Beed eating help

Littlejen22

I am only 5'1" and want to lose 15-20 lbs, I lost weight last year with a personal trainer and a lot of time in the gym and gained it all back and then some. I am trying to change my eating habits and work out again. Any tips?  And easy food suggestions?

OliveBeckett

Lol.  Agreed, beeds don't fit into my diet and I can't recommend them. 

 Ok, first step to a healthy diet is to just keep eating the way you normally do and exhaustively write everything down.  This is a record of NORMAL eating for you.  Don't cheat, don't forget.  Then, use calorie king or another online calorie counting tool (or the labels themselves on the items) and add up your daily intake. Is there a group of items that can be replaced or eliminated?  Potentially, there could be some items that you are totally willing to give up and that can add up. You'll need to most likely eat between 1500-1800 calories for weight loss.  In 6 small meals.  After a few days of hunger your body will adapt and it WILL NOT be awful.  Promise.

Weight loss is usually best and most healthily accomplished at a 1-2 pound a week rate. Since a pound of fat is roughly 3500 calories people usually try to cut down about 250 calories in their diet and burn 250 calories per day.  That adds up to 1 pound a week.  Double that and you get 2 pounds a week.

Some advice:  do as PP poster suggested and find some cookbooks and plan some shopping and cooking.  Plan to bring your lunch to work everyday. Find workouts you actually enjoy otherwise you wont be able to be consistent and that is the key.  Consistent eating better and exercise and you will achieve your goal.

Take your time.  The formula is simple: eat less and move more.  But, you must find the components that you can stick to.  If you torture yourself you won't be consistent and you'll yo yo your way through this for years. Like me. 

 Just try a bunch of things and PRACTICE Don't assume - AHAH THIS is what will work!  That's a great way to waste a bunch of money

I found out over 4 years that I like the paleo diet and cross fit best.  But Tosca Reno has some good stuff in the eat clean diet and I like Beach Body's Turbo Fire or taking Zumba classes. 

 

Good luck! It is hard but you don't have a ton to lose.  So just know you can do it if you develop discipline and find what you like. 

JJhenton

Oh please, please don't count calories!!!!  WHAT you eat is SO much more important than how MUCH you eat!  Your body processes a 100 cal apple so much different than a 100 calorie slice of bread!!!!

You are very smart to start with your diet!  I am a personal trainer & start by telling people that getting fit & healthy is 30% exercise/ 70% diet.  First, try cutting way down on your processed foods.  Breads (even whole wheat!!!), noodles, processed dairy, cereal, refined sugar, etc.  I'm not suggesting the low-carb diet (which I think is very unhealthy) but more of a "clean" or "whole foods" diet with a majority of your foods from the fruit, veggie, nuts, & meat categories.  The first few days of cutting out the "junky" processed foods will be way hard and the cravings will be crazy but it's amazing how good you will feel & how fast the weigh comes off once you cut out the crap.

Secondly, I always recommend to forget what you have learned about exercising for a long period of time in the "fat burning zone".  If you really want to rev-up your metabolism you need short bursts of high-intensity intervals and some resistance training.  Good news is that you only need to exercise for around 30 mins. The bad news is that you need to make it intense! For example, you might warm up for 5 mins, then do 15 mins of 30 sec sprints/ 30 sec recovery walk.  Just make sure your sprints (or high incline/tension walking/eliptical) is hard enough that after 30 secs you are VERY happy the 30 secs are over). Then cool down for a few minutes & hit the free weights (which I recommend WAY over machines bc you work so many more accessory muscles) & do some lower body resistance & your done!  Just try it for a few weeks please.  I've had so many people get better results doing this kind of workout than the lower intensity / hr a day/ 6 days a wk workouts.  Good luck!