Four principles for effective dieting

[jhogan]

I've had a pretty successful run at losing weight. From my peak of 230 pounds in 2000, I'm at my lowest weight ever today -- 163.8. That's a bodyweight loss of over 25%, and I have significantly more muscle now, as well. Of course, the hardest part is always keeping it off, but I'm feeling quite optimistic about that. This has been a nine-year

Comments

[pjammer]

Very thoughtful and well-articulated! Great stuff ... I'm trying to get closer to my collegiate rowing weight of 153 (won't hit it- that was 3 hours of heaving rowing every morning 6x/wk) but I liked how I felt when I was in that space.

[ywong]

I ate some cookies while reading this.

[jhogan]

mmm, cookies!

[jhogan]

Yay incrementalism!

I have our TSI strategy doc open right now, and "realistic compromise" is another strategic principle that is present here (implicit in 'realistic expectations', 'healthy stretch'). Incrementalism and realistic compromise are probably pretty good principles for almost any sort of long-term strategy, I imagine.

Thanks for the tips!

[cagrimmett]

I have been searching for good dieting techniques and an overall healthier lifestyle to get rid of my gut that I aquired from having a desk job over the summer over the past four years, and spending most of my day in a desk during the academic year. I had unhealthy eating habits and rarely worked off the extra calories I took in.

These are great tips that I intend to try out.
A few questions:
As I am new to calorie counting, can you point me toward any resources you used to learn?
Also, what is your normal diet on a down day? The alternate-day diet really interests me.

Re: Thanks for the tips!

[jhogan]

Cool! -- I hope some of the suggestions work out for you.

For calorie counting, I use Calorie King. I used the downloadable software, although they have a web-based version as well which I haven't tried. It is OK, the UI is kind of crappy. I didn't do extensive research on alternatives, but have heard that they are so-so as well. They all have a pretty big database of nutritional info to work from, but I ended up adding quite a bit of custom items on my own.

For my down days, I was doing 500-calorie down days for a couple of months, and will be trying 1250 next. Certain beverages (teas, black coffee w/artificial sweetener, diet sodas) became staple snacks because they were 0-calorie. Meals would consist of something like an apple, or a slice of toast with peanut butter, or some scrambled egg beaters with veggies. 500 was pretty hard for me. I lost weight pretty fast, though (1.5-2 pounds a week).

[anonymous]

That's resveratrol, not reservatrol.

[jhogan]

Thanks -- fixed.