MyWeightLossForLife.com

Archive for July, 2008

Does this sound familiar?

You start off weighing 200 pounds. You manage to lose 25 pounds, but over the next few weeks or months, your weight bounces back, maybe settling in around 185 or 190. Your weight stays there for a while, and eventually you’re able to drop more weight and the cycle repeats itself.

What’s going on? In short, you’re falling victim to your body’s set point. The set point is, to put it simply, the weight your body “wants” to be. That will be about a 10 percent range (plus or minus) from your current weight. So, if you weigh 200 right now, your body isn’t going to want to drop below 180. Doing so will trigger reductions in your metabolism and changes in appetite that will encourage you to gain weight.

Doesn’t seem fair does it?

You gain weight, your set point readjusts UPWARD, and it’s even tougher to take the weight off? What’s the solution? According to this article, Ideal Weight or Happy Weight?  the answer is gradual weight loss.

Let’s look at the above scenario. Instead of losing 25 pounds, let’s say you lost 15 instead. You’re closer to your set point range, so it should be easier to keep that weight off. You’ll quit trying to lose weight and focus instead on maintaining the weight you’ve lost. When you’ve done that a few months, your set point will reset, and you’ll be ready to try to lose another 10 percent of your weight.

I know what you’re thinking (because I thought it too). That’s going to take a long time to get the weight off. You’d be able to lose 20-30 percent of your body weight in a year, max. When you have a lot to lose, that’s a long time to wait.

If you’re like me, you struggle more with keeping the weight off than with losing it in the first place. I’ve lost hundreds of pounds and kept off only a fraction of them. So, isn’t it quicker to do it this way than to stay on the roller-coaster of losing and gaining weight?

This recent study compares three popular diets: Low fat, low carb, Mediterranean. The results weren’t surprising, to me at least.

All three work when it comes to weight loss.

The Mediterranean diet and low carb diet actually performed a little better, presumably because both allow more fat in the diet. These also resulted in better blood glucose and blood lipids, which may seem a little surprising.

Fats do help control appetite, and fats do help moderate blood glucose. I know from my husband’s experience that a low fat meal and a higher fat meal with the same number of carbs will have different effects on his glucose.

I think it’s better to think of these more as lifestyle changes than as diets. A diet is something you “go on” to lose weight, and come “off” when your willpower fails or you drop the pounds. To really lose weight and keep it off requires permanent changes in your eating and exercise, not on again off again diets.

Of course, the diet lifestyle change that works best for you is the one you can stick with.

Technorati Tags: diet comparison

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know that I’m not a fan of diet pills and potions in general. I’ve surprised myself by finding that I’m a bit interested in SlimShots, a new appetite control product.

To summarize, SlimShots is made of oat and palm oil, which suppress your appetite. You drink one or two small (the size of a coffee creamer) servings a day, and you eat as much as 30 percent less.

I did a little research, and from what I’ve found there are two big complaints with the product: the taste and a tendency to cause mild nausea.

There’s also a page that discusses some clinical trials that support the notion that adding these types of fats to the diet can suppress appetite. One warning though, according to the site Slimshots is not appropriate to combine with Alli; I’m guessing because of how Alli reacts to fat in the diet.

I haven’t bought any, and I’m not sure that I will. I am wondering if anyone has tried it and what your results were. I’ve found some discussions and reviews online, but I’d like to know what you say.

Over the last few days, I’ve started wearing a pedometer again. It’s my first step to getting ready for the half marathon.

July 1: 10500 steps

July 2: 7500 steps

July 3: 7800 steps

And today, I forgot to put the darn thing on!

Buying a pedometer

I own about a half dozen pedometers: different brands, various prices. However, the best one I own is one my husband found online that has no brand name on it. However, it does have a sensitivy setting, and that’s the key to its being so good.

I’ve bought pedometers that were much too sensitive or not sensitive enough. Others work fine when worn with loose fitting clothes, others work better with tighter clothes. Some make a noticeable ticking noise when you walk, which is quite annoying.

It would be nice if you could try a pedometer first before buying it, but that isn’t possible. So, my advice is simply to make sure your model has a way to adjust its sensitivity.

Testing your pedometer

How do you know how accurate your pedometer is? First off, you should be concerned with its accuracy in counting steps not counting miles.

Put on the pedometer by clipping it to your waistband two or three inches away from center. Make sure it’s set to 0 and walk, counting your steps as you go. Be sure to walk normally. After one or two hundred steps, look at the pedometer reading. It’s okay if it’s a few steps off, but if it’s more than a few, change the sensitivity and try again.

Converting steps to miles (or kilometers)

Many pedometers don’t convert to miles or kilometers (mine doesn’t). But even if yours does, you’ll need to know the length of your stride to convert steps to miles. Here’s an easy trick to measure your stride.

Put on your shoes and go out onto your patio, porch or deck. It should be a solid surface (no grass) and large enough so that you can take several steps at a natural pace.

Wet the bottoms of your shoes and take a few steps, making sure to walk naturally. Measure your wet footprints from back of heel to back of heel (or toe to toe). Repeat this a couple of times and average your measurements to be sure you’re accurate.

Some simple math

There are 5280 feet in a mile. Let’s say your stride is 2.5 feet.  Take 5280 and divide it by your stride length (in this case 2.5). The resulting number is the number of STEPS IN A MILE for you. For me, it’s about 2112.

Many people skip the measurement and math altogether and just guessimate 2000 steps per mile.

I’ve been looking at some marathon walking sites on the internet, trying to find a training schedule and tips for getting from 0-13 miles.

Walk the Half Marathon includes a training schedule that’s pretty light through the week with a long walk day on the weekend. That would work with my schedule. It starts at only 30 minutes a day, but the total training time is just 12 weeks.

Half Marathon Training Schedules for Walkers includes longer walks through the week as well as cross-training. Total time to get ready is 14 weeks. My concern with this one is that 3 miles to start might be a little tough for me.

12 Week Beginner Walking Schedule isn’t a marathon training plan. It’s a plan for beginners to work up to 60 minutes per day. After that, you can begin the marathon training. This might be where I need to start.

Training to Walk a Marathon is for a full marathon (26.2 miles) if you’re feeling really ambitious.

At the Marathon Calendar, you can find marathons and half-marathons where walkers are welcome. I’m not going to think about this yet.

Next step for me? Get some walking shoes and a battery for my pedometer!

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Why am I really overweight?

Of course, the simple answer is this: eating more calories than you burn makes you gain weight. That’s true, but it’s also not quite true at the same time. It doesn’t get to the heart of the problem.

You see, if it were as simple as eating less (or exercising more), losing weight would be a simple thing. If you’re like me and have struggled to lose weight, then you know that losing weight isn’t simple at all.

The real issue is this, why do I eat more calories than I burn?

There are a lot of answers to this one. Maybe you’re like me, and you’re a stress eater. I tend to associate food with comfort, so I eat when I’m not really hungry. Maybe you keep on the weight as a kind of barrier or shield from the world. Maybe you hate to exercise, or you have a health condition that keeps you from it.

Whatever the reasons for your weight problem, I’m convinced that as long as you see it as a simple matter of calories in and calories burned, you’re not going to be successful. People just aren’t that simple. If you’re overweight, you have a problem with your eating, and you have to examine the cause of the problem, not just try to treat the symptom.

So, here’s my challenge to you. Spend some time today thinking about how you relate to food.

• When do you overeat?
• What causes you to fall off your diet?
• How do you feel about yourself when you’re dieting? When you’re overeating?
• When did you first become overweight? What was going on in your life at the time?
• How did you relate to food when you were a child? Were you a heavy kid?

Thinking about these things may be uncomfortable, but it will give you some ideas where your food problems lie. You’re not likely to be successful simply trying to eat less, unless you understand why you tend to overeat in the first place.

I’ve been really lax in the exercise department, except for yard work. It’s summer, and my husband and I have committed to doing our own yard work this year, so that amounts to two days of exercise a week.

But that’s it, and I know that that isn’t enough for either of us.

I mentioned a while back that I was thinking of joining a gym. There’s one available where I work, and they’re currently offering a half-price membership if they can get enough people to sign up for it to make it cost-effective. So…. I committed to joining at that price. I don’t think the membership will begin until the fall, but that’s a start.

I’ve also been toying with the idea of training for a half-marathon. That’s a big goal for someone who hardly exercises and is still seriously overweight. Still, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while.

So I’m officially committing myself to start training for it.

Just so you know,  half-marathon is a little over 13 miles. Yikes.