Losing Weight Improve Your Waistline - 44/45 - It's All About Getting Healthy & Sticking To A Diet

Time To Cut Out Sugar

December 2, 2008 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

When I was a lot younger I didn’t take sugar in my coffee. Since then I’ve taken to drinking much stronger coffees, so adding sugar became a natural thing to do. I then decided to replace the sugar with artificial sweetener, but that’s probably not the best of ideas either…

But being honest about it, the sugar in the coffee might not be the worst thing. The sugar on the breakfast cereal is probably doing me a lot more damage. So I’m now going to try and cut it out. I might not be able to cut out sugar immediately, but if I can reduce the quantity I use it will probably help a bit ….

Why Christmas Sucks If You Want To Lose Weight

November 30, 2008 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

Image via Wikipedia

You don’t need to be a genius to realise that Christmas is a really bad time of the year if you’re on a diet. That probably explains why so many people decide to go on diets in the New Year …

So what to do?

Christmas is a wonderful time of the year to see friends and family, but what on earth do you do about the food?

Christmas dinner itself is usually a calorie-laden feast – if not then there’s probably something wrong!

And in the weeks leading up to Christmas there are so many temptations put in your way… Think of mince pies, cakes, panettone, pan d’oro and of course office parties.

I don’t think there is an easy solution. The only thing I can try to do is eat in moderation and try to avoid as much of the junk as possible – even if it pains me!

Some Progress Makes You Feel Better

November 30, 2008 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

So I’m avoiding lots of food. Trying to eat better and more healthy options etc., etc.

Most of the time it’s relatively easy – munching on fruit throughout the day seems to work out okay and if I’ve got too much fruit other people in the office help make sure that it doesn’t go off.

Of course the big question is whether or not any of this is actually working.

While it’s nice that people say encouraging things it’s hard to know if they’re just saying that to help boost your morale. Not that I’m complaining, but tangible results would be so much nicer!

So I was delighted to find that I’d dropped a full kilo when I weighed myself this morning. A full kilo! That’s 2 lbs if you’re into Imperial measurements.

Unfortunately I suspect that the 1kg is due to my horrible hangover yesterday – as I couldn’t stomach food for most of the day, but let’s not dwell on that too much.

Other positive things …

I’ve bought a smaller belt for my trousers, as the one I was using couldn’t be tightened any further and my trousers felt like they were going to fall off me most of the time.

So what now?

Rome wasn’t built in a day, so I just need to keep on at it.

Web Services To Track Your Dieting

November 23, 2008 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

PLANTATION, FL - MARCH 06: Howard Brown repai...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

As I’ve mentioned before, I work in IT, so I like gadgets and web services. However I am pragmatic. If it’s going to take me hours to setup a profile on a site and keep it up to date, then I probably won’t really use it.

In my quest to keep track of my dieting and weight loss (I prefer to refer to it as “change of lifestyle”) I sought out some online services to help me.

Weight Watchers have an online service, but as it’s pay to use I haven’t assessed it as yet.

Three other sites did attract my attention:
Daily Plate
Fit Day
Traineo

There were problems with all 3 sites.

Both Daily Plate and Fit Day are very American, while Traineo’s signup page was broken on my first visit. While I did eventually manage to signup a number of the site’s functions are not working correctly at present, which is more than a little annoying.
Of the three only two sent me confirmation emails after signing up. FitDay didn’t, so I had to search my browser history to work out the site’s name.
That is annoying.

Anyway, what about the site’s themselves?

All three offer very similar functionality. The main difference is in how you can access it and add your details ie. keep track of your eating, exercise and weight etc.,

Traineo would appear to be the slickest and simplest to use, as they give you a relatively simple “portal” to work from. Unfortunately, like the other sites, it allows you to enter data in lbs or kg, but then displays suggestions related to lbs only, which is really annoying.

Daily Plate is quite powerful by the looks of things, but to be able to access any of the more advanced features you need to upgrade to a paid subscription. It allows you to track what you eat by searching their database, but unfortunately it’s very American in its bias and the display of options when you search is confusing to say the least

Fit Day is quite easy to use and doesn’t seem to want my money to access any of its features. Unfortunately, while it allows me to set targets and enter data using metric values it provides all of its advice and graphs using Imperial measurements!

After playing around a bit with all three services I’m really none the wiser.

If someone were to launch a more Euro-centric solution I’d probably be a lot happier.

Is Weight Watchers A Good Option?

November 23, 2008 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

Weight Watchers seems to be a very popular way of losing weight amongst my female friends.

I’ve been looking into joining weight watchers, as I like to keep my options open, but I have a few reservations.

To start with, while I may be happy to write about my battle to lose weight or to tell anyone I know, I’m not 100% sure if I would like to get involved in a group of complete strangers. I’ve never been particularly good with groups or anything that involves regularly scheduled meetings, so I don’t think I’d feel particularly comfortable going to a meeting by myself. If a friend or colleague was attending as well then I probably would.

The other thing is that while weight watchers has “men only” meetings in some parts of the country, they don’t have any in my area.

Of course if I really wanted to I could always opt for the “Weight Watchers at Home” system, which gives you all the booklets that you’d get normally plus you have access to their consultants.

Breaking Habits

November 22, 2008 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

If, like me, you spend most of your working day sitting at a desk it’s all too easy to let the pounds pile on.

So what can you do?

While it might be a nice idea to advocate going to the gym or getting lots of exercise you need to be realistic.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks

I don’t entirely agree with that saying, but I think there is a grain of truth in it.

If you aren’t a fitness freak then you won’t be able to convert yourself into one overnight.

It’s probably easier and more sustainable to try and change small habits gently over time, rather than trying to reinvent yourself.

For example you can walk to the shop instead of driving.

I live within walking distance of the town centre, so I don’t really need to take the car with me if I’m just going out to buy a couple of things, though I would need to take it for a proper weekly shopping trip.

I’m still trying to find a way of exercising that fits with my mentality. I have considered walking, but unless a walk has a purpose I can’t see myself doing it ie. unless walking is to get me from point A to point B I won’t do it.

Another option would be to get some home fitness equipment so that I could exercise while watching TV or listening to the radio.

Snacking Is Bad

November 19, 2008 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

box of tea, coffee and drinking chocolate

Image by natala007 via Flickr

If you’re sitting at a desk all day you probably end up drinking lots of coffee or tea (I know I do!)

So when you’re drinking your tea or coffee you may feel that overwhelming urge to indulge yourself in a snack – maybe a little biscuit or a small bar of chocolate. Wouldn’t it be nice to wash down with that coffee?

Stop!

Snacking is a really bad idea!

If you’re trying to control your waistline and bring down your weight then you need to cut out unncessary snack in between meals.

If you must eat something then try an apple or an orange – I don’t think you can really overdose on fruit!

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