The battle with the weight

[LustForLeith]

Giving this a bump as it’s resolution time!

Determined to loose about five pounds in three weeks. Biggest dive been in years!

[hibsbollah]

I put on some lumber as well.

I've been experimenting with The Hairy Dieters cook book. Full of good ideas. There's one which is a great substitute for a doner kebab; Cauliflower tandoori. Basically involves mixing tandoori paste with lemon juice and low fat Yog, smearing it all over a load of cauliflower and then baking it. Fantastic in a pitta bread with hummus and more yog and lemon on top and chopped herbs. Dead easy and fat free.

[LancashireHibby]

Every year I do really well until summer holidays and then a steady decline towards Christmas. This year I managed to put on 10 pounds between December 14th and New Year alone! Need to lose just over a stone to get back to my ‘summer’ weight and ideally a little more besides.

Have been on low carb since Wednesday and will continue to next weekend, just treating it as a bit of a detox. On the booze in Bristol next weekend then I’ll be on strict calorie counting and much more exercise.

[LustForLeith]

I’ve lost four pounds since the end of last week. Crisps, choloate and bread OUT!

[Pretty Boy]

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I’ve lost four pounds since the end of last week. Crisps, choloate and bread OUT!

I put 4lbs on over Christmas and New year and weighed myself today and I've got it off again.

My marathon training is in full swing now so that helps but it's amazing how much impact cutting out 'just the one pint' or 'just one more chocolate' has. It just seems far harder to say no over the festive period. My big thing is making sure I eat breakfast. If I miss eating in the early morning I tend to go totally overboard at lunch or fall off the wagon mid morning. Porridge and a coffee then a banana as a snack later on makes all the difference in keeping the hunger at bay.

[Antifa Hibs]

hibsbollah wrote...

I put on some lumber as well.

I've been experimenting with The Hairy Dieters cook book. Full of good ideas. There's one which is a great substitute for a doner kebab; Cauliflower tandoori. Basically involves mixing tandoori paste with lemon juice and low fat Yog, smearing it all over a load of cauliflower and then baking it. Fantastic in a pitta bread with hummus and more yog and lemon on top and chopped herbs. Dead easy and fat free.

It's a good series of books. Been out for a couple of years now so can be picked up for a few quid. Their sweet n sour is very good too and that's coming from someone who hates it from the Chinese or supermarket. There was also a good TV series about it at the same time, intrigued to see if they managed to keep the wieght off. Tom Kerridge also had a book and series out last year, fair play to that lad, literally half the size he used to be. Another book for those looking to cook is Jamie Oliver's 5 Ingredients, simple, relatively cheap and easy to cook recipes. Cooking helped me massively when trying to lose a few pounds.

[hibsbollah]

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It's a good series of books. Been out for a couple of years now so can be picked up for a few quid. Their sweet n sour is very good too and that's coming from someone who hates it from the Chinese or supermarket. There was also a good TV series about it at the same time, intrigued to see if they managed to keep the wieght off. Tom Kerridge also had a book and series out last year, fair play to that lad, literally half the size he used to be. Another book for those looking to cook is Jamie Oliver's 5 Ingredients, simple, relatively cheap and easy to cook recipes. Cooking helped me massively when trying to lose a few pounds.

Their chicken katsu is amazingly tasty as well. Panko breadcrumbs and the katsu sauce has mushrooms carrots and onions blended up with your normal chinese spices. I had no idea it was so simple.

[bingo70]

There was a programme on TV the other night giving advice to people who want to exercise but find it difficult to find time, stay motivated, can't afford the gym or simply don't enjoy it. Someone might be able to help more than i can as i can't even remember what channel it was on which isn't much help for trying to find it on catch up. (Think it may have been BBC actually but not sure)

Anyway, something i took from it is the 10,000 steps a day challenge being a myth started as a marketing campaign for what i think was the original pedometer company. Obviously if you can do 10,000 a day that's great however it is probably more likely to de-motivate people as it's very difficult to find the time to do that many if you're not someone that naturally enjoys fitness work. Apparently there is greater health benefits to doing three 10 minute brisk walks a day. For me that is more than achievable, walk to work in the morning from my car i'm trying to make that wee bit faster, 10 minutes at lunch time is easy enough and then back to the car after work.

Diet wise i'm not as motivated as i was last year so I think i'd be lying to myself if i thought i was going to be making big changes, still trying to be a bit more sensible though. Brown bread for white bread, drinking more water instead of juice, trying to have veg with my tea every night and not being quite so ridiculous if i want a snack (a biscuit, instead of a packet of biscuits!)

On the subject of bread, does anyone know if the best of both is actually the best of both? I'm not a fan of brown bread at all but the 50/50 stuff is alright, i'm a bit sceptical though if it is actually as good as brown bread or just a bit better than white bread? (Anyone i've spoken too who is into healthy eating and fitness tells me white bread is the work of the devil)

[Antifa Hibs]

bingo70 wrote...

There was a programme on TV the other night giving advice to people who want to exercise but find it difficult to find time, stay motivated, can't afford the gym or simply don't enjoy it. Someone might be able to help more than i can as i can't even remember what channel it was on which isn't much help for trying to find it on catch up. (Think it may have been BBC actually but not sure)

Anyway, something i took from it is the 10,000 steps a day challenge being a myth started as a marketing campaign for what i think was the original pedometer company. Obviously if you can do 10,000 a day that's great however it is probably more likely to de-motivate people as it's very difficult to find the time to do that many if you're not someone that naturally enjoys fitness work. Apparently there is greater health benefits to doing three 10 minute brisk walks a day. For me that is more than achievable, walk to work in the morning from my car i'm trying to make that wee bit faster, 10 minutes at lunch time is easy enough and then back to the car after work.

Diet wise i'm not as motivated as i was last year so I think i'd be lying to myself if i thought i was going to be making big changes, still trying to be a bit more sensible though. Brown bread for white bread, drinking more water instead of juice, trying to have veg with my tea every night and not being quite so ridiculous if i want a snack (a biscuit, instead of a packet of biscuits!)

On the subject of bread, does anyone know if the best of both is actually the best of both? I'm not a fan of brown bread at all but the 50/50 stuff is alright, i'm a bit sceptical though if it is actually as good as brown bread or just a bit better than white bread? (Anyone i've spoken too who is into healthy eating and fitness tells me white bread is the work of the devil)

Wee bit here on the original pedometer and the 10,000 steps stuff > https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42864061

Regarding brown bread most of the cheaper brown bread is basically white bread with some caramel through it to colour it. You're looking for wholemeal if you're wanting health benefits from it. Tried wholemeal pasta, brown rice, wholemeal bread etc but gave it up. We had two Spanish and 1 French graduates last year joining us, they ate rice, pasta, bread, meats and cheeses everyday. They also ate a ton load of veg, rarely drank juice only water and black coffee and never snacked on any junk food. Meanwhile Agnes from accounts won't eat a bowl of pasta but will have a curly wurly as its only 3 sins from scotlands slimmers :D

hibsbollah wrote...
Their chicken katsu is amazingly tasty as well. Panko breadcrumbs and the katsu sauce has mushrooms carrots and onions blended up with your normal chinese spices. I had no idea it was so simple.

Nice one i'll check it out 8-)

[Jay]

Sweet potatoes are counted as a syn in scottish slimmers, and avacado but you can eat as many burgers as you want? Well that was the case a couple of years ago anyway

[danhibees1875]

I think forward planning and enjoying cooking is as big a part as anything. There's absolutely zero temptation for me to grab a takeaway or something "easy" like a pizza on my walk home tonight because I know I have some sea bass defrosted and that I'm making that into some sort of sea bass linguini dish.

Lunch too, I made up 6 portions of salmon/mackeral pasta at the start of the week for my girlfriend and I which I take with a box of mixed fruit. It means I've no reason to go out to get a meal deal/subway/cheese toastie for lunch. If nothing else, it's cheaper!


The exercise bit I've tried to pick up running again. In 2017 I done the Edinburgh marathon after 3 or 4 months of regular running to train for it and also the Aberdeen half (albeit with little training) so I was out and running a lot of miles - about 550 over the year. 2018 was more c.150 and it's mostly becuase I had nothing signed up to train for so it was a lot easier to just not bother going out. Hopefully sign up to a 10k for Spring and something a bit later in the year too. I'm pretty good at walking instead of getting the bus at least, so tend to do a few miles a day around Edinburgh.

[overdrive]

I’m in diet mode (again) partly due to life changes but mainly due to health.

I had a few health scares over the Xmas period, one being just before Xmas I found out that I have extremely high cholesterol. I’ve been told to go on a diet of very little saturated fat for six months.

There was a programme on last week about the myths around health and fitness and they touched upon cholesterol. They basically said what I’ve been told to do is a complete waste of time for the majority of people with high cholesterol as for most people it is a genetic issue not one through diet and for those people diet changes will have little impact.

I suspect this will be the case with me. My mum and my grandad on that side both have/had extremely high cholesterol that stays/stayed the same irrespective of diet and drugs. Plus, I started calorie counting and noting down how much saturated fat I was consuming over the Xmas period (without dieting) and I don’t actually eat that much saturated fat. I do eat healthy it’s just that I eat a lot. This is what annoys me about the likes of Slimming World and Scottish Slimmers that allow you to eat unlimited amounts of burgers, chicken, etc. If you eat lots of it you will still get fat. Saying that, my cousin has lost 7.5 stone through one of these groups in 11 months.

I’m sticking with the diet though as I’ve also been suffering from mild depression and not-so-mild insomnia so losing weight is meant to help with that. Plus I’ve found myself newly single recently so I better get myself in shape in advance of getting myself back on the market

I’ve also been going to the gym and I’ve taken up yoga to try to improve my overall fitness/wellbeing.

[hibs#1]

Don't know if it's been mentioned but the My Fitness Pal is good app to help you track what your eating. Not sure if it's always 100% accurate but it is pretty close gives you a good breakdown of everything.

[overdrive]

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Don't know if it's been mentioned but the My Fitness Pal is good app to help you track what your eating. Not sure if it's always 100% accurate but it is pretty close gives you a good breakdown of everything.

A wee hint with MFP if you are tracking anything other than calories (or if your item isn’t on MFP), instead of just adding the calories as a quick add, choose the “create food” option at the bottom of the search for food screen as you can just copy the nutritional values from the packages. I’ve been using MFP for years on and off and I’ve only just found this out in the past week.

[hibs#1]

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A wee hint with MFP if you are tracking anything other than calories (or if your item isn’t on MFP), instead of just adding the calories as a quick add, choose the “create food” option at the bottom of the search for food screen as you can just copy the nutritional values from the packages. I’ve been using MFP for years on and off and I’ve only just found this out in the past week.

That's a handy tip thanks 👍

[Jay]

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That's a handy tip thanks ��

I use it to store recipes so i dont have to remember the cals/protein etc in each one. Im also lazy and just take pics of the barcode to enter my food on it

Thats when i can find will the power which im really struggling with just now, if i dont find it soon somebody will roll me down a hill at easter!

[Rocky]

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I use it to store recipes so i dont have to remember the cals/protein etc in each one. Im also lazy and just take pics of the barcode to enter my food on it

Thats when i can find will the power which im really struggling with just now, if i dont find it soon somebody will roll me down a hill at easter!

I found out today that you can paste the web address of a recipe into it and it imports all the ingredients as well as the recipe so it can calculate all the nutritional info automatically for you. It does need to be reviewed though - it calculated two cloves of garlic as 900 calories!

[Jay]

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I found out today that you can paste the web address of a recipe into it and it imports all the ingredients as well as the recipe so it can calculate all the nutritional info automatically for you. It does need to be reviewed though - it calculated two cloves of garlic as 900 calories!

Yeah it does need checked. This morning i almost clicked on 400mls skimmed milk @ 420 cals! I worked out my macros as well as i could a few days ago and I think im winning. MFP definitely helps keep me on track, watching those numbers drop drastically for a biscuit i didnt really enjoy isnt fun so im managing not to eat rubbish

[Rocky]

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Yeah it does need checked. This morning i almost clicked on 400mls skimmed milk @ 420 cals! I worked out my macros as well as i could a few days ago and I think im winning. MFP definitely helps keep me on track, watching those numbers drop drastically for a biscuit i didnt really enjoy isnt fun so im managing not to eat rubbish

Nearly fell off my chair when I saw that shortbread fingers are 100 calories each. It meant I stuck to two instead of sitting demolishing the pack though so that's a win in my book.

[Jay]

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Nearly fell off my chair when I saw that shortbread fingers are 100 calories each. It meant I stuck to two instead of sitting demolishing the pack though so that's a win in my book.

kinda is eh?

[Pretty Boy]

I'm sure many of you are aware but if not then another great feature of the My Fitness app is you can sync it to other apps that record your running, walking or other exercise and it recalculates your calories required based on that. As an example my daily calories is set at 2130 but I ran 12.5 miles on Sunday so it took that into account and reworked my required calories accordingly.

I use the feature mainly to make sure I'm not at a massive calorie deficit before and after my long runs but people often overestimate how many calories some exercises burn so it's useful for not getting carried away. Again as an example a steady run burns between 100-150 calories a mile so if you run a 5K (a good effort btw) then you are burning somewhere between 300-450 calories give or take. The temptation many have is to then have a pizza or have a slice of cake because they have earned it. The reality is you are probably taking in far more calories from the treat than you have burnt during the running, assuming the rest of your eating and exercise habits remain the same for the day.

That's not meant as a post to advocate denying yourself a treat or a reward for working hard, just a general point about not letting a 'miscalculation' ruin your hard work.

[Rocky]

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I'm sure many of you are aware but if not then another great feature of the My Fitness app is you can sync it to other apps that record your running, walking or other exercise and it recalculates your calories required based on that. As an example my daily calories is set at 2130 but I ran 12.5 miles on Sunday so it took that into account and reworked my required calories accordingly.

I use the feature mainly to make sure I'm not at a massive calorie deficit before and after my long runs but people often overestimate how many calories some exercises burn so it's useful for not getting carried away. Again as an example a steady run burns between 100-150 calories a mile so if you run a 5K (a good effort btw) then you are burning somewhere between 300-450 calories give or take. The temptation many have is to then have a pizza or have a slice of cake because they have earned it. The reality is you are probably taking in far more calories from the treat than you have burnt during the running, assuming the rest of your eating and exercise habits remain the same for the day.

That's not meant as a post to advocate denying yourself a treat or a reward for working hard, just a general point about not letting a 'miscalculation' ruin your hard work.

I've been using that with it linked to fitbit to pull in my calorie burn. Having a bit of a mare with it though as the calorie adjustment coming in from fitbit seems way too high. As a result I've had to set my calorie baseline target in MFP to 490!

[Jay]

I didnt link my fitbit because im trying to lose weight and dont want my cals increased because ive exercised - is that how it works? I didnt really look into it all that much

[Rocky]

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I didnt link my fitbit because im trying to lose weight and dont want my cals increased because ive exercised - is that how it works? I didnt really look into it all that much

Yeah it does. Based on my plan to lose 2 stones by Easter holidays it worked out I need to take in 1,000 fewer calories a day than I use. My baseline calorie usage (just for being alive even if I stayed in bed all day) is something like 2,100. Exercise then goes on top of that so if I'm having a lazy day that might only go up to 2,500 or so, hence allowance of 1,500. If I get out for exercise that goes up.

[Jay]

But if you dont increase your intake your calorie deficit is bigger? I know you dont want too big a deficit but is increasing your cals not defeating the purpose?

[Rocky]

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But if you dont increase your intake your calorie deficit is bigger? I know you dont want too big a deficit but is increasing your cals not defeating the purpose?

It depends what your approach is I suppose. If you're trying to lose as much as possible as quickly as possible then the less you take in and the more exercise you do the better (within reason of course). If you've got a target to get to and a date when you want to get there then it's the net calorie deficit that counts. So if you do more exercise you get more to eat (or drink!). I guess it's more sustainable if you're not miserable so knowing that you can have a wine or two in exchange for half hour on cross trainer works better for some people.

[Jay]

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It depends what your approach is I suppose. If you're trying to lose as much as possible as quickly as possible then the less you take in and the more exercise you do the better (within reason of course). If you've got a target to get to and a date when you want to get there then it's the net calorie deficit that counts. So if you do more exercise you get more to eat (or drink!). I guess it's more sustainable if you're not miserable so knowing that you can have a wine or two in exchange for half hour on cross trainer works better for some people.

Yeah im just looking to lose a stone, my docs would say more but i know whats sustainable for me and a stone lighter is fine. I get plenty cals without adding and i dont stick to it rigidly anyway, 100 cals over wont have me reaching for a packet of biscuits in floods of failure tears. Ill.just keep plodding on. I need to sort my exercise out though. Next thing on my list

[Allant1981]

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It depends what your approach is I suppose. If you're trying to lose as much as possible as quickly as possible then the less you take in and the more exercise you do the better (within reason of course). If you've got a target to get to and a date when you want to get there then it's the net calorie deficit that counts. So if you do more exercise you get more to eat (or drink!). I guess it's more sustainable if you're not miserable so knowing that you can have a wine or two in exchange for half hour on cross trainer works better for some people.

Eating less isn't always the way to lose weight though, as daft as it sounds, you can actually eat more a day than normal and still lose weight, eating properly is a lot more important than the actual excercise

[overdrive]

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I've been using that with it linked to fitbit to pull in my calorie burn. Having a bit of a mare with it though as the calorie adjustment coming in from fitbit seems way too high. As a result I've had to set my calorie baseline target in MFP to 490!

I have my Garmin watch synced to MFP and it is a bit iffy at times. What I do is try to only use a maximum of half of my exercise calories.

I’ve got a friend who I’m connected to on MFP and so I get updates about how he’s doing. I don’t think he quite gets the concept of weighing himself. He seems to be weighing himself twice a day, logging tiny fractions of pounds lost. My other mate is actually his boss and he says the first guy has a strange way of dieting too, e.g. a Tesco meal deal for breakfast in the office followed by two more Tesco meal deals at lunchtime.

[Rocky]

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I have my Garmin watch synced to MFP and it is a bit iffy at times. What I do is try to only use a maximum of half of my exercise calories.

I’ve got a friend who I’m connected to on MFP and so I get updates about how he’s doing. I don’t think he quite gets the concept of weighing himself. He seems to be weighing himself twice a day, logging tiny fractions of pounds lost. My other mate is actually his boss and he says the first guy has a strange way of dieting too, e.g. a Tesco meal deal for breakfast in the office followed by two more Tesco meal deals at lunchtime.

My weight logging will look a bit like that just now too because I bought a set of Wi-Fi scales that sync automatically to MFP. Because I don't store them flat I tend to think that the first weighing won't be accurate as it needs to settle in, so I tend to have another go to see if there's any difference. To be fair it doesn't seem to make much odds so I'll just go with the first reading.

I like the sound of his diet though.