The dieters' support thread

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Currently 85.4 kg, 172.72 cm.
I am struggling to find a diet that works for me. I tried the atkins once, and lost a stone (6.4kg) in a week. Obviously way too fast so immeadiately started adding carbs again to balance out effects. After a while (after keeping relatively stable) decided to try again, with same diet plan. Had no effect, never lost any weight at all. Tried low calorie, sticking to between 1000/1200 for induction week and actually put on weight. Thankfully our local gym has opened up again for the first time in four years, and swimming/treadmill are only excercise that I can hold an interest in. However money's tight, for both diet purposes and exercise. I am planning on giving up smoking soon (and have cut down to 1 or 2 a day when by myself) but already I've noticed a change in how much more hungry I seem. I only have about 8.3 kg I want to get rid off, but that number is slowly increasing.
My main issue is a lack of motivation. I'm pretty lazy and either forget or decide to forget. At least with diets I've already bought the ingredients, I have to use them. Plus since I still live with parents a lot of what I decide comes from their budget and plans. I have bought meals before specifically for myself but now I can't afford this luxary.
Will be trying again after the whole christmas period is over, but no idea what course to undertake. Any advice?

Hey you sound like you're in exactly the same position i'm in! Except replace the parents with my wife i'm starting after christmas too, so maybe we could be diet buddys! (Cringey as it sounds)

Welcome, new people! Here's some hard-earned encouragement for you, hopefully.
(I just took the 3rd pic tonight.)





My favorite thing about dieting, in fact, is getting my face back.

You've lost loads of weight! How long between the first picture and the third?

The first pic was taken in late April, and the third tonight.

I exercised too intensely at the start, so I got sick for two months (cold or flu or similar bug). I had to rebuild my immune system after that by eating lots and resting a lot, so I gained some of the weight back. Then, I started doing the weight-losing process more gently, but still exercised a good amount, and happened to get sick after losing just five pounds. So I had to wait out that sickness, rebuild my immune system again, and now, about three weeks ago, I started my latest plunge. This time the only real exercise I'm doing is walking outside or on a treadmill once per week. That and 30-40 crunches per day and curling a 20-lbs dumbbell daily -- I just added those two 3 days ago. I'm trying to get to 145. It's all diet: calories and fat grams. If you count those carefully every day in a journal, and keep it -- in guys' case -- around 2,000 calories or less and under 45 grams of fat, you will lose weight -- even without exercise. About 1 pound (0.4kg) per week, depending on your metabolism and current weight.

That sounds terribly tedious and boring.

For me the only thing that worked was finding a sport I loved, and doing it as often as possible and then now, training for that sport specifically. It gives me a practical reason for losing weight. I couldn't motivate myself with a vague goal of just "losing weight." But that's just me. One way I lost a lot of weight when I was younger was cycling. Cycling is pretty sweet, rollerblading/ice skating is better, imo, but cycling is really good, and both will give you stupid strong leg muscles.

Oh, for your abs, don't do crunches, do leg raises. Crunches can mess up your posture, I forget exactly how, but I think it's something along the lines of them not targetting the right ab muscles. Bicep curls, if you want them to grow, you're gonna have to go to failure, so until they feel burning, or do less reps at something heavier. Personally, if all you got is dumbells, I'd do dumbell bench pressing instead of curls, or at least benchpress with the curls.

http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5- ... g-program/
That sounds like a good program, imo. People underrate lifting, but unless you're really bulking and consuming like 5000 calories a day or something stupid like that, it's awesome and will make you look better. Try it, picking up heavy weights is really sweet, and it'll improve most of your "cardio" activities, ie, your sprints will get a lot better.

Right now, I wanna diet a bit, I got down to 180 this summer, but I added some muscle, but I'm 190 right now but I still have a bit of a gut. So I'd like to somehow keep my strength all intact, and then drop down to at least 180 again, or maybe preferably 170, I kinda wanna take lifting a bit further, and I wanna drop into a lower class. Plus at 180 or 170, I'd probably be "ripped" and cool looking, and even though I'm not motivated by looks terribly much, it'd still be sorta cool to "try out" being ripped. My plan to do it is basically just exercise like I do (an hour a day ice skating, and 3 days a week lifting and doing box jumps and stuff like that) and maybe ride my bike a bit more, maybe 2-3x a week, probably 7 mile route. That, and eat more beans and legumes, and less processed food in general, but that's hard as processed food is so prevalent in my household, and if I'm emotionally not well, then I lose motivation to cook, even though I'm really good at it. However, I've been feeling a lot better since I started taking extra B vitamins, so I'll probably be better off again. I got money for my various supplements and vitamins again, too, so I should be a lot better off in general.

I'm rubbish at keeping journals and things like that. I'd probably be into it for about a week and then get bored, what I'm gonna do instead is figure out a 4 week meal plan, where obviously I don't consume any more than 2000 calories a day, and have a set food shopping list at the beginning of each week. I think I would find a schedule like that immensely easier to stick to. This is a really good thread though, I'm getting a lot of good advice!

Just have fun with what you're doing, exercise a lot, but do it in fun ways. IE, take a hike, hiking is like 600-700 calories an hour right there, and you're not like "I'm bored to death" like you are on a treadmill. For food, what helped me wasn't calorie amounts, though it's good to like, read labels a bit and keep them in mind as a generality, but more a change in thought process of "this will be beneficial for me, this will not benefit me." Or saying "I don't have to eat that" when I see like, a bag of Dorritos.

What makes the treadmill enjoyable for me is listening to music while I'm on it. To me, the activity IS the music; the treadmill merely functions as a place I can go by myself to listen to it. And the more into the music I am, the more I forget that I'm even on a treadmill. My treadmill measures my heart rate, so I used a chart in the exercise room to figure out that I burn the most fat at heart rate 105 beats per minute. So, I found out what speed of walking that is, through experimentation on the treadmill as it read my heart rate, and was quite surprised: it's the most naturally-slow, casual, and relaxed walking I can do! I was really amazed at that. Aerobics authority Kenneth Cooper writes that losing weight from walking is the formula "LSD: long, slow, distance". And he's thin as a rail himself. Vigorous exercise burns more sugars (calories) than fat, while slow and steady exercise burns more fat than sugars. Of course, burning sugars is good too, if you eat a lot of calories, because any excess sugars taken in and not burned are converted and stored as fat.

I'm rubbish at eating exactly the same things every day, so I keep a journal. I'm fairly routine in my daily food intake, but I'm not consistent enough to not have to actually keep track. I do like a bit of variety each day, so I've memorized most of the calorie counts of every food, drink, and dessert in my home, and each daily food intake list is somewhat different than the others. To each his own.

Helpful hint: for any food, go to google.com, and type the name of the food, i.e. "egg white", and then "calories". Usually, the "Calorie King" or "Calorie Count" websites show up -- they seem to have every food imaginable already calculated for you, with the fat grams as well.

Keeping a list like mine WOULD probably be boring for most people:

Thurs 11/24:
1790

Fri 11/25:
1895

Sat 11/26:
~2200

Sun 11/27:
2020

Mon 11/28:
1810

Tues 11/29:
2250

Wed 11/30:
2090

Thurs 12/1:
2050

Fri 12/2:
2050

(The past 9 days, I consumed 18,155 calories out of a break-even possible 22,500.
Deficit: 4,345. Weight conversion: 1.24 pounds)

Sat:
2095 food
-300 exercise
---------
calories take in and not burned =1795

Sun:
2060

Mon:
1990

Tues:
2030

Wed:
2270

Thurs:
2020

Friday:
1925

Sat:
1966, 45g
-285 exercise =
-------
1681

Sun:
1998, 20g

Mon:
1785, 36g

Tues:
1998, 32g

Wed:
2002, 49g

Thurs:
1808, 32g

Fri:
1775, 28g

Wow, just saw those progress pictures. What a difference 30lbs makes! You should feel proud of your accomplishment.

You have made great progress, well done. Just thought I'd post this video for motivation as it is very inspiring.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBcsjgktEzU[/youtube]

That's a really good video. I thought it was gonna be some bodybuilder shouting at the screen like a drill sergeant.

I've decided I am going to bluk up a few muscle groups. I've only been doing free weights to increase muscle tone so far, but I've decided now to bulk up my biceps, triceps, forearms, and -- in due course of my belly vanishing completely -- my abs. The highest I own are 20-pound dumbbells, and they're now too light for me, unless I lift them in 18-rep sets, which is when my arms reach failure. I could have sworn I had a 25-pound one, but if so I can't find it anywhere. I'll have to go buy one, if simply pumping my 20-pounder to failure won't help me bulk-up. Then again, if it will, I'll save my money. (A 25-pound dumbbell is $25. For that price, I might just try and hold my 20 and my 5 together in one hand. I've done that before, but it's a little awkward.)
As far as my progress and bulking-up goals, wifey likes it VERY much.

Do some deadlifts!

That's a good idea. I'll have to do the dumbbell kind, because I don't own a barbell.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZnrc_MXX1U[/youtube]

Looks like that kind only strengthens the back, but that's good too.