Losing weight

Hi there!
So, I'm no nutricionist, and I'm quite fat myself, but I'm about 15kg less fat than I was one year ago, so maybe I can give you some advice here.
To lose weight in a healthy way, you should focus on finding a kind of diet that you can keep long term. If this is a diet you jumped into, and it's not good for you yet, why don't you try to break into it slowly?
You could start with, let's say, drinking one less can of soda per day this week. Next week, you'll reduce that soda intake even more, and so on, untill you quit drinking soda as a part of your regular nutrition. And you can start testing with vegetables to find out which ones you really like.
So, don't give up on losing weight, but try to start slowly so that the changes feel natural to you, instead feeling like falling on hard concrete face first.
And, most importantly: if you feel hungry, eat. Just watch what you're eating, okay? A good tip is: if you can't pronounce one of the ingredients at the first try, it's probably not something good for you, haha. (Oh, and have you ever tried making fruit animals? They good for you, fun to make, fun to eat and solve the "being hungry" thing... for a while, heh). Seriously, though, eat when hungry and, if one diet doesn't feel right, you can always try something else!
Good luck!

 

When I cut back on carbs I had about a week of near-constant hunger, after which it mostly eased up. According to my doctor, that's normal.

 

First let me say I myself am trying to lose 30lbs over this next year. So I am in the same boat here. Secondly go slowly with any insane change of diet. You might not even know you are addicted to something unless you go off it cold turkey.
I did that with energy drinks and man that was not fun. So I found out a single cup of black coffee with nothing but honey or cinnamon in it is a healthier alternative. Its not perfect for you but so long as its ONE cup its not bad either. That brings me to my next advice look for healthy options for things you really like.
Finally if you are hungry look for a healthy snack but also DRINK WATER. The body can actually confuse thirst for hunger so try a glass of cold water and wait 30 or so minutes to see what happens. Good luck and trust me I know this isnt easy.

 

Some people say that you can lose weight without ever being hungry - but those are usually skinny annoying people.

I lost almost 50lbs 4 years ago and have kept it off. The key was to eliminate those things that have empty calories - the pure sugars in desserts and cola. Cut them out entirely.

Carbs is next. We all think that 'whole wheat' is good - and maybe it is - but it is still full of calories that we generally don't need.

So a diet of lean meat and vegetables is what you're aiming for. Eat 5 times a day so that you're not crazy hungry - snack on roasted soy nuts or other high protein, low carb things.

Increasing your amount of exercise is also good, but I found it was more to do with the food than the exercise. Good luck!

 

I've lost about 70 pounds over the last 6 months and Im at this point looking to maintain. I did it mainly by cutting out all sweets or crap foods, also no pop and as much water as possible. Because it was the summer I also managed to run for 30 minutes every day coupled with exercise and still manage to squeeze it into my schedule now that I'm working plus school.

It sounds like quite a bit and very drastic but if you do it gradually you hardly notice it at all, if you're struggling with foods have a cheat day or something I don't personally do that but over Christmas break I literally ate nothing but pure crap so I have my own system kinda. (Mainly birthdays plus holidays)

 

I'd go with slowly changing eating habits to healthier food .... Not less food ... Just healthier food .... Start with moderate exercise and healthy eating .... Push ups ... Jogging ... Stuff like that .... Real easy to get into ... Put on some muscle ... Muscle burns calories at rest too so it's good to have ...

 

I use a website that allows me track the number of calories that I am eating. I put in my height, weight, age, sex, and pounds that I want to lose weekly and was given a daily calorie budget. I have lost nearly 50lbs this way. A couple good ones are Free Calorie Counter, Diet & Exercise Journal | MyFitnessPal.com and my personal favorite, Lose It! - Succeed at weight loss with Lose It!. Some weeks are harder than others, hunger wise and I was rather hungry the first week or two, but after awhile it got easier. I eat what I want for the most part, including carbs, I love carbs. I did cut out Mayo, if something comes with it fine, like egg salad, but I do not go out my for it. I also cut out ketchup, but I never really like ketchup anyways, so no big loss. I also cut down on pop, I now normally drink unsweetened tea or flavor water if available. I tried diet, but the aspartame gives me headaches if there is too much, and I can't stand the taste.

 

I lost all my weight on Atkins by drinking a lot of water and exercising in 6 months. I didn't fallow it to a tee but I kept it low carb. Just after a month I saw a big difference and I also had a ton of more energy. It was really easy to stay motivated

 

What kind of things are you eating at the moment? EDIT: before your diet, as well as during your diet.

Fruits and veggies are good (not because they "cleanse the liver," that's not actually true, and your liver doesn't need any cleansing anyway) because they displace other higher-calorie foods and provide you with fiber and vitamins and minerals.

Whole-grain products are good, but stick to reasonable amounts. No need to cut them out entirely, you'll just make yourself miserable.

As someone else has said, cut out the soda and sweetened juices, etc. No matter what, they are unhealthy. And the diet versions are unfortunately no better because they contain chemicals which trick your brain into thinking you're actually taking in sugar, which has repercussions on weight gain. =/

If you tell us what you eat in a typical day, we'll surely be able to give you suggestions to improve.

Oh yeah, and exercise, too.

Good luck!

 

Well you didn't provide much information about your diet (or exercise routine), so it's hard to evaluate your particular situation and come up with a solution that fits your unique circumstances.

But of course the basic rules of weight loss are
A) Eat less
B) Exercise more

You can just do one or the other if you want, you'll just have to that one more compensate for the lack of the other.

Ultimately genetics and your metabolism rate do have an impact on your weight and any attempts to change your weight. (I eat whatever I want, I hardly ever exercise, and I'm underweight). But they don't predetermine your weight, you still have the power to lose weight if you want to and really try, you just have to work harder at it.

If there's one thing I would suggest to you or anyone who wants to lose weight: drink a lot of water. Don't drink soda or anything else, just drink litre after litre of water, it will flush your system out and really help in shedding those pounds.

 

Not liter after liter, please. You could inflict serious damage to your body like that. No more than 8 cups a day (and that's really on the high side, considering food already contains a fair amount of water), which is 2 liters. Not to mention it will only help in weight loss at first; after that, the eating habits and the exercise are the only keys to weight loss.

 

I know you are 15 so this might not work for you but maybe someone else will find this thread looking for tips. I find that the best way I lose weight is simply to remove temptation. I usually eat when I'm bored so I make it difficult.

I don't keep snack food in the house. If I have a big bag of cool ranch Doritos I will get bored and plow through them. I have chips occasionally but I only buy a small snack size bag and don't eat them til I get home. If I eat out I also take it home before I eat it. This way if I feel I want more I have to go back across town to get more instead of just walking to a counter.

Also don't buy stuff like hot pockets that you can shove in a microwave and hit a button. Instead buy stuff you actually have to cook like say pork chops and fried potatoes (just eat what you want). The trick is just make enough for one serving at a time. If you make enough for seconds then you will probably have seconds, but if you actually have to cook seconds you probably won't. This also keeps you from eating when you are bored because you will ask yourself am i hungry enough to want to cook? If you are bored you will answer"no" if you are actually hungry you will get up and cook something.

The last thing you can do is if you're addicted to soda is try switching to something like tea or kool-ade because you can control the amount of sugar in these. Start off drinking it how you usually drink it then slowly start making it with a little less sugar every week or so. In no time you will have cut your sugar intake in half in about a months time and because you did it slowly you will not even realize you've done it

 

Diet alone doesn't do it. Same reason working out without a good diet doesn't do it. Do some cardio workout and slowly get into weight training. With the combo of the diet and workout it helps to curb some of the cravings due to the endorphins. Eat lots of celery. Celery actually takes more calories to eat it than it gives you.

 

I drink multiple litres of water a day. Every single day. I rarely exercise. I eat whatever I want. And I'm at a healthy weight (I'm just at the very bottom cusp of the normal range BMI).

And I have little explanation for why I've lost so much weight over the year since I left college. As a college student, walking to and from classes and sometimes going to the gym, I weighed about 15-20 lbs heavier than I do now. Today I'm pretty much completely sedentary. I sat in my parents house unemployed doing basically nothing for a year, now all I do is to drive to my job where I sit at a desk all day. And I'm older, it makes no sense for my metabolism to have suddenly picked up now, when the opposite is supposed to happen. (And for the past few months I've been on an anti-depressant medication that happens to be notorious for causing people to gain as much as 10-20lbs). Yet I lost weight during all this time and have remained skinny The main variable is that I drink a lot more water. (Though I also drink a lot of coffee and tea.)

Yes, you CAN drink too much water- I've done it once, I drink a lot of water when I'm nervous, with my social anxiety it makes social interactions easier to bear for me when I have a bottle of water in my hand to sip and give me time to think of what to say. One time I was at a long social gathering, I had a bottle, there was no food but there was a water cooler, and I kept refilling to the point where I wasn't keeping count, and I felt dizzy and went to the hospital and was diagnosed with mild hyponatremia (low sodium levels) and given a saline drip. Even then the doctors just suggested that if I'm going to drink a lot of water, make sure I eat enough salty foods (they suggested carrying a bag of pretzels around with me) and drink things like Gatorade to keep your electrolytes in balance. You really have to drink an EXTREME amount of water to develop serious water intoxication. So yes, do not drink an extreme amount of water unless you want to risk serious damage to your body and possibly even death.

I told my own doctor of my high water consumption and she said it was fine, as long as I'm not drinking soda, which is poison to your body and will definitely lead to weight gain.

Anyway my suggestion wasn't meant to be taken literally. You don't have to drink litre after litre of water (even though I personally do), I'm just saying that drinking a lot of water, replacing the soda and sugary drinks you're already drinking with water, can really help with weight loss.

 

It's rather an easy answer. Carbohydrates are the main cause for wright gain (imo). Carbohydrates take days to brake down and are often stored as fat. There's not much nutritional value from them, but if you want to lose weight, you must control your intake of them. Even if you go as far as rejecting pizza crusts, it can help. I checked the calories of 1 hot dog and 1 hot dog bun. Amazingly, they were about the same. Good food groups for you to intake during a diet would be meat, fruits, and vegetables. Drinking a lot of water is also good for clearing out your system.

 

I disagree, I don't think cutting carbs is a good idea, because when you start eating them again your body stores it all. Instead, make your portions sizes of carbs smaller and make the change to Wholemeal carbs instead of white, processed carbs. Water is important, veg, protein. I'm losing weight myself but mainly by trying to get fit, this is a recent endeavour for me, when I was about your age I developed an eating disorder, the single worst year of my life. But I recovered, and now I'm here, not the thinnest I've ever been but by far the most comfortable in my own body I have ever felt. I cannot stress enough how much exercising makes me feel better. Even if it's not for weight loss especially, but it feels so good to be getting fit. I started by running as far as I could before I had to stop, I kept running every other day until I was running 5km every other day. Now I'm in the gym more doing exercise classes and things. Food is important for losing weight but don't go crazy cutting things because it's so easy to fail that way, but get into an exercise routine and you feel great. My though processes can go two ways:
With exercise:
"I've exercised, I should probably eat well so I don't undo all my hard work"
Or
"No point eating the chocolate cake if I'm going to the gym later, I'll need some real energy"

Without exercise I tend not to think this way and stuff it all! I've not being healthy today anyway so I may as well have some cake!
Am I making any sense? I used to hate exercise but it seriously feels good
This turned into a massive rant but best of luck!

 

Agreed with above poster, cutting carbs completely is bad. I mostly get my carbs from veggies and it's working for me. note that veggies are really low in carbs so I eat a lot of them. I cheat here and there now and I can still maintain my weight. As others have said, it's extremely important to drink water and exercise.

 

Calories contribute to body fat. One pound of body fat is equivalent to approximately 3,500 stored calories.

The basic break-down of food and calories is this:

All food items have one, some, or all of four components. Alcohol, fat, protein, and carbohydrates. All are necessary or provide an important function in nutrition.

Each component, however, has their own caloric value. (Before I begin, I cannot recall of these measurements are in a single gram or not. But they provide the information you need, regardless.)

Alcohol - 7 calories.
Fat (lipids) - 9 calories.
Carbohydrates - 4 calories.
Proteins - 4 calories.

As I said, you cannot remove proteins or carbohydrates from your diet without compromising your health.

I'll list some common foods from each group that you can focus on or ignore.

Alcohol -- flavor extracts (vanilla, almond), gin, spirit drinks, vodka, etc.

Fat -- pastries; doughnuts; cakes; baked goods (minus most breads); sauces; most thick soups using a beurre manie method of thickening; fatty meats; vegetables, fruits, and legumes with a high oil content; dairy; beverages like milk or milk substitutes like almond and coconut; etc.

Proteins -- primarily found in meats and legumes. If you eat meat, proteins are unavoidable. But fret not, there are options within meat. Eggs have a high amount of protein and cholesterol (in the egg white and yolk, respectively) and are purest form of both; the omega 3 fatty acids contained in most fish make them a good choice due to the healthful nature of the fats they possess, and low-fat meat such as poultry (chicken, cornish game hen, duck, goose, turkey, etc.).

Carbohydrates. Last but not least, and most complicated for last. Certain foods have more carbohydrates than others and I will list them according to MOST to LEAST (on average). Sugary foods like desserts, jellies, sodas, syrups; starches like corn or potatoes; legumes like beans and peas; bread and yeast products like pizzas, fruit cake, whole wheat bread, garlic bread; fruit products like apples, oranges, and bananas have lots of fructose (fruit sugar); dairy items like yogurt, cheese, cream cheese, milk; vegetables EXCLUDING starches or legumes like celery, carrots or tomatoes; and meats like poultry, red meat, fish, crustaceans, etc. Yes, meats have high levels of protein but low carbohydrate quantities.

I hope this helps. In terms of exercise, your body begins consuming its own fat (among many other reasons) when there is not enough energy to preform a task with its current energy stores. After all, a calorie represents energy and fat stores 3,500 calories. This doesn't mean eat less and do more. It means balance what you eat with what you do.