I wholeheartedly agree in this instance.

My diet is kinda random from day to day, but basically I try to focus on some specific things:

1) No desserts, candy, or anything like that. The single exception to this was a piece of cake on my little brother's birthday this past weekend. There won't be another exception until my own birthday in May. I get my fix by having a pudding cup (100 calories) or a skinny cow ice cream cone (150 calories iirc) once every 3 or 4 days. Helps tide me over

2) Lots of veggies.

3) Keep the carbs reasonable. I wouldn't say I'm doing a low carb/no carb thing, but I try to keep to a general rule of staying under the recommended 100% daily carb value intake. It's really just a matter of eating less of whatever carb component there is to my meals.

4) Avoid sugar. Basically any sugar I eat should only come from fruit (and the above mentioned pudding cups/ice cream cones). It's quite shocking though when you start reading labels and EVERYTHING has HFCS in it. EVERYTHING.

5) I drink whey protein powder in skim milk about 4 days a week as well, just to make sure my protein intake is high enough.

Other than that I just try to make good choices. I mean, it's not hard to know if something if good or bad for you. So I just try to stick to the good stuff, and keep portions in check. I've definitely gotten myself used to eating smaller meals than before.

It would be a good idea to start keeping track of your total calories as well.

Yogurt (ideally greek, but it can take a little getting used to) is probably a better choice here than a pudding cup. Much more satisfying in my mind.

I can get with all the P90x criticism in this thread but WTF pudding is delicious.

a cup of greek yogurt (i have gobani brand) has 14 grams of the protein. pretty good esp the fruit ones

So are cookies, what's your point?

My main issue here is my insane chocolate addiction. I just need a fix now and then. But I can give some yogurt a go and see if I like it.

Yeah, I wouldn't say I DON'T count calories at all. I just don't go out of my way either. I'm assuming as I get further along and the weight gets tougher to lose I'll start to keep more detailed and exact calorie counts.

Also, sometimes (like right now) I'll blend up some frozen strawberries with my protein/skim milk. Nice way to get a "dessert" fix.

You can get chocolate yogurt.

I just think you might be consuming more calories than you realize. Do it for a week at least.

www.fitday.com

Ii you eat out fairly regularly or eat a lot of prepared foods, I prefer Dailyplate since the food database is much larger. I started on fitday and found myself constantly needing to look up nutritional data and it didn't take long to realize that most of the time I was finding that info on dailyplate.

Yea put me on the calorie counting express too. I think you have some leak in your eating game there that once exposed you will see greater gains. When I'm cutting weight I find having a house cleaning of suspect food is a big help. Any of the foods I am tryin to cut back on I largely remove, as find it near impossible to do otherwise.

Good luck, keep er going. Looking forward to seeing you make it through this.

Week 5 weigh in: 261

Total weight loss: 14 lbs.

I've been noticing an interesting pattern the last few weeks. I typically weigh myself Saturday morning and Sunday morning. But I report the Sunday number since that's the end of each P90X week. Consistently the Saturday number is better though. The reason I find this interesting is because Saturdays are also typically my healthiest days, just because it's easier to be super healthy when eating all meals at home. Just natural variation I guess? Every Saturday I'm a pound lighter than Sunday.

Kreel is going to finish the program and he's at least doing better than sedentary. Remember though, absolutely nobody who gave SS a legitimate try on this board ever thought anything other than that it was superior to what they were doing before. If he can keep this rate up and lose 25+lbs in 12 weeks that definitely wouldn't be horrible though even if he didn't gain any strength or muscle in the process.

yep OP deserves credit for sticking to something, you're doing better than what the vast majority of people do

I've actually already decided not to repeat P90X after I finish it. To be honest it's gotten kinda boring, and there are certain things I've grown to greatly dislike (Thursdays - Yoga... UGH). I don't have the equipment for SS, and don't really wanna spend the money to join a gym, but I've starting thinking about how I can design my own program once I finish this.

Whatever it is, it does need to remain cardio-heavy. I think I mentioned before, it's been a long term goal of mine to climb Half Dome, and that's gonna take some serious cardio improvement (along with the weight loss). Cardio is the easy part though. I need to spend more time reading up on what I can do in terms of weight lifting with the equipment I have, or without spending too much money. I've noticed some stuff in this forum about kettlebells. Maybe that's something that can work for me? Ideally I'm thinking my program would be like 2-3 days a week for weights, and the rest of the days for cardio.

I have no interest is getting huge muscles, but I don't have a problem with bulking up just a bit and maintaining that level.

Anyway, I've got time to figure it all out while I grind out the rest of P90X. I know some of you guys probably think I should just drop it now, but I feel like I should finish it out since I'm this far in.

Oh, also, come August my biggest obstacle is going to be time constraints. I'll be starting Law School at nights, so I'll have class 4 nights a week and all the studying time that goes with that, plus my 30 hour a week job. So ideally I'm looking for something that will be highly efficient in terms of time.

Also, fwiw, I've already noticed a remarkable improvement in my life. Just in terms of how I feel every day, I have more energy, I don't need quite as much sleep (always felt like I needed 8.5 hours before, now I'm solid with about 7.5), I'm happier than I used to be, I just generally feel great. And that's only after losing 14 pounds and still being quite a big guy.

Anyone who's just starting or thinking about starting to get in shape, GET MOVING! It's totally worth it.

OP,

Keep it up. Shut these haters up. 14 pounds down is a great start. You seemingly now have a routine that is working so keep it up until it stops working.

FWIW I climbed a harder route in Yosemite (Cloud's Rest, which I highly recommend over Half Dome, way better route/view and far less people) the day after having a pretty bad fever and made it up and down without any major problems (besides gargantuan blisters). I did do some HIIT before, but very sporadically. Mostly I just did SS two months prior.

Of course, being very heavy makes it harder, I was around 175 lbs doing that climb.

Yosemite rules.

Yeah, the thing is I doubt I'll ever be 175 LOL. Just don't see that as even possible. I think with consistent working out over the next year, I can do it next summer (2011) even if I'm still up at like 220 or so.

And yeah, I LOVE Yosemite. We used to go a decent amount but it's been a long stretch of about 6 years since the last time. I wasn't quite as big as I am now, but was definitely out of shape and just the Nevada Falls hike absolutely KILLED me.

Just googling Cloud's Rest right now. That one looks pretty awesome too. I'll definitely add it to my To Do List.

I love hiking, but being lazy and fat has really prevented me from going out and doing much. Really looking forward to changing that more than almost anything.

I think next summer is very, very realistic.

PM me if you have any questions on Cloud's Rest. Definitely thinking of going back to Yosemite, even if the plane ride's a biiiiitch.

Yeah, I figure 220 is my baseline. I wouldn't attempt it without getting down to at least 220. And doing that by summer 2011 really should be super doable, even with slowdown in weight loss as I get closer to it. To get to 220, that's less than 3 pounds a month average between now and next June. Ideally I'd like to be closer to 200 by then. I'm just not sure where my bottoming out point is. I mean, I'm naturally just a big guy, so I find it hard to imagine I could maintain anything under 200 (or even get there).