Blonde will make thin ....Here we go again !

[leethefish]

Weight loss, then. Forget the weight watchers this, slim fast that, the diet pills, that thing that electrocutes your abs, getting your stomach stapled, "health foods" and anything explicitly labelled "low calorie," or "low fat." Losing weight basically boils down to 2 things:

1. Eating less
2. Moving around a bit more

Here are a couple of things that are super easy to change, and not only will the pounds continue to fall off, but you will also feel fitter and healthier for it.

1. Drink water

The single thing that scientists look for when trying to assess if there could be or could have been life on other planets is water. This is because water is so crucial to life. Things cannot live without water. So why have you consumed 3 diet cokes, an orange juice from concentrate, a red bull, 2 pints of lager and a cup of tea with 3 artificial sweeteners, and not a single glass of life-giving water?

Try this. The first thing you do in the morning after you brush your teeth and before you get in the shower: slam one glass of water and sip another. This will be more effective at waking your brain up than a cup of tea or coffee and it will fill you up a little to help moderate the size of your breakfast portion (as well as the numerous overall health benefits that come with drinking more water.)

Shoot for 6-8 glasses of water a day. The following are also fine:

 - A glass of milk a day.
 - If you like tea or coffee then help yourself to a cup or two a day, but if you need to sweeten it then please use a small amount of sugar instead of sweetener.
 - A glass of red wine or 2 per week

However, ditch the diet sodas, ditch the fruit juices (that includes smoothies) and definitely ditch the energy drinks. This is an unbelievably simple way of cutting out calories, and also improve the overall health of your entire body, inside and out. You'll be running for the bathroom every 20 minutes to begin with, but your body will adjust to the amount of water it's consuming.

2. Walk places

This is an easy one for me, because I make my own hours so I can pretty much pick a time I feel like going for a walk in the big beautiful fields right next to my house. I appreciate not everybody is in such a relaxed situation, and between scrambling to to get to work at 8am, getting home at 6pm, feeding the kids, and watching Manchester United lose the most embarrassing penalty shootout in the history of televised football, there's not much time to go for a leisurely stroll.

If you're being honest with yourself, though, there are probably journeys that you use the car for that you could feasibly walk, such as a trip down the supermarket to get some vegetables for next week's dinners. Also, if you get weekends off work, you can get the family together and go for a walk around the park. Also, is there really anything stopping you from setting your alarm for an hour earlier, putting your favourite songs or audiobooks on your iPod and taking a 30-60 minute walk around the block? An early morning stroll pre-breakfast is another fantastically effective way of waking yourself up to face the day ahead.

I hope this helps. Let me know how you guys get on and I'll be sure to post some more simple lifestyle changes in the future.

Some really simple advice ... Thanks Sean

So many times I'll take the car which is only a short walk !

I don't if I'm honest drink enough water although probably most in our home when I smoked I drank litres & litres ..... Strange !

[BorntoBubble]

I drink loads of water now when exercising but never really drink it at any other points in the day. Not sure why really need to replace 2 cans of diet coke a day with another litre of water. Its cheaper for one but much better for me in the long run! Over a year that would save me like £200 :/

[RED-DOG]

I can't get my head around this forcing yourself to drink more water concept. Use it to replace sugary drinks sure, but drinking for the sake of it? Why?

[leethefish]

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/07/9-great-reasons-to-drink-water-and-how.html.     




Weight loss
Water is one of the best tools for weight loss, first of all because it often replaces high-calorie drinks like soda and juice and alcohol with a drink that doesn't have any calories. But it's also a great appetite suppressant, and often when we think we're hungry, we're actually just thirsty. Water has no fat, no calories, no carbs, no sugar. Drink plenty to help your weight-loss regimen.

Heart healthy
Drinking a good amount of water could lower your risks of a heart attack. A six-year study published in the May 1, 2002 American Journal of Epidemiology found that those who drink more than 5 glasses of water a day were 41% less likely to die from a heart attack during the study period than those who drank less than two glasses.

Energy
Being dehydrated can sap your energy and make you feel tired -- even mild dehydration of as little as 1 or 2 percent of your body weight. If you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated -- and this can lead to fatigue, muscle weakness, dizziness and other symptoms.

Headache cure
Another symptom of dehydration is headaches. In fact, often when we have headaches it's simply a matter of not drinking enough water. There are lots of other causes of headaches of course, but dehydration is a common one.

Healthy skin
Drinking water can clear up your skin and people often report a healthy glow after drinking water. It won't happen overnight, of course, but just a week of drinking a healthy amount of water can have good effects on your skin.

Digestive problems
Our digestive systems need a good amount of water to digest food properly. Often water can help cure stomach acid problems, and water along with fiber can cure constipation (often a result of dehydration).

Cleansing
Water is used by the body to help flush out toxins and waste products from the body.

Cancer risk
Related to the digestive system item above, drinking a healthy amount of water has also been found to reduce the risk of colon cancer by 45%. Drinking lots of water can also reduce the risk of bladder cancer by 50% and potentially reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Better exercise
Being dehydrated can severely hamper your athletic activities, slowing you down and making it harder to lift weights. Exercise requires additional water, so be sure to hydrate before, during and after exercise.

[RED-DOG]

That's better!

Perhaps that's why they say, "Fit as a haddock" (Or is that just me?)

[leethefish]

Another question ......

After Sean & others have warned us to stay away from low fat things .....

what milk should we use in tea & for cereal ?

I used to use semi skimmed since being on diet I have switched to skimmed

[Simon Galloway]

Use semi Lee.... skimmed is just white water!

When you were posting food intakes... tehre was usually half a dozen slices of bread and a crunchie on there... better/easier/more sensible to save a few cals there than by suffering with skimmed milk?

[tikay]

Use semi Lee.... skimmed is just white water!

When you were posting food intakes... tehre was usually half a dozen slices of bread and a crunchie on there... better/easier/more sensible to save a few cals there than by suffering with skimmed milk?

BOOM!

Crunchies & the like on a diet? Nooooooooooooooooooo!

[Marky147]

Another question ......

After Sean & others have warned us to stay away from low fat things .....

what milk should we use in tea & for cereal ?

I used to use semi skimmed since being on diet I have switched to skimmed

You don't necessarily have to stay away from low fat things, however, you should be aware of the contents of said products.

Quite often these 'low fat' foods, will contain an abundance of sugar, and therefore they're basically shit!

My old dear is one who dives onto the low fat stuff when she wants to lose weight, so the fridge is regularly filled with low fat yoghurts

That's why when I'm being serious about losing weight, I tend to count my macros, so that I know exactly what is going in on a daily basis.

It's a bit of effort for a short while, but once you get to know the numbers for most foods, it takes but a few minutes to plan out your meals for the next day.

[millidonk]

To add to Sean's 'Eat less' point. That isn't as black and white as it sounds. Less calories maybe but I would probably say 'eat better'.

Take myself for example. In the past when I was working in an office I would often eat nothing from like 6am-2pm at which time I would have a Greggs, then from 6pm-10pm I would just gorge because I was so hungry and probably consume 4000+ calories just in time to get my head down.. it ruined my body. My metabolism now is probably akin to an old aged, disabled and also lazy sloth in quicksand. To give it a boost I now try to eat 5 meals a day. I am putting a larger amount of food through my body but less calories and also better food. I can have 5 meals a day and only consume 1500-1800 calories, this way you give your metabolism a jump start and you also stop it peaking and troughing throughout the day. I also try to eat the vast majority of my carbs before 5pm.

So my 2014 eating habits look more like:

07:00-9:00am
Breakfast

9:00-11:00am
Morning snack

11:00-2:00pm
Lunch

2:00-5:00pm
Afternoon snack

5:00-8:00pm
Tea

My biggest changes are 1 -  eradicating the filthy word diet from my vocabulary. I am just trying to change my way of living. I have already made slips and I will make more but i's just about continuing with the positive changes I am making so the negative things I do have as little impact as possible. 2 - I now feel guilty when I stuff my face. I never really did before.

Disclaimer I have been ill recently and to celebrate getting over it I ate 2 bags of crisps yesterday. I still have that emotional connection of when I am happy I celebrate with food, when I am sad I turn to food. When I am neutral I am a fat burning robot. Unfortunately my emotions are akin to my poker playing.. yoyo.

Where are all the other 20 Stone + guys? I know there are at least 10 on blonde.

[zerofive]

Yes I will say there are exceptions to every rule. I didn't want to post too much at once, I'm just trying to address the absolute fundamentals that some people get wrong or simply don't know about. Like when they teach you the atom is the smallest thing in the world when you're a kid, they don't just start by telling you that there are 26 dimensions.

Red-Dog is doing the right thing by asking some good questions. It's imperative to know "what," but it is also helpful to know "why."

Lee again doing the right thing and, this is the most important thing you can do in my opinion, reading for yourself. You can bang pretty much anything into your Google search bar and get some great articles from some good sources, such as a really good response to the "why" of drinking water.

I'm going to answer a couple of questions quickly below

You need to explain what's wrong with sweetener

The simplest answer I can give for what's wrong with sweetener, is that it isn't natural or even from a natural source. Sugar is found naturally in many foods - Glucose in pasta and rice; Fructose in fruit and honey; Sucrose in sugarcane (and your cup of tea after reading this post). While too much of it is a bad thing (I can address this in more detail at another time, think insulin, think calories) the body is capable of breaking it down and has been able to do so since we were cavemen. The liver and kidneys were not designed to break down chemical sweeteners such as - Sucralose, not to be confused with Sucrose; and Aspartame. For the calories that you save in one or two spoonfuls of sugar per day in your tea or coffee, it is not worth the damage you can do to your body by feeding it all sorts of artificial shit.

It is phenomenal how many people I see, and this includes some of my close friends, who will eat sugary cereal for breakfast every morning and sugary desserts with every meal, but will insist on sweetener in their tea instead of sugar. Just put half a spoonful of sugar in your tea and have eggs for breakfast and your overall sugar consumption will drop DRAMATICALLY, not to mention your liver, kidneys, stomach, bowels and brain will all say THANK YOU.

After Sean & others have warned us to stay away from low fat things .....

what milk should we use in tea & for cereal ?

I used to use semi skimmed since being on diet I have switched to skimmed

I want to clarify that I'm not saying stay away from low fat things, don't go to your butcher and tell him you're not interested in chicken breast because it's low in fat and someone on the internet told you to stay away from things that are low in fat! What I'm suggesting is that you avoid things that are marketed as "reduced fat," or "low calorie." I can't bring an example to mind right now because I'm so conditioned to avoid these things Usually desserts, frozen meals, cereal bars, fruit juices, etc. What they're usually doing is selling you a product that would naturally be of a high fat or sugar content, and replacing the fat or sugar with artificial sweeteners and we already discussed why that's not a good thing. Please tell me you know what I'm talking about.

The answer I gave to the last question applies here as well. I already mentioned dropping cereal from your diet. This was probably the last big change I made to my diet, and I can't imagine ever going back. Very occasionally when I'm doing my grocery shopping and I see a massive box of Weetos for £2, a part of me still thinks "damn, I could really go for a big bowl of that..." but you may as well be munching down a big bowl of sugar. Start your day with eggs, meat and vegetables instead of cereal and you will notice you stay fuller for longer, more focused throughout the day, and the pounds will really start to melt off.

So let me throw back to my friends who eat sugary cereals, ice cream, but God forbid they put half a spoon of sugar in their tea. Why choose skimmed milk over whole milk for a very fractional calorie reduction, when you're pouring it over what is effectively a big bowl of fortified sugar?

[littlemissC]

Sean

I drink lots of water, and walk a ton but have never (other than when at school many moons ago) done real exercise

What would recommend as a good way to start building fitness levels? Please don't say gym as I have no intention of setting foot in one sorry

 

[Big_D]

Weighed myself this morning at 18st 1lbs

I would like get down to 15 stone eventually but taking each stone as it comes and keeping it off is the main aim.

Weighed in this morning at 17st 10lbs for a 5lbs loss in the first week.

Today I weighed in at 17st 6lbs for a 9lbs loss in nearly three weeks.

I weighed myself at the beginning of December and I was 18st 5lbs so nearing a stone loss total from where I was back then.

[Marky147]

Weighed myself this morning at 18st 1lbs

I would like get down to 15 stone eventually but taking each stone as it comes and keeping it off is the main aim.

Weighed in this morning at 17st 10lbs for a 5lbs loss in the first week.

Today I weighed in at 17st 6lbs for a 9lbs loss in nearly three weeks.

I weighed myself at the beginning of December and I was 18st 5lbs so nearing a stone loss total from where I was back then.

Great effort 

[leethefish]

Weighed myself this morning at 18st 1lbs

I would like get down to 15 stone eventually but taking each stone as it comes and keeping it off is the main aim.

Weighed in this morning at 17st 10lbs for a 5lbs loss in the first week.

Today I weighed in at 17st 6lbs for a 9lbs loss in nearly three weeks.

I weighed myself at the beginning of December and I was 18st 5lbs so nearing a stone loss total from where I was back then.

very well done