I bought some tofu the other day thinking it might be good for me, but it's just not as sexy to grill as a steak or a pork chop! ~And even those aren't terrible for me, but portion control needs to be exercised.

Looking forward to getting my pedometer. I'm very curious how my steps size up to everybody else. A sedentary job in a comfy chair on wheels doesn't help.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

I think we should impose a posting limit on the scrawny thin people

Hehehe, watch it Jeff, that might cost you some beers one day!

True friends love what is on the inside, not the outside.

Some love both Uli!

I'll be happy to buy you a few anytime my friend.

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Well, it is Monday, so I pulled out our old bathroom scale, blew off all the dust and, with much trepidation, settled my corpulence upon it.

Pudgy Little Raccoon Weigh-In #1

168.2 pounds
(That is 76 kg; 294.23g for those of you smart enough to have the metric system.)

At a height of 5 feet, 3.5 inches (Hey!!! Every half inch counts when you are my height!!!) I currently have a BMI of 29.32, which is in the "over weight" category and bordering on "obese". How flattering...

Well, time to go eat a sensible breakfast full of good food choices!

But as Uli says, it is more the person inside that matters.

Very true, however as one who is 14 stone(196 pounds), 6 ft tall and a BMI of 26.5 and officially overweight, I will be looking at some of the alternatives suggested on the NHS website.

Extra weight puts a strain on the body and can obviously lead to complications in later life.

I will see how it goes.

Just as an aside before I started my "walking" I was 14 stone 8 pounds.

Now to not be "overweight" I need to lose nearly a stone (11 pounds)

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My BMI is 28,6.

Life itself can lead to some complications Bernie.

20 years ago you simply took your height (metric) removed the 1 in front of the height and you knew your perfect weight.
Plus minus 10%.
I would still fit then.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

I've always thought that those BMI charts were skewed so that people would want to lose weight. I'm heavier than I ought to be, but by no means obese.

I have a coworker at the USDA Cotton Classing Office who stands (when he can) 6'7" and weights over 400 lbs. He wears sweatsuits with pockets, and slip-on shoes. Last October he tripped and fell in a part of the lab where there is nothing he could use to pull himself upright - it took two of us to lift him onto his feet, and I had a sore shoulder for 3 days after. He spends most of his time in a heavy-duty office chair, and has all the health issues you would expect of someone his size. Every season he shows up for work, we are surprised he hasn't had a stroke or heart attack, and we pray he won't have one at work. And he isn't quite 50 years old.

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

I've always thought that those BMI charts were skewed so that people would want to lose weight.

I totally agree on that Donald.
"You can`t do this, you can`t eat that and you can`t have this"
I`m tired of it.

Of course for Jeff its a different circumstance.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

I've always thought that those BMI charts were skewed so that people would want to lose weight.

I totally agree on that Donald.
"You can`t do this, you can`t eat that and you can`t have this"
I`m tired of it.

Of course for Jeff its a different circumstance.

I am trying to make equally delicious but more health forward food choices. I'm also trying to just eat a little less of those things that I know are not the best food choices.

I'm trying not to think of it as a "you can't" situation and more of a "you can, but not as much as you used to have" situation.

I've always thought that those BMI charts were skewed so that people would want to lose weight.

I totally agree on that Donald.
"You can`t do this, you can`t eat that and you can`t have this"
I`m tired of it.

Of course for Jeff its a different circumstance.

I am trying to make equally delicious but more health forward food choices. I'm also trying to just eat a little less of those things that I know are not the best food choices.

I'm trying not to think of it as a "you can't" situation and more of a "you can, but not as much as you used to have" situation.

Thats a good way to look at it Ang.

Even tough i like you the way you are tho.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

If my flu keeps up I'll
lose weight in no time.....

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Exercise is good for many, many, many physical and mental health reasons. I am, by no means, telling people not to exercise. I do not mean to bash exercise in any way, but OMG... as a weight loss measure alone I have just discovered that it has VERY limited effectiveness!!!

Let's say that I snack on 4 ounces (1/2 cup) of yummy, delicious, high quality vanilla ice cream with a calorie intake of 230 calories. (Now right away I am living in Fantasyland here. 1/2 cup of ice cream is not very much. I typically eat twice that in a sitting. Still, let us just say that I was a very, very, very good little raccoon and I portion controlled my vanilla ice cream to exactly 1/2 a cup.)

To burn off 230 calories I would need to do any TWO of the following.

64 mins walking
26 mins jogging
19 mins swimming
35 mins cycling

(Information courtesy of the "Calorie King" website.)

I am, by nature, a sedentary raccoon. I just don't see me walking for an hour and then getting on a bike for an additional half hour of exercise. I suppose the argument to this would be that by exercising aerobically for 99 minutes a day I would eventually replace some of my fat with muscle, and thereby have a higher metabolism for burning calories each day. Maybe there would be some long term payoff's...

I suppose that the good news is that people who are unable to exercise due to physical limitations can lose weight "just" by cutting caloric intake.

The bad news is that it is virtually impossible to lose substantial amounts of weight just by increasing physical activity.

Cutting caloric intake seems inevitable. Rats!!!

Exercise is good for many, many, many physical and mental health reasons. I am, by no means, telling people not to exercise. I do not mean to bash exercise in any way, but OMG... as a weight loss measure alone I have just discovered that it has VERY limited effectiveness!!!

Let's say that I snack on 4 ounces (1/2 cup) of yummy, delicious, high quality vanilla ice cream with a calorie intake of 230 calories. (Now right away I am living in Fantasyland here. 1/2 cup of ice cream is not very much. I typically eat twice that in a sitting. Still, let us just say that I was a very, very, very good little raccoon and I portion controlled my vanilla ice cream to exactly 1/2 a cup.)

To burn off 230 calories I would need to do any TWO of the following.

64 mins walking
26 mins jogging
19 mins swimming
35 mins cycling

(Information courtesy of the "Calorie King" website.)

I am, by nature, a sedentary raccoon. I just don't see me walking for an hour and then getting on a bike for an additional half hour of exercise. I suppose the argument to this would be that by exercising aerobically for 99 minutes a day I would eventually replace some of my fat with muscle, and thereby have a higher metabolism for burning calories each day. Maybe there would be some long term payoff's...

I suppose that the good news is that people who are unable to exercise due to physical limitations can lose weight "just" by cutting caloric intake.

The bad news is that it is virtually impossible to lose substantial amounts of weight just by increasing physical activity.

Cutting caloric intake seems inevitable. Rats!!!

The thing about exercise is that it increases your metabolic rate so you continue to burn more calories for hours after you've done exercise. I have found exercise a far more efficient way of losing weight than diet alone. Diet alone is depressing and horrible. My weight tends to creep on slowly. I was fairly slim when I moved to Canada, because I cycled everywhere and really limited my consumption of sweet things (cakes, cookies, icecream, all the things that make life worth living). I was slim and beautiful and all I was told I was supposed to be. I was also very cold.

I moved to Canada and I continued to cycle my son to school and back twice a day, but I met my future husband and he kept making me cakes. I like cake very much. Cakes are awesome. As long as I cycled I did not gain the weight, but then my son got to an age where having mum cycle with him to the school gates was embarrassing and he made me leave him further and further from school until I no longer went. I began to gain weight despite efforts to go swimming and walk. Then I got a car and that was the end of that and I had to buy bigger clothes.

Now I go to the gym 3 times a week and I try to fit a cycle in. I haven't lost a single pound but I have definitely got thinner and more toned. I am really trying to cut down on the cake. I like cake.

Portion size is a huge way to reduce calorie intake. You train your stomach to eat certain amounts, the more you eat, the more it will stretch and you will have trouble feeling full.

I struggle with my weight, the only thing that I know for a fact that works for me is exercise. About 20 to 40 mins a day. The best way is fit it into your daily routine. So cycle or walk rather than drive. Go to classes so that other people can motivate you to push yourselves. I have difficulty doing that much exercise simply because I don't have time, but I know it works.

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Reality Internet Personality

...Now I go to the gym 3 times a week and I try to fit a cycle in. I haven't lost a single pound but I have definitely got thinner and more toned. I am really trying to cut down on the cake. I like cake....

Mmmmmm... cake!!! What's not to like?!!!

1 slice of chocolate cake (1/12th of a standard layer cake) with chocolate frosting is 506 calories.

To burn 506 calories, you could do any of the following TWO activities.

140 mins walking
58 mins jogging
42 mins swimming
77 mins cycling

(Numbers, again, courtesy of the website CalorieKing.)

Es, you are clearly one of those people who has exercised enough to turn fat into muscle - a feat to be celebrated and applauded!!! I do not know if CalorieKing includes the effects of increased metabolic rate in its calculations of exercise required in the "burn off" of foods. Probably they do not. The numbers would vary so much from person to person that I think any effect would be impossible to calculate validly for inclusion in a venue like a reference website. I guess my point is that, at least for me, exercise in the absence of actually cutting down on food intake would not result in weight loss.

Again, I am not against exercise! I love swimming and I genuinely enjoy walking our neighbor's dog, Maya, up and down the hills of our hilly SF East Bay suburb. I enjoy gardening as well, which can be vigorous if it involves turning soil or turning compost. All I am saying is that I am surprised at how much exercise is required, over our basic human metabolic requirements, to "burn off" extra foods we may enjoy. The CalorieKing website may not be 100% accurate, but it seems to be largely consistent with other food-exerciser calculators out there. I'm sort of a numbers person and I find the numbers to be educational. Knowledge is power.

And by the way - WELCOME, Es, to what is turning out to be a very fun and popular thread!!!

They wined, beered and fed me at least twice a day at a restaurant. Somedays even breakfast. Starters and desserts some days too. What saved me was a lot of walking. I love to walk. Distance is not a deterant, but heat is here in CA.
So in 2015 with a more sensible meal schedule, I might just loose weight.

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Pluto will always be a planet to me.

Seti Ambassador
Not to late to order an Anni Shirt

I've been seeing a lot of Marie Osmond and Sharon Osbourne on tv advertising weight loss plans. I've even seen the girl(Melissa Joan Hart) who played Sabrina, the Teenage Witch advertising one. I guess those meal plans work ok. Anyone ever try one?

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

fifteen minute laughing burns between 10 and 40 calories.

Boy, I must be burning a lot of calories then as I laugh quite a lot:) I know something else that burns qute some calories but I won't post it now (hehehe;)))

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Music
Pictures

fifteen minute laughing burns between 10 and 40 calories.

Boy, I must be burning a lot of calories then as I laugh quite a lot:) I know something else that burns qute some calories but I won't post it now (hehehe;)))

LOL

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

I've been seeing a lot of Marie Osmond and Sharon Osbourne on tv advertising weight loss plans. I've even seen the girl(Melissa Joan Hart) who played Sabrina, the Teenage Witch advertising one. I guess those meal plans work ok. Anyone ever try one?

One of my co-workers has been getting those meals for a couple of years. Initially she lost substantial amounts of weight, but she appeared to put most of the weight back on within a year of hitting her lowest weight. Ironically, she is still eating those meals. She claims they "help", so she must still be down a few pounds. The food looks TERRIBLE. Also the meal plans instruct the buyer to supplement the frozen/microwave-to-eat meals with fresh salads and fruits, so they are not really cooking free. The meals are costly too, as there are built in costs for processing, packaging and shipping. Lots of money for bad, processed, airplane-style food seems like an AWFUL idea to me. Maybe I would feel differently if I hated cooking.

On a different note, I woke up at 4am this morning H U N G R Y!!! This is atypical for me, as I usually eat such substantial dinners that I never get hungry at night. I have many bad food habits, but eating after dinner does not tend to be one of them.

Initially I told myself that hunger is good. It means that I did not give my body enough calories that day to maintain the status quo. Hunger is a signal from your body that says "Send down some food before we have to take drastic measures and burn some fat reserves." Of course this what we are trying to do here, but the sensation of hunger can be persistent and distracting. At 4:30am I was still awake and feeling hungry, so I tried the posted suggestion of drinking a big glass of water. I was skeptical that it would make a difference. I was under the impression that hunger signals are triggered by blood sugar levels. I figured that water would not up the glucose in my blood and alter that signals my body was sending me.

I was wrong. The GI tract must be involved somehow in the signaling process. As soon as I drank the water, the sensation of hunger went away and I fell asleep again. I awoke at my usual time and ate a sensible breakfast.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

That was a wonderful suggestion!!!

Angela, I'm not a bit surprised about what you had to say about those diet meal plans. I pretty much figured that was the case. I imagine those celebrities help the companies sell a kazillion crummy dinners.

I'm glad the water helped you. I personally have to have it ice cold.

Still waiting on my pedometer. ~Should be delivered tomorrow. (No steps involved in this purchase)

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Angela, I'm not a bit surprised about what you had to say about those diet meal plans. I pretty much figured that was the case. I imagine those celebrities help the companies sell a kazillion crummy dinners.

I'm glad the water helped you. I personally have to have it ice cold.

Still waiting on my pedometer. ~Should be delivered tomorrow. (No steps involved in this purchase)

Got a free one out of a packet of breakfast cereals a few years ago. My daughter grew to loathe it almost straight away as it only registered about one-fifth of her footsteps. After a few days and more than a bit annoyed she gave it a shake and it jumped 700 steps. After that - "walking" involved eating an icecream and periodically shaking the pedometer at the tv :) She circumnavigated the earth in just one day :)