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Watch your portion sizes - Page 2

post #16 of 28
8/31/10 at 10:24pm
I went from 167 to 142 with no exercise or lifestyle change other than using fitday.com to keep it to 1600 calories a day.

The two best things I did were to buy this (I got a different model, can't find it now)

http://www.amazon.com/Escali-11-2dlb...3304610&sr=1-1

and this (exact one I have and I LOVE it for the consistency)

http://www.amazon.com/EatSmart-Preci...6&sr=8-2-spell

Weighing your portions for about two weeks gets you trained to realize how much you are overeating. I wound up memorizing the nutritional information for pretty much everything, and now the weight loss is continuing without having to weigh my food or anything else.
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post #17 of 28
8/31/10 at 11:27pm
Conversly, do the exact opposite to put on muscle - when I start thinking - okay, eat a real meal 4x + a day, then I gain weight, otherwise I lose down to a plateau.
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post #18 of 28
9/1/10 at 4:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SField View Post
That is a very achievable goal

I hope so, although I'm not that young anymore (I'll be 40 in October) so its not as easy as for guys in their 20s. I'm aiming for 72kgs as that was my weight aged 25 when I was lucky enough to live near the sea and to surf 3 or 4 times a week (plus I did tae kwon do twice a week) and was pretty much solid muscle. I've still got a decent amount of muscle but I've steadily gained a few pounds of fat per year due to lifestyle (long hours at a desk, young kids taking all my free time, lazy eating habits, all the usual excuses...). Turning 40 this year has made me take my head out the sand and reverse the trend of the last 15 years, especially after I was put on high blood pressure pils earlier this year and my cholesterol test was shockingly bad.
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post #19 of 28
9/1/10 at 4:48am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCFZo...layer_embedded

thank me later
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post #20 of 28
9/1/10 at 5:15am
when i was raised i was always told to eat everything on my plate. i find it hard to leave uneaten food on a plate now. ive come to despise resturants which have huge servings at the expense of quality. Tony Romas, TGIFs etc american style food chains are the absolute worst.
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post #21 of 28
9/1/10 at 9:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Herbert View Post
when i was raised i was always told to eat everything on my plate. i find it hard to leave uneaten food on a plate now. ive come to despise resturants which have huge servings at the expense of quality. Tony Romas, TGIFs etc american style food chains are the absolute worst.

Amen to this. Any time I come back to the U.S. the first thing I notice is how absolutely huge the servings are. I can rarely finish an entire meal of anything. Now I am eating much smaller portions of much healthier food, but I eat four or five times a day. I notice that this has really improved my endurance during runs.
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post #22 of 28
9/1/10 at 10:06am
Agree. I've only been to the US once - Miami for a holiday. I was shocked at some of the meals being served up, just enormous. Not everywhere was like that, we had an extremely good meal in a French restaurant that served up normal portion sizes of fantastic food. But we also went to some sort of tex mex restaurant one night and the clue was in the fact that 75% of the people in there were obese. I ate half my starter (a bucket of soup), a bit of my main course (a huge steak, a giant potato with sour cream, a side bucket of salad, a whole loaf of garlic bread) and didn't touch my dessert (a bucket of ice cream) but that was still more food than I wanted, let alone the endless offers for coke top ups (in the goldfish bowl sized glass of coke). Bleh.
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post #23 of 28
9/1/10 at 11:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by PipPip View Post
Agree. I've only been to the US once - Miami for a holiday. I was shocked at some of the meals being served up, just enormous. Not everywhere was like that, we had an extremely good meal in a French restaurant that served up normal portion sizes of fantastic food. But we also went to some sort of tex mex restaurant one night and the clue was in the fact that 75% of the people in there were obese. I ate half my starter (a bucket of soup), a bit of my main course (a huge steak, a giant potato with sour cream, a side bucket of salad, a whole loaf of garlic bread) and didn't touch my dessert (a bucket of ice cream) but that was still more food than I wanted, let alone the endless offers for coke top ups (in the goldfish bowl sized glass of coke). Bleh.

haha buckets and bowl of coke. that IS america for you. trust me, i feel the same way.
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post #24 of 28
9/1/10 at 12:45pm
Thing is, if you have a heavy main meal, just skip breakfast and lunch (or just have a light lunch, apple, banana etc).

mind you, I never have a starter or a dessert when eating out, and rarely a side.
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post #25 of 28
9/1/10 at 2:48pm
OP,
what you mentioned is really true.
I watched a couple of BBC documentary about weight gain/loss, and the reason why most people aren't losing weight is because they under-estimate their food portions.
This is one of em;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSm1dWjMGeM

There's another docu, why thin people are not fat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6-A0...eature=related
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post #26 of 28
9/1/10 at 4:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by LVoer View Post
I'm not overweight by any stretch of the imagination but a few weeks ago I was talking to some friends who are in great shape (eat healthy, exercise, etc.) and I thought I'd give myself a little challenge. I wondered how much weight I'd loose if I watched my portion sizes and actually paid some attention to calories. Before this I'd never think twice about eating anything I wanted (I had no idea what my calorie or fat intake should be). With some minor adjustments to my diet (minimal potatoes, rice, switching to diet pop and watching portion sizes) I dropped about 7-8lbs in 3 weeks. I would always have seconds at dinner but I realized I didn't really need them, I was just eating because I liked eating and there was some left over. I'm really amazed by how well this worked, but it's really a life-style change, not a diet. If I went back to my old ways I'm sure I'll put a few on.
There are potential pitfalls with decreasing portion size instead of attacking the problem in other ways. When you eat small portions, in theory this is good, but leads most people to graze/snack throughout the day between meals. If you're able to avoid this, that's fine, but most people struggle with eating small meals. Let me be clear, if you're dieting and you're CONSTANTLY hungry throughout the day, more than likely you aren't going about it in the most efficient way. When I'm dropping calories, I will still eat until I'm full, just making sure to keep the calories in line. Many people try to lose weight by eating too little of the wrong food, and their training sucks. They should actually be eating more calories than they are, with different ratios, and getting their training in line - which in the long run will produce much better results. Long story short, most people can't drop weight correctly.
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post #27 of 28
9/1/10 at 4:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rambo View Post
Remember the basic fundamentals of weight loss -

calories eaten > calories burned + calories pooped or vomited back up = weight gain

calories burned + calories pooped or vomited back up > calories eaten = weight loss

Even if you're eating everything clean and healthy, if you're eating so much that you can't burn it off, you'll end up packing a few on.

FTFY
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post #28 of 28
9/3/10 at 12:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by indesertum View Post
nuts are such a bad diet snack food. they dont fill you up and they're mostly fat and a little bit of fiber. same with dried fruit but change fat to simple carbs.

Oh my. How terribly wrong this is.

Dietary fat doesn't add fat fat.
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