I am 5'10 and weigh 200 pounds. Right now it isn't convenient for me to go to the store whenever I feel like it. I also don't have the money to buy a lot of healthy foods that I can eat for 6 meals a day like a lot of people recommend. Right now I survive on frozen dinners, ramen noodles, cereal, and a lemonade made from a drink mix. I am going to start taking vitamin supplements to get the vitamins and minerals I don't get from everything else. My question is, will this severely slow my metabolism down to a point where my body thinks that it is starving if I continue on this diet? I have started running daily and am currently burning around 250+ calories a day, but with time I will try to increase that amount as I build stamina. Is this an effective way to lose weight?
November 5th, 2010 - 18:41
No, it’s not an effective way to lose weight, sorry.
For what you’re spending on frozen dinners, you can do better learning to make healthy dinners yourself. Right now, you have no vegetables or fruit, and your protein may be lacking. The lemonade is just sugar water: drink regular water and flavor it with some lemon slices you cut straight from a lemon at little cost and no calories.
This won’t be easy, but you need to study what your body needs and eat right. The running is good, but you’ll want to vary your route and eventually add some hills.
Instead of frozen dinners, buy lettuce and tuna and make tuna salad. Add in some cans of peas, buy some broccoli and steam it, learn to slice up chicken breast and cook it. It’s not hard, but you need to pay attention. By using canned and frozen food, you don’t have to go to the store often.
Good luck!
November 5th, 2010 - 18:41
Hi,
I know a lot about food and dieting, but I haven’t got it all under control myself, it can be a hard road, especially if your overeating is emotional as it is with me. But I can give you the info on the theory of your question.
Most important about a diet is balance in everything. You can eat frozen dinners, ramen noodles, cereal and drink mix all the time, but it would be much better to eat different things throughout the day and week. The advantage of fresh fruit and veggies and whole grain foods if you’re trying to lose weight is that the fiber in them will keep you full for much longer, so you’ll be less hungry. If you buy a lot of processed foods with very little fiber your blood sugar will spike after eating them and that will make you hungry much faster.
On the other hand, if you take a multivitamin you can at least prevent the worst of not getting many fruits and veggies, but you still wouldn’t have the fiber benefit. There are cheap fruits and veggies out there, I eat a lot of apples, oranges, and carrots and cucumber or tomatoes. Those are cheap. I also found that places like small import stores for chinese or middle eastern foods can be much, much cheaper places to get veggies than mainstream supermarkets.
If you eat 1600 calories and burn about 250 a day with some sport or activity you should lose about a pound a week, which is a good amount, but how well your diet will work with the foods you just mentioned is if you like them well enough that you’ll not get upset that you’re missing so much and that you don’t feel hungry too soon. I eat six meals a day but I eat the same amount that someone with three meals a day would eat, just divided over six meals instead, the 6 meals is not about the amounts, it is about preventing blood sugar lows and hunger so you it will be harder to lose control because you haven’t eaten in too long.
So in short, a 1600 calorie plan is great, but it helps to fill that with some fiber from fruits, veggies and whole grain type stuff. But it is possible (though harder) to do without, but make sure you take those vitamins, and vitamins are never as good as the natural foods. Some people do fine with 3 meals, some people need six, and the best way to find out what works for you is to try it out. Not every body reacts the same to specific foods.
I hope this gave you some idea! A good site to check out is http://www.pyramid.gov you’ll find a lot there about good eating habits and they have a free tracker you can use for a year to keep tabs on what you eat and how healthy it is.
Take care and good luck with the weight!
Alexandra
November 5th, 2010 - 18:41
Everyone knows that exercise helps you lose weight but cutting calories does not. You must eat different cheap foods. A whole cucmber cost @ 70 cents but it has only has 14 calories. Eat one before dinner and you will have less room for that other stuff so you eat less of it. It is 96% water.
Diets do not work. 99% of people gain the weight back. No one teaches the animal what to eat and what not to eat. He knows instinctively what to eat. Humans also have the same instinct. The way it works is just eat whatever tastes good and that will be healthy for you and non-fattening. That is why a baby tastes everything. So again whatever tastes good, is good for you. This is why you will spit out spoiled milk.
But wait!!! Man has the technology to create rat poison. It tastes like healthy food (good taste) but kills the rat. So man has done that to you. Note– any food unaltered by man (uncooked) that tastes good, is good for you. So if you are stranded in the woods, that is how you know what to eat (cooking changes that). So man has created fake fruit. It tastes like fruit that exists in nature but it is terrrible for health, addictive and fattening called sweets.
So it is natural to like real sweets called fruit, like a baby does, but they have fooled you just like the rat. But they do not want to kill you. They want you to become obese so you will buy lots of their foods. This is called GOOD BUSINESS. Remember the above (not on site) and see site below to re-learn how to eat so you can be thin and fit for life.
http://www.phifoundation.org
November 5th, 2010 - 18:41
Do calories matter or do you simply need to eat certain foods and that will guarantee you’ll lose weight? Should you count calories or can you just count “portions?” Is it necessary to keep a food diary? Is it unrealistic to count calories for the rest of your life or is that just part of the price you pay for a better body? You’re about to learn the answers to these questions and discover a simple solution for keeping track of your food intake without having to crunch numbers every day or become a fanatic about it.
In many popular diet books, “Calories don’t count” is a frequently repeated theme. Other popular programs, such as Bill Phillip’s "Body For Life," stress the importance of energy intake versus energy output, but recommend that you count “portions” rather than calories…
Phillips wrote,
"There aren’t many people who can keep track of their calorie intake for an extended period of time. As an alternative, I recommend counting ‘portions.’ A portion of food is roughly equal to the size of your clenched fist or the palm of your hand. Each portion of protein or carbohydrate typically contains between 100 and 150 calories. For example, one chicken breast is approximately one portion of protein, and one medium-sized baked potato is approximately one portion of carbohydrate."
Phillips makes a good point that trying to count every single calorie – in the literal sense – can drive you crazy and is probably not realistic as a lifestyle for the long term. It’s one thing to count portions instead of calories – that is at least acknowledging the importance of portion control. However, it’s another altogether to deny that calories matter.
Calories do count! Any diet program that tells you, "calories don’t count" or you can "eat all you want and still lose weight" is a diet you should avoid because you are being lied to. The truth is, that line is a bunch of baloney designed to make a diet sound easier to follow.
Anything that sounds like work – such as counting calories, eating less or exercising, tends to scare away potential customers! The law of calorie balance is an unbreakable law of physics: Energy in versus energy out dictates whether you will gain, lose or maintain your weight. Period.
I believe that it’s very important to develop an understanding of and a respect for portion control and the law of calorie balance. I also believe it’s an important part of nutrition education to learn how many calories are in the foods you eat on a regular basis – including (and perhaps, especially) how many calories are in the foods you eat when you dine at restaurants.
The law of calorie balance says:
To maintain your weight, you must consume the same number of calories you burn. To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn. To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn.
If you only count portions or if you haven’t the slightest idea how many calories you’re eating, it’s a lot more likely that you’ll eat more than you realize. (Or you might take in fewer calories than you should, which triggers your body’s "starvation mode" and causes your metabolism to shut down).
So how do you balance practicality and realistic expectations with a nutrition program that gets results? Here’s a solution that’s a happy medium between strict calorie counting and just guessing:
Create a menu using an EXCEL spreadsheet or your favorite nutrition software. Crunch all the numbers including calories, protein, carbs and fats. Once you have your daily menu, print it, stick it on your refrigerator (and/or in your daily planner) and you now have an eating "goal" for the day, including a caloric target.
Rather than writing down every calorie one by one from every morsel of food you eat for the rest of your life, create a menu plan you can use as a daily goal and guideline. If you’re really ambitious, keeping a nutrition journal at least one time in your life for at least 4-12 weeks is a great idea and an incredible learning experience, but all you really need to get started on the road to a better body is one good menu on paper. If you get bored eating the same thing every day, you can create multiple menus, or just exchange foods using your primary menu as a template.
Using this meal planning method, you really only need to “count calories” once when you create your menus, not every day, ad infinitum. After you’ve got a knack for calories from this initial discipline of menu planning, then you can estimate portions in the future and get a pretty good (and more educated) ballpark figure.
So what’s the bottom line? Is it really necessary to count every calorie to lose weight? No. But it IS necessary to eat fewer calories then you burn. Whether you count calories and eat less than you burn, or you don’t count calories and eat less than you burn, the end result is the same – you lose weight. Which would you rather do: Take a wild guess, or increase your chance for success with some simple menu planning? I think the right choice is obvious.
For more information on calories (including how calculate precisely how many you should eat based on your age, activity and personal goals, and for even more practical, proven fat loss techniques to help you lose body fat safely, healthfully and permanently, check out my e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle at
http://www.fightfatphilly.com/tom_venuto_fitness_articles.html
To learn more about building your best body ever, simply go to http://www.ChristianHealthandFitness.com to download YOUR FREE copy of ‘The Christian’s Guide To Maximal Fat Loss’ sample plan. You will also find some more great fitness tips from Matt Shuebrook at http://www.FightFatPhilly.com/articles.html and http://www.MyPhiladelphiaFitnessExpert.com