Quote:
Originally Posted by The Sixth Beatle
I'm trying something new for me regarding weight loss. My nephew signed up for one of those programs that sell you prepackaged meals to eat and the thought occurred to me - why couldn't you do that on your own? I looked into the frozen foods section of my local grocery store and came across the Healthy Choice meals. The portions are small, but there are always vegetables and sometimes 'dessert' (usually spiced apples or a combination of spiced apples and cherries) and the calorie range is from 240 to 320 per meal. I already drink no calorie beverages (black coffee, green tea and caffeine-free Diet Coke), so I figured that if I limit myself to a reasonable breakfast (McDonald's Egg McMuffin (300 calories) and a Healthy Choice for lunch and dinner, I could lose weight, right?
It worked. To this point I have lost 33 pounds in about 6 weeks. When I feel the need to snack, I either fight through the urge or have a bowl of stewed tomatoes, cottage cheese or a bowl of spinach, all things I enjoy. My goal is to lose 90 pounds by November and even though I know the weight will become progressively more difficult to lose, I feel I can do it.
I look for bargains on the meals - Wal-Mart usually has them for $2 each and sometimes the chains (Hy-Vee, Price Chopper, etc.) have them on sale for about the same, but with a wider selection.
It's just something I'm trying.
|
wow, Congrats on doing something far better than others who also try to diet
interesting way to reduce calories... very easy and cheap to do, most importantly you are losing the weight(fat, I hope)
I find this an interesting example of how to diet below...all that matters for a diet to work is to eat fewer calories than you burn,
which is true for saving money, just spend less than you make and you save money!
Keep up the hard work!
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08...sor/index.html
For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.
His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.
The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months.
For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily.So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.
His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.
Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.
"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"
Despite his temporary success, Haub does not recommend replicating his snack-centric diet.
"I'm not geared to say this is a good thing to do," he said. "I'm stuck in the middle. I guess that's the frustrating part. I can't give a concrete answer. There's not enough information to do that."
Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.
Families who live in food deserts have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, so they often rely on the kind of food Haub was eating.
"These foods are consumed by lots of people," he said. "It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think it's unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for vegetables and fruits. It may be healthy, but not realistic."
Haub's body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent. This posed the question: What matters more for weight loss, the quantity or quality of calories?
His success is probably a result of caloric reduction, said Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian in Chicago, Illinois.
"It's a great reminder for weight loss that calories count," she said. "Is that the bottom line to being healthy? That's another story."
Blatner, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said she's not surprised to hear Haub's health markers improved even when he loaded up on processed snack cakes.
Its almost summer and I have the answer to rapid weight loss!!
Feel free to visit my facebook page 
