Hi /r/loseit, I have been browsing this sub for a little bit of motivation for myself towards my new weight loss goal (3rd time after a long series of weight loss and gain in my life, though this is after a large span of years such as childhood, adolescence and early adulthood). Since I'm quite a lurker, I don't think I've ever made a post, let alone even a comment on the sub, so I figured I'd give back a bit to a community that has been amazing to read and experience. I'll try to keep things short and sweet, but cover what I know to have worked for myself. I'm doing this in the hopes that it may help someone else, since this is an accumulation of "tips & tricks" I've conditioned myself to acknowledge that has had monumental influence on my progress each time I felt the need to shed a few pounds. Anyway, let's get to the real content:
note: If this type of post is not allowed I apologize, I read the rules and didn't see anything quite pertaining to the content of this post. I apologize if such a post is not allowed on this sub. Also please understand these are something things that have worked for me. This isn't an infallible guide to magically lose every nook and cranny of excess fat off your body, but more of a word of advice from someone who has lose an accumulative 100 lbs in their lifetime.
Mind Over Matter:
Every time I have had someone ask me "Hey /u/Mycopixel, how did you lose so much weight so fast, what diet/secret/exercise plan/sacrifice did you perform to do it?" I always respond the same way. The time tested, bare bones, no B.S., science approved answer: Eat less, move more. But there has to be more than that.... right?! From a strictly physical point of view; sorry Charlie that's about it. However, from a realistic point of view, yes there is A LOT more involved than just eating less and moving more. When I say this, I mean you have to dig into what everyone has, yet everyone wishes other people would use more: the mind. See, losing weight is easy strictly from a number sense. I'm a faithful follower of CICO (Calories in, Calories out) and if it were a person I'd make Stan look reasonable. The problem with all this easy math using CICO is that it fails to acknowledge that we as humans, are very impulsive creatures. There's a reason why candy bars are seen at the checkout line when finishing up at the grocery store, it makes our super smart monkey brains say "Damn, that a nice looking piece of chocolate" and then influences us to buy it. For this reason, among many others, is why motivation, inspiration, and mental fortitude are paramount to weight loss in my opinion. For one to even feel the want to lose weight, they have to draw from at least one of those aspects and support it with the others to attain their goals. Just because someone NEEDS to lose weight, doesn't mean they WANT to lose weight, this is why it is so common to see people with Type-2 diabetes lose limbs and suffer so much. It was preventable, but the person didn't feel the need to address it, so the issue spiraled out of control until a consequence was adhered to. As with any obstacle in life, losing weight is a mind game and should definitely be addressed on the mental front. With all that being said, I'll put some easy to read bulletin points of things that have helped myself in this area. All of these are things I incorporate daily for my own weight loss both presently and the past and have been incredibly useful for myself. I can only hope it does the same for others:
- Understand that there will be slip-ups. Trust me, it will happen. If you're like me and follow CICO as your main source of dietary guidance, expect to go over some days. Whether or not it was a simple mistake "That burger was HOW MANY calories?!" or a relapse due to an eating disorder (such as what I had in my childhood), they will happen and they too will pass.
- Discover what your root cause for losing weight is and keep it near-and-dear. Everyone has an eventual reason for wanting to lose weight, be it because Dr. Jones said you should for health reasons (I may have some fat, but at least I don't wear that stupid pineapple tie everyday, HA!), you decided you want to be more athletic, or you just simple want a body that puts David (wiener warning) to shame. There is no dumb reason to lose weight and I cannot iterate this enough. My main reason for losing weight when I was a teen was that I was tired of not having a girlfriend and guess what? It worked (relationship didn't though, RIP me).
- Motivate yourself. Different things motivate different people so I will only be able to speak from personal experience here, but motivation is a huge factor in powering through the gritty part of weight loss. For me, this came mostly from seeing art sculptures and reading history. I find the ancient Romans and Greeks to be huge sources of inspiration to me. I visualize myself in the body I wish to sculpt from myself and find it similar to the depictions of their icons. The phrase "Shoot for the moon, but aim for the stars" applies here. Am I going to be the physical embodiment of a chiseled Greek god? Most likely not, but I sure as am going to try. Reading stories such as the battle between the Romans and Barbarians to even the very popular (and often mis-remembered) battles of the Spartans are very motivational for me. Find your groove, it is hard to describe, but you will feel a sensation almost akin to butterflies in your stomach, something pulling you towards greatness and lighting an internal flame within you. There is no such thing as a wrong source of motivation.
- Music, Music, Music. Seriously, listen to music when you exercise. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it pumps you up and makes you feel ready to take on a gorilla in a match of fisticuffs (rest easy Harambe, sweet prince), there is no wrong fuel for your ears. It can be anything: rap, country, techno, hell I even listen to the theme of the Dovahkiin while on a run when I am ready to go hard because it's epic.
So you're a master of the mind now, what about the physical side of things?
You feel ready to take on the world and the gorilla you're more than sure you can 1-hit KO is cowering in the corner sipping on his juice box, what's next? Well slow down there tiger, because even though we may have covered (barely) the hardest part of weight loss above, we still have the bread and low-calorie butter substitute of /r/losingit to cover. The physical side of things. There's not much I can really say here as I am aware most of you are probably already well versed in this matter, so I'll head straight to what works for me:
- Exercise. Wow, what a shocker right? Here's the thing, you don't NEED to exercise to lose weight, but if you don't then you're going to be losing it about as fast as a snail trying to escape a salt mine (AKA it will take awhile). If dieting st the Ying, exercise is his beef-cake brother Yang. Even if it's something simple, incorporate exercise into your daily life. And I don't mean the "teehee I take the stairs at work instead of the elevator!" kind (we all know THAT "exercise" person... The one who brags about the stairs and awards them self with a triple-double extra squeeze mocha from Starbucks). What I mean is you need to actually dedicate some time to exercise. If you're a 100% dedicated couch potato, even something as simple as a timed 30 min walk, or distanced 2 mile walk can be a great start.
- Take the stairs. "But wtf /u/Mycopixel, you just told me not to be that person!" Yeah, don't be the person that does that and expects some kind of reward afterward. You are getting rewarded, by losing just a tiny bit more fat. Buying yourself a candy bar afterward because of it is punishing yourself. Try to add extra things every day and build it up. As of now I currently make sure I climb 12 flights of stairs and walk a minimum of 6 miles between my lunch/breaks at work. Build up a decent amount of exercise you can do "idly." Especially if working in an office setting.
- Learn proper breathing technique with cardio. This one is huge and a game changer for sure. What this means is it pace your breaths while running/walking/cycling/etc... This improves lung strength, helps deliver more oxygen to your body thus providing better performance, and makes things much more bearable. An example of this is breathing in every 4 steps and breathing out every 4 steps. This is especially important for new runner, it eliminates that suffocating feeling a lot of new runners may get when doing rigorous cardio.
- Actually provide effort to improve your exercise regimen. To put it plainly, this means to keep pushing yourself. 2 miles was hard yesterday, but easy today. So bump it up to 2.5. Challenging yourself challenges your body and provides better results as a reflection of that. If you are plateauing, chances are something needs to change, because that usually means your body has learned to adapt to the conditions it used to find difficult a little bit ago.
- Provide a day off, but do not be lax with it. This means to have a day, or multiple days, for your body to rest. Muscle is built by tearing and repairing a bit more muscle tissue than there was before. Your body can't take time for repair itself if you keep working it. Think of it like a car, if you leave a car going 24/7 it's going to break down, no matter how much fuel you give it. So it should have time put in for maintenance. When I say do not be lax, I mean don't go "Well, work really sucked today and Stephanie TOTALLY was just texting while I was doing all of the work, I deserve another day to rest!" This kind of thinking is dangerous and a very slippery slope. For every reason you find to exercise, you better believe your mind will find 10 more on how to avoid it. Stick to a schedule and power through it, even if your performance is worse than usual, it is better to do some much rather than none.
Alright, you did some push ups and now you're totally ready to fight that gorilla. That should be all you have to worry about, right?!
Well, not exactly. "But we covered every important area such as the mind and body, what else could there be?!?" Well Timmy, you're forgetting the one area that most likely got you into this mess. Your stomach. Remember how I said CICO is everything and you don't have to (but you really should) exercise to lose weight? This is where all of that ties in. As the saying goes "Muscle is made in the gym, abs are made in the kitchen." This statement could not be truer. For beginners, go find out what your calorie limit should be to both sustain yourself and to lose weight. If you can't find one, simply google "Caloric need calculator" or check out that fancy sidebar to find one. This will help you find out what your energy intake limit should be in a day. Be honest, if you lie about physical activity/weight/height, you're hurting yourself and that wouldn't be very smart now would it? That being said, I'll jump into the tips that have helped me in kitchen:
- Buy things that make calorie counting easy. There are some apps that help counting calories, but I've always preferred a good ol' fashioned calculator and iPhone notes. Yes this isn't super efficient, but it is what works for me. When you go to make a meal, make sure to note the calories each serving of what you put into it is, this will help you find the total number of calories in all of the cooked food and divvy it up in a way that helps you.
- Keep meals simple. Lots of ingredients = more calories = more math = sad and annoyed chef. Meals can be flavorful without lots of unnecessary ingredients, you just need to know what works.
- Virtually most spices are calorie free. This one is HUGE for me. It can turn any boring meal into a flavor paradise that your taste buds will be singing about until the next meal time. I prefer to use combinations such as Johnny's seasoning salt or other pre-made brands. That being said some essentials for me are: salt, pepper, cumin, onion power, and garlic powder. These can seriously turn even a boiled, skinless chicken breast into a flavorful roller coaster ride. Note: be wary of rubs for meat. Sometimes they have brown sugar and other ingredients to make them tasty, but really up the calorie count.
- Most salsas are very low calories. This makes things I normally don't like, taste amazing. I use salsa on nearly all of my salads. It turns a simple 50/50 leafy blend of salad into a nice little meal with a tiny amount of kick. I have yet to see a salsa go above 25 cal per serving. I find salsa verde to be particularly amazing due to having a calorie count averaging around 5-10 per serving while having an outstanding amount of flavor.
- Cut out unnecessary sauces and ingredients. I hate to say it, but say bye-bye to ranch, bbq sauce, honey mustard, vinaigrettes, and other sauces for a little bit. They might be fine for a cheat meal here and there, but they are usually high calorie foods designed to masks the flavor of those icky vegetables. I recommend to substitute them with low to no cost calorie sauces such as cholula, tobasco, sriracha, and other things of the sort (if you haven't noticed I love to light my mouth on fire apparently). They add an amazing amount of flavor to a meal and help you cut that fat loose.
- DO. NOT. EAT. OUT. Period. If you HAVE to (AKA you're like me and your wife loves Olive Garden so you go because you love her) make sure it is a place that has an easy to read calorie menu. Eating out is the quickest, easiest way to destroy everything you've ever worked for. If your weight loss progress were to be an army, eating out would be similar to invading Russia in the winter. Just because the Mongols (or your friend Becky, which never gains weight, that BI-) pulled it off one time successfully, doesn't mean you will. Seriously, it is a terrible idea. If you have cravings you will get over it.
- If you got a real sweet tooth or have a food vice, you don't have to 100% cut it out. You can absolutely still eat that daily chocolate chip muffin or brownie like you have been for the past few months. Simply just make sure to account for it in your maximum caloric intake for the day and you're good to go. That, in my not-so-humble, opinion is what makes CICO so amazing. You can eat literally whatever you want, it's the amount that you eat that matters. Control yourself, if you feel the call of your Reese's overlords calling you, feel free to pick up the phone. Just be wary how much you are eating and how it affects your total caloric intake for the day. Soon enough you'll find yourself thinking "Hmm, I could have this brownie and satisfy my sweet tooth or I could grab two pieces of chicken and feel extra satisfied!" You will find eventually that you will go 9/10 times with feeling satisfied, no one likes being hungry.
Well /r/loseit, that's about the most important tips and tricks that I have used to help me get through the tough times of weight loss. I may add more to the post and/or refine what I have here later, but I feel this covers what I have found has helped me the most. I hope that some of these pointers will find their way to help others and may provide a source of inspiration or even just general knowledge when it comes to a weight loss achievement. Losing weight is by no means a simple task, but it is doable. I have no doubt that anyone who is committed to the challenge and follows this amazing community will succeed in their efforts to do so. If there were one thing I'd want to really ingrain out of this wall of text it would be: In order to lose weight you have to want it. You can't suspect it to happen out of nowhere and no one can do it for you. It is a real test of mental resolve and physical endurance. I believe anyone can achieve it so long as they are sincere about their intentions.
Thank you everyone, for everything you post here. This community is amazing and I have no other want than to give back for all of the amazing insight and knowledge I have obtained here over time. I wish you all the best and you can definitely do it.
[link] [comments]
from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2MMrnxZ
No comments:
Post a Comment