Bringing it to the Gurus
 

Hi all. I'm Julie. I've been here before, first as an Allicat, then on Medifast. I'm back, not to start a new diet, but to make some positive, life-long changes, and I could really use your help.

Over the past few months, I have been doing some reading and thinking everything through. I want to improve my relationship with food and incorporate exercise. Of course, I hope to lose weight, but I am not setting weight loss goals for each month, at least not right now. My weight is a symptom and NOT the problem. The way I have been living--sedentary, stuffing my face full of low-quality, fat-filled, over-processed junk to hide from my feelings and stressors--THAT is the problem. THAT is what I need to fix. I have to believe that if I stick with a healthy plan, I AM going to lose weight. My body is going to naturally seek a new set point for my caloric intake and activity level as I change my lifestyle. This is going to be a forever kinda thing. Here's what I've come up with. Please tell me what you think....

Nutrition:
--Eat 3 meals and 3 snacks each day, as CLEAN as possible--shoot for 75-
85%
--Shift between 1400 and 1800 calories daily
--Eat some form of lean, high-quality protein at every meal
--Shoot for 5 servings of veggies and 3 fruits each day
--Choose complex, whole grain, non-processed carbs
--Consume 3 servings daily of low-fat dairy products
--Drink 80-100 oz. water daily
--Phase-out diet pop, salt
--Choose healthy, delicious foods that I love, including a treat each day of
some kind

Planning:
--Use Sundays to prepare! Make menu and grocery list; get groceries, pack
lunches, make/package oatmeal for breakfast, prepare veggies/fruits, cook
dinners for the week if possible
--Make a weekly menu ahead of time, complete with calorie counts, then
STICK TO IT
--Record every bite in a journal, then transfer it each night to Fitday

Exercise:
--Aerobic workout in am--walk, treadmill or dvd workout (build up to 30-45
min.)
--Strength training in the am (30-45 min.)
--walk dogs in pm (light workout to boost metabolism)

Other:
--Get to bed on time!
--Weigh once a week
--Record thoughts, moods, etc. in journal as well
--Take measurements 1st of each month
--Reward myself for weeks I stay on track, meeting fitness goals, etc.
(manicure, perfume, music, clothes, etc)
--Do not expect more than a pound a week!

Maybe it sounds like I am over-thinking this, but I know myself well enough to know I have to have a plan to make something happen. Any feedback you could give would be appreciated. I want to improve this as I go :0)

I think it all sounds fine - sounds a lot like what I've done the last nearly 2 years. :)

However there is one thing that I think you're going to need to adjust:
--Do not expect more than a pound a day!

A pound a day is a totally unreasonable expectation for healthy weight loss. A healthy goal is to expect to lose about 1% of your bodyweight per week. At your current weight you should expect between 2 and 2.5 lbs per week.

BUT. You cannot even really 100% count on that because there are tons of things that will have an influence on the scale - your period, ovulation, how much salt you've eaten, the weather, etc., etc. So I'd say expect about 2lbs a week and if you don't make that one week, don't let it frustrate you or make you give up.

That's the hardest part for most people ... expecting too much and then giving up if they don't see the results they think they should see.

So hang in there and have reasonable expectations of yourself. Remember you didn't put the weight on a pound a day, you're not going to take it off that fast. :)

.

Yes, a pound a day is a really unreasonable goal. Weight loss will be faster in the beginning, but it will slow down later (1-2 lbs per week).

Also, if you are going to strength train, do it on your cardio days off. If you do cardio and strength in the same day, well, after a while you'll overuse them and you'll be in big trouble. Alternate!

Other than that, everything else is a good positive step towards your weight loss future!

BTW - Where are you in Michigan? Just curious!

Whoops! Typo!
I meant 1 pound per WEEK
1 per day? Yeah, that's not so good :0)

Weeeeellll ... not necessarily. :)

You can do both on the same day. I do ss-cardio after I lift (3x per week) and then HIIT cardio on alternate days.

There's no reason you can't do both, but pay attention to your body and make sure that you're not overtraining. :)

.

Thanks for the vote of encouragement and the advice.
RN--I am from Jackson, home of the Cascade Falls!

I think your plan is excellent. I would only remind, however, that that is LOT of changes. Don't expect yourself to do ALL of that, ALL the time, from the very beginning. We're all different, but be especially careful if you're the type that goes off plan in some small way, and then thinks, well, the day is blown, I may as well skip the gym and have ice cream for dessert!

Oh very good point!

Or as kaplods says: If you trip on the top step, don't throw yourself down the whole staircase. :)

.

Great point. Maybe I will choose 1 or two things to work on each week. Thanks for your feedback :0)

Or as kaplods says: If you trip on the top step, don't throw yourself down the whole staircase.
_________________________________________
Oh yeah--Been there, done that.

:dizzy:

Photo

From her post she wants to do 30-45 minutes of cardio and 30-45 minutes of strength training. It seems a bit much IMHO, but it all depends on what kind of strength training she will be doing.

At my gym, women's days are only Mon Wed Fri so many of us are stuck with doing strength training and cardio in the same day. So if I do a bunch of cardio, i'll just do strength training on my upper body, then the next day do cardio (walk the dog etc), then next day do lower body strength training.

If she insists on doing both in the same day, I'd do one am and one pm.

Oh, that's funny. I meant to say ice cream for dinner. I'm going to choose to believe that slip is due to how firmly my new habits are established, that I don't ever even think of having ice cream for dinner anymore. As if ;)

Yes!!! Ice cream for dinner.. tsk tsk!!!

But yeah it's sooo important to also plan for setbacks, they are so inevitable. make a written plan on how you'd conquer them

A couple of questions:
Have you completely given up sweets? That is something about which I can't make up my mind. Maybe it would be more realistic to plan for a chocolate attack by ending the day with lo cal pudding or a snack pack instead of waiting for a chocolate chip cookie craving to derail me.

Do you stick to the same calories each day, or stay within a range? I've heard a lot of good things about shifting calories--some have sworn that they have avoided plateaus. I've never tried it before, but I think that it wouldn't hurt to try. Any thoughts?

As for exercising, I think I will shorten up the cardio on strength training days
(15-20 min.) and keep the pm session each day. The pm session is going to be more of a stroll--it is really for my dogs and to help me boost my metabolism and CHILL after wrangling 25+ fifth graders all day :0)

It's always nice to fit in a small amount of sweets in during the day. yes low calorie pudding cups are a good idea. it's preportioned so that's good. I've heard from some that toggling your amount of calories per day keeps your metabolism in check, and guessing what will happen next. I always stay within 1600-2100 calories, alternating everywhere, but eating more on heavy exercise days.

I hadn't even thought about relating my calories to the intensity of my workouts--definitely something to consider. Of course, I'm going to try to threaten/cajole the people at work to join a biggest loser contest there. I may have to boost my calories for days I engage in heavy trash-talking too :p

haha work those facial muscles!!

Hey--Whatever it takes! ;)

Your plan looks almost identical to the plan I followed, and I do cardio and strength training on the same day...and I do HIIT cardio 6 days a week for 30 minutes and SS Cardio for another 15 mintues (45 minutes total for my cardio). I have not had any trouble doing it this way for the last six months, but I do most of my cardio on my exercise bike so it is pretty low impact, and my strength training is not incredibly strenuous (3 days a week for around 40 minutes a session.). I work all of my major muscle groups each time (using resistance bands) and do 2 sets of 15 reps. In addition to the resistance bands, I also do crunches, bicycle crunches, a couple of leg lift exercises, some lunges and some squats.

As for your sweets question, I prefer to eat the real thing in small quantities rather than try to satisfy the craving with a poor substitute. I keep small squares of dark chocolate, and if I need a chocolate fix, I eat some chocolate and work it into my calories. The squares I eat have 40 calories...not that difficult to fit into a day's worth of calories.

On the calorie cycling front, I cycled my calories as I lost the weight -- hitting a daily average of about 1500 calories, but having days that ranged from 1300 to 1800. Personally, I liked having the mix of high and low days...plus I could work "special occasion" meals onto "high" days so that I had the extra calories to spend those days. I cannot say for sure that cycling my calories really kept my metabolism up and allowed me to lose more steadily...but I did lose remarkably steadily and fairly quickly...averaging 2 pounds a week almost the whole way down...with only a couple of weeks that I did not have a loss.

Your plan looks great, BTW. I wish I had started that scientifically. I SORT of knew what to do, but it took me several weeks to really find my groove. I lost WAY to fast for the first few weeks as I tried to find my balance.

I'm a big believer in having a plan. On those terrible days when you get hit by a food craving, having a plan that you can at least refer to--"Wait. What am I supposed to be doing today?"--can really help get you through it.

That said, my own plan is somewhat flexible. I don't plan every day's meals ahead of time with rigorous precision--rather, I have a range of meal and snack choices that I can mix and match when the time comes. The advantage to this is that I feel like I have more freedom and that I'm not locked into a particular meal at a particular time. Mostly that's a psychological strategy, because I tend to eat the same things anyway! :lol:

It looks like you've got the right idea. Now all you need to do is start with day 1 and see how it goes from there. I agree with kaplods and PhotoChick--one slip-up is no reason to go off the rails totally. Use damage control and keep going!

Jay

Thank you, Schumeany. Hearing that it mimics what you've done is really encouraging given your results. I totally agree with you with regard to the sweets as well. When it comes to other foods, if I'm eating it, it's going to be the best quality. If I want a sandwich, I'm not going to use some paper-thin slice of fat-free ww bread. I'm going to have beautiful, whole grain brownberry bread and work it into my calories. I think it's a great idea to do the same for my treat. Choose the best, limit the quantity, and work it in.

I was thinking about special occasions with the calorie cycling as well. It seems like a great, built-in plan for dealing with family dinners, parties etc.

Btw, HIIT is high intensity, right? What is ss?

Jay, thanks for your help also. As I've been thinking all of this through, the idea that planning and monitoring my food so closely may actually keep food in the forefront at all times worries me. Food already rules my life--maybe increasing the focus will make me obsess even more! I guess I'm hoping that Sunday will be the day to think about food. I can plan it, count the calories, prepare it, then spend the rest of the week just grabbing it and focusing on other things. The decisions will have been made. I hope that I can get to the point where I won't need to plan so rigorously. The menus will become second nature and I will have what you have--a mental list of meals and snacks to choose from.

Yeah, HIIT = hight intensity interval training. SS = steady state cardio. I do SS cardio after my weight lifting 3x per week. I do HIIT on alternate days.

I definitely agree about the Sunday planning thing - it works really well for me. And the upside is that it helps with my grocery budget as well!

.

HIIT stands for "High Intensity Interval Training" -- basically cardio that has "peeks" of high intensity during the work out. In my case the "peeks" last about a minute followed by less intense valleys that last around three minutes.

SS stands for "Steady State" -- basically cardio that stays the same intensity or level the whole time -- no peeks and valleys.

Oh, and after I got into the the "groove" of losing weight, I did do what Jay did with having meals and snacks that I knew the calorie count for that I could mix and match throughout the day, but when I first started, I planned my days more scientifically so I knew in advance what I would be eating. I found having a planned menu helped make eating "just something I did" at very set times, and so I was not thinking about food all the time or trying to "game" my calories for the day.

Thanks for the clarification and for sharing such great info with me. You all have really helped me!

My menu is done and I started today. Here goes nuthin'....

You can do this! Congratulations on getting started.:)

Good luck Julie and enjoy the journey. You will get into the groove in no time.

I had a great day today! Thanks again for the support :0)

:cheer: Julie :cheer: