Hello all...Brand new to the community and brand new to dieting. I'm hopefully headed off to kuwait at the end of the month for deployment, which is what has prompted me to loose the weight. Can't go if i cant get it off....Not that weight loss would be a bad thing for me by any means! ( the first step is acceptance right?? ) The current diet is as follows : 1 gnc lean meal replacement in the am, 1 snack, 1 meal replacement for lunch, 1 snack, and a "sensible" dinner....I'm trying to do the mind over matter deal, but my mind is telling me that something delicious matters! ugh....The exercise portion of all this is my krav maga class that starts tommrow that i'm very excited for. Has anyone ever tried it? Is it good?

Thanks guys!
-Alyss

I've heard wonderful things about Krav Maga - hope you enjoy it!

You know, there's no reason that you have to resort to food you don't enjoy eating. I really like food. REALLY like food. It's one of the great pleasures of my day. So I watch my calories, and cook in a way so that I can eat food I love AND keep weight off. That means bulking out my portions with lots of veggies, eating lean meats, low fat dairy, and fruits, while keeping my grains mostly whole and in small amounts. But there is NO reason that "reduced calorie" has to mean "not delicious". You really can have both, thus avoiding the whole mind-over-matter bit altogether.

Just want to clarify, there's nothing WRONG with doing meal replacements if they satisfy you, but a plan that doesn't satisfy is a plan you won't stick with, which is a plan that won't work!

My husband does Krav Maga with a couple RCMP friends and LOVES it. Great awesome workout.

Good luck!!!

Alyss, how about just cleaning up your current diet? Don't eat processed foods or drink anything other than water. Eliminate sugar. And get plenty of sleep. When you start feeling good, you'll have plenty of energy and will burn calories better.

I don't know anything about Krav Maga, but I do know about living in Kuwait. I lived there for nearly five years, as a civilian, during and after Operation Desert Fox. My family really enjoyed our stay there, and one of the highlights of our time in Kuwait was to take a tour of Ali Al Salem Air Base and to have troops out to our house for Thanksgiving. We lived on the Saudi Arabian Texaco compound. If you're there in the fall, I hope you get to go to the compound for Thanksgiving, because the compound residents will have you come into their homes and have a real Thanksgiving supper with them.

Best of luck to you out there. Hope you can save up on some sleep before you get out there, because the winds blow on the desert and we always heard how hard it was to get good sleep.

Georgia

Thanks for the response!

I am pretty much an awful calorie counter. I've been doing more research on it since these shakes taste like liquid chalk, and i look forward to dinner every night because it's the only time i get to eat something that resembles food. whoever said losing weight was easy clearly didnt have much to loose to begin with! I try to make my dinner's as bulky as possible with veggies to fill me up, but for some reason - example -....I made an awsome salad the other night, it was filled with things i love. By the time i got to dinner i was rather hungry so i thought it would be great. By the time I had eaten about 1/2 of it i was so nauseated by it i couldnt finish it......Was my brain telling my stomach that it wasn't a steak???????? It's stuff like that - that's annoying. So two hours later im starving like i havent eaten dinner..........ugh.

If I don't include protein with a salad I'm hungry very quickly afterward. I add tuna, chicken breast, or some black beans or chick peas. They don't add that much fat or calories and help to keep you full.

But as was said above, work with your food choices so that you find stuff you like. Do you want to drink chalky shakes for the rest of your life? And when you lose the weight and stop the chalky shakes and start eating again, you'll gain the weight back if you don't learn to change your eating habits as you are losing the weight. I'd much rather have some oatmeal and fresh fruit for breakfast and a salad with a chicken breast for lunch than a meal replacement shake. It does take more effort to eat healthy, but in the end it will be worth it.