response 14 of 332:

Sep 25 03:52 UTC 2003

Calorie content does not change from that of the ingredients unless you are
boiling things and some of the calories go into the water.  (This probably
explains why canned vegetables have slightly fewer calories per ounce than
fresh ones in our list.)  Get a kitchen scale and weigh things as you add them
to what you are cooking.

The amount of oil used in cooking makes a large difference.  

Rice and potatoes, not just bread, are high in calories.  Try having a higher
proportion of vegetables to other things in your meal, as that will fill you
up without many calories.  Brown rice takes longer to digest and will keep
you feeling full faster, also takes longer to chew.

You can buy a small water filter that attaches to a kitchen sink faucet
(screws on) at a hardware store to make the water taste better.  You can also
cook with less salt so as not to need to drink as much.  Whenever I eat
restaurant or prepared food I get very thirsty and drink several glasses of
water - with our cooking I don't need to drink water.

It is said that sugar makes you hungry for more sugar.  Eat fruit.

response 16 of 332:

Sep 25 05:24 UTC 2003

What worked for me, in combination.  I have no idea how much any of these
alone would have done:

Give up driving.  I didn't really give it up, but limited it to situations
where there was no other good way to get where I wanted to go, so no driving
to the grocery store or other local shopping, no shopping in suburban strip
malls (other than the Target that has a train station at the other end of its
parking lot), no driving to work, etc.  When I was working upstairs from a
train station, this translated to using my car maybe two or three times a
month.  Working in a somewhat wider variety of locations, I find I'm using
my car maybe twice a week, on average.  This approach used to sound limiting
to me, but mostly the places I can get to by walking are more interesting than
the places I can get to by driving.

Give up soft drinks.  I used to always keep a glass or can of rootbeer on my
desk, and be drinking it constantly.  After a while I decided this was making
me feel rather sick, and switched to water.  Really rapid weight loss
followed, which was a pleasant side effect but mostly not the goal behind that
particular move.  I followed that by mostly giving up other products
containing refined sugar, but I still like cookies or ice cream occasionally.
Sugary drinks just seem gross to me at this point.

Find a fun physical activity, and build a social life around it.  For me,
that's biking.  I like biking down hills, and I like spending time with the
people I bike with, so biking up hills (hard physical activity) becomes part
of life.  When I've attempted exercise for the sake of exercise, I've never
been at all good at keeping it up.

Don't limit yourself.  If I want to do something, building a lifestyle around
not doing that thing isn't something I'm going to stick with.  Everybody
always starts off this discussion with the importance of healthy, home cooked,
food, for example.  But I'm not that great a cook, and I live in a
neighborhood famous for its restaurants.  I'm always going to be consuming
calories.  The key is just to burn off what I consume.  See fun physical
activity paragraph.

response 20 of 332:

Sep 25 12:47 UTC 2003

I am not American, I'm Indian. Being called fat is a personal thing. Sure that
comment did zing at first, but it was the truth, and I realise it. Each woman
has their own body shape, and some are a little thicker than others. I, for
one, know I can be 22 lbs thinner at least, I've been there. (Even then
Ithought I could lose a few lbs, but I'd be happy just ggetting there right
now :P)

And why is it that you're not supposed to call "American" women fat? It's ok
to call European, Australian, Arican, Chinese, Indian women fat? Though
compared to Indian women, American women are bombardd much more with size 0
models, and the pressure on them to be thinner has been greater. Indian women
have always had pudgy, hip-heavy role models, though that's changing with the
latest slew of actresses that we have. But even in school, we were never
really under any pressure to be a certain body-shape. i think it's different
over here. I remember my cousin saying she'd die if she put on another pound.
This frm a 14 year old girl who had teh flattest tummy and was the skinnest
person I knew at the time. Maybe it's die to this pressure women have had to
grow up that you're not supposed to call American women fat? I don't know.
Personally, I don't think you should call *any* woman fat, unless you know
she really could be thiner and it's sheer laziness that's keeping her from
being fit. My fiance's been trying to nudge me on the right direction for
months. "hitcher", the poster on my site, prolly didn't have any right to say
it (I don't know who he is. If he turns out ot be someone I knew in my thinner
days, maybe he had some ground. If he's just someone who visits my site, it
would be highly rude, but it was teh truth, and it did provide the last straw
that broke the camel's back.

response 22 of 332:

Sep 25 13:02 UTC 2003

Steve, I wish I could give pu the car. But Columbus has virtually no public
transport, and definitely none from where I live to my place of wor. I do need
to drive everywhere. (My theory on why people in NYC are so much fitter than
people in the mid-west - they walk everywhere, food portiona are smaller, and
beer being $7.00 for 2 at the "convenience" store, who can fford to drink?)

And I do not drink soft-drinks. Never liked the aerated stuff, so that's one
less thing to cut from my diet. Which is a pity. Just by dropping soft-drinks,
I could drop a few lbs. But I do not have that  option :(

Weigh-in this morning was 156lbs. I think. I shall invest in a digital scale
so I don't have to squint trying to figure out where the needle is pointing,
and wonderingi f the damn thing is calibrated right. Also, I'm aware that body
weight fluctuates daily. I'll prolly go by weekly number, buit a daily
weigh-in just makes the process "easier"?

The fiance got me a slice of coffee-cake yesterday. According to fitday.com,
1 cubic inch is 15 Ok, again - according to fitday.com, 1 cubic inch is about
16 alories, and 1 gram of fat. Can this really be true? Can coffee cake be
sooo satisfyingly low cal. (1 cubic inch is enough at a time) and what does
(NFS) next to teh food name mean, Glenda? Anyone?

response 24 of 332:

Sep 25 15:15 UTC 2003

Unfortunately the coffee-cake came from a bakery. No nutritonal label.

I thought maybe NFS meant No Fat Substitutes. Dunno

response 26 of 332:

Sep 25 15:56 UTC 2003

Holy shit 156?!  You must be short or anorexic.
,

response 28 of 332:

Sep 25 16:46 UTC 2003

I'm 5'7". Definitely t anorexic. I can definitely see the fat on my tummy and
posterior, and am borderlining the healthy weight for my height and body type.
I've never had illusions of being too fat, if anything it's the opposite. I
tend to think I'm thinner than I am (which explains how I got here) 157 lbs
would have been ok, if I was also fit to go along with it. But I have more
flab than I care to know about and am definitely not eating healthy and my
stamina is shot.

I've been looking at fitday and 10 minutes of walking at about 3.5 mph burns
about 33 calories. Chatelaine says "running" at 3.8 mph is about 173 calories
for 10 minutes. My treadmill says its 120 calories or thereabouts, but of
course it doesn't know whether I'm runniong or walking at a very brisk pace.
Does the number of calories burnt actuall ychange with the fact that you're
walking or running? I think that's pretty interesting. And also leads me to
think that I'm burning a lot less calories than I think I am.

(I don't like running much, and definitely not on the treadmill. I can never
seem to keep in line with the damn thing. And I don't have the stamina for
it)

response 30 of 332:

Sep 25 17:09 UTC 2003

I meant "definitely NOT anorexic". The internet ate u pa cpl of letters.

response 32 of 332:

Sep 25 22:50 UTC 2003

I had lunch away from my desk today, which means I had it in 20 minutes. I
was hungry again by 3:30pm. I shall stick to eating lunch at my desk. When
I do that, lunch is prolonged over an hour and a half and that keeps the
hunger pangs away till well into the evening. (I ate the same thing for lunch
today as I've been doing for the last couple of days, so it's not like I ate
less today).

Just joined California Fitness. A nice month-to-month program with the
initiation fee waived for about $30.00 a month. The equipment is good. I get
a free personal training session tomorrow where the trainer will assess my
fitness, work out some sort of plan for me, show me how to use the eqiuipment
etc. I'm looking forward to that.

I've also found that I prefer a bowl of lentil-spinach soup to a sandwich now.
The mere thought of those empty calories is enough to make the sandwich taste
of cardboard

response 34 of 332:

Sep 26 01:53 UTC 2003

resp:12 "The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet," Dr. Rachael F. Heller and 
Dr. Richard F. Heller, ISBN 0-451-17339-2.  It's an alternative to 
Atkins, particularly if you find you have cravings on the Atkins 
diet.  You basically do low carb two meals and the third you have some 
flexibility by limiting eating time to an hour-- the idea is that your 
body believes it doesn't need to use insulin yet if you do.  Read the 
book over first.

response 36 of 332:

Sep 26 02:37 UTC 2003

Simple carbohydrates (like refined sugar, or Gu) are sometimes bad because
your body stores them as fat if it can't use them right away.  The other
approach to eating stuff with lots of sugar is to do so during exercise.  At
that point they can provide badly needed energy, rather than "empty calories."

Sustained exercise will probably require you to eat a lot more than being
sedentary, since you end up burning a lot more calories.  I decided at one
point that if fuel costs were measured in miles per dollar, driving became
considerably cheaper than bicycling.  Somebody else I mentioned this to
pointed out that it was more true when biking from bakery to bakery in West
Marin than when biking from convenience store to convenience store in some
other areas.