I just ate and I'm getting hungry again - I love eggs!



Rachel - might want to check out ordering liquid egg white online. It lasts a while, is all protein, and is really easy. Throw a half cup in with a couple eggs, cook some to throw on sandwiches, toss in a stir fry pan, etc. A protein shake before bed is also good for recovery and for maintaining LBM.



Also to help with hunger, if you like them think of picking up some frozen veggies (ginormous bag of broccoli comes to mind), and you can nuke a bowl of them with a meal and hardly count it as calories. When I have the munchies I will think nothing of a bowl of broccoli, couple apples, or celery/baby carrots. The fiber helps keep you full and the extra nutrients aren't too shabby either.



As for the protein in eggs, I think there's about 7g/egg, and half that in the white, so 6 whites + 2 eggs is well less than 40g of protein, which is about right for a meal...

Great goals! I plan to be back on track nutritionally in the next couple weeks - diet being 80-90% of any weight loss plan



I haven't counted calories in about 9 or 10 months, but I may go back to that for a few weeks as well. Basically I will be eating oatmeal and eggs for breakfast, nuts, pb, fruit, yogurt for morning snack, healthy lunch of meat and veggies, maybe brown rice/barley/quinoa, similar afternoon snack, and dinner similar to lunch.



The key to success will be having healthy food that is easy to prepare. I'll be ordering tubs of egg whites, getting cans of tuna, yogurt, unsalted almonds, keeping skim milk on hand for protein shakes, string cheese, and plenty of small apples and raw veggies to eat whenever I'm snacking out of boredom, etc.



Also I will be bringing my water intake back up to about 3qts/day, and getting back in the gym. I need to get back on resistance training and build my strength back up, as well as get that exercise in to improve mood and quality of sleep...



This isn't difficult, it's about building positive habits and learning to appreciate treating yourself well!

Great routine, but I wouldn't recommend starting with that. Hop on the Stronglifts 5x5 program, and when you can squat 1.5x your body weight, think about switching to the Milk and Squats program... This will give your body some time to adjust to lifting free weights and build a foundation of strength.



If you are doing well and still seeing good gains, it wouldn't hurt to keep on the 5x5 until you hit 2x your body weight in squat.



But as many mentioned, the most important part of this will be eating. You need to eat well/clean, and eat A LOT. Egg whites will be your friend

I've been out too long - what's this new Stronglifts with abs and Inverted Rows???

Good luck Rachel!! This looks like a great plan, especially with taking time and opportunity to continually re-evaluate. It's important to keep dedicating ourselves to a healthy lifestyle, and I've been neglecting that myself the last month!



Keep us in the loop, I'm interested to know how you're doing.

What is the shortest animal gestation period?

I just counted all my hair.

a,c

As soon as I can get to one, methinks I'll be taking that advice

All right, I just read the article and it's appalling. She draws inaccurate and illogical conclusions. Her point seems to be made in the last sentence, and is a valid one, but I find it incredibly irresponsible to have written the rest of this article for that one point. Bottom line is that exercise in addition to dietary modification is absolutely necessary for "fat people" to lose weight and be healthy. For example...



Scientist says (quoted by Sandy):

"...There is little evidence that suggests that exercise alone produces magnitudes of weight loss that are similar to what can be achieved with dietary modification."



What does that mean? Diet has a more significant effect on weight loss than does exercise. What does that imply? Exercise still promotes weight loss.



Sandy says:

"So if exercise alone doesn’t seem to work, then how about exercising longer?"



What?



Scientist Says:

"...When resistance exercise is combined with dietary energy restriction, there appears to be little benefit in terms of absolute weight loss. These results have been consistent across studies with energy intakes as low as 800 kcal/d or as high as approximately 1300 kcal/day."



Sandy Says:

"Even while eating starvation-level calories in clinical studies, resistance exercise had no effect on weight loss, according to the ACSM:"



OF COURSE!!! If you're starving yourself and trying to build muscle, something is gonna give!! This is an absurd statement and should have no bearing on the conclusion of this article. Writing this down is only going to serve to confuse the issue among the majority of the population, who are not knowledgeable about the subject. The Scottish government is recommending daily exercise and twice weekly resistance training - leave diet the same and add those and you're going to lose weight and improve your health.

Of course. There are only two data points and one environmental factor to consider here, at the most basic level, in terms of whether exercise leads to weight loss or not. Diet and exercise, and your rate of weight loss/gain. To measure the effect of either diet or exercise on the rate at which your weight changes, we must ensure that the other remains constant - this is science at the most empirical level.



So, if you're eating one way and your weight is constant, if you add exercise and maintain diet, you will lose weight (barring any health issues, this is infallible and not open to argument). As previously mentioned, exercise only creates a rather small caloric deficit, so it might just be a pound a month, but you will lose.



If you want to maximize your weight loss, you need to start thinking of eating in terms of fuel for your body, and you need to maximize your lean body mass by doing resistance training. But that's another thread I'm sure

And thanks for the "Welcome Backs"



It's nice to be home, and though I can't be all that physically active for quite a while, I'm going to be getting back in the groove. I need to figure out some sort of cardio I can do w/ one working leg!

I'm not sure what I think about this. Whether or not someone needs to lose weight, this is an important question - and where you find that answer is in determining if you're fit and healthy. If you look at American Society, not the attitudes you see expressed in a forum such as this or perhaps within your social circle, I think the first two may be somewhat accurate.



The target audience for this article is the obese. In that sense, your body would be working against you. It's like inertia, you've created this set-point that your body has adapted to and it tries to maintain that stasis. And, in an unhealthy manner, it is much easier to gain weight than to lose it. I could make terrible food choices and not exercise and in 3 months be right up around 300lbs again, putting on the weight that it took me a year to remove.



In terms of our cultural environment, this may be improving, but it is still working against being healthy. It costs more, takes more time, and isn't marketed properly. Do you see advertisements for eating healthy and exercising properly, with realistic expectations? No, you see ads for gimmicks and fads, with claims that are ridiculous and downright impossible to achieve in a healthy way.



The intent of the article, and especially items 6 & 7, is to prepare people that might be overwhelmed with the task. If you know what to expect, what frustrations you're going to have and what roadblocks will be there, even if they're only mental or implied, you will be better able to prepare yourself for success and to overcome them. Like when quitting smoking, it's important to recognize your triggers and come up with ways of dealing with them.



There's my 4 cents

As I type this, my friend is assembling a home gym in my office. On like DON-KEY KONG.



Unfortunately, due to my leg, I will be at a significant disadvantage only doing upper-body workouts...

I'm home, after 2 months of hospital beds and 2 weeks at the rents



(and down about 80lbs now)

Sometimes we don't realize this until we lose it for a bit!!



I liked the article, it had some good info. It did seem a little defeatist, but it's not easy and people need to understand that.

Thanks all, it's great to see the encouragement!!



After the 6th surgery on my left leg last night, it as finally started to show some positive changes. It looks as though they have salvaged everything that they can, and I will hopefully be meeting with a plastic surgeon by Monday to discuss how the wounds will be closed and what I might have left for muscle. Because of being ejected from my car, I've lost a huge amount of muscle from both sides of my lower leg as well as the front of my quad near the knee (so much that if I were put back together now, I would lack the muscle to lift my foot as well as the muscle they would generally use to replace that).



The plan is on Monday to close up the draining wounds and put back together what they can. Then, later in the week I need to get opened up again to have my ankle set (and likely re-fractured, it's been over 2 weeks). Once my ankle heals, which I'm told is about 7 weeks, I can start working on my knee. My MCL and ACL were totally trashed, and something happened to the meniscus, but I'm not clear on those details yet.



So, I think I might lose the million lb marathon



Joking aside, I am pretty terrified and frustrated. This is a long road ahead and it's not just a little intimidating.

I wish I could take that credit, but it was 2 workouts... I'm actually still sore from the squats, I HAVE to start doing those 2x/week or they're going to kill me every damn time



I AM still on break from the shoulder, so that 41k is going to be pretty much my *weekly* quota for a bit.. .

I usually get it for 1.99/lb... it's 93% lean, so a LOT cheaper than ground beef, though from a consistency perspective it doesn't hold up quite as well. Makes good burgers, but I generally just make 'pot-o-stuff' that is easy to throw into a container for work.

Careful! This one is usually what kills my diet... Pasta is cheap and fruit/veggies are expensive... I've pretty much eaten everything in my house, though, excepting several cans of beans and a bunch of wheat pasta. I need to restock, throw out anything that isn't healthy, and make sure to budget for things to snack on that won't hurt.



One thing that helps is cooking at home - I can get a couple lbs of ground turkey, or a pork roast, and cook that w/ beans, veggie, and spices and it will be lunches for a week and some dinners. The trick w/ the pork roast is to pull the pork so it creates a more dense dish. Cook up some brown rice/quinoa/barley to go w/ it and you have SEVERAL satisfying meals that can be kept frozen for a couple months.

None shall pass!

still on break for shoulder, def. over did it yesterday...



Monday:

squat: 135x18, 185x12, 185x10, 225x6, 225x6 - 9200

bent row: 165x6x5 - 4950



Tuesday:

chin up (assisted): 220x6x3 - 3960

weight dip: 120x15x3 - 5400

bent row: 135x8, 145x6x4 - 4560

lat pull down: 100x10x2, 120x6, 110x7 - 3490

tri cable push: 60x12, 70x8, 65x8x2 - 2320

dumbbell shrug: 150x12x4 - 7200



Total: 41,080



Total So Far: 690,208

damn, that lasts a month?? that explains a lot...

I would rather that than the idiot doing barbell curls/Overhead Press/Dead Lift that is just too lazy to lift the bar from the floor... It's called a "squat" rack for a reason, dick. for the most part, it seems the guys at my gym that are actually doing squats are actually doing them right. With only 1 squat rack, the half-rep fakers are happy on the Smith Machine.

Thanks for the support on quitting smoking! It finally feels different this time, and it feels great to not be a slave to addiction. It's still tough sometimes, but I haven't had one puff in over three weeks, and though I asked my friend to let me have a drag once, I was actually very happy he said no







I have a tendency to agree, but the difference from my ideal (losing 1.5-2lbs every single week) is that I'm exercising at about 60-75%, and my diet would maybe average about 300 extra calories/day...



Hmmm... Looking at the 2 month weight graph... Okay, I maintained a 1+lb/week loss over the first month, and a 1lb/week gain over the second. I don't *think* that my change in behavior could account for so much gain (I'm certainly not on a 7000 calorie/week swing, maybe on the worst week would be 2500-3000 cal difference combining diet and exercise).



Does anyone know what sort of effect quitting smoking can/does have on metabolism?



So the plan remains, beef up the exercise and get a little more strict w/ the diet again.

So, it seems I've hit a plateau of sorts. It is unexpected because I still have so much weight to lose, but I guess after losing about 50lbs it kind of makes sense. What has contributed to this:



Quitting Smoking! Metabolism has likely slowed a bit w/ dropping a pack-a-day habit cold turkey. It has been just over 3 weeks, and in that time I've put on 8lbs.

Lax eating habits I no longer specifically track my calories, and the smoking cessation has lead to an increase in appetite (though this is generlly healthy calories). Also, my weekend consumption has been bad - fewer meals that are on the whole rather unhealthy, with increased frequency of bad snacks (girlfriend has introduced me to 2 new friends, Ben & Jerry).

Inconsistent exercise I am in the gym generally 3x-5x per week, but may go as many as 4 or 5 days without going. Also, I had not been doing cardio.



So, over the next few weeks... I am going to:



1. Not go more than 3 days without exercise (if this means jogging/running outside a day while I'm in Boston, then that's what I have to do).

2. Do cardio a minimum of 2x/week (conservative goal), but really look for 3x/week. Basically these first two are about mixing up my routine a bit. I will be swimming a little, but concentrating my cardio on running/jogging to work through the c25k plan.

3. Be more consistent with my diet, maybe going as far as to track on fitday for a couple weeks. Get more things like baby carrots and apples to make up for the increased appetite/cravings. Also use sugar-free candy/cough drops as they work on the oral fixation. Have a bad meal or two on the weekends, but make sure to keep to constant grazing, having breakfast, drinking lots of water.



Any thoughts or suggestions? Is it reasonable that I am indeed hitting a plateau, even though I am still at least 60lbs overweight? And has anyone else had a similar experience and worked through it?



Thanks!

-d

sorry, disappeared... It's actually the barnacle...

what animal has the largest penis to body mass ratio? (and 'Dave' is not the answer)...

nope, that's upside down and backwards



(as if I were upside down)...

NOON