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Dieting method

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Breadist


Writer

PostPosted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:52 pm


This method is hard to start with, but if you follow it, you should be able to shed pounds without starving yourself. I used it twice, successfully. It's a long read, but might be helpful.

There is no magic to losing weight. You simply have to burn more calories than you put into your body. Simple as that. The most difficult part of weight loss in my opinion is setting yourself up to lose weight. That first week or two are the hardest. You have to basically experiment until you can lose one pound. That includes finding an aerobic exercise you can live with, and also a diet that works for you. Once you have lost one pound in one week without starving yourself, the rest is simple. You repeat what you did the first week the next, and lose another pound, and then another, and then another, until you're done. Then you slightly increase your calorie intake to maintain your weight without it going back up. The first week or so is also crucial because that's when your body adjusts to a lower calorie intake. If you've been eating a lot, your stomach is large, and demands a lot of food. If you eat less, it'll shrink, and eating a lot will be unnatural to you. Clearly, getting it to shrink is a good idea.

Here's the way I did it. It may not work for you, because you're a different person than me, but you may want to try some variation of it. I basically eat three meals a day. No more, no less. If you want to eat five small meals throughout the day instead of three, you can try that, and I hear it works, but for me it's too much micromanagement. I eat two cups of cereal combined with one cup of 2% milk in the morning. The cereal is 100 calories per cup, the milk 120 calories per cup, for a total of 320 calories at breakfast. This is at roughly 9 AM. Then, at 12 PM, I eat a sandwich, or make three eggs. That lasts me till 4 PM. If you're not used to dieting, I highly recommend eggs once a day at lunch, because they stuff you for a long time, but have few calories, only 70 per egg, I believe. Then I eat a fairly large dinner, usually a small frozen pizza with 650 calories. This lasts me until nighttime. As you can see, my diet is designed to get me from meal to meal, not last me through the whole day. I also regularly eat small, healthy snacks to keep myself from getting hungry. My recommendation is apples, lots and lots of apples, especially in the beginning of your diet. An apple is only 53 calories or so, and it is tasty, nutritious and filling. It takes a few minutes to eat an apple, and it fills you up for a while. If you eat, say, a piece of candy, that is more calories, and it doesn't even fill you up at all. You can eat 6 apples a day without really breaking your diet too much, and it'll stuff you something awful. During the first crucial week when your stomach is adjusting to a smaller food intake and shrinking, it is really a good idea to eat lots of apples. Beef jerky also works. A pack of beef jerky is tasty and filling, but it's only 120-140 calories. MASSIVE amounts of salt though.

The key to all this is looking at the calories you're taking in. You don't have to eat the food I eat, and you don't have to have absolute control over what goes in your body, but you should have a pretty good idea. While dieting you should eat out once per week, because that won't set you back too much. Even then, eat out at a decent restaurant, not some place like McDonald's or Wendy's, because honestly, that's just nasty. One package of McDonald's french fries, large, has as much calories as the dinner I eat, and that dinner lasts me for roughly 7 hours, while if you eat fries you'll be hungry after an hour or so. But in any case, don't eat out while dieting, because the bottom line is, you don't know what they're serving you. Few restaurants keep track of their food's nutritional information, and most are not healthy at all, because unhealthy food is generally tasty food. You should almost always eat food from your supermarket, because not only is it cheaper, but it always has the nutritional information on it. You can calculate what you're doing with yourself, and make adjustments at your convenience. That's valuable.

Finally, there's exercise. Exercise is very important, and it's also the stumbling block for many people, because a lot of people don't bother with it. The truth is, the actual number of calories you burn from exercise is not that large. Your diet will lose calories far more readily. But exercise will make you feel good, and it'll boost your metabolism, which will make your body better at burning fat the rest of the time. The bottom line is, if you eat right but don't exercise, you're screwing yourself. What you actually do is up to you. I like to walk long distances. Some people run, some people swim or do elliptical machines, I walk. I have strong legs so I can walk for up to 6 hours a day, though realistically I usually do 2-3. I like it because walking does not even require you to shower after you're finished. You might work up a bit of a sweat, but though you get tired you ultimately can go on with your day immediately. You can also do it virtually anywhere -- in your neighborhood, the local forest preserve, or the gym track, if the weather is lousy. Contrast that with something like running, which does require a cool-down period.

To track your progress, weigh yourself once a week, on a set day, in the morning before you eat anything and after you've gone to the washroom. According to the doctors I've talked to, that is the most accurate way to keep track of your weight, because it'll fluctuate slightly during the course of the week. Also, if you weigh yourself after eating or drinking anything, it's inaccurate because you're weighing the food and drink along with your body weight.
PostPosted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 8:39 am


You can eat a low calorie diet but still be unhealthy. And eating three eggs a day is unhealthy. One egg has about 65% of your maximum recommended cholesterol intake of the day. That means if you eat just two eggs day, you're over your cholesterol limit. You might be able to get around that by only using egg whites, I am not sure. But eggs are a great example of why you have to look at more than just the calorie count, why you have to understand nutrition labels, and why you have to understand what is good for you and what is not good for you.

I am at a healthy weight, so I don't eat healthy to lose weight. But do I eat healthy to stay healthy. I do not count calories. I don't usually look at the calories at all. I check the saturated fat and cholesterol levels on everything. Because those are the two things that can really make you fat, increase your risk of cancer, give you heart problems, etc. If you avoid or cut down on saturated fat and cholesterol, you have a better chance of losing weight, being healthy on the inside, feeling good, having more energy, and not having to starve yourself or count calories.

I also recommend putting small amounts of food on your plate initially. You don't need to load up right from the start. You can always go back for more. And eat slowly. It actually takes time for your brain to realize your stomach is full. So if you eat fast, you're a lot more likely to overeat.

LorienLlewellyn

Quotable Informer


Nikolita
Captain

PostPosted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 10:04 am


Years ago while in high school, over the course of within 2 years, I dropped something like 25 pounds just from cutting back portion size. My diet stayed primarily the same, but I ate less and eventually my stomach shrank. Now I need to get back into that habit again. sweatdrop
PostPosted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 11:17 pm


LorienLlewellyn
You can eat a low calorie diet but still be unhealthy. And eating three eggs a day is unhealthy. One egg has about 65% of your maximum recommended cholesterol intake of the day. That means if you eat just two eggs day, you're over your cholesterol limit. You might be able to get around that by only using egg whites, I am not sure. But eggs are a great example of why you have to look at more than just the calorie count, why you have to understand nutrition labels, and why you have to understand what is good for you and what is not good for you.


My mom's a doctor, so I am fairly sure I am eating eggs ok because she hasn't told me otherwise. If it's alternated with a sammich, it's definitely ok. To be honest, even if you temporarily eat high cholesterol, it's better than remaining overweight -- or eating food that makes you more so -- and later you can just replace the eggs.


Breadist


Writer


LorienLlewellyn

Quotable Informer

PostPosted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:18 am


Your mom might not tell you it's bad because there is some debate. Some people say eggs are not ok to eat at all. Others say they're ok in moderation. And some people think they're ok to eat all the time.

That's because eggs are loaded with cholesterol, but studies are still being done to determine exactly how bad that cholesterol is. Because some things can change the way our body deals with bad cholesterol. And some people think that the egg whites may have the ability to counteract the egg yolks.

But since the jury is still out, most doctors urge on the side of caution, which means seriously limiting egg intake. So the diet you recommended contains far more than the current recommended maximum amount of cholesterol for a day for a person with normal cholesterol levels, which may put you at risk for heart disease. And it's recommended that people with heart disease, high cholesterol, and diabetes avoid egg yolks altogether.

If you want to risk it, fine. But don't go around recommending that sort of diet to people who may not know better without a word of warning. There are plenty of other safe and healthy foods. It's not like people have to eat eggs in order to lose weight. So they don't have to find a replacement for them later if they can just do it now.

If you want to read more about it, check the American Heart Association's website:
"One egg contains about 213 milligrams of dietary cholesterol. The daily recommended cholesterol limit is less than 300 milligrams for people with normal LDL (bad) cholesterol levels...."
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3006030

The MayoClinic:
"Eggs are high in cholesterol, and a diet high in cholesterol can contribute to elevated blood cholesterol levels...."
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cholesterol/HQ00608
PostPosted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 1:49 pm


Your first maths equation is simple. To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you're consuming. And you're right that it sounds simple enough. But to be honest, there's a lot more to being healthy and losing weight/maintaining weight than what you've said. I don't know if you did this every night, but you said "usually a small frozen pizza". Even if you're varying the type of pizza, having pizza every day or even every other day isn't great for you. And if I wanted to lose fifty pounds, I'd be doing that for almost a year. That's a year of good nutrition out the window for the sake of losing weight. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the perfect diet, and although I'm aware I could do more exercise to lose weight if I wanted to, I'm maintaining my weight as healthily as I can.

To be honest, most people could probably lose the weight simply by doing more exercise. As for the weighing yourself thing, it sort of makes sense, but women close to their periods retain more fluids, so they weigh more. Weight does naturally fluctuate by up to half a stone, so I try not to worry about it too much.

Fran Salaska


!namorata

PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 12:10 am


BTW, hard-boiled eggs are negative 7 calories. You burn calories by eating them. So if you chop up haird-bouled eggs for your lunchtime sandwhich, your calorie intake will be a lot lower.
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