A Few Weight Loss/Exercise Questions

[Christine]

Hi Everyone!! I posted a few weeks back about not being able to stop eating! Well, I used some of your tips and I have been able to control some of my hunger and get started on a program (of my own). I started about 2.5 weeks ago. I've been watching my portions, cutting out all the junk, and consistently walking 5-6 times per week. I have managed to lose 2 lbs of the 10 that I want to lose.

Over this past weekend, I was pretty good, yet I woke up this morning and the scale hadn't budged. In fact, I swear I got 1/2 pound back. Here is what I did this weekend:

Saturday:
Breakfast - One serving of long cooking oats with 1 tsp brown sugar, 2 TBSP dried fruit, cinammon, and skim milk.

Lunch: Whole Wheat English Muffin with Natural Peanut Butter
Plain, non-fat yogurt with Blueberries and 1 tsp. honey

Dinner: Pulled Chicken Barbeque Sandwiches on Hamburger Rolls topped with marinated cucumbers (2) - (A Cooking Light Recipe)
Frozen Green Beans Medley

Snack: Haagen Daz Sorbet and Yogurt Bar (90 calories)

SUNDAY:
Breakfast - Same oatmeal as Saturday
Snack - 3/4 cup lowfat cottage cheese with pineapples
8 Triscuit Thin Crisps
Lunch: WW Tuscan Chicken Entree

Snack: 20 Grapes

Dinner: 1 slice of white meat Turkey Loaf (my son loves the stuff)
1 cup cooked egg noodles with spray butter
2 cups cooked cauliflower with spray butter
1 whole mango

Snack: Haagen Daz Sorbet Bar
5 Triscuit Thin Crisps
10 grapes.

On top of this, I exercised 2 miles on Saturday morning using Walk Away the Pounds and on Sunday morning I took a 3 mile outdoor walk.

Trying to figure out why the scale is going UP.... It's not that Time of Month either.

Any ideas????

 

[DMickey28]

I just wanted to say hi!!!

Keep in mind I am very new to this and everybody has different things that work for them.

The first thing that came to mind was carbs. I may be way off base...try going to fitday.com and inputting what you are eating. It really helps to open your eyes to the vaule of different foods. For example...I love rice...rice pilaf to be exact. I cut down my portions to half a cup. When I input that into fitday.com it shows me that even half a cup is like 40g carbs at least... no health value either. I am now trying to get into brown rice when I feel like rice.

Sometimes it's easy to get confused and mislead by all the different diets out there. My problem with dieting, is not eating enough. If I eat to much I feel like I am not being productive. The key is finding the good foods to eat.....

I hope this helped a little bit.... I would look at cutting carbs back some and see how that works. Also check out fitday.com...it's nice just to see it in front of you!!

 

[catherine]

I'm a little confused when you say that you haven't lost anything over the weekend. Do you mean that you weighed yourself on Friday, and then again Mon. morning, and you hadn't lost anything? If that is the case, that is pretty normal for weight loss. That is why I only weigh myself once a week.

 

[disneygoof]

Looking at your menus quickly, it seems like very little food. If you don't eat enough, you'll stall your loss because your body will go into "starvation mode". Also, you didn't note how much water you've had on a daily basis. It can be a pain until it becomes a habit, but water does make a huge difference.

I also agree with Catherine that weekly differences are more important than daily, and would add that the first few weeks of weight loss are more dramatic than later weeks, with few exceptions. Slow and steady wins the race; keep at it and you'll have results before too long.

Have a magical day!

 

[Christine]

Thanks for the replies.

After looking over my food intake, I did notice a lot of *carbs*. It is hard for me to get used to cutting them back because I was raised in the era of "lots of fruit is good" etc. This morning I tried to do better by just having a bowl of high fiber cereal (no fruit), with skim milk and then a hard boiled egg. Can't say that I felt anymore satisfied and I was ravenous by lunch.

As for the weekend issue. I was very gradually (over the past two weeks) watching the scale go down by small amounts. On Friday evening I was at my low point and very happy. I weighed myself on Saturday and was the same. I weighed myself this morning and it seemed to be up by a half pound. I also felt puffy in my face so I'm hoping it is just water. Maybe the WW's entree had too much sodium in it. Maybe all the fruit plumped me up. It is just so discouraging.

Water: I cannot drink a lot of water. I am not a drinking kind of person. Never have, never will be. I drink about 2 8 oz glasses of water a day, about 3 cups of tea a day, and maybe 1 diet soda. All that will have me running to the rest room. I was reading Shape Magazine yesterday and was happy to read this little snippet from their "Good Advice That's Not" article:

Old Rule: Drinking lots of water will help you lose weight.

Real Deal: There's no strong evidence to show that drinking water will help you lose weight or fill up your stomach enough that you will be less hungry. Your body doesn't treat water as food, so drinking it doesn't affect hunger (thank you, I've known that for 2 decades). Still it's a good idea to stay well-hydrated, both for general health and so you don't mistake thirst for hunger and overeat. Women need the equivalent of about 11 glasses of fluid a day, about 80 percent of it from beverages (coffee and tea count now!!) and the remaining 20 percent from foods, especially fruits and vegetables.

So--I might be a little short on fluids but I feel better about what I am doing liquid-wise. I have always had an overactive bladder. Fortunately I don't have any incontinence issues but the pressure I get when I drink often is quite uncomfortable, especially if I have to go to a meeting or even exercise. I can't tell you the number of times that I set out to walk for 2-3 miles but had to turn around 15 minutes into my walk because I knew I'd be in agony if I went to the whole way. Not fun, but that's my life!!

Anyway, I had a Subway sandwich today (one of the 6 grams of fat ones) and a half bag of baked Lays. Of course, I'm hungry again (2 hours later) but I'm gonna have a cheese stick and then hopefully make it until dinner. I'm also going to the Madonna concert tonight so maybe I'll dance off some pounds!!