meaning if you weigh 200, you should drink 100 ounces of water). You should log everything you do for one week and see where you are. You don't say how much you weigh, but your ticker says you want to lose 124, so I could only guess, high 200's? That info is helpful too. (No one cares here how much you weigh, by the way, you can post it in your ticker)
There are a lot more people on here that are way more knowledgeable than me, I was just trying to get a head start for them.
I agree--when you've visited the 3FC forums for awhile, you see all kinds of stories from folks who can't lose, even though they "do not eat that much." But unless you are tracking it somehow, you can't really know. It doesn't have to be FitDay, although that's really easy to use--you could do it with a calorie-counter book or some other Web site.
Try tracking for a week, NOT to change it, but just to see what's up. Write down everything you eat during the day and how much (ounces, cups, tablespoons, etc). Don't figure calories yet. And then in the evening, do the calorie calculations and add it up. Or, if you're using FitDay, it will keep track for you and you won't have to do any calculations.
It's good to walk! You may want to add some other exercise as well once you've been doing that for awhile.
I discovered 3FC's about a year ago when my weight loss stalled. I was discouraged and I needed help and advice. The greatest tool I found was Fitday. I started logging my food (even though I was eating good, low cal, low fat foods) I found that logging made me hyper-aware of the quantity of the food I was eating. A week of logging and adjusting my portions and I started to lose again.
Yes I weigh 255. I don't walk very fast when the kids are with me. I thought that it didn't matter if you ran or walked as far as burning calories goes. I do have FitDay from a long time ago, I think I will start logging my calories again to check. Thanks for the advice.
http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist4.htm
You might want to compare activities to see what the better calorie burners are.If you want to lose weight you need to burn calories and not eat more than you are burning.That is not to say cut your calorie intake drastically cause that won't work.You need to eat well and exercise regularly.Casual walking is better than nothing at all but you also need to get your heart rate up.There is a wealth of information on this site you should make a point of raeding through the topics that relate to you.
Of course, ANY activity is better than none, but the pace of your walk definitely matters--I could stroll around all day long (like a big day of casual shopping in a mall or something), and that won't do anything for me. The key to efficient calorie-burning is getting your heart rate up, and casually walking doesn't really do that for most of us. The exact pace you need to keep depends on your level of fitness, but if you're breathing normally and not sweating the whole time, then you're likely not getting much of a workout (not that you need to be panting and dripping sweat, but you get the idea ).
As for the cutting out soda, first things first: congratulations! Now, when you were drinking all that soda, were you gaining weight? If so, then by cutting it out of your diet, you may have lessened your calorie intake enough to stop gaining and maintain, but not quite enough to create a large enough deficit to lose.
Yes I weigh 255. I don't walk very fast when the kids are with me. I thought that it didn't matter if you ran or walked as far as burning calories goes. I do have FitDay from a long time ago, I think I will start logging my calories again to check. Thanks for the advice.
That is an old myth...
-during the exercise you burn more /mile the faster you go. In addition there is an efficiency factor. Runner's world did a mini study on it. They found that even for equivalent speeds, running burned more than walking..until you got very very fast. Faster than ~11-12 minute miles, walking becomes very inefficient and starts burning more than running the same pace. But who can WALK an 11 minute mile?
Post exercise burn. There are the calories you burn WHILE walking/running. Then there are the other 23.5 hours in the day. If you exercise at a higher intensity for more than 20 minutes your metabolism stays revved up for hours afterwards. lower intensity pretty much as soon as you stop you go back to normal.
That's cool, Ennay, but we're not all runners. And walking IS a perfectly good form of exercise; it just should be more strenuous walking and not as much strolling.
jsta_girl, maybe you could look into exercise DVDs? I'm somewhat a fan of the Walk Away the Pounds series, by Leslie Sansone. It's a good workout, you do it at home in front of your TV (so if you're self-conscious about going to a gym it's great), and depending on your level of fitness there is everything from a gentle "get started" 1-mile program to programs of four and five miles, high-intensity.
Not losing weight
You may want to add some other exercise as well once you've been doing that for awhile.
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