Calorie Queens !
 

I am fed up with losing and regaining or not losing at all. I just finished reading Calorie Queens and the authors who lost 300+ pounds suggest eating your MAINTENANCE cals right from the get go..They say weight loss will be slower but you will be able to stick to it.
Thoughts?

Well in theory it sounds GREAT. But the problem with most dieters is they want FAST results in the beginning to help them stay motivated. I am happy with anything over 5lbs per month loss. But again most people (like me) want to be able to see some difference right away. I think if you have a BIG amount to loose then around mid-way switching would be more "doable" for the average dieter.

I would like to lose 45 lbs. But I have wanted to for a long time..and cant seem to do it by cutting way low..So maybe this would be doable for me.
Anyone else tried it?

I think if you are the type to not need instant results and can emotionally handle slow going, then sure give it a try, anything to make you healthier can not be bad! Good luck with it.

Ok I started..I am aiming for 1500 cals a day so I can have some extra on Sat night for wine and a richer meal. I will not count exercise..just use that towards extra weight loss.
Will see how it goes.

Glad to see a thread on this--I just got the book last night and have read a couple chapters. I think the approach makes a lot of sense. I think what worries me a little is that (so far) I haven't seen much about accommodating exercise. At half hour increments, I would just let exercise fall into the whole picture, but I tend to get involved in more endurance activities (like hiking) for hours at a time so....I guess there would be some accommodation for that. I'll be interested to read more from others over time on this.

I am loving the plan. Essentially I want to weigh 135..so my calories are 1600 per day. Since I like to go out and chill with wine and a richer dinner one night a week..I am going with approx. 1500 per day. That allows me 600 extra calories I can use one night in a splurge or break up. I tend to wait till the end of the week..so its something to look forward to. But its not like I am suffering on the other days..1500 is plenty for me and if I am having a tough day I vary it. I dont count my exercise for more calories because my exercise routine is not strenuous..but if it was I would add in more calories.

So far so good! I am keeping track of my Calorie Queens plan using Calorie King and each day I put in my calories. It's very easy to stick to.

I really think it makes a ton of sense also. I mean why go on a lo cal diet that is hard to stick too. With this you can see if you are able to stick to that amount of calories..you either can or you can't.

Anyway I love it!

I think there should have been more in the book about eating protein because too many carbs can cause sugar splurges..and also about exercise.
But heck I am not complaining. I am losing weight and its the easiest thing I have ever done. I just feel like this "IT" for me.

So how much have you lost on this so far? How long have you been following it?

I just started recently and am down just a little. Its not fast weight loss..but its really liveable. I mean lets face it..if dieting is about calories in and calories out..then bottomline you have to be able to stick to the calories you are going to take in for the rest of your life to maintain your weight. So this makes it obvious. If I can't stick to the calorie requirement..then I may as well select a higher weight (though exercise is also a variable )

So yes I am very new to it..but as I said if I cant do it and stick to it..then I will not be able to stick to anything because this is the calories I can eat for the weight I desire.

Calorie Queens
 

Hi Slimcharm! I am a long time lurker and big fan of 3fc; but I don't have a lot of posts.

I read your post, and was interested in the book, so I ordered it from Amazon. It came last night, and I read it, and I think it's really good. I think it is very no-nonsense.

What struck me, is that the calories for maintenance are really not that much more than for loosing :( . Time to face facts, I guess...I'm just eating too much; and I have make some major changes for the rest of my life OR accept my size.

I'm trying to do 1800 calories for now.

Let's do it :carrot: .

OR (wormtown)...add exercise? I mean...if 1800 is your maintenance level, but you burn 300 cals in exercise, then personally, I would add it back in (unless you're in a mode where you want to accelerate weight loss). Eating back the exercise calories (for intentional exercise--not, like, gardening) just keeps the balance. I find that I force myself to WANT to exercise sometimes just because I want to go home and have a bigger dinner or some kind of treat.

Good point. Right now, I'm not doing much in the way of exercise. Hope to get back to the gym after Christmas.

I think this book is making me face the reality that I've been avoiding for a long time (and many pounds). The amount of food I've been eating has been increasing. And we don't really need all that much food.

For instance, one day last week I didn't have time for breakfast. So I stopped and got a cofee with milk and a plain bagel, on the way to work thinking that was a pretty good choice. In the past I wouldn't really have thought much about it; probably gotten cream cheese as well. When I got to work, I looked up the calories on the web site for the coffee place, and it was 400 calories :( . That's 22% of my allotment for the day.

Reality check, I guess.

Originally Posted by wormtown:
What struck me, is that the calories for maintenance are really not that much more than for loosing :( . Time to face facts, I guess...I'm just eating too much; and I have make some major changes for the rest of my life OR accept my size.

I noticed this thread, and the comments that everyone has made reminded me of a post of Meg's from way back in 2003 (has it been that long already??), written on the occasion of her one year anniversary of reaching her goal weight - check it out...a brief snippet follows:

Originally Posted by Meg:
Maintenance doesn’t look any different than losing: I eat the same foods in pretty much the same quantities, work out just as intensely and often, and do as much cardio. I may eat 100-200 more calories per day — that’s it. You have to run hard just to stay in place.

I still plan and weigh and measure: I use Fitday.com and plan my meals the night before and write down everything that I eat. I weigh and measure portions simply because I know that I underestimate when I am hungry. I make lists of strategies of what to do when I am tempted to eat the wrong food. I still need this control over my eating just like I did when I was losing.

I’ve made it for 365 days. I’ve been through Christmas and Thanksgiving, my birthday, two surgeries, and a bad mammogram without turning to food for comfort or celebration.

A year later, our Meg wrote her second anniversary post - I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here are some significant snippets:

Originally Posted by Meg:
Last year, on my first anniversary of reaching goal, I wrote a post about my thoughts on maintenance...Today I went back and re-read that post to see if maintenance looks any differently to me now that I have another year of it under my belt. I have to say that I won’t change a word of the post, but would emphasize my first two points even more strongly:

MAINTENANCE IS HARDER THAN LOSING
MAINTENANCE DOESNT LOOK ANY DIFFERENT THAN LOSING

An interesting discussion of the whole concept of maintenance developed from that post. One poster thought that “maintenance” was a failure to progress; others thought that since we can’t physically lose weight forever, at some point we have to stop and work on keeping what we’ve achieved. Karen came up with the best definition, in my mind: maintenance = living.

In the past year, I’ve come to realize that I’m not at all ashamed of simply “maintaining” my weight. Rather than being embarrassed at failing to progress further, I now am truly appreciating what a battle and challenge it is to stay right where I am. This isn't natural and intuitive, folks! It would be incredibly easy to slide right back into my old bad eating habits -- of course they're still with me. I have NO doubt that I could put every pound back on in far less time than it took to come off.

Maintenance — especially long-term maintenance, like years and years — IS harder than losing. I’ve gotten to the point where I admire someone who’s been able to lose and keep off ten pounds more than the person who constantly gains and loses and regains, over and over again. It’s sad — and educational — to find out that some of the big weight loss success stories you read about on the Internet last for about three minutes — about as long as it takes to snap those “after” photos.

And then the diet is over and the weight starts piling back on. It’s happened to all of US, right? I venture to say that every one of us has lost a LOT of weight in his or her life (undoubtedly I’ve lost hundreds of pounds). It’s the failure to KEEP it off that’s the problem...

The best analogy I’ve been able to come up with for maintenance is running on a treadmill. You have to run hard and fast just to stay in one place and not fly off the back. Likewise, we have to work hard just to keep our weight in one place. For those of us who have struggled with weight issues practically our whole lives, eating “normally” will probably never be natural and intuitive. We’ll still have to think, plan, journal, and do all the things that got us to goal in the first place if we want to stay there.

I’m OK with that. I’m sure all of you would agree that it’s a very small price to pay for all the benefits we get of keeping the weight off for life: health, energy, appearance, self-confidence — some day we should make a list! It would be quite lengthy.

As a society, we focus almost exclusively on losing weight. Hardly anyone talks/writes/thinks/posts about what happens after you reach your goal. Which doesn’t make much sense, since we’re going to spend much more time keeping the weight off than we did losing it — hopefully many decades for most of us. For me, I’ve now spent twice as long maintaining as I spent losing. And the rest of my life is going to be all about maintenance because I can assure you that I’m NEVER going to put those pounds back on...

I would encourage all of you (and everyone who is lurking) to check out the wealth of information here at 3FC, particularly in our Maintainers Forum - even if you haven't gotten to your goal weight or are just thinking about your weight loss journey...as Meg has said - it's part and parcel of the whole deal. ;)

Thanks MrsJim! I think this gets to the core of what leads to failure so often--we think of "diet" as an activity that changes us from one weight to another, and when that change is complete we will go "off" that diet. One of the things I really like about Calorie Queens is that they have you thinking about maintenance not at the END of a journey, but at the beginning. It think it's also a great way to think about and really put into perspective the concept of "what weight CAN I live at?". Just from the couple weeks I've been on the site, I see a lot of folks who seem to set rather low final goals and I keep thinking to myself "can they really LIVE at that weight and be happy?". I suspect that my goal weight will be bit higher than what might ultimately be recommended in charts, but I would rather be maybe 10 pounds above that and at a weight that I know I've lived at for years in the past--i.e., something that I can maintain without being miserable--than to add an unnecessary amount of struggle to what will surely be a difficult enough process.

Thanks for all the great info, Mrs. Jim. I will go check out the rest of the threads. I guess this is stuff that we all know, but every once and a while something "clicks". I think/hope this is going to be a "click" for me.

Thanks also for the tip about the maintenance section....

Originally Posted by :
Karen came up with the best definition, in my mind: maintenance = living.

There was a similar quote in the book, but of course I can't find it now :D .