New here....gotta lose!

M

Mercenary

New member
Hey folks. I'm a 38 yr old male who has quite a bit of weight to lose. I tip the scales somewhere north of 350 lbs right now.

I've been heavy for most of my life. I feel pretty good right now but the blood pressure has crept up lately and I am getting sick and tired of being sick and tired all the time :D

I don't really plan on going on a diet per se....I want to cut out junk food and fast food and incorporate movement in my every day and see how far that takes me....
 
Mercenary, welcome to the site. I am also new to the site, but not new to weight loss. I have posted "How I lost 70 lbs in 1 year" on the "Weight loss and health conditions" board. Feel free to have a look and ask any questions you may have.
 
Hey Mercenary

I'm new as well. I don't have quite the same amount of weight to lose but just know that I feel your pain. I have some weight to lose as well and really want to develop a group online to make sure I stay accountable.
 
Hi and welcome :) Cutting out (or down- out entirely may not be feasible) junk and increasing exercise is an excellent start. I know you don't want to go on a specific diet, but I'd recommend (for awareness' sake) working out a guideline daily calorie allowance (keeping in mind this will change as you lose weight) so that you have some idea of what foods will help and which will hinder your progress. Go to this website and put in your details: then follow the link, multiply that number by the amount of activity you do (so x1.3 for sedentary through to x1.9 for extremely active), which will give you the amount of calories you need to eat to maintain your weight. If you reduce that number by 500, that's the number you need to lose (in theory- these are approximations) a pound a week. What you do with that number is up to you- I calorie count, but you could even look at things and say "my calorie allowance to lose weight is (say) 2000 calories- that packet of chips is 500. Do I really need to waste a quarter of my calories on a snack?" This will hopefully help you make better choices.

Another thing that's really helping me (again, may not be for you) is keeping a food diary- writing down what I'm eating (and in my case, how much it weighs and how many calories it is). I do this on a calorie counting program and alongside my weight loss diary (link in my signature), and the latter helps keep me accountable, I find.

Hope you find something that works for you, and good luck :)
 
Hey Mercenary

If you are starting to feel that you want to cut down the junk/fast food for healthy reason, it is a very good start! Forget about "weight loss" in your mind, just go for "healthy" purposes.. you slowly enjoy all the healthy and dislike all the junk foods! You will totally feel fresh and energetic when you eliminate all those stuffs....

Good luck and hope to hear your great story soon!

Cheers,
Mag
 
Fatlossfatloss

You bring up a good point. One of my first struggles on my weight loss program was the temptations of junk food. The vending machine in my work had lots of goodies.

Once I started bringing in snacks to work (eg- rice cakes with cottage cheese or peanut butter as morning snack and celery sticks with hummus in the afternoon) I wasn't tempted With trips to the snack machine.

Even at lunch time, I used to have cravings, but looked at the choices on offer and wasn't swayed by any one of them. It's amazing what a change of mind frame does for curbing your "false" appetite.

It helped that I didn't take my wallet to the work canteen, hence I couldn't buy a snack if I wanted to!! ;-)
 
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