Daily Question Tues. March 29th

I dont as often as i should

Not nearly as much as I should! I do walk on my lunch hour, every day, for at least 30 minutes, after I eat. I did drop a lot of weight doing that years ago. Recently, though, I've not kept up with it as much--DH's work hours have really changed--he's up at 4AM now, instead of 6 AM, and I don't usually get back to sleep, so I've been napping on my lunch hour!

I do something every day. Since my knee has healed from the surgery last year, I am back to walking 3 miles over my lunch break at work. And now I'm back on the treadmill at night for another mile or so. Followed by 1.5 miles on the elliptical. Once the weather truly warms up (someday ), I'll walk 3-4 miles every night outside in addition to my lunch walk. I just love walking; it's the best exercise and it's always available, whether you're outside, on a treadmill, or at the mall. (Our mall has a walking group that meets every morning to walk before the stores open.)

One of my GFs bought an Ab Lounger, decided it was too much work and gave it to me to try. Well, it's mine now and I'm doing 150 crunches on the Lounger every night while watching Bones in syndication.

I also lift weights three times a week and do other types of crunches on my mat in the bedroom almost every night. In the summer, I work out on the Bowflex in the basement; during the winter months, I take my dumbbells to the bedroom and exercise there while watching tv.

My walking combined with my exercise routines probably give me about 2 to 2-1/2 hours of exercise every day.

I exercise at least 4-5 times a week. During the winter I use my recumbant bike at home for an hour, but in the summer we walk almost everyday, hike, bike, etc. I can't wait until it warms up enough fo rus to do so!

Do you all ever get frustrated? It used to be that even 30 minutes of exercise five days a week was great. Now, you read that it's an hour of exercise every single day......just to maintain your weight, especially as women get older. That's not to lose weight; that's just to maintain weight. It seems that no matter what we do, it's not enough. I get so frustrated with it all that sometimes I could just spit. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy exercising....I really do. And I always feel so much better when I'm on an exercise program. But geez......

We're supposed to eat good carbs; we're supposed to eat lots of whole grains. Don't forget the fruits and vegetables we're supposed to eat. Drink your milk, take your calcium, don't forget the Vitamin D. And so on and so on.

I guess my question is......How are you supposed to be able to fit all those foods into your diet and still maintain a healthy weight? As we get older, we don't need the calories that we used to need when we were younger. Our metabolism slows down, no matter how active we are. But the need for whole grains, produce, etc. doesn't change. So how do you fit in the whole grains and the fruits and veggies, and all that stuff and still maintain your weight?

I consider myself a fairly active person overall. Yet, if I eat more than 1100 - 1200 calories, I gain weight. It never fails. Thyroid tests are fine, other tests are always fine. Yet I have a really slow metabolism, even with everything I do. And believe me, you don't get much for 1200 calories.

How do you deal with eating "sensibly" and still maintaining your weight?

(And I apologize for the )

Every day. Jog, walk, bike.

Yes, I exercise at least five days a week. I like to eat so I have to do it. I do the FIRM tapes and videos. Have done those for years. I also love to walk and bike ride. In the summer I will bike ride everyday for a half-hour.

I am the same way, and I'm 22- but I used to weigh about 220 pounds, and I am 5'6.5" and I dropped 60 pounds in about 6 months by extremely restricting my calorie intake to about 500-700 calories.This was back when I was 16, and ever since then my metabolism isn't quite right.

But, even if you haven't done anything extreme like that- if you get your body used to eating a very small amount of calories per day, anything below 1200 is what is considered starvation mode for women, then your metabolism will adjust to that in order to keep you alive and become slower...at least based on what I've been reading!!
So I would look up different ways to increase your metabolism and try them, you can do it!

I've been reading about bodybuilders' diets, because they get extremely lean in order to get their muscles to show up like that. Basically they only have muscle and skin! And, in order to lose weight they restrict their calories, but they only eat high protein foods and restrict the carbs and fat to a bare minimum...And of course that plus working out, and it doesn't have to be for 8 hours a day or anything, an hour every day is enough!

I am definitely trying that, and since I'm a female unless i take steroids i won't get big like some guys do (I don't like the look of a women who have so much muscle so I'm trying to avoid that) And so far it's pretty awesome because I've been eating 2000 calories per day and still haven't gained anything, I am moving towards going to 1500 in order to lose fat...

Well I'm a trucker for a moving company and while loading and unloading a truck with furniture is good exercise in itself, I also go the the gym 5 days a week and in the summer I go out biking every day.

Nope, none at all. Maybe if I can get my heart dealt with I'll be able to. Right now I can only walk about a mile and only if it's cool enough (less than 80F) and not a bad day for me (rare). Otherwise just trying to get through a store to do a bit of shopping is tough enough.

Since I stopped eating bread and pretty much every other convenience/snack food I've started losing weight. Not really what I need to do, I had finally gotten to a healthy weight. In the last few weeks I've went from 135 to 131lbs.

I´m not proud of this....very seldom I do... I shouldn´t....


question!

Not as much as I should. I used to exercise for 15-30 minutes every night, but lately my work schedule has left me exhausted and with limited free time. Thankfully I've been managing to keep weight off since I have a fairly healthy diet, but I do wish I were more active.

One of my big problems is I hate exercise. I get very bored by it. The only way I've been able to motivate myself to do it is to set up a laptop caddy at my stationary bike and play video games while I bike.

Very small portion sizes! Most meals in the western diet are far too huge. I eat any time I am hungry and only enough to remove my hunger (not enough to make me feel super full) so I end up eating 3-5 tiny meals a day instead of 1-3 big ones, which really helps speed up your metabolism. My meals tend to range from the size of one closed fist to two.

Plus you don't necessarily need to eat all of those things every meal or even every day. Just so long as you get a decent balance over the course of a few days. I try to make each meal a little protein, a little veggies, and a little complex carbs, but what those are made of vary widely from meal to meal.

I think sometimes all those diet "rules" flying about society really overcomplicate eating. There's a great book I read that kind of sums up this problem: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. Often just trying to eat fresh foods with some variety, and limiting consumption of processed foods can help a lot. That's the philosophy that allowed me to lose 30 lbs anyway! And I only exercised regularly for about the first 10 lbs of that.