This.

My whole life has been based on "I've tried everything," and I learned otherwise in OOT. So I simply HAVE to try this.

+1 to this^

Good luck man, I honestly mean that. i hope you stick with it, and see the reward that Cleinen and many others in this subforum have seen.

This is what I was trying to say - you'll need to make this THE priority for a while, maybe a long time. How should I eat? How do I make that? Where do I go to buy that? I'm going to be ______ for 3 days with my friends and they eat pizza every night and drink all day. How can I prepare to not fall in that trap?

Not to say you can never have those foods again. They just need to be the exception and not the norm. Some friends/family may think you're being weird but most will be supportive. The ones who aren't, f&*k 'em - it's your life you're saving.

Worrying about butter vs margarine (I agree butter is better), 2 cubes of sugar vs. 4 in your coffee, fat free mayo vs. regular mayo are all small potatoes in the big picture. We should be talking 2 tortilla wrapped hot dogs vs. 4 eggs, 2 sausages & strawberries for breakfast and almonds or yogurt for snack vs. pizza slice.

Well, if you're starting to drag at some point, let us know what we can do to help with motivation. My guess is that squishy concept is going to be the one real obstacle. All other mistakes or delays won't matter in the long-run if you can stay motivated b/c they will just be blips imo.

Subscribing.

It takes an enormous quantity of calories to maintain 380 pounds. It may "seem" high, but it's definitely in the ballpark.

A target of 2700 calories is a reasonable place to start for someone with a history of major hunger issues. Losing 3 pounds per week isn't too shabby if it's sustainable which is obviously the big issue.

This. Absolutely this.

I really have no idea on the science of Diet Coke, personally I've never cared for the stuff. When I stopped drinking (lots) of regular Coke, I didn't switch. Was really surprised not to miss the caffeine more, I drank coffee for a week or two in the morning but eventually stopped out of indifference.

Definitely experiment with what you eat. Some things will make you full and some won't. Personally nothing starchy (carby) fills me up -- I could probably eat a whole box of Cheerios and be hungry again in an hour. Give me a little protein and fat and I'm good for hours.

subscribed.

completely concur with loco's suggestion and AB's reply to it. Walking is the nuts. The diet thing is going to take some time to figure out. An important thing to remember is ****ing up isn't an excuse to fall off the wagon completely. You're going to **** up at some point and down some awful ****. You just have to face up to it and get back on the wagon immediately.

I'm imagining how many calories I'd burn if I had to carry a 200 lb. weighted vest every day.

Obviously 100% what El Diablo said.

Bad second level thinking ITT.

? wtf are you talking about. Please don't make this into an El D slurpfest. No one has taken a hardline stance with ytf at all. Seems like most here agree with the "start logging food, keep a deficit, walk" approach.

anklebreakerisright.jpeg

GL YTF, enjoyed your contributions in the Luck thread this year.

Just read the oot threa and really glad it took a turn for the positive. Big good luck YTF!

I find progress pictures to be great motivation because I know that the people making drastic changes to their bodies are not doing anything fancier than what anyone else can do, so on that note, here's reddit's /r/progresspics subreddit. Hope it gives you a little boost.

TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2012

BREAKFAST: The veggie omelet and three sausage links. No olive oil this time, just Pam cooking spray. 493 Cals.

After breakfast, we head into town for the $45 poker tourney, followed by karaoke next door. Despite getting absolutely no cards for the entire tournament, I finish 6th out of 104.

I end up locked inthe tourney for over four hours. Now it's 11 PM, not many options for:

LUNCH: Two McDonalds grilled chicken snack wraps (one chipotle, one honey mustard). Don't freak out about seeing the word "McDonalds", the whole thing weighed in at 500 cals total.

I trimmed breakfast and lunch because I knew there would be beers at karaoke.

SNACK: I cut back from twelve beers to six, and switched to Miller Lite...but oops, the draft beers are 16 oz, not 12. Oh well. 768 cals.

(BTW, figured out why I was missing some high notes on songs I like, so I debuted "Music of the Night" tonight. Crowd went nuts, so I also debuted "Smoke Gets in your Eyes," but by then the place was empty and I was singing to upturned chairs on top of tables.)

DINNER: Usual spaghetti/sausage/meatball portions, no side salad this time. 1105 Cals.

Total: 2865 Cals. Over by one beer. Dammit, if I had stuck to bottles instead of tap, I'd've been OK.

Please, don't flame me over beer and McDonalds. I was planning on that chicken caesar salad at the cardroom, but I ended up getting locked into the tourney and forgetting about food--besides, the McDonalds I ended up eating probably had fewer cals than the salad I was planning.

Nice work. Yeah beer is a huge calorie sink but totally worth it sometimes. If you're over one day it's OK. You just shoot for being under on average.

(on my birthday I had 1300 calories worth of beer and my daily target at the time was 1920 calories)

2800-2900 calories will get the job done for now - you're on the right track, .

Good job staying under 2900 cals, but I'm gonna keep picking these nits. Olive oil (real stuff) is good for you. Better than Pam.

This doesn't matter much, but I'm going to put it here because a lot of people don't know this.

The nutritional label on cooking sprays says that they contain 0 calories despite the fact that they are 100% fat. They get away with this because if a serving size contains less than 5 calories, they are allowed to round down to zero. So the manufacturer's just set the serving size accordingly, then label the damn thing "fat free."

However, most people spray way more than a serving size into the pan. So they may in fact be getting just as many calories as if they had used olive oil in the liquid form.

Again, not something to worry about, but it's good to know the facts.

hey, this day is a hudge win man.

great job so far YTF It's a major paradigm shift when you realize you can eat essentially whatever kind of food you want and still lose weight. I think you are definitely on track for success.

smart forum dudes-

what weight should YTF shoot for before incorprating in some body weight squats and that type of thing? we gotta get those knees fixed up

He should really concentrate on making this diet stick and slowly adding in some walking as his knees allow. Obviously they'll improve just from carrying less weight around. I think this is for psychological reasons: he needs to focus on improving his approach to diet first - hard exercise (for him) could make him feel miserable and he could compensate with eating.

Slow, steady progress and adapting to changes before adding in new things is probably best for compliance and keeping motivation high.

You need to learn to control macros (macronutrients). Calorie # is not the final answer to all. Imagine eating 2500 of fat, 50 protein, and 250 carbs. Great, you are at 2800 calories, but your body will not burn any fat, and actually be using protein, i.e. the little muscle mass you have, as fue as you are in a calorie defecit.

Learning what macro percentages will force your body into a fat burning machine, thus greatly effecting the amount of negative weight you will lose.

33bb, that's also something he has to learn along the way, but probably not for a little while. I almost wonder if it's worth giving ytf a roadmap, something like start working on daily protein goals after losing 50lb lost, start to lift weights after 100lb, etc.

Yeah, cutting the beer is a way better cal-saving measure than cutting olive oil.

Are you planning to keep the beer down to like once a week?

GL by the way, this should be a good log.

read the whole thread in OOT pretty much (lol me...)

here to say gl to YTF and hopefully to be in on the ground floor of an epic thread

also want to reiterate what others have said: it's much more important (imo) to focus on counting calories now and staying under 2700 than it is to nitpick over random nutritional minutiae. like, exponentially more important.

again, gl man!