Weight Loss/healthy Living Support Thread

Who's on a quest to lose weight?.... Maintain weight?... Gain weight? (I guess! lol)

What are your planned methods for food and exercise?

What are your goals?

Let's support and encourage each other here....

This post has been edited by FunBetty on Oct 18 2011, 09:22 AM

I'm in maintenance mode. I've reached my goal, but I've also realized how easy it is to slip when I went to the Keys week before last (thereby putting on hold my workouts and of course my careful eating habits). Gained three pounds. Just ate too much down there. The good news though is that it's already off. And I didn't even start working out immediately, because I wasn't feeling well the first week I was back. But I was back to my normal eating, and I got back to my goal weight.

Starting yesterday, I got back to working out. It felt good, but I purposely didn't work as hard as I was. With two weeks off, I'm going to build back up gradually.

I'm definitely in loss mode. Struggled with a few months of emotional eating (I know, it was bad, but it was my coping mechanism at the time). Ready to put that behind me.

I'm on a calorie budget. I"m using an app on my phone (myfitnesspal), which is cool because it can also scan barcodes of foods and you just put in quantity of servings.

For working out, going to alternate between walking (until the weather gets too bad), Wii Zumba, and I got a groupon for a local fitness center for 10 bootcamp classes (2x's a week).

Right now my short term goal is for my wedding bands to not be so snug (I recently had them sized down, but have gained some weight back).

I need to be in loss mode, but I've been in gain mode for the last year! I think I have "found" every lb someone else has lost

I think I have to finish up the pan of lasagna that I made this weekend before I can convince myself to start counting calories again though!

So the app for your phone FB, does it actually give you a calorie count for what's in the food if there's a barcode?

I've always wished there was a web site that you could put a recipe in (one that you normally make) and it would give you a calorie count, but I've never found one.

Another pet peeve of mine is when they do give calories it's "by serving" - well you can't always tell what a serving is. I mean if you make a pot of soup or a casserole, you can't always tell what 1/6 of it is, kwim? If they would say by the cup or something it would be easier to tell just what you are getting, imo.

I agree with that. And sometimes I don't know what I'm buying.

Like I get scrambled eggs and turkey sausage at the cafeteria at work. There are no calorie counters so when I go to plug it in, it gives me like 500 choices of turkey sausage links. Very confusing.

I want nice and easy...simple...and it's not like that anymore.

The app does tell the calories (but also the other nutrition content). And I measure it all out by the cup and half cup. I don't have a scale, so I think at some point I need to get one!!

Tink, I'd imagine that in the cafeteria it would be hard for such things (unless you brought your own measuring cup! lol).

HSG - when I do make something (and the recipe doesn't include the nutrition content), I get all mathematical and calculate based on all of the ingredients.

Although, sometimes you just have to guestimate!!

But sometimes you have to measure out the whole casserole then, to find out just how many cups there are in it once it's made... or am I missing an easy way to do this.

For instance - I make a whole chicken hot dish. Measure out everything, add up the calories in each ingredient and have the total calories for the dish. Then I have to measure it by the cup to see how many cups there are in it in order to know how many 1 cup servings there are (things like noodles and rice etc. get "bigger" as they cook, so measurements would change- right?). That can make a mess and at least another dish needed to measure into, and thus wash (sticking tongue out smile here).

Or am I missing an easy way of doing this???

Yeah I get what you're saying.

And no, haven't figured out an easy way to do that. Maybe in 10 years that technology will exist!!!

I am in loss mode.

Last March I started walking just a few days before I had a doctor's appointment. When I went to the doctor my weight was way higher than it should be, my bp was 145/95, blood sugar levels and cholesterol levels came back slightly high too.

The fibro pain was so bad that it was hard for me to walk around my driveway. Eventually I got to where I could walk around the block. Now I walk an average of 7 miles a day.

I went again in August and found that I had gained 4 lbs! A few days later I got the news that my blood sugar levels and cholesterol levels were still slightly high. I told the nurse that I didn't understand how I could be doing all that walking and still be in the same boat health wise? She reminded me that my blood pressure was now down to 122/80 and suggested that I start using a tape measure. She also suggested that I go on a diet that they recommend for diabetics.

I've only lost 10 lbs (and the 4 that I gained) since March. Last March my size 18 jeans fit OK. Last month I took all those jeans to Goodwill because they were too big and picked up some size 12 jeans.

Why did my clothing size shrink that much, but my scale won't budge?

Roberta (did I get that right?), I think I wouldn't worry too much about the scale too much for now, everything else sounds great! It could be water weight or something. I can't get over the 7 miles a day!

You're gaining muscle, Roberta and that's good.

Muscle is denser than fat so you're leaner with more muscle than more fat. That's a good thing.

And that's AWESOME for you!!!

I personally need to loose about 90-100 pounds to get to the weight I want. I don't want to go less than 100 at all. That would be too skinny IMO.

My problem is I'm always soooo tired that by the time I get ready to go run, I'm so exhausted I can't.

Everyone keeps saying gaining muscle. 7 months seems to be an awfully long time to be gaining muscle though.

It took me about 3 months work get up to 7 miles a day. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with winter coming up though. Indiana is pretty cold in January.

Ah, muscle, that's it! About the 7 miles, do you walk it all at once? How long does it take you? I'm so impressed! I've been walking for a year and I can do maybe 3, but that's it.

I am working on losing, though I had a gain this morning at weigh in.
Ok, so maybe I wasn't surprised since I ate McDonalds on Saturday night and Sonic on Sunday. No more of that for me though.

I work out at the Y, and my goal this week is at least 4 days. I went last night, and will be going again tonight, and plan on Wednesday and Friday.

I've been stocking up on the McDonald's happy meal buckets for Halloween gifts. Probably not helping my cause much...LOL

The seven miles is done in two walks. One in the morning and one in the evening.

My dd works at McDonald's. We have quite a few of those halloween buckets.

Shoot...I should have just had you send them to me. I'm about burned out of Happy Meals...LOL

I survived day 1!

Of course, BCB decided *right* when we were ready to walk out the door that he was tired aka cranky for a nap...so he then slept for two hours.

Just enough time to get in a 12 minute walk and go pick up CL from school....

...but I got some housework done last night! That should count for calories.

Ok Miss Tina. This is allllll your fault, but I'm going to try to join you on this weight loss journey.

So this morning I made a egg muffin at home. One mixed grain muffin, one slice of cheese and one egg. 240 calories.

So, I wonder if I can keep it up through lunch.

We'll probably go to Subway today because I "owe" a co-worker lunch (she bought last time she was here) and that's where she likes to go. But they have some pretty low calorie, low fat sandwhiches so I should be Ok.

Dinner - hmm, might have to stop at the store before going home to get something semi healthy!

Well, if I'm going to get blamed for *something*, then this isn't too bad.

Just got back in from taking a walk. Only planned on walking for 30 min, but BCB fell asleep, so I walked for another 30 minutes. 3 miles down for the day and officially negative in cals.

HSG - have you tried egg beaters? Twice the egg for half the calories. I like volume in my food. lol.

I need to get you a recipe for chicken parmesan meatloaf. A-Maz-Ing.

ETA HERE is the link.

This post has been edited by FunBetty on Oct 19 2011, 09:19 AM

This is going to be a bit of a drive-by post as I've got to get busy with some offline stuff.


Tina - I'll join this thread!
I'll have to come back later to elaborate on my goals and such.



*~*~*~*~*
Have y'all heard of SparkPeople?

It's an extremely comprehensive health, fitness & weight loss website. Because it's so comprehensive, it can be somewhat daunting in the beginning; but once you spend some time in there, you'll come to know your way around, and you'll also know what parts of it to claim as "yours".


HSG, SparkPeople does have a calorie counter per serving; and they've even improved that aspect of it recently; specifically with making it easier to calculate servings sizes and what not.

As to how to know how many cups are in a particular recipe, I usually just go by how how much my container holds. For example, I know that when I make Chicken and Dumplings, my stock pot holds 6 quarts. If I want a serving size to be 1 cup (ha! right), then I know there's 4 cups to a quart, so my stock pot makes 24 cups of chicken & dumplings.

You can do the same thing for a baking dish; just pour water into the dish up to the level where the food would be, then pour the water into a measuring cup to determine how much the baking dish holds.



If anyone wants to find me on SparkPeople, you're most certainly very welcomed to do so. I've got my SparkPage set to private, so, once over there (and once you've registered), you'll have to send me a SparkMail so I can add you to my friends list. Just let me know who you are by your user handle here. (Each person gets their own "SparkPage" - it's fun!)


I'm actually in the midst of taking a bit of a break from SparkPeople . . . but if any of y'all send me friend requests over there, I may come back a bit earlier from my break. I'm just trying to sort out a new routine I've got going for my weekdays regarding everything I want to do.


By the way, I need someone who *isn't* already my Sparkfriend to PM me here so I can tell you my username over there, so you can then test it to see if it's actually set to private. I recently went through and gleaned my friendlist and renamed myself over there. So, PM me (here) if you're interested in finding me (there).

And, for YOU here who is also my friend over there (and you know who you are) . . . if you could test it out to make sure that you can still see my page, that would be great! And then, maybe just PM me here, please?

I've never had the page set to private until now, so I want to make sure everything is working the way it's supposed to be.


SparkPeople's website is: www.sparkpeople.com


Here's to y'all's good health and to mine, as well!

Tina, I want the chicken parmesan meatloaf recipe too!!!

Denise, I put the link in my previous post.

I'm going to make it again tomorrow night. One of our youth workers is coming over for dinner. Not sure on the nutrition info, but it's ground chicken (instead of beef). I need to do some calculations on that.

Well, if I'm going to get blamed for *something*, then this isn't too bad.

Just got back in from taking a walk. Only planned on walking for 30 min, but BCB fell asleep, so I walked for another 30 minutes. 3 miles down for the day and officially negative in cals.

HSG - have you tried egg beaters? Twice the egg for half the calories. I like volume in my food. lol.

I need to get you a recipe for chicken parmesan meatloaf. A-Maz-Ing.

ETA HERE is the link.

Sounds great FB, and is freezable too.

So did you figure out calories? I didn't see it listed on the recipe. ETA: Oops- I saw your later post saying you hadn't done this yet. So get busy on it already...

And no, I haven't tried Eggbeaters yet. I do often use one whole egg and then add just whites if needed though.

This post has been edited by HSG on Oct 19 2011, 11:50 AM