HalFitness
- Thread starter BananaHands
- Start date
GasBandit
Staff member
So I'm sure you guys remember I had stomach surgery to facilitate weight loss, and that it went very well. I lost 165 pounds! Well, then COVID happened, and during a lot of working from home I managed to pack 50 of those pounds back on over the last 2 years. Well, this month I finally clenched my fist and decided I was going to get serious again and went back to strict portion controls, eliminated snacking and grazing, and no more food after 8 pm.
I've been very pleased with the results. In the last 30 days I've lost 8 pounds. Just a start, but it feels good to be back on track.
I've been very pleased with the results. In the last 30 days I've lost 8 pounds. Just a start, but it feels good to be back on track.
I lost a whole bunch of weight during covid and in preparation of the wedding etc, and right after I got sick with a pretty bad stomach flu and didn't eat for two days. I was already pretty thin but now I feel like I'm wasting away, I can still only eat small portions or I get nauseous. I've lost more weight and I can literally see my legs and arms get thinner.
Still have a bit of a pot belly, to add insult to injury. All my hard won muscle mass is gone and the fat I had is still there. Ugh.
And with the wedding now behind me I'm having a hard time thinking of any reason to actually bother anymore.
Still have a bit of a pot belly, to add insult to injury. All my hard won muscle mass is gone and the fat I had is still there. Ugh.
And with the wedding now behind me I'm having a hard time thinking of any reason to actually bother anymore.
Geeze, is a tontine your answer for everything?
I don't know about you, but allergy season has been messing with my outdoor runs. It's effecting my breathing once I've been out for more than 20 minutes. I can start feeling those bastard leaf molds crawling down my throat.
Have you seen my mental health lately?
My girlfriend and I biked 20 km today. The original plan was to take the bus up to my favourite bike trail to the Bike & Bean (my yoga rock is along that route). Unfortunately, when the bus arrived, there was already one bike stored on the bus bike rack. Bus bike racks only fit two bikes.
So, the girlfriend suggested we bike to the trail, instead. We biked through side streets and among traffic for the first time. She did great, though she was nervous. Then we biked up the Chain of Lakes Trail instead, to the 5k Cafe, had lunch there, and biked back.
I'm now exhausted and will probably go into a post-biking coma soon. Definitely not used to longer rides yet.
So, the girlfriend suggested we bike to the trail, instead. We biked through side streets and among traffic for the first time. She did great, though she was nervous. Then we biked up the Chain of Lakes Trail instead, to the 5k Cafe, had lunch there, and biked back.
I'm now exhausted and will probably go into a post-biking coma soon. Definitely not used to longer rides yet.
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I made a couple of changes to my lifestyle and diet recently:
1) Started using the Lose It! app again to track my calories. It's not an exact science, of course, but it gives me a good barometer on my consumption. I decided to start using it again after measuring how much sugar I put in my tea every morning. I like that it's linked with my Fitbit app, so when I exercise, it displays a calorie deficit, which means I could consume more calories that day if I wanted to. I'm still trying to keep my consumption around 1,600 - 1,800 calories, though I've slipped a few times. I've been tempted to get back on the keto diet, since that brought me a LOT of success last time.
2) I stopped getting snacks out of the vending machine at work. Instead, I've been bringing or buying a small lunch. A co-worker gave me the idea when they pointed out I spend $5 a day on a bag of chips, a bar, etc, so why not just bring a small, healthy lunch instead, if I'm going to consume that much in calories? Right now, I've been buying a variety of 515 ML cans of soup or chowder. At some point, I'll start making my lunches more, making more use of my slow cooker, for example. For snacks, I've been bringing celery and peanut butter. Funny enough, though, since cutting out the morning cups of liquid sugar, my appetite has significantly decreased. It's decreased enough that I find I'm not even hungry for the celery and peanut butter and the soup/chowder has been enough to sate me until I get home from work.
3) I started jogging again. I'm only doing about 3 KM so far (in an average around 25 minutes). Mind you, more than a third of that time is spent walking in between jogging sprints. I feel like a slug while running, but it's also been about 4 years since I last jogged, when I was about 50 pounds lighter. I've actually been doing it in the morning before work, along with a little bit of yoga. That's on top of still biking to work, too.
As a result, so far? I'm already down 5 pounds. Down from 251 to 246 lbs. Obviously, weight fluctuates and like the calorie counting, it's not an exact science, but it's nice to see it trending downwards.
1) Started using the Lose It! app again to track my calories. It's not an exact science, of course, but it gives me a good barometer on my consumption. I decided to start using it again after measuring how much sugar I put in my tea every morning. I like that it's linked with my Fitbit app, so when I exercise, it displays a calorie deficit, which means I could consume more calories that day if I wanted to. I'm still trying to keep my consumption around 1,600 - 1,800 calories, though I've slipped a few times. I've been tempted to get back on the keto diet, since that brought me a LOT of success last time.
2) I stopped getting snacks out of the vending machine at work. Instead, I've been bringing or buying a small lunch. A co-worker gave me the idea when they pointed out I spend $5 a day on a bag of chips, a bar, etc, so why not just bring a small, healthy lunch instead, if I'm going to consume that much in calories? Right now, I've been buying a variety of 515 ML cans of soup or chowder. At some point, I'll start making my lunches more, making more use of my slow cooker, for example. For snacks, I've been bringing celery and peanut butter. Funny enough, though, since cutting out the morning cups of liquid sugar, my appetite has significantly decreased. It's decreased enough that I find I'm not even hungry for the celery and peanut butter and the soup/chowder has been enough to sate me until I get home from work.
3) I started jogging again. I'm only doing about 3 KM so far (in an average around 25 minutes). Mind you, more than a third of that time is spent walking in between jogging sprints. I feel like a slug while running, but it's also been about 4 years since I last jogged, when I was about 50 pounds lighter. I've actually been doing it in the morning before work, along with a little bit of yoga. That's on top of still biking to work, too.
As a result, so far? I'm already down 5 pounds. Down from 251 to 246 lbs. Obviously, weight fluctuates and like the calorie counting, it's not an exact science, but it's nice to see it trending downwards.
GasBandit
Staff member
Careful with the soups if they are store bought/canned - a lot of them tend to be extremely high sodium, which can appear to hamper weight loss by making you retain more water. Fortunately, water weight brought on by high sodium is also usually easily shed - when the salt intake decreases, you will literally pee off the weight. But in the short term, it has the potential to cause frustration.
Previously I had been saying (and trying) to avoid peanut butter and peanuts in general like the plague, as they're ludicrously calorie dense (they have about twice the calorie content by mass as donuts)... but my dietician keeps pushing me toward it, saying that the benefits outweigh the calories so long as it is kept in moderation. She tells me that eating two tablespoons of peanut butter now (which is about 160 calories) may actually make me not feel like I have to eat 300-400 calories of something else later. I guess it just goes to show me that there's a lot of variables at play that don't go on a spreadsheet of calories consumed/burned.
Yeah, I'm aware of the sodium problem with the canned stuff and the high sodium. I just looked up how much sodium was in the last can I consumed and it's around 1,700 mg of sodium. Which is...a lot. It's the sin of buying canned goods.
But for now, it's a stop-gap measure to break me of the habit of going to the vending machine and bringing my own lunch. And that's working, so far. I think my appetite dropping significantly is a sign I'm doing at least something good. Cutting out the morning tea with mounds of sugar is making a difference.
Funny enough with peanut butter, when I was on the keto diet, that was often a staple of my consumption. Either in my green smoothies or snacking with celery. In fact, most times, peanut butter is often listed among foods that are good to have in a keto diet.
12 lbs down.
Folks I've met here are into Pokemon Go and so I added it back to my acct after 7 years of inactivity. It's really helping me get walking in, which I should have been doing all along. But...so boring.
I started walking/running, for no other reason that if I'm gonna be bored, I might as well be bored doing something that makes me healthier. I haven't even looked at the scale, but much of my clothing is beginning to loosen up, so who knows? I'm averaging 5-10 miles a day, with one day where I did 15. this in addition to the lifting I do at work, I'm getting kind of healthy fast? I don't know, maybe some day when I ask a doctor about a problem the first response wont be, "try losing some weight, that's likely the cause.".
Biked over 30 km yesterday; about 20 of that was with the girlfriend. I'm completely worn out. Probably going to have a lazy day today.
I'm also down 10 pounds so far. I'm at 240 lbs. I haven't been that low since August 2021.
I'm also down 10 pounds so far. I'm at 240 lbs. I haven't been that low since August 2021.
Way to go!