[gmilch]

Hey everyone.
I'm looking to make some serious life changes that will effect my overall health and contribute to loosing weight.

The changes I want to make are:
1. Becoming more active
2. Focusing on nutrition (whole foods, eat this and not that, etc.)
3. Reducing the amount of toxins that my body is subject to.

The challenges I face are:
1. I work at an office, mostly confined to a desk up to 10 hours/day and sometimes 6 to 7 days a week.
2. I have little time for cooking, shopping and exercise
3. I am not very knowledgeable on which foods are helping and which foods hinder. (junk food or fast food is not an issue. What I mean is what foods are bad for metabolism such as white flour, high glucose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, ect. that are commonly found in highly processed foods and should be avoided when reading labels)

I'm looking for the best advice, tips and tricks for staying healthy on the go and how to prepare the most nutritional foods in the least amount of time or that can easily be packed and reheated if necessary. I consider this community as one more step in the right direction. I know where I want to go but a little fuzzy on how to get there.

Thanks everyone!

[zoodoo613]

I think yours is a pretty common situation. I know I struggle to find the time to do all the things I think I should do. I think probably the best thing you can do is take baby steps in the direction you want to go in, and don't worry too much if you can't make too many changes at once.

On becoming more active: I've been taking a walk at lunchtime if the weather is good. When I'm not working, I try to make my recreation active. This works better for me than trying to carving a big chunk of time out of my day for exercise. But then, right now I'm focusing more on being active than I am on really getting in shape.

Focusing on nutrition: Shop from the perimeter of the grocery store and only sparingly from the interior aisles. This generally does mean that you'll have to spend more time on food prep than you might be used to. But it doesn't need to be that complicated. Fruits and raw veggies make good snacks. You can make soups or other dishes in large batches and bring them later in the week.

I'm not sure I buy into certain foods speeding or slowing your metabolism, but you've already listed some foods that are calorie dense/nutrition sparse. Work on avoiding them.

And remember, you don't need to do it all over night. And changes you make can be a step in the right direction.

Good luck!

[Lovely]

Hey there Gmilch ^^

You face very similar struggles to anyone starting. The key is not finding the time, but making the time to do things.

Small things: Taking the stairs at work, walking over to someone's desk to ask something instead of e-mailing them, taking a 5 minute walking break while everyone else is taking their smoking break, standing at the computer instead of sitting for a few minutes at a time. (At my last office job a lot of people adjusted their desks to stand instead of sit.)

Exercise isn't confined to doing a 45 minute aerobic workout wearing legwarmers. You can do many little things to make you more active until you do have the time to take a stroll, or workout to a DVD.

Foods might not necessarily slow down our metabolisms (I have never found a reliable source for that kind of information), but I can understand wanting to avoid certain ingredients. Zoodoo made some great notes about eating healthier. I must second that if you're looking to eat less process and more whole foods that you avoid the interior aisles of most grocery stores (though in the one I visit there's a section that has whole wheat/whole grains like steel cut oats that I pick up.)

Raw fruits and vegetables can make a great snack or even take up a good portion of a meal.

I'd take one thing that you eat now and make a substitution. For example if you eat a granola bar, but come to find out it has some ingredient you don't want to be eating then you can bring trail mix instead (though it's calorie-dense so you'd still have to watch the serving).

One thing I sometimes see people do to save time is to make extra servings of dinner, then package the leftovers for the next day's lunch. No prep in the morning! Just grab the leftovers and they can easily be heated up at work. Almost any meal without something that gets soggy (like breads) will be perfectly fine to reheat like this.

Best of luck with your changes! And do keep coming back and posting =)