I'm 23 years old, living with my parents until I find a real job and can pay my own bills (which hopefully will be soon soon soon!). I've always been overweight, and never been any good at losing it. I tried Atkins for a few weeks a while back, and managed to lose about 10 pounds, but that was right before I moved into a dorm, and it's not exactly easy to follow a strict diet living off of dorm food (unless your on the All-Cereal-All-The-Time diet). At least I haven't gained it back. The main problem with Atkins, though, is that it's just too hard to stick to. They say "lose weight and still eat your favorite foods!," but that's not very accurate if your favorite foods are pasta and potatoes!
Anyway, this time I'm just trying to cut back on everything, but not cut anything out. I've been trying to analyze how my body responds to different foods, how long it takes me to get hungry after eating X, things like that, and as it turns out my body works best if it has some carbs, but too many makes me tired. I'm basically making my own diet. I'm going to check out that glycemicindex.com site MQ was talking about... there may be something to that.
As far as exercise goes, I'm trying to walk my butt off. Literally.
I've been going 2 miles on the treadmill, and since I've reached my goal of 2 miles in 30 minutes, I'm going to start increasing my time until I get to 3 miles in 45 minutes. I've also started incorporating strength training, because once I shed all of this fat I want to have nice toned muscles. Skinny people with flabby muscles bother me. Besides that, muscle burns more calories than fat does, and it looks better, and it's more compact. Oh, and I try to do yoga/pilates/stretching once or twice a week, just because it feels good.
Let's see... my parents are overweight too, and my dad at least has high cholesterol. I'm trying to get them to eat healthy and exercise too, but it's not working very well. It's driving me crazy. They say, "oh, it's good you're losing weight," but they don't do anything to help, and by that I mean that when I ask Mom to bring home some healthy foods she brings me a bag of grapes and a box of Lean Pockets along with her chips and dips and Twinkies and Snickers.
Whew... that was a long one! Anything else you want to know or discuss, just ask. I'm online 2 or 3 times daily, at least, so I'll be around to comment.
Hope everyone is doing well!
~Miss Elisha