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- Weekly Update: March 7th
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- My weight loss update: Feb 29th
- 5 Tips on How to Avoid Weight Loss Plateau
- My Weight Loss Update - Feb 22nd
- Ok, Elmo Live is just going to drive me nuts (but it is cute!)
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My Weight Loss Update - Feb 8th 2008
Well, the first week has flown by and I don’t think I have really set into my rhythm just yet - I haven’t been quite as ruthless with cutting out all the bad foods, but I have still made some… pretty big changes.
Bread is definitely out, and I’ve cut back on the portion sizes for pasta and rice, and only had a small amount of potatoes once this week. The amount of fruit that I eat has gone up quite dramatically though, and so to has my water consumption. Instead of the diet cola I had been drinking daily, I’ve just had the occasional soda water with a splash of cordial for my fizzy drink hit, and with the amount of lemons, limes and oranges almost ripe on our fruit trees I’ll probably start flavouring it with them soon… overall a good change I think.
So what’s the verdict, what do the nasty scales have to say about my performance?
They were quite kind to me this week actually, my weight is now 129.6 kg, a loss of 1.4kg for the week and well on target for my goal of losing 4kg this month.
Overall I’ve got to be happy with that result, there’s still plenty of room to tighten my belt and that gives me a few more things to concentrate on this week… I still need to get my portion sizes down at dinner time, I haven’t quite reigned them in as much as I would have liked just yet, so that’s my next project.
Share this article, I appreciate your support.February 8, 2008 | Filed Under Updates
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Why cutting bread from your diet can get you off to a good start
If you’re like me and a typical day usually involves a couple of slices of toast for breakfast plus a couple of sandwiches for lunch, then it might be time to have a good think about changing your habits when it comes to bread..
Two slices of white bread tips the scales at about 170 calories (that’s just the bread, not everything else on it too!), so the six slices a day I used to have made up 510 calories of my daily diet. According to this weight loss calculator, given my current weight of 131kg, with a lightly active lifestyle, I should be eating around 2380 calories per day in order to lose about 1kg a week. Six slices of bread would represent 21% of that target… not only are there many ‘dead’ calories in white bread, they are pretty light on nutrients too, so wasting over a fifth of your diet on something as bland as mass produced cooked flour is not really something I would recommend.
What are the alternatives?
I think having toast for breakfast was more of a convenience thing than anything else, it’s quite easy to grab a couple of slices, throw them in the toaster and by the time you’ve got your coffee cup ready it’s time to start eating. But there are far more convenient foods out there that will give you a much healthier breakfast: fruit, yoghurt, muesli – all exceptionally quick and simple to prepare and you’ll get far more benefit, and keep off the hunger pains for longer than with toast.
For lunch, you’ve got plenty of choices too. For starters you could just eat what you regularly put on your sandwiches but leave off the bread, stack your plate up with a bit of extra salad and you’ll be good to go. Personally I’ve switched over to rye crispbread, has less than half the calories of white bread (although the slices are smaller), and it actually promotes healthier eating (at least it does for me), I usually top them with a little cream cheese, tinned tuna, tomato and lettuce or sprouts, it’s a really tasty meal.
Share this article, I appreciate your support.February 7, 2008 | Filed Under Weight Loss Strategy Leave a Comment
5 Weight Loss Tips for counting Calories (or should you even bother?)
Photo by Sister72
Last year when I lost 20kg (44 lb), I initially spent a lot of time counting calories – I do like to look at things from a technical point of view, so at the time, it was a comforting distraction. What I soon found though was that as long as you eat the right foods, it generally tended to work things out for itself.
Now, I do have quite a bit of weight to lose, at 131kg (289 lb) it’s pretty easy to lose weight by just eating the right foods, as I get closer to my goal weight, then a closer look at my exact calorie intake will be far more useful. For now, apart from a quick glance at the nutrition labels of foods I’m not that familiar with, I’m not going to stress about Calories all that much.
My tips for making sure you avoid the Calorific Overload:
1. Check out the nutrition labels for foods you eat regularly. Learn to compare the number of calories for a constant weight of food. For example, in Australia, all our Nutrition labels have Kilojoules/100g (4 KJ’s is approximately 1 Calorie), so this makes most food easy to compare and you’ll soon be able to tell at a glance if something is a bit too ‘Calorie heavy’.
2. Think about what you’re getting for the cost. It’s not enough just to look at the number of Calories, but you also need to consider the benefits you’ll get from the foods. Some ‘low fat’ snacks for example can also be very low on Calories, but they also have a nutritional value of next to nothing (meaning you’ll need to eat something else soon after anyway), whereas most nuts can have fairly high Calorie contents, but contain many essential oils and other goodness, are low GI and a small handful can stop those hunger pains and get you through to your next meal.
3. Cut out the ‘dead’ Calories. Similar to the above point, pay extra attention to cutting out foods that are high in Calories and have a high GI. Not only will these foods take up a large proportion of your daily Calorie intake, but they will also give that energy to you in a quick burst and leave you wanting more sooner than you should need it.
4. Have ‘pre-screened’ snacks that you can reach for when needed. It always helps to have some sort of plan, and having a list of snacks (and meals) handy that you enjoy and know won’t derail your weight loss efforts can be a godsend. Try to make sure you always have a few of them handy for times when you need that extra snack.
5. Above all, enjoy what you eat. There’s no need to limit yourself to low Calorie ‘cardboard snacks’. Just because lettuce leaves are virtually Calorie free doesn’t mean you need to force them down your throat if you can’t stand the taste. There is virtually a limitless supply of great healthy foods out there, find ones that work for you.
Share this article, I appreciate your support.February 6, 2008 | Filed Under Weight Loss Strategy 1 Comment
How ANYONE can start Twittering like a pro in under 5 minutes
Twitter is one of the simplest applications to use that I’ve seen and it won’t take you long before you’re using it like a pro.
If you’re not sure what Twitter even is, check out my previous post: Introduction to Online Social Networks (and how they can help you to lose weight).
The first thing you need to do is create a Twitter profile, so head on over to Twitter and click on the button that says ‘Get Started - Join!’
The registration form is pretty straight forward.
You’ll need to enter a username (this also becomes your Twitter profile address, so choose something that is easy to remember and your comfortable having other people see. Password and email address are self explanatory, the ‘humanness‘ section just contains two words that are drawn a little funny, this is just to stop automatic programs coming through and registering accounts to spam with, so to prove you’re human, go ahead and enter the two words you see (if you have trouble reading them, click on the refresh button (the top, red, icon) and it will give you another two words.
It’s up to you on whether you want to check the box ‘Get the Inside Scoop - please send me email updates!’, they’ll update you on anything interesting happening with Twitter, you can change your mind later once you’ve registered.
That’s it - click on ‘I accept, Create my Account’ and your profile will be created. The next screen will ask if you want to search to see if your friends are on twitter - if you have an Internet mail account like GMail or Hotmail it can search your address book from their and see if anyone with those email addresses have twitter accounts, or you can just click on ‘Skip’ which is in the very top, right corner of the page (usually easiest to just click ’skip’).
Once you’ve logged in, go to the ‘Twitter Settings‘ link at the top of your profile and add some information about yourself. You’re just about ready to tweet!
You’re next job is to add some friends, you can start by adding me! click here: Lose40kg - my Twitter Profile and click on the ‘follow’ button.
Once you’ve done that - you’ll hear all my ‘tweets’, they’ll be shown on your account home page. Every few days I’ll go and ‘follow’ everyone who ‘follows’ me, so once I’ve added you I’ll also be able to hear you. Go ahead and click on some of the profiles of other people who are following me, find a couple who you seem to be posting tweets that sound interesting and ‘follow’ them too, this is how you start to build up your network.
To post a tweet, go to your home page, post something and hit send. It’s that easy!
Note: If you want to send a message to someone who isn’t following you or want to direct a response to a particular user, just put @username at the front of your message. So to send one to me, you can start your tweet with @lose40kg
Quick Tip: The best way to use Twitter is by downloading and installing one of the many desktop clients. This will save you having to log into the Twitter website each time you want to use it and keep you connected to your circle of friends much easier. Try these popular ones to get you started:
Twhirl (Windows/Mac)
Snitter (Windows/Mac)
Twitteroo (Windows)
Twitterific (Mac)
Twitux (Linux)
February 5, 2008 | Filed Under Social Networks Leave a Comment
Introduction to Online Social Networks (and how they can help you lose weight)
Over the past few years there have been some amazing advances in social networking across the Internet.
I’m sure you’ve heard of MySpace and Facebook, two of the biggest online communities in existence, but there are literally hundreds of websites that allow you to connect with people in similar ways – chances are there will be at least one out there that you will find useful.
Originally these social networking hubs were very much the domain of the ‘younger generation’, but more recently have become popular with all walks of life (much to the annoyance of many teenagers who now have to deal with their parents understanding how to use Facebook and invading their circle of ‘friends’). The ease of connecting to people all over the world who share similar interests to you, and the depth and simplicity that you can interact with them is on a scale we have never seen before – the general public is only just starting to wake up to these possibilities. It doesn’t matter if you are a teenager wanting to find a group of friends to talk about the Indie music scene, a professional wanting to network with other people in their industry – or an average person trying to lose weight, wanting to build a support network of friends going through a similar stage in their life, the use of online social networks makes connecting with the right people a breeze.
All the networks behave a bit differently, but the main concept that we are interested in here is the ability to interact with a group of people that you choose to interact with. Think of web based forums – if you’ve been a member of one somewhere before you’ll know they can be a great place to meet people with similar interests and share some really useful information… which is great, but they do have at least one major drawback, you have no control over who else becomes a part of that group. With most social networks that control is in your hands – you choose your ‘friends’, and you choose whether to be part of a small tightly knit group or to continue growing your group and becoming part of a larger, more diverse group – the way you approach it is totally up to you, you’re in control and it couldn’t be easier to get involved.
Tweet, Tweet, Tweet
The main network that I’m interested in right now is Twitter. Twitter is a very simple system that is quite similar to Instant Messaging. All messages (they call them ‘Tweets’) are limited to a maximum of 140 characters (so you have to keep things short!) and are sent instantly to your group of ‘followers’ (people who are interested in what you have to say). Of course people can then respond back to you in real time, giving you that instant connection with your circle of friends.
Twitter was originally conceived to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ and as such, many comments still posted to Twitter are kind of mundane (eg. ‘just going to hang out the washing…’) – for some people, that’s the kind of interaction they are looking for, others look for something more interesting. The point is you can choose the people you want to follow and block out the chatter from those you don’t. Personally, I’m looking at building a community of Twitterer’s that are interested in losing weight and supporting each other to help them achieve that goal, if you think you would like to be part of a community who regularly interacts like ‘Hey, just found this excellent recipe for honey, soy, teriyaki chicken wings – check it out’ (one of my faves btw), or ‘a chocolate bar on my desk is mocking me (looks so yummy, grrr)… how do you guys get past the temptation?’, then rock on over to Twitter, create an account, then point your browser to my Twitter profile and click ‘follow’. You’ll then hear everything I have to say, and once I follow you I’ll hear everything you say too!
If you’re still a little confused, I’ll put together a post for tomorrow that focuses on how to get started on Twitter and walk you through each step, as well as show you some excellent desktop applications you can use (to make it even more like Instant Messaging) so you don’t need to log into their clunky web site each time.
Technorati Tags: Social Networks, Twitter, Weight Loss
Share this article, I appreciate your support.February 4, 2008 | Filed Under Social Networks, Weight Loss Tools 2 Comments