Hello

[HM08]

Hello. I'm 20 years old and weigh 350 lbs. I want to lose weight so bad but I feel like I can't stay motivated to do so because of work and school. As of now I have been going on 40 minute walks which are usually 40 minutes long. Will this help me to lose weight? I know I need to change my diet, but I hope this exercise will at least help. The problem is is that besides walking outside all I have access too it a treadmill and I can't afford gyms. Anything else I can do?

Also, another big problem with my diet is pop. I have tried numerous times to kick the habit and I just can't for more than four days. Any suggestions?

 

[Frosteh]

You can lose weight largely through diet, what is important is that you consume less calories in a day than your body uses. First of all google search for a calorie calculator which you can put your age/weight/height/activity in to, and tell you how many calories you're spending per day roughly, I'm guessing it's upwards of 2500 calories.

As long as you eat less than your target then you'll lose weight, in fact it's fairly predictable loss, you need to have a net loss of about 3500 calories to lose every 1lb of fat, it sounds a lot but if you spread that over a week (7 days, it's 3500/7 = 500 cals)

So basically if you can eat 500 cals less than your daily requirement every day, you'll lose about 1lb per week, this scales up so if you want to lose 2lb per week then you'll need to eat 1000 cals less per day.

Walking helps burn more calories a day however you need to get some perspective on just how much, for every hour of average speed walking you'll only burn about 200-300 cals, not a lot certainly not enough to balance out bad eating habits.

Pop has a silly amount of calories in it, realistically if you drink a lot of fizzy drinks then you'll be taking in huge amounts of calories and that needs to be cut down. My view on this is that it's completely pointless to try and make drastic changes to your life that you cannot maintain such as entirely cutting out one thing cold turkey, the best thing to do is make lifestyle changes you can live with not just for your diet but forever. Like for you, fizzy drinks was always an issue for me, I found that diet fizzy drinks are actually really low calorie, in fact it's impressive just how low calorie they are, a small bottle is only about 5 cals which is absolutely nothing when your daily limit is approx 2500

Taste wise the diet drinks range from good to awful , it took me a while to find diet fizzy drinks which were anything like the original ones, I find Pepsi Max is a great, Fanta orange is very close to the original and sprite also very good, things like diet coke is awful, although diet cherry coke is better, find some you like and stick to them.

Finally keep a calendar of your cal intake, there's lots of websites that help you track it easily, i personally use a feature called which is free and easy, it allows you to calculate your daily cal usage there and set cal goals and you can enter what you eat and track to make sure you don't exceed your daily limits.

 

[amy1985]

Hi, and welcome

Frosteh has given you some good advice. I'm going to be rehashing some of it here as well as adding my own stuff.

Exercise is good, and will help, but diet is probably 80% of the battle. It's all about the calories. If you're walking for 40 minutes and say (optimistically) burning 200 calories, then drinking four or five servings of pop a day (I have some cans of Pepsi here to hide from my boyfriend who's trying to reduce his intake, and they're 139 calories for 11.6 oz), giving up or cutting back on the pop will do more for you than the exercise, if you see what I mean. (200 burned versus 556 or 695 gained, using this can of Pepsi as the number in question) If you did no exercise and cut it back to one can of Pepsi, you'd be better off. (I'm not recommending doing no exercise)

Having an awareness of your calories (like my little exercise with the Pepsi) is an important part of losing weight, even if you don't want to calorie count (other calorie counters- all have free versions- are fitday, myfitnesspal, and cron-o-meter). You should find a BMR calculator and work out, with activity level (I use one that incorporates the Harris Benedict formula), how many calories you need to maintain your weight and take off between 500 and 1000 from that number. You don't want to go into too deep a deficit or you'll potentially damage your metabolism.

Treadmill/ walking outside is perfect- try to get your heartrate up, so you're starting to become a little short of breath (not to the point where you're causing yourself pain in your joints). Do you have access to weights or anything that you can substitute as weights? (e.g. cans of beans you can hold reasonably comfortably in your hands) If so, then you can do strength training as well, which is important to maintain muscle when in a calorie deficit. There are aerobics routines available online for free (through youtube, or the site bodyrock, and others) for a bit more variety.

With kicking junk habits, try cutting back first (or switching to diet, then cutting back. From what I can see, going cold turkey for most people is a recipe for disaster. So if you have six cans a day (my boyfriend used to do that- I've cut him back from six a day to maybe three a week), cut it back to five, or five and one diet, try that for a week, then cut it back further. (It's slow, but you'll help change your expectations) Also, you may want to find a substitute. While water is the best thing, there's no need to only drink that. Black tea and coffee (by tea I mean hot tea, not ice tea) are virtually calorie free on their own, and adding low fat milk and artificial sweeteners doesn't add very much. Or you could make low cal ice tea. Or there are low cal drink flavourings (squash/ cordial in the UK- apparently something called Crystal Light in the US)

How do you plan to change your diet?

Have a look around the forum for more ideas- especially the stickied posts, the diary section (to see what other people are doing and how it works for you), and the before-after section (for some serious inspiration).

Hope this helps