SultanOfSwing

Belief is not very effective.

Lion in Winter

Sez you.

SultanOfSwing

Now, that would help me lose weight, on account of all the vomiting it induces.

Nutek

When we are in charge...

Nutek

Excellent.

manekeniko

I bought a TrekDesk last year for my Craigslist treadmill and Macbook all ready for fitness multitasking. I feel mocked and humiliated staring at this setup from the couch. I assume emotional turmoil burns energy, do you think?

Nutek

petitefrancaise

After the birth of last baby, dear, darling hubby didn't quite get the subtle and not so subtle "christmas pressie ideas". He bought me an elliptical cross trainer. "That's not a pair of diamond earrings" I said. He put it in the bedroom just so I couldn't ignore it. I told him that there's no way that thing will fit in my jewellery box. Eventually I moved it to the garage and in the spring a friend of mine who had lost her baby weight said the magic words..." Oh Hubby cooks tea for me and the kids so I can get on the cross trainer". RESULT. Exercise and it gets me out of cooking for the mostly ungrateful masses. I lost 12 kgs in about 3 months.....

Gillymonkey

Shop in ethnic supermarkets, the fruit and veg tends to be cheaper. When we first moved over my husband and I were on a super strict food budget, we never ate any processed food really as it is actually more expensive. We'd buy cheap cuts of chicken, fruits and veggies and make our own meals (the way we preferred to eat anyway).

For your work some suggestions are - get your own little cooler, boiled eggs and salad, bean/lentil salads, soup in thermos, cooked meats with pre cooked veggies on side, crackers and cream cheese/hummus etc.

Hotscot

You must have changed your diet?

petitefrancaise

Not really, I was doing HIIT on the cross-trainer which is excellent for fat loss. I also started working part-time with a load of skinny minny french people so there was a bit of pressure there! Stress too; I'd thought my french was pretty much ok but I suddenly had to learn dental french, speak to patients and handle the staff.

StephieFaith83

It IS expensive to buy healthier foods but in the long run I look at it as saving money on medical costs etc. I also eat out very rarely these days. I work out 4-5 times a week at our local JCC. When I first started doing it I could only manage 10 minutes, now I can work out for over an hour and I'm feeling GREAT. As someone who has battled with depression since forever, I can safely say that exercise and diet is better than any pill they can give a person.

Hotscot

Sorry to hear about your depression..have you noticed the recent findings on the street drug Special K?

Street Drug 'Special K' May Offer New Hope For People With Treatment-Resistant Depression

Bink

I put weight on with successive knee then hamstring injuries. The wife convinced me to use SparkPeople which I hated but have since moved on to Fitbit and that's worked better for me. The main advantage of Fitbit for me is that I'm competitive and friends with some other competitive people which has upped my exercise levels (the challenges are the real help for me). I also find the food tracker easy to use so I tend to use it more frequently. Probably 5/6 days a week. They all aren't very good if you scratch cook though unless you eat the same things all the time as you end up having to enter every ingredient in the dish.
It's working so far. Down 15lbs since the 1st. Just about another 30 to go...

scrubbedexpat091

I am going to try and make beans and lentils more, I think I can buy those in bulk at one of the grocery stores in town.

We don't get cheap cuts of meat or produce up this way, it's all fairly pricey compared to the US, and some meats such as Chicken are not free market and have a marketing board that sets the prices. Farmers don't get the subsidies here for the most part like US farmers get, so we get marketing boards who set prices, also why we pay double the price for milk vs across the border in Washington.

We cut meat as it's gotten really pricey, pork chop pack with 6 of them in it are running 15-20 dollars now. 4 chicken breasts will cost 15-20 dollars and so on. Even a pound of ground beef is 5+ dollars now.

Frozen veggies are cheaper, and we do buy those, mostly broccoli since it's cheapest and the bag the biggest, but we also pick up asian mixes when on sale that have a variety of different veggies.

We eat pretty okay at home, it's work that bites me.

I also have a medication that screws with blood sugar levels which has also resulted in some weight gain, I gained a good 30 pounds in the first 6 months i was on it, but I leveled now and stopped gaining, so now just working on losing to get down to 190 hopefully. I did lose some, I was 224 at the doctor Monday down from 232 in December, so its slowly coming off.

I don't exercise hard core, just walks with the dog 2-3km's, and my 3 work days include a boat load of walking, granted the walking is inside parking garages, but some of them take me a good 30 minutes to walk around, and I do 4-6 rounds per shift. I also start at the bottom of the garage and walk up since some have decent incline and figure walking up is better then down.

I'll start biking more in the coming months once there is some daylight in the evenings again. I don't feel safe or comfortable riding in the dark.

I can't run because of knee issues and arthritis, and can't swim nor have access to a pool, but are there low impact ways besides walking and biking that can work?


Unfortunately we have no ethnic food stores in town, few ethnic people live here, and the few that do just open restaurants and charge a lot of money.

So I am stuck with the 3 grocery stores, 2 of which are owned by the same company, so no competition in town, they all match each other's prices.

I think the key is to go vegetarian and just eliminate meat...lol

I have found eating oatmeal in the morning (no sugar, or milk, sometimes berries added) and 100 grams of greek yougurt keep me filled until lunch, so my snacking is almost non existent now.