Hey from a newbie

B

Boslo

New member
Hey guys.

I've finally come to terms with the fact that my metabolism is no longer as equipped to deal with the cliche pizza and Pad Thai uni student diet that I've been living the last couple of years, and its time to do something about it before my weight spirals out of control.

I'm a pretty active person (jogging, always taking the stairs, dancing, etc), but my eating habits are terrible, like, 2 family sized blocks of chocolate for dinner terrible.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get some good inspiration from this forum on how to stop cravings and stop eating food just because it's there.

Looking forward to meeting you all :)
 
Welcome to the forum. We will try to help push you to your own goals :)

Ok, so you have cravings? Try this, over the next week, when you have a craving write down what you are feeling at that time. I'm going to be it will be something like sad, bored, lonely, stressed etc. We tend to turn to foods for comfort.

While you are at it, write down what you eat just to get an idea of where to tackle diet issues. It gives you a gameplan to tackle what you want to do..


by the way..what is that? Throw some stats our way like age, height, weight and your goal :)
 
Hey Jericho, the food (and associated moods) journal sounds like a really good idea, it'll also allow me to calculate my daily caloric intake, something I've never really done before as well as isolate problem times/moods/foods etc, thanks for the tip.

Sorry I really didn't include any of my stats did I. I'm 20, 5"9 and about 145 pounds (guess buying a scales is probably my next step). I don't want to lose a drastic amount of weight (about 15-20 pounds), its more about getting a handle on my eating habits and halting the slow ascent of my weight before I do need to lose a drastic amount.
 
Boslo,

Wise move to think about this at your age. Eating habits established young tend to be harder to break. In my family, we always had desserts after meals. I am 53 years old now and pretty fit, but I had to unwind my craving desserts and still do. It is about establishing new habits which happen when the motivation is large enough.

What is the external benefit of getting your eating under control that you are looking for?
 
Boslo said:
Hey Jericho, the food (and associated moods) journal sounds like a really good idea, it'll also allow me to calculate my daily caloric intake, something I've never really done before as well as isolate problem times/moods/foods etc, thanks for the tip.

Sorry I really didn't include any of my stats did I. I'm 20, 5"9 and about 145 pounds (guess buying a scales is probably my next step). I don't want to lose a drastic amount of weight (about 15-20 pounds), its more about getting a handle on my eating habits and halting the slow ascent of my weight before I do need to lose a drastic amount.
Click to expand...


Ok, the journal will help see if it is the actual foods. It really sounds like it might be the emotion of when you eat but we don't know that. I'd like to see the result in a week. We can talk from there :)
 
dobner said:
Boslo,

Wise move to think about this at your age. Eating habits established young tend to be harder to break. In my family, we always had desserts after meals. I am 53 years old now and pretty fit, but I had to unwind my craving desserts and still do. It is about establishing new habits which happen when the motivation is large enough.

What is the external benefit of getting your eating under control that you are looking for?
Click to expand...

Yeah exactly, and we don't even notice some of these habits that we've formed as children until it's too late to change them. A big one I've recently realised is the tendency in my family to use food as a reward/incentive, ie "Good soccer game, have an icecream cone" or "If you help me with the groceries you can have a kitkat" or "I'll let myself eat a row of chocolate for each hour of study I do", so I'm trying to replace the junk food reward with something else like shopping.

Well the external benefit I'm seeking is quite simply a 15-20lb weight loss and increased fitness.
 
Jericho said:
Ok, the journal will help see if it is the actual foods. It really sounds like it might be the emotion of when you eat but we don't know that. I'd like to see the result in a week. We can talk from there :)
Click to expand...


Hey. Well I've kept a diary in the diary section on here for the last 10 days or so, and when I look at my dietary indiscretions (which have gotten fewer thankfully) it does appear that I'm more likely to binge when I'm bored, or when I feel like I deserve a 'reward' of sorts, as in when complete a project, or clean the house or something. I guess the second should be easy to combat by substituting the reward for something else, and I'll try combat the boredom induced eating by having a supply of healthy snacks on hand or drinking a couple of glasses of water before I eat anything so I'm not able to kid myself into thinking that I'm hungry.
The other time I tend to hit the junk food is about 4pm each day when I get a massive craving for sugar, but I imagine that is a result of something missing in my diet earlier in the day rather than an emotion thing, but I haven't quite figured out what yet.
 
Welcome to the forum, Boslo, and congratulations on getting an early start on your change to a healthier lifestyle.

I have found that counting calories is a great help in controlling the unconscious grazing that we tend to do. I use an Excel spreadsheet, but there are plenty of tools available. Lots of people here like Fitday.com. I prefer or Cron-O-Meter which is a free program you can download here
 
Harold14370 said:
Welcome to the forum, Boslo, and congratulations on getting an early start on your change to a healthier lifestyle.

I have found that counting calories is a great help in controlling the unconscious grazing that we tend to do. I use an Excel spreadsheet, but there are plenty of tools available. Lots of people here like Fitday.com. I prefer or Cron-O-Meter which is a free program you can download here
Click to expand...

Cheers.

Yeah I've started using fitday to count my calories and record them in a diary on here. From someone who'd never even glanced at the calorie count on the back of food packets before, boy was I in for a rude awakening when I realised just how calorie-loaded some supposedly 'healthy' foods really are!
 
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