Weight loss without exercise

[Flea]

It's been almost 6 months since my groin injury, and I'm still tiptoeing around. Every so often I'll make some headway with it, and then I'll get excited, push the envelope, and knock myself back to where I started. Turns out, all I need to do to re-injure it is walk a few blocks. Or sit cross-legged. Or climb too many stairs.

:tantrum:

It took me six months, a fruitless MRI, a massage therapist, a reiki practitioner, and two physical therapists, but I think I'm finally on the right track. I'm walking normally again. Still with a slightly restricted range of motion, but mostly pain free. My secondary complaint came up this afternoon when I looked in the mirror at the PT's office. My profile looks like I'm 6 months pregnant, with twins. I'm sure a lot of it will slide off when I can exercise again, but in the meantime? Ew. It's unsightly, it's unhealthy, and it wounds my pride.

I asked the PT today what kind of exercise I can safely do, and he gave me a couple of weenie strength-building things. "Better just stick with these for now." Damn it all, I need to sweat. I get really squirrely without lots of regular exercise, but I just don't dare rock that boat after all I've been through and all the false starts I've had.

So how do I lose weight? It may sound odd, but I've never been on a diet in my life. I'm descended from a long line of bean-poles so I've never needed to worry about that. For the most part my diet is obnoxiously healthy anyway. Eating right is a no-brainer. But I have no idea how to lose weight without the other side of the equation.

Any advice?

 

[rlobrecht]

If you are eating healthy, and gaining weight, you're eating too much. Try the six meal a day trick to eat much less, but not feel hungry.

I'd also do as many of the exercises you're allowed to, for as long as your allowed to. Some calorie burn from exercise is better than none. And time doing the exercise is a huge part of the equation.

Good luck.

 

[Ken Morgan]

You’re body need X amount of calories a day.

Through a combination of adding calories, (eating), and using calories, (activities) you will gain or lose weight if you go over or under what your body requires. When you are a sloth, you’re body uses less calories, when you are active, your body uses more, any variance past what your body needs to maintain normal function will allow you to gain/lose weight.

If you’re eating is the same now as when you were active Flea you will likely gain weight. As you are not active, the only solution is to drop your intake of calories.

Cut out the simple things first, sugars and processed food. If that doesn’t work decrease your portion size.

Weight gain tends to be gradual, hence weight lose should be gradual too.

 

[Flea]

Thanks everyone. I forgot two other relevant bits of information:

I'm on a prescription that's notorious for sudden dramatic weight gain. People using it commonly put on 50+ pounds within weeks of starting it. I'm cutting back with my doc's blessing, but it's a very slow process as I've been using it for several years. Other than the spare bowling ball it's been very good to me and I don't think I want to ditch it completely.

Also, I'm hypoglycemic which means I need to eat 6-8 small meals a day. In practical terms this means I graze a lot and seldom wait until I'm feeling hungry to eat.

An average day looks like this:

9am Steel-cut oatmeal with soy milk and agave
10:30 8oz yogurt or cottage cheese with fruit
noon 12oz some kind of homespun soup
2 more soup
1-4 grazing on organic raw trail mix and apples through afternoon. (This has the added benefit of driving my control-freak boss batty, so I'm sure not to skip on this essential step.)
6 afternoon tea with some low-glycemic cookies or sweets
7 small dinner (usually cooked from scratch at home)
9-10 secpnd small dinner
11 bedtime snack, usually more oatmeal and tea

I try to keep all my meals and snacks low-fat or veggie based, but I find that in winter I'm just not interested in raw stuff. So I do a lot of stews, soups, and stir-frys rather than salads. I also have a big fondness for carbs, which I satisfy with whole grains like brown rice and bread. I had to phase out the white stuff a long time ago, as my body reacts to it no differently than it does to a hot fudge sundae.

Hopefully this sheds a little more light on things.

 

[seasoned]

Sugar lurks in many foods under different names. High fructose corn syrup being one of them. Also carbs in the form of white breads and the like will spike your blood sugar. Eating fat will not make you fat. Our bodies need quality fat (olive oil and flax seed oil) plus high quality carbs that burn slow. Divide your weight in half and drink that much water in oz throughout the day. Don't eat past 7pm at night and take a table spoon of honey at bed time. I lost 28 pounds in three months with the above..................

x

 

[Flea]

What's the rationale with the teaspoon of honey?

 

[seasoned]

While working with athletes, Mike McInnes discovered that eating fructose-rich foods such as honey helped to burn fat and increase stamina. He also found that the best time to burn fat is while sleeping. Eating honey before bed activates the body’s natural recovery biology, which is fuelled by burning fat. These effects can be maximized by the accompanying 15 minute exercise program that is effective with only three sessions per week. Tested by professional athletes, this dream diet aims at creating a healthier lifestyle and increasing athletic ability rather than just losing weight.

Also Google up "The hibernation diet".

Pure raw honey is a natural sweetener, not to be confused with High fructose corn syrup, or pain sugar.

 

[rlobrecht]

Looking at your daily meal plan, for a normal person, your carb to protein ratio leans a lot towards the carb side. I have no idea what being hypoglycemic adds to the equation. Can you get your doctor to work with a nutritionist to design something that would work for you?

 

[Flea]

Great googly-moogly, I think it's working!

The hypoglycemia means that I have to graze continually throughout the day, so I responded by making some substitutions rather than cutting back on quantity. Now I have a giant salad for lunch, and switched to low-fat cottage cheese with fresh fruit, and small sandwiches with organic peanut butter on whole grain bread. I also sip half a gallon of water over the course of a day, some in the form of herbal tea with agave.

I simply refuse to give up my two favorite food vices - chocolate milk and potato chips. So I upgraded on both. I know that if I feel deprived I'll just fall off the wagon completely.

Best of all, I'm able to exercise again!! I joined a gym last week and I'm making tiny forays - ten minutes here, half an hour there - as I rebuild my strength. It's very encouraging. I've lost 2 pounds in the first week of the first diet of my life. It may be modest progress, but I'm pleased.

 

[rframe]

Several times per year I'll use fitday.com to track my foods for a few days to see how many calories I'm taking in and what the carb/sugar/fat/protein distribution is. It's almost always different than I think. I also eat healthy as a matter of lifestyle, but even so it seems too easy for a few certain foods to add up and shoot the calorie intake up beyond my normal needs. It's a handy free tool to visualize what's going into the body.

I'll usually check it when I feel like I'm a little overweight and using the tool quickly reminds me "why".

To over-simplify things, if calorie intake = calorie burn then there's no weight change.

I believe that a pound of body fat contains about 3,500 calories. So when it comes to weight loss, a daily deficit of 500 calories should result in a loss of 1 pound of body fat per week. Most agree that you shouldn't have a deficit over 1,000 calories per day or your body will react in negative ways (starvation mode). A 500-800 deficit should result in 4-10 pounds of fat loss per month.

There's more to it from a technical perspective, but it doesn't matter too much, in the end these estimates have been pretty accurate in my experience.

 

[Randy Strausbaugh]

Great googly-moogly, I think it's working!

The hypoglycemia means that I have to graze continually throughout the day, so I responded by making some substitutions rather than cutting back on quantity. Now I have a giant salad for lunch, and switched to low-fat cottage cheese with fresh fruit, and small sandwiches with organic peanut butter on whole grain bread. I also sip half a gallon of water over the course of a day, some in the form of herbal tea with agave.

I simply refuse to give up my two favorite food vices - chocolate milk and potato chips. So I upgraded on both. I know that if I feel deprived I'll just fall off the wagon completely.

Best of all, I'm able to exercise again!! I joined a gym last week and I'm making tiny forays - ten minutes here, half an hour there - as I rebuild my strength. It's very encouraging. I've lost 2 pounds in the first week of the first diet of my life. It may be modest progress, but I'm pleased.

Well done, sir! You might want to cut out the bread altogether if you can. Google "wheat belly" to see why.

Over the years, I've found the following to be true:
Diet plus exercise is the best way to lose weight.
Diet without exercise will work, but not as well.
Exercise without diet doesn't work. (at least for me and for those with whom I've discussed the matter)

 

[guynes33]

I totally agree with rlobrecht, try the six meal a day trick and I'm sure that will help since it helped me a lot when I was in a situation that was the same as yours

 

[Isebell]

I agree with you mates, eating balance diet is so important for losing weight. Loosing weight quickly isn't wise.
Its best to loose 1-2lbs a week and its more likely to stay off. No sugar and low carbs seems to work best for you. Drink lots of water instead of fizzy drinks and fruit cordials.