mstaff4564

Welcome ngold004!

The difficulty in finding anything in their food searches (and the food are actually accurate) is very annoying. I try to use custom foods whenever possible.

I've actually be dual-entering my foods this week into Fitday and SparkPeople, and I have to say that SP is growing on me. They just have a wider variety of exercises (and you can enter in custom exercises & calories) and foods to chose from. Plus, I can track sugar, which is important since I have insulin resistance.

At some point, I may fully move my food journaling there, but never fear: I enjoy this forum too much to go away entirely.

Congrats on sticking with it! According to some of your earlier posts, you've been slowly cutting down on carbs, correct? This can make your body feel crummy for a few days, kind of like a carb withdrawal since your body is so addicted to them. I would suggest pushing on through if you can and after a few days, hopefully you'll feel better & there will be a good surge of energy.

It could also be just a bug or food poisoning. Or if you're trying new foods that you're body isn't used to yet, it might not be reacting so well. Yellow squash caused a lot of tummy troubles until I got used to it.

Hope you feel better soon!

Feeling good today after my exercise. Billy Blanks was trying to get on my case, but I was able to stay with the group in the video until the very last group of kicks I'm not quite as flexible as they are, but at least I could keep up, yay!

Mixing up my workouts with Tae-bo and Yoga has really helped me feel better this week, and I'm feeling soreness in areas that I don't normally feel it in when I get on the treadmill, so I'm happy that I'm working some different muscles. The Yoga DVD I have is just a core strength one, so I think after next week I'm going to take it back to the library & try the Yoga for weight-loss one. Because even though the Yoga lady has a "third eye" I just don't think we see eye to eye on that subject (boo hiss, lame joke).

Thanks for the advice on the calories. I think I'm going to try to stick to a 1600-1900 range & see what happens. I am feeling a bit more energy after a few days of upping my calories a bit, so hopefully that's a good sign So I was still at 239 this morning. At least I didn't gain anything from yesterday, and I'm still a half pound down for the week (I weigh-in on Mondays).

ldybug1752

Hello ladies! Today is a very exciting day for me! I hit exactly 20lbs lost this morning! I made it through my vacation in Ohio and came back lighter than I went, which was my goal! I didn't have any wedding cake or dessert the whole time I was there. I even made use of the hotel's fitness center and got in a good 45 minute cardio workout. It felt great to actually lose weight on vacation! Then this morning I couldn't believe when the scale was exactly 20 lbs less than when I started losing weight. Aaahh..it's been a good week. Hope you all have a great weekend!!

GameGal

OK in a nut shell, the dietitian had this to say....

She said given the 5 day workout, weight etc.. she usually starts people out between 1800 - 2000 calories, about 140 - 160 grams of carbs a day.
Then when you reach the point where you have stopped losing consistantly, you drop it down by 100 calories until it starts again. Then repeat that at each plateu, however you shouldnt drop below 1500.

I had showed her some of my food logs and I was staying between 700 - 1200 and she said I am amazed you have lost any. She said ( she agrees with ya'll) that if your body isnt getting enough, it may not go into starvation mode, but you wont lose much if any. But since I have been so low in calories, she didnt want to discourage me if I should temporarily gain weight by starting me at 1800.. so she is playing it safe and told me try to stick with 1500. She said if I have the occasional 1200, thats fine but no lower.

She also said, another way of knowing you arent getting enough water and nutrients is muscle cramps, stomach probs and tired.

Although I personally dont like this method, she suggested using the 'exchange' system. For instance:

Breakfast

1 starch, 1 milk , 1 fat and as many free foods as you want.

Lunch

3 starch, 1 fruit, 1 veggie, 2 meat, 2 fat, and free foods

Dinner

2 startch, 1 fruit, 1 milk, 1 veggie, 3 meat, 2 fat, free foods

Snack

1 starch, 1 veggie, 1 fat

Obviously, the 3 starch is servings. Meat is 1 oz = 1 serving. So 3 meats is 3 ounces.

So like I said I dont like doing the exchange system because it makes it more like a diet instead of a lifestyle change to me. But until I get the idea implanted, I will use it. She said it should let me lose 2 - 3 lbs a week, depending on my exercise.

Oh and one last piece of advice she gave... do NOT drink juices ( tomato juice is ok because it is not sugar laden) but for instance, it takes 4 - 5 juice oranges to make 4 oz juice and so you get the sugar of 5 oranges and no fiber, but if you eat one orange instead, you get the nutrients, the pulp (fiber) and it fills you up more than 4 oz of liquid.

Hope this helps.

ChunkyDunk78

Thanks... that might be it...
Today I've only had around 110 I think, and I will probably have fruit for a snack later, so yeah, I suppose that it a drastic cut. I have no idea how many I had prior to starting this, but the first couple days, I had over 300... am winding my way down to a healthier amount.
I felt a bit better later in the day, and have had more water today so far then I usually do by this time, so I am definitely pushing through. I went to the Farmers Market and bought a bunch of fruits and veggies and was able to resist all the tasty looking sweets and treats.... Was hard, but I made it home without buying anything even remotely "bad"
It is really nice to have some support during this starting time when it feels so impossible!

ChunkyDunk78

wwooooottttt awesome job !

ChunkyDunk78

Also, thats what I was using (basically the food pyramid), and have been hearing A LOT that it is way too many carbs!

GameGal

Yes, I was a little alarmed when I saw the amount of carbs some have been having, so that was why I made sure to ask that question. If you are not diabetic or insulin resistant, she did say it could go up to about 175 grams a day, but much more than that, would defeat the purpose of watching them. And that made sense to me.

mstaff4564

Oh wow, congrats! Going on vacation is hard, but you toughed it out. YAY!

Thanks for the info from your nutritionist. The calories do make sense. I'll keep the 100 calorie tip in my mind if I start having major weight-loss issues.

I don't know if the 140-160 grams of carbs will work for me, but that's just my personal needs. I am insulin resistant, but so far I've been having great success & energy with around 200-230 grams a day, which is about 50-55% of my total daily intake. My OBGYN seemed pleased with that cut. But my carbs used to be 70-80% of my day, so this was a pretty drastic cut for me. It does make sense for me to watch those percentages because I have seen the difference 20-30% of carbs has made in my energy & life.

For now, if I try to cut it any more, my energy really starts dragging. I'm not saying one day I won't try to cut it further, but for now, it works well for me. I'm going to have some more bloodwork in September, so I should know then if I need to cut it further.

WeightlossBoo

Yeah alright!


Had a great work out last night. A class called 'Salsacise'. At one point I thought my heart was going to stop, but there was no way I was going to give-up. Feeling a little tender this morning, but it's nearly weigh day so I'll deal!

almeeker

Hey ladies, Wed night we drove out to the in-laws for a family gathering. I know, middle of the week, but they had out-of-town guests so we had to put in an appearance. So yesterday was one of those days where there is food out the whole day and none of it is health food right. These sort of gatherings KILL me, because I'm a grazer and was raised to "clean my plate". I also couldn't get to a computer to log my intake, so I had to try and keep track of it in my head, and I didn't exercise one bit. All we did was hang out and eat/drink/make merry. But I have to say I logged it all in this morning and managed to keep my intake to around 2,400, which is possibly a record low for me at an all day eat-fest. It's about 1,000 calories higher than my budget, but not so bad that I can't recover from it. In fact I was down a little this morning.

ldybug, congrats on hitting 20 pounds!!! Feels really good doesn't it?

On the whole carb discussion, I try and keep my carb intake low, only 2 servings of grain based carbs/day (low-fat, low-cal, whole grain), and my fruit intake to 3 servings - no more, no less. On starchy veggies, I don't usually let myself have more than 3-4 servings/week, but on green leafys and low-carb veggies I eat as many as I want (well within reason). The veggies I limit are potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, peas and beans. I know I know some of those foods aren't technically "veggies", but they grow in the ground like all the others, so it just makes it easier for me to keep track.

On the pasta topic, we have it for dinner about once every other week. We use Barrilla Pasta Plus, or some such. It's whole grain and also contains protein and I think it has about 100-150 calories per cup (prepared), depending on the shape. For those trying to cut grain based carbs, you might want to try using spaghetti squash. It still has carbs, but they aren't grain based, and it's much lighter than actual pasta. My kids love the stuff, however, DH despises all squash, so on pasta night I still have to boil him some pasta.