The veggies that fill me up the best are raw kale (massaged with oil) and raw broccoli. For some reason I can have a salad with those 2 ingredients, some nuts and other various veggies and be full for nearly 3 hours.
I, too, have issues with carbs and hypoglycemia so I'm kinda obsessed with what will keep me full for the longest time and what makes me hungry right away. I totally understand your carrot thing, I get the same thing! Must be the sugar in the carrots.
I tend to try and stay away from carbs because of the low blood sugar thing, BUT, I find that whenever I try to put more protein in my diet and less carbs, I either gain weight or stay exactly the same without losing. It's such a tricky balance.
My tweaks are:
a little more carb than I think I should have
a lot more fat than I think I should have (i.e., coconut oil, avocados, nuts)
a lot less protein than I think I need
Seems to be working, albeit VERY slowly. I wish I was one of those people who could just eat nothing but greens and chicken breast and lose 10 lb within a few weeks but I'm not. I'm just not, and I have to accept that...
Thanks. It's comforting to know others are in the same boat and understand (but not happy you share the lack of time).
It's also good to know that going over/under does odd things for you - well, not that it does for you, but maybe that could be a contributor, as well as the fruits/veggie choices. I have gone under a few days due to work craziness. Maybe tweaking would help? Do you find certain fruits/vegetables are good vs. bad choices for you? Would you mind sharing for me what choices you find good/bad?
Do you also find that certain veggies fill you up more than others? I think I haven't found what works for me re: that. I did find I can't eat carrots or they make me hungrier...
I know, right, re: creamer? I was shocked how many points i use on it. I so, so wish I could get used to drinking coffee black... or that "lower calorie" versions existed...
Funny, I started WW because I didn't want the pain of calorie counting, but if some of these suggestions don't work, I'll have to start to make sure I'm getting a good range between "minimum" and "maximum" for my body, lol.
Thanks!
I totally get what you are saying.
I was on Metformin before I lost weight, and honestly probably should be still, but ugh pills. Anyway, so I have blood sugar issues, and I am also SEVERELY anemic. My body is hypersensitive to any sort of change. Carrots do not make me more hungry per say, but they do not fill me up, and I do not like them raw anyway, unless it is with ranch or Hummus!
I have a tree nut allergy so that makes it difficult sometimes, but this is what I have discovered works for me...not everyone..but me..My weekends are a bit different, but working 60ish hours a week, I need a set schedule! No thinking involved!
"Pre" Breakfast-On the way to the office and until I am tired of drinking it, since WW I have never finished a full cup
Coffee- 2 points total (large travel mug size HAHA) 3-4 Stevia packets (depending on the coffee I brew) 2TBS International Foods Sugar Free Creamer (Caramel Macchiatto has 1Pt per, but there is one that is 0 I will find it and let you know)
(1) Banana - (0) Points- around 7 when I get into the office
Breakfast - Around 8:30ish
(1) Smart Ones Breakfast Quesadilla - 5 pts
Mid Morning Snack 10:30ish
(1) Fiber One Chewy Granola Bar 4 pts (I can only eat the chocolate ones because of the nut thing)---Sometimes this is substituted for a Special K bar, or on occasion 1TB of peanut butter with 1oz of pretzels..but only occasionally
Lunch-12:30
Frozen meal, left-overs from the night before, sandwich (never more than 8 points) ---it all depends on the time I have in the morning and if I have gone shopping for the week yet.
Afternoon snack - 2:30 - 0-3 points depending on my choice
Apple, grapes, Celery with Hummus, Salad with oil and vinegar and sunflower seeds or soy nuts (one of those not all of them!)
Dinner 8pm - 10-12 points (I do not get home until 6-7pm, start dinner, go work out and then eat not great to eat this late, but hey...its the time I have)
Dinner is always a lean meat (chicken, lean pork chop, turkey, OCCASIONALLY beef) or Tofu
Veggie (of any sort, I love asparagus)
Salad
Something "carby" Brown Rice, Veggie Pasta etc
Dessert 0-4 points (depending on my choice)
Sugar Free Jello cup (0 points)
1/4c Cool Whip Free (1 point)
or
Skinny Cow/Weight Watchers Ice Cream (I must admit, I am an ice cream addict)
So that is at the most...38 points for me...Usually, it is less. Now granted, I have more points than you....and I gain about 12-18 a day with my workout depending on what i do.
Remember, even walking those 20 minutes gets you "extra" points....I do a few minutes of Yoga a day in my office, just to stretch and work the kinks out, and that is my creamer points LOL It took a minute for me to figure out, that since I LOVE to eat...if I want to keep eating, I need to keep moving. I have used weekly points exactly two times in my WW journey.
Good to know it might be slowed but not destroyed. I didn't think of sleep contributing.
I feel like I have to say something here, as I tend to have a lot of people saying I have to "make" time for it" or "it must not be important to me" (aka when I asked my dr. for diet advice, they push exercise, my friends who don't work in the same field I do, etc). I don't have time due to my work and commute, and I need to work to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. I have a minimum 2-2.5 hour commute EACH WAY to work every day, with a job that OFTEN requires LOTS of overtime (and is so busy there are often large chunks of time I barely have time to use the restroom, let alone take an actual break). Before the economy crashed, where employment and housing options had some flexibility, I spent a LOT of time taking care of myself and going to the gym. The economic climate prevents me from having time to take any care of myself, except very rarely and sporadically, I hope that this changes someday soon.
Thanks everyone for your input and suggestions.
Believe me, I know how impossible it seems to "make" time, and for roughly 20 years I lived at that pace. I worked multiple jobs to make ends meet, or because a job required it, or because it was necessary to get the job I wanted. Some weeks I worked 30 hours of overtime. Sleep was something I did when I had the time between jobs.
I had no idea that sleep deprivation could be lowering my metabolism, until I was diagnosed with multiple sleep disorders. I had rls and plmdd (I thrashed around so much that both myself AND hubby would wake up bruised. I also had severe sleep apnea and my brain waves showed that I spent virtually no time in the restorative stages of sleep.
My pulmonologist told me that good sleep was so key to metabolism, that I would probably lose a significant amount of weight without any conscious effort on my part.
To be honest, I laughed and thought he was crazy - I had never lost so much as a single pound without a good deal of effort, but sue enough at my next checkup, I had lost 20 lbs!
When I said "make time," I didn't mean in any way it would be easy, or that you should drop responsibilities or that you could pull time out of thin air, but your body can go without decent sleep and activity, before your health starts to collapse. And while the health problems are minor at first, and easy to ignore, until suddenly they're not and they start to snowball and gain momentum until your health suddenly crashes.
When my husband and I met in late 2001, I had some minor health problems, but I was still very functional. A year later, my health began collapsing and I had even less time for me, because all my "spare" time was spent seeing doctors. Less than a year after that, I was totally disabled.
I'm slowly digging myself out of the disability hole, but I would love to spare even one person from my path.
Sleep deprivation may be even worse for health than smoking, so when I say "make time," I don't say or mean it lightly. If you can't get all the sleep you need, get as much as you can and realize that every hour you shortchange yourself might shorten your life and quality of life for several.
Chronic sleep deprivation very well may have caused my fibromyalgia and autoimmune disease. A rheumatologist who specializes in fibro told our local support group that she had never seen a fibro patient get better while getting less than 6 hours per night or while working swing shifts (even if they were sleeping more than nine hours).
If your job is active, you may not need additional exercise, but if it's sedentary, it's damaging your body. If you have no time to incorporate movement into your existing schedule, doing "double duty" will prevent some of the health cascade I went through.
If I had fully realized and appreciated how vital sleep, diet (not just limiting calories and eating lots of fruits and vegetables) and activity were to my health, I would have used my personal and professional time differently. It wouldn't have been easy, but I would have acted as if my life depended on sleep, activity, and diet, because they do.
I do have the dubious luxury of free time (being on disability) and it's still hard to be diligent with self-care because as women, we're often encouraged to believe that everything is more important than our own personal needs.
Whatever time you ARE able to take for yourself will pay off in huge health dividends, not only for you but for your personal and professional responsibilities. Well-rested employees are more productive (trying to convince some employers is a different matter).
I know you may not be able to take care of yourself as well as you'd like to, but do what you can, and know what you're sacrificing when you can't. I wish I had thought of myself and my health assets worth protecting.
I am also 5'4" (but older than most here - I'm in my 50s). I get 26 points a day and that generally works out to 1100 to 1300 calories depending on what I eat. I know because I also track calories in MyFitnessPal.
I was always frustrated at being a slow loser. For 2 years I followed the program religiously, never going over my points. Sometimes eating weekly points, some times not eating them, usually eating about half of them. And, I lost between 1/4 and 1/2 pound a week on average. During the middle of this I was going to the gym or rowing at home.
But here's the deal. My life is sedentary. I drive to work and then mostly sit. I have a one story house. I don't do yard work and doing stuff around the house is pretty easy. When I got an Active Link I found that I wasn't meeting my baseline every day. Weight Watchers in assigning points is trying to create a roughly 1000 calorie deficit a day (to get to 2 pounds loss a week). People who are closer to goal weight will find it harder to do that as someone who weighs 165 doesn't burn as many calories doing things as, say, someone would who does the same things weighing 265. So, as you get close to goal it is hard to lose quickly. It is even harder if, like me, you have a sedentary lifestyle.
Weight watchers in creating that 1000 calorie deficit assumes that you will burn a certain amount of calories each day. That is your baseline that they assume. What I found out was that even with exercising for half an hour several days a week I wasn't meeting my baseline because I was sitting too much.
In my case, the Active Link diagnosed the problem but didn't solve it. So I bought a Fitbit. With the Fitbit I could see very clearly what the problem is. On an average day if I don't make an effort to not sit, I will walk about 3000 steps. When I walk 3000 steps I'm lucky if I lose 1/4 pound in a week and often I will lose nothing.
So, I have had to try to find ways to walk more often. For example I put a program (eyeleo) on my computer that gives me a periodic reminder to get up and take a break. I will get up and walk back forth to the other end of the house a couple of time. At work, I will get up every 20 minutes and walk to the rest room or go to the kitchen, just to get some steps in. Just doing these things throughout the day got my steps up to around 5000 to 6000.
The other thing I started doing for the first time ever is going outside and walking. When I do that I will hit 8000 to 10000 steps in a day and when I do that I average 1 1/4 pounds lose a week.
I know that you have time constraints. I am lucky in that I'm able to walk in the evening before it gets dark and I have a good neighborhood for walking in. If I didn't and didn't have time to go to a gym, I would probably buy me a treadmill. I realize that may not be an option for you right now. I have a long commute when I work but I work part-time so that makes it easier for me.
When I was still working full time with kids at home and long hours and a long commute, I sometimes couldn't priortize the weight loss.
If you can't exercise at all, at 165, I think you will most likely have to priortize eating healthy and maybe losing weight very very slowly. Even maintaining your weight at such a stressful time is a victory.
Also, I don't think that someone who is 5'4" can realistically have a goal of 120 without engaging in intense exercise. I know whereof I speak because I am a lifetime member and my original goal weight was 125. I made that goal weight when I was 37 and even got down to a low of 117. And, at that time, I was single and spent a lot of time exercising and obsessing about food. And you know what? I couldn't maintain it. I couldn't exercise the extreme control of food needed to stay at that lifetime goal given the amount of exercise I was willing to do (which was about an hour a day for 5 or 6 days of the week).
Someone who weighs 120 has a really low basal metabolic rate. On a sedentary day (weighing in my 180s now), I burn about 200 calories more than my BMR (my BMR is about 1500). On an active day where I get 10000 steps in I burn about 2000 calories total and if I eat 1250 calories a day then I should lose 1 1/2 pounds a week.
At 120 pounds a female age 40 has a BMR of 1289 calories at this calculator. So if you are sedentary you are probably going to gain weight if you eat more than 1500 calories a day. That is really, really hard to maintain long term if you aren't exercising so you can eat more food.
If you can't exercise right now (and I can understand it) then it might be more realistic to set a goal weight at the top of your range and then get there and focus on maintaining it for awhile before deciding on such an extremely low goal weight.
I have personally found it illuminating to track my calories eaten and compare them to what Fitbit says are the calories I've burned. I have found that there is a high correlation between that information and what I actually lose. I've been sick the last couple of weeks and have been more sedentary (extremely sedentary) and not going much over BMR several days. And, I haven't been losing either. But I'm not freaked out about it (like I would be before) as I can see clearly in Fitbit why I'm not losing.
I am also 5'4" (but older than most here - I'm in my 50s). I get 26 points a day and that generally works out to 1100 to 1300 calories depending on what I eat. I know because I also track calories in MyFitnessPal.
I was always frustrated at being a slow loser. For 2 years I followed the program religiously, never going over my points. Sometimes eating weekly points, some times not eating them, usually eating about half of them. And, I lost between 1/4 and 1/2 pound a week on average. During the middle of this I was going to the gym or rowing at home.
But here's the deal. My life is sedentary. I drive to work and then mostly sit. I have a one story house. I don't do yard work and doing stuff around the house is pretty easy. When I got an Active Link I found that I wasn't meeting my baseline every day. Weight Watchers in assigning points is trying to create a roughly 1000 calorie deficit a day (to get to 2 pounds loss a week). People who are closer to goal weight will find it harder to do that as someone who weighs 165 doesn't burn as many calories doing things as, say, someone would who does the same things weighing 265. So, as you get close to goal it is hard to lose quickly. It is even harder if, like me, you have a sedentary lifestyle.
Weight watchers in creating that 1000 calorie deficit assumes that you will burn a certain amount of calories each day. That is your baseline that they assume. What I found out was that even with exercising for half an hour several days a week I wasn't meeting my baseline because I was sitting too much.
In my case, the Active Link diagnosed the problem but didn't solve it. So I bought a Fitbit. With the Fitbit I could see very clearly what the problem is. On an average day if I don't make an effort to not sit, I will walk about 3000 steps. When I walk 3000 steps I'm lucky if I lose 1/4 pound in a week and often I will lose nothing.
So, I have had to try to find ways to walk more often. For example I put a program (eyeleo) on my computer that gives me a periodic reminder to get up and take a break. I will get up and walk back forth to the other end of the house a couple of time. At work, I will get up every 20 minutes and walk to the rest room or go to the kitchen, just to get some steps in. Just doing these things throughout the day got my steps up to around 5000 to 6000.
The other thing I started doing for the first time ever is going outside and walking. When I do that I will hit 8000 to 10000 steps in a day and when I do that I average 1 1/4 pounds lose a week.
I know that you have time constraints. I am lucky in that I'm able to walk in the evening before it gets dark and I have a good neighborhood for walking in. If I didn't and didn't have time to go to a gym, I would probably buy me a treadmill. I realize that may not be an option for you right now. I have a long commute when I work but I work part-time so that makes it easier for me.
When I was still working full time with kids at home and long hours and a long commute, I sometimes couldn't priortize the weight loss.
If you can't exercise at all, at 165, I think you will most likely have to priortize eating healthy and maybe losing weight very very slowly. Even maintaining your weight at such a stressful time is a victory.
Also, I don't think that someone who is 5'4" can realistically have a goal of 120 without engaging in intense exercise. I know whereof I speak because I am a lifetime member and my original goal weight was 125. I made that goal weight when I was 37 and even got down to a low of 117. And, at that time, I was single and spent a lot of time exercising and obsessing about food. And you know what? I couldn't maintain it. I couldn't exercise the extreme control of food needed to stay at that life given the amount of exercise I was willing to do (which was about an hour a day for 5 or 6 days of the week).
Someone who weighs 120 has a really low basal metabolic rate. On a sedentary day (weighing in my 180s now), I burn about 200 calories more than my BMR (my BMR is about 1500). On an active day where I get 10000 steps in I burn about 2000 calories total and if I eat 1250 calories a day then I should lose 1 1/2 pounds a week.
At 120 pounds a female age 40 has a BMR of 1289 calories at this calculator. So if you are sedentary you are probably going to gain weight if you eat more than 1500 calories a day. That is really, really hard to maintain long term if you aren't exercising so you can eat more food.
If you can't exercise right now (and I can understand it) then it might be more realistic to set a goal weight at the top of your range and then get there and focus on maintaining it for awhile before deciding on such an extremely lose goal weight.
I have personally found it illuminating to track my calories eaten and compare them to what Fitbit says are the calories I've burned. I have found that there is a high correlation between that information and what I actually lose. I've been sick the last couple of weeks and have been more sedentary (extremely sedentary) and not going much over BMR several days. And, I haven't been losing either. But I'm not freaked out about it (like I would be before) as I can see clearly in Fitbit why I'm not losing.
Ok so I read some of your post and Im noticing that you mentioned "packaged foods" .. big no no..also you mentioned jerky and wheat bread. Maybe try some ezekiel bread. I eat it every day and it is way better for you and less carbs!! Its spouted grain..
Another thing is eating in between meals, snacking! That will raise your metabolism..I snack between every meal!!!! Mixed nuts, large salad or spinach salad, multigrain crackers with hummus, greek yogurt, berries, apples, almond butter with toast, carrots. Dinner side dishes sweet potatoes, bulgur wheat, quoina, lots of GREENS!!! always have half of your dinner plate full of veggies!!!! Also try to drink lots of water and have green tea..limit your salt and sugar intake significantly!!!!!
Try these and I bet you will notice a huge difference. I lost 35 pounds so far and am still going WITHOUT exersize .. but I will be getting into that later. Good Luck!
Last edited by Krissypants29; 06-22-2013 at 04:58 AM.
It took a minute for me to figure out, that since I LOVE to eat...if I want to keep eating, I need to keep moving. I have used weekly points exactly two times in my WW journey. 
