Hotscot

Damn...

kodokan

I moved to Switzerland in 2008 and over about 18 months dropped from about 12 to 10 stone effortlessly, by not owning a car, biking everywhere, and scootering with the kids to school. During this time, I ate whatever I wanted, including vast amounts of delicious artisan breads, fondue, and a ton of wine and chocolate. It was awesome. Lifestyle changes can make a huge impact, creeping either up or down over time.

Moved here in 2011 and since then have gradually drifted back up to 10.5 st, despite eating fairly healthily, doing karate twice a week, and doing all the yard work on 3/4 acres. Using the car for everything is key, I think - I'm looking forward to a future post-kids life where we can move somewhere much less car-dependent. At least our 'hide indoors' season is now coming to an end, and I can get back to shopping and errand running by bike; we were biking to school until two weeks ago, when my 10 yr old braked sharply and went over the handlebars, and now has her right arm in a cast...

In the meantime, I've got a Fitbit, linked it to a Myfitnesspal account, and am amusing myself by tracking all my food and exercise. Making it a fun techie-based game is working - I'm down a couple of pounds in Week One, and aiming to get back to 10st, which is my happy equilibrium weight of feeling good without having to skip too many treats.

scrubbedexpat091

My doctor in Canada is big on preventive and routine tests every time I go, and at first I thought it odd as this wasn't even the case in the US, but all the routine blood tests did catch early signs of some liver issues, what it is the doctor isn't sure, but the last 3 blood work ups over 3 months all have increases in some liver enzyme, so now waiting for an ultrasound, but hey routine testing even when there is no symptoms of something may very well nip something early on before it actually become a problem.


As for weight, mine wont budge. I eliminated all the bad stuff, and bike ride daily, and after the initial 5-8 pound loss, I have stagnated.

CAdreaming

Oh that's changed since i was last at the docs in UK!

unique_boy

US pint is smaller than a UK pint....this is helping me lose. Plus all I ever seem to do in New York is walk....you walk places just to walk around some more when you get there.

Hotscot

I realized I'm actually 18Ibs down from two years ago by eating healthier. Lots of fresh veggies and salads.

Still drink too much though and when I cut that I expect to see another drop.

Gym every day as well..

kodokan

I find the following work for me (woman in 40s), and use them in vague rotation depending on my mood if I need to trim back a bit:

- super strict calorie counting to rein in portion sizes, using weighing, bar code scanning via a phone app, etc. The first time I did this, it was quite staggering: 'There are HOW many calories in that small handful of pasta? And the 30g portion for cereal is HOW tiny? Eek!'

- not worrying about calories, but low-carbing by cutting out all the white fluffies of bread, pasta, sugar, rice, potatoes, and swapping them for mounds of veggies with portions of protein.

- intermittent fasting, such as the 5:2 diet that the BBC Horizon did last year, where you eat normally for 5 days then have 500 calories on the other two (or 600 for blokes)

- cutting out all alcohol for a few weeks. Or at least switching to small amounts of red wine only

Hotscot

That sounds really hard.

scrubbedexpat091

Yes, I am amazed at how small a serving is on so many things, it really makes you think once you start paying attention, for cereal, I was eating like 800 calories in one sitting because of how much I was pouring into the bowl, but the serving sizes for cereal are far too small for me and don't fill me, so I just eliminated cereal and replaced it with oatmeal which is more filling even with a small serving, and I add frozen berries to it as well.

Its been hard, but I am trying to eliminate sugar and its surprising how much food has sugar or some sort of sugar like substance in it, I mean to we really need to add so much sugar to stuff?

Hardest thing because of the caffeine withdrawal was coming off soda, and took several months, but I am not soda free. I went from brown soda with caffeine, down to diet brown sodas with caffeine, then down to diet sprite caffeine free, and then to water with a tsp of lemon juice for flavor, and I am feeling better, amazing how adding water to your diet does, but now soda is a treat and I am no longer drinking copious amounts of it. I was drinking a good 7-10 a day at one point. I was addicted to soda..

I've added veggies of various sorts, eat most of them raw, I find I don't like the texture of most cooked veggies, but eating them raw is fine, so that is what I do now, figure eating them raw is better then not eating them at all. I think after all these years it wasn't the taste of veggies that was the issue, but it was the texture, but maybe they change tastes when cooked, but for things like carrots, I just cannot stand the texture of them cooked.

I try and avoid most breads, and pasta's, never been a huge fan, but when I eat bread, replaced it with whole grain instead of white, but I eat so little bread its not likely an issue.

I have lost a pound since last week, but its coming off really slow, but its a work in progress, I didn't get out of shape overnight, and I wont get in shape overnight either, so just gotta take it one day at a time, one step at a time.

Fruit is about the only thing lacking in my diet aside from the berries on the oat meal, fruit other then banana's are just too much money, most run 3+ per pound this time of year, so just get too little for too much $$ to buy. But even banana's are getting pricey, 0.95/lb now.

I also find avoiding the interior aisles of the grocery store to be beneficial, almost all the health foods are on the exterior aisles, and the interior aisles are mostly junk food, so by-passing these sections keeps impulse buy's under control.

kodokan

I'm in weight loss mode at the moment, because my weight's crept up over summer (in AZ, so just coming to the end of my 'housebound' season when I don't walk much, use the car all errands instead of biking, etc). I've got about 4lbs to lose to get back into the normal BMI range, which I stubbornly want to do before going for the 'mandatory' health insurance medical next month. I find that's about the weight that's reasonably easy to maintain (except during summer, apparently, when I shouldn't combine staying in the house more with 'ooh, summer beer is so lovely!'), and is a good compromise between effort and effect.

My usual maintenance system is to low-carb for 1-2 meals a day: breakfast on Greek hog/ honey/ almonds, or a piece of fruit and a couple of hard-boiled eggs; lunch on salad or soup or a plate of weird ad hoc stuff based on what's in the fridge. I enjoy eating like this so it's very little bother. I find dinners hard to low-carb though as the rest of the family want to eat like normal people, so it's simplest just to fit in there, and keep an eye on portion sizes.

Raw veggies will be better for you than cooked ones anyway, plus are cheaper as it saves electricity/ gas And don't worry overmuch about fruits - olden day people ate a lot less of these due to issues of hunter-gatherer harvesting or storage, so they're not an essential part of the human diet. Just enjoy the cheap gluts when they're in season - we're currently going mad on peaches, having bought a box of 32lbs last week.

GeoffM

What annoys me are the single serve containers that say on the nutrition information "Servings per container: 2". In other words you get double the calories/sugar/fat than what the label says. This includes stuff like Monster drinks in tin cans (ok, let's not go into their health issues!) and I've even seen it on microwave meals for one.

But apparently both the UK and the US are cracking down on situations where it's clearly a container for single serve, single use.

Then there are the "Lite" beers which are all of about 10% fewer calories, if that.

kodokan

Yes, that's total rubbish, isn't it? I think they do it to make things like the sodium come in within spitting distance of the RDA. And then they'll do things at the extreme end of the other way round, saying a bottle of maple syrup is 6 servings, when it's around 20-25 when poured by anyone who wasn't brought up to have a side helping of pancakes with their main course of syrup.

Since I've been scanning beers this week, I can confirm that delicious Sam Adams pumpkin-ey autumn ones are 190 calories, and non-alcoholic ones are 95. Depending on my mood, I have one of the former if I want taste, or two of the latter if I'm merely thirsty and want beer-flavoured soda for fluids.

unique_boy

What is really amazing is that for how ever long it takes you to lose weight and get healthy you can pretty much put it back on in a couple of weeks

GeoffM

Not sure if we're talking about the same thing here but when I say "lite" I mean the ones that still have 4-5% alcohol in them, not alcohol free (which is pointless IMHO ).

scrubbedexpat091

Yes that is so annoying, its frustrating too because they like to make it seem like its low calorie but make the service idiotically small.

They did some cracking down in Canada as well, 590ml soda for example now have the nutritional information for the entire bottle, where before they would 1/2 it and say it was 2 servings, I am sure they made the monster drink types do the same.

Bread still annoys me, most still have the info for 1 slice, but i am sure most use 2 slices at a time, so I think the serving size should be 2 slices vs 1, but what can you do.