Hope I'm not the only one with a weight problem.
I think my problem is I eat too much and don't exercise enough. Any advice on that?
Emotional eating. Don't eat looking for solace or empathy /sympathy. Junk food doesn't care about you. It just wants to make you fat.
Eating is not the meaning of life. I am starting to realise that now.
Yet that cakeshop needs my business. I am helping the economy by buying their pies.
I'm sure you've heard this before but I truly believe it is extremely accurate. Calories in, calories out. One idea to consider is to monitor daily food intake, particularly carbohydrates, to achieve a balance with the amount of daily exercise. Note that each gram of carbohydrate translates to 4 calories but not all calories are going to be converted to fat.
First, I have to be fair and identify that I am not super heavy. I am 6'-1" tall and weigh roughly 210 pounds. According to the medical field I am considered obese but to look at me I don't look obese. In February of 2012 my weight had climbed up to about 230 pounds and I was diagnosed with type II diabetes. My doctor prescribed Metformin and had me attend a class about managing carbohydrate intake. Carbohydrates, particularly simple carbs like sugary foods, syrups, milk products, white flour, white breads, and fruit juice concentrates among others are what is converted into glucose. Complex carbs are high fiber and these are not converted to glucose as easily and help you feel full at meals.
According to medical guidelines a diet for a person 50 years old and above should get about 135 grams of carbohydrates daily. When I actually tracked my carbs I learned that I was ingesting upwards of 200 grams or more per day and a good percentage of them were simple carbs which are the ones that really can cause blood glucose to rise and increase fat storage in the body.
I began to regulate my carb intake to a plan. I would allow myself up to 30 grams for each of three main meals per day with a maximum of 15-20 grams for any snacking between those meals for a total of up to 150 grams spread throughout the day. I also concentrated on switching to more complex carbs than simple carbs. I switched to whole grains for things like pasta, bread, cereals, flour, etc. Complex carbs are higher in fiber and these are not prone to increase blood glucose or be stored as fat.
At first it was a challenge to say the least. I had to learn a new lifestyle and my body had to readjust but one thing I did notice is that I never really felt hungry because I was eating something every 2-3 hours throughout the day, although portions were considerably smaller. Try this. The next time you have a piece of cake cut the piece to be about 2 square inches in size or if you have a bowl of cereal for breakfast, measure out 1/2 cup. That will be about 15 grams of carbs give or take. That's what I do.
By September of that year I lost about 30 pounds and my blood glucose came under control enough to stop taking the Metformin. After a while I decided I had this and didn't need to track my carb intake anymore. Almost immediately I began to notice my weight increasing because I was getting lazy, so I created a spreadsheet on my phone to track my carb intake and my weight came back down.
Today, depending on how diligently I monitor my carbs, I fluctuate from 200 pounds to 215 pounds but so far, thank the Lord, my A1C has been relatively steady ranging from 5.1 to 6.1. It's when I get lazy and convince myself that I can deviate from my plan that I find my weight increasing.
Carbohydrates and calories and body fat go hand-in-hand so when I am tracking my carbs I am also tracking most of my calories and managing my body fat storage.
We are not self-disciplined to manage our diet and exercise to accomplish the task. We rely on fancy diet plans and programs to do the work for us so we don't have to change our way of life. The problem is, if we do actually lose the weight what then? We stop the diet and then we put the weight back on because we didn't change our lifestyle. My wife spends tons of money on different plans and has found little success. What success she does have is rapidly negated as soon as she stops the plan after reaching her goals.
We'd prefer to just take a pill and solve our problems that way. I get a kick when I see commercials for weight-loss pills followed by commercials for weight-gain pills. They are preying on our lack of self-discipline.
