Quote:
Originally Posted by Musicangel
We can't just be all weigh ins all the time.
You're so right! I don't think I answered you properly before, either. I've seen a steady loss with no plateau since I started at the beginning of March (with the exception of TOM), and there are three things that are working for me:
- Weigh every day (except during the inevitable TOM uptick) and enter it into a spreadsheet with a graph so I can always know where I'm at. I know some people don't advise daily weighing because small gains can make you feel bad, but those daily numbers keep me on track and keep me aware of the consequences of my choices. It's also helped me realize that those days when I eat too much don't matter! I'll gain for a day, then be right back on track the day after, and still keep losing.
- Eat a huge breakfast every day with lots of added fiber. I'm planning to start the Slow-Carb diet in a few months (from Timothy Ferriss's "The 4-Hour Body"), but for now breakfast consists of a big bowl of high-fiber cereal topped with flax and psyllium husk, yogurt, a banana, coffee, and a big glass of water. I'm stuffed when I'm finished. When I don't have breakfast, or if I just have something small, I stay hungry throughout the day. But on big breakfast days, I usually eat less overall. (Plus [TMI] the fiber does its job!)
- Exercise at least 5 times a week and track it just as diligently as I do my weight. I use Nike+ to track minutes/miles, and count any non-walk/jog exercise as uncounted bonus minutes. I've also joined the April Exercise Challenge thread and have joined a few mileage challenges for people of my fitness level on the Nike+ website.
There are a lot of things I don't do, like count calories or deny myself *anything*. I'm a fairly independent person, and I don't like being restricted, even when I'm the one doing the restricting. In the past, I think I always failed because everything was about denying myself things that I wanted, and that just made me want to quit. This time, it's all about adding things - more exercise, more fruit, more veggies, more fiber, more water. If I still have room in my appetite for a piece of pizza or a burger, I'll just have it and not beat myself up over it.
lostangel05, Could it be that your up/down weight when exercising is due to muscle building? Sometimes you'll be losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time, but it doesn't show on the scale. Another thing that could affect it is variation. For me, the longer I do the same exercise, the less effective it becomes. With walking/jogging, that means I change my speed and distance from week to week, but I also try to do some other exercise to mix things up, like strength training twice a week, or using the Wii (my favorites: Wii Tennis and the 10-minute hula hoop game on Wii Fit). Don't give up on exercise - you'll start seeing your results soon enough!
I'm still plugging away on this challenge, though I'm not where I wanted to be by now thanks to TOM (less exercise + more eating!). I have a feeling I won't get to my Cinco de Mayo goal (230) by the time I see my family in May because it's now 3 weeks away, and I'll be spending the last 5 days of those three weeks in San Francisco with (thin!) foodie friends. I'm okay with that, though, since I did set the bar high and will get fairly close to my goal by the time I'm in the Bay Area. When I get there, I'll let myself enjoy the food, and try to get in more exercise by walking around the city while I'm there!
. I want to be overweight 
