Not a size three here -- never was, never will be. You should click on over to the Conversations side of this forum and look for the Weight Loss Group thread, where we all pi$$ and moan about our weight. Well, some of us are very wise about eating and have good tips.

Nope, John, not drawn, quartered or boiled in oil.

I lost quite a lot of weight a few years ago, I don't know how much exactly but somewhere over 80 pounds. I've put 12 of it back on.

I really like the recipes from Ellie Krieger and I subscribe to Cooking Light and several of my favorite recipes are from there.

I subscribe to my old doctor's very wise advice, he told me two things: "Eat less and move more" and "Eat anything you want, but only eat half of it". That worked for me because I like good food, I want to enjoy what I eat and I have one of those personalities that make me only want whatever I'm not supposed to have. This way I can have anything.

You'll find lots of good recipes, not only on the Weight Watchers thread, but interspersed throughout the other posts.

And somewhere here we had a thread that contained a whole bunch of "healthy" recipes, I wonder what happened to that, what with Easter and Passover, LOL.

Annie

Lordy lordy..I am a Lifetime member of Weight Watchers only I achieved that honor many moons and pounds ago. My sister lost about 40 pounds following Annie1992's advice of eating anything but only half of it. She literally cut her food intake exactly in half and it worked wonders. There is a good blog at the Hungry Girl site and she has many fab recipes for healthy delicious foods. You might want to check her site or get one of her books even though your are Not a girl!! I admire your determination and wish you lots of lost weight!
Joann

Here is a link that might be useful: Hungry Girl

Oh, interesting. I've never clicked on the ''Conversations'' link before, from any forum. There's a first time for everything!

I don't really understand the distinction between Forum and Conversation. I will go read there, and will also try and find a FAQ that explains the difference.

I believe we have quite a few health conscious cooks in this forum who watch what they eat (and yes I am one of them). I don't think there's anything wrong with visiting here and looking for healthy cooking tips. Just that dieting is never the focus.

If you want delicious recipes, this is the place to be. But if you want absolutely healthy recipes that suit your needs, you will have to pick and choose. I often see very delicious looking pictures with recipes but have to resist the temptation. I put on fat just by looking at them! LOL

Based on your handle I assume you're a male. Eating 1,100 calories per day is not a healthy practice, especially without professional supervision. Even a female should not eat less than 1,200 calories a day. Below is a link where you will find helpful information on weigh loss.

So welcome to the forum. All the best to you!

Al

Here is a link that might be useful: Calorie Needs for Men - Anne Collins site

Congratulations on your weight loss. It's funny, isn't it, to see how easy it is to get by with less? Portion control and making better choices makes a world of difference.

I have to agree with Al though. Eating fewer that 1200 calories a day (if you're a woman)is not healthy. And men require even more...

It's very difficult to get all the nutrients your body needs on an extremely low calorie diet. In short order your metabolism will slow down, your body will start to burn muscle for energy and begin storing fat. Those three things are the complete *opposite* of what helps you lose weight, and keep it off.

I've always read that healthy weight loss is about 2% of your body weight per week. If you're losing more than that, it's likely that some of that is muscle loss, and not fat.

I'm dieting right now and, like you, am logging all my calories. I target 1300-1500 calories/day on inactive days, and 1500-1800 calories/day on days I lift weights or do cardio. I've lost 16 lbs since January. I'm a 40 year old woman, 5' 8". I have 4 lbs to go to reach my goal weight.

I use http://caloriecount.about.com/ to log my calories, and I use the discussion forums there frequently to ask questions. It's been extremely helpful for me.

John, the forum "discussions" is for talk about food, whether it's Easter dinner or a trip to the A&W or making cookies with the Grandkids.

Conversations is about anything, it includes new babies, pets, prayer requests, jokes, songs, books we've read, nearly anything goes.

The gallery is for pictures and you'll find good photography tips there too, courtesy of SharonCB.

Annie

Thanks for the explanation, annie. I couldn't find anything in the GW FAQs.

althetrainer and susytwo (who I will struggle not to call susyq), thanks for the cautions. I'm going to start working out and plan to find a way to monitor muscle mass. I like to count things. Maybe I watched too many Count von Count stories on Sesame Street.

Suzy is right. Joining a forum with support groups definitely will help. I often refer people to Sparkpeople.com. It's sort of like caloriecount but with a massive supportive structure including how to diet and exercise. All the best!

Al

Here is a link that might be useful: Check this out

I recently lost over 50 lbs during a 9 month period under weekly supervision of a dietitian and using herb diuretics on a controlled high protein diet. I wouldn't have tried it without supervision as I was given specific vegetables per week with no fruit so it went along according to a specific plan. I'm currently on a 4 week pause and will go back at the end of this month to lose another 4 kilos, starting from the first week phase again.

It really helps to have a nutritionist keeping a weekly weight control and gradually adding fruit and veg back into your diet as weight is coming off.

There was no calorie counting but foods were severely limited, with no butter, white flour, baked goods, juices, fruit, potatoes, rice, pasta, wine and more for the longest time. It's been most successful, coupled with twice weekly Pilates sessions at the gym, some walking instead of taking the car, and I now feel like a teenager again, getting into clothes I wore 20 years ago. So far I haven't gained back any weight. One important point is to eat 5 times per day, with snacks mid-morning and afternoon, and drinking 2 liters of water daily. That really keeps you from eating too much at mealtimes. And on this diet, when one feels hungry they should eat a protein food, which keep you feeling full for longer. My protein snacks were mini tins of tuna in olive oil, a hard cooked egg, a slice of goat cheese, glass of skim milk or plain yoghurt, fat and sugar free. Breakfast and lunch are the main meals of the day and supper in the evening should be very small, sometimes a few pineapple rings in their juice with no added sugar. The only bread allowed on this diet is 2 small slices of an oat & fiber bread as toast for breakfast.

Get a printout of the glycemic index and choose foods from the lowest value, especially the leafy green ones and check out books from both Michel Montignac and Rick Gallop.
There's lots of good advice and recipes written by both of them.

SharonCb

Some things I like are chocolate sherbet:

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2009/06/chocolate_sherbet.html

Oven sweet potato fries:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Perfect_Oven_Sweet_Potato_Fries/

and roasted Brussels sprouts:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/roasted-brussels-sprouts/Detail.aspx

(Also pretty good without the oil!)

My perfect day is protein, unsaturated fat, and complex carbs in the morning, followed by complex carbs/protein every few hours for the rest of the day. That rarely happens, so I roughly try to count calories instead. I am also entirely dependent on hi-maize and Dreamfield's low carb pasta. If they ever find out the stuff causes cancer or something, I'm in SERIOUS trouble.

Wow, canarybird. Wow. I will look for those books.

Al, thank you so much for that link. I will definitely check it out.

What did I eat today.
- Breakfast was 4 oz of sashimi (halibut) and 20 oz of coffee. I start work at 5:30AM so I do need my coffee.
- Lunch was 3 oz of pasta with 4 oz bolognaise sauce, and 4 oz of broccoli.
- Dinner was 4 oz of rare beef (a bavette, salted, buttered and seared, then briefly roasted) with a garlic-wasabi aioli, 4 oz of salmon with a glaze of reduced teriyaki sauce, some broiled asparagus spears, and 3 oz of roasted mushrooms and potato cubes simmered in ham stock.

(The commercial teriyaki sauces I've tried, Kikkoman in this case, is awful, too much soy sauce and not enough mirin, it doesn't reduce well, and what's with the HFCS? I have better luck with homemade teriyaki sauce.)

Too much protein and not enough veg, I suspect. I'm just not a prolific vegetable eater. This summer, we're going to buy a weekly vegetable share from a local farm and then we'll have no choice but to eat more veggies.

I'm going to list a few more days' of food, in hopes that people who know more about nutrition that I do (won't be hard) might give me some criticism or suggestions?

Monday:
- Breakfast was a bagel with cream cheese, and 20 oz coffee.
- Lunch was 3 oz roasted halibut and 3 oz lox topped with onions, capers, lots of pepper.
- Dinner was 4 oz of this weird rice pasta that SWMBO wanted to try, 5 oz of bolognaise sauce (yes, it got taken to work the next day), 3 oz broccoli, and 3 oz caesar salad.

We'll gently forget about Easter Sunday, shall we? I didn't eat much at all, but what I ate was sort of embarassing. My notebook records things like ''3 M&Ms'', ''2 Hershey's Kisses'', etc.

Saturday:
- Breakfast was 2 oz rice, 1/2 cup miso soup, 1 oz D'Affinois cheese, 2 oz blueberries.
- Lunch was 5 oz roast chicken, 1 cup homemade chicken noodle soup with store-bought tortellinis
- Dinner was 2 cups of the same chicken noodle soup, 3 oz green salad, 1 oz dessert wine (I didn't like it), and 3 oz pasta with a white wine-cream sauce.

Friday:
- Breakfast was 3 oz chicken breast, 2 mandarin oranges, 1 banana, 3 oz blueberries.
- Lunch was 4 oz pan-fried chicken thigh
- Dinner was 6 oz of raw fish, 4 oz of raw beef (that's not a diet thing, I just love sashimi and raw meat), 1/2 cup homemade miso soup (dashi, red miso, tofu), 4 oz teriyaki chicken (this time w/ proper homemade teriyaki sauce), and - oops - 20 oz of merlot and barbera. Well, a good friend was visiting after all.

What do you think? What should I be doing better, nutritionally speaking?

I think you should be exercising more and obsessing less. Honestly, you weighed your wine and only ate 9 ounces of vegetables in four days?

I cannot make heads nor tails out of your "diet" as described, and it certainly doesn't sound healthy to me, nor sustainable for any length of time.

1100 calories a day is not a reasonable goal. How about seeing a nutrition?

IST

Yes I agree that a dietition should be the one who decides what you eat as it can be surprising to find that what you think is good, turns out to be not so. Orange juice (even natural) for example, is high in sugar as are bananas. Avoid everything made with refined white flour (bagels are a big no-no) which has the same glycemic value as white sugar.

If you're aiming for weight loss, go to a dietitian who can give you balanced, daily menus that will not be detrimental to your health.

SharonCb

what's SWMBO and IST?

Yeah -- SWMBO? IST I get -- the rest of nutrition___ - from the post before it.

SWMBO comes from John Mortimer's "Rumpole Of The Bailey". It is what he secretly called his formidable wife Hilda, whom he must obey.

Obsessive? Me!? Never! Okay, giving everything in ounces may seem a teensy bit obsessive, but I don't otherwise know how to track quantities.

The comments about insufficient vegetables, minimizing whte flour, and the sugar that lurks in bananas, is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to know. Thanks.

Shockingly, this is pretty much my usual diet, except that the quantities are being cut way back from that which blessed me with the poundage, and I am particularly trying to eat less pasta and less rice.

Oh Jeez...She Who Must Be Obeyed...forgot all about old Rumpole. :P

OH! hahahahahah laughing at IST, I thought it was an acronym for something else. hahahah!

John, I agree, you need a LOT more vegetables, and more whole grains like brown rice and whole wheat and oatmeal. Have you ever tried quinoa? Very high in protein and good for you. Lentils and beans are higher in calories but also higher in protein and fiber and lots of nutrients.

As for that bagel, be careful. A regular bagel from a bagel shop with some cream cheese has about 500 calories and there wasn't a bite of protein in that breakfast unless you count the smear of cream cheese. You get lots of protein at most of your meals, but protein will keep you satisfied longer, you need at least a little bit to start the day.

And try having five small meals, like SharonCB suggested, even if a "meal" is just a handful of carrots and a cube of cheese or a cup of yogurt or some peanut butter on a celery stick (ditch the crackers!). It'll keep your metabolism burning right through the day.

Annie

For me, if I need to loose weight, especially in Spring and Summer when fresh vegitables and fruits are abundant, a Vegan diet works wonders and is so easy. No weighing or counting calories, only eat vegitables, fruits and whole grains. The Engine 21 diet gave me the inspiration. The book was written by a Fireman in Austin, Texas and the whole department followers the routine.

Here is a link that might be useful: Engine 21 Diet

suzy, thanks for that link. Although I'd never do well on a vegan diet (being a 3rd generation beef farmer, LOL), I do like a lot of vegetables and the lentil burgers look good, as well as some of the other recipes, so they would be easy to integrate into my meals.

Annie

John, you've already received excellent advice but to add to that, here are a few simple suggestions:

1. Eat as low on the food chain as you can. In other words, the less processed the better. So oranges are better than orange juice. Brown rice is better than white, etc. These foods provide more nutrition and more volume, helping to stave off cravings and providing greater long-term fullness and satisfaction. They'll keep your blood sugar on an even keel.

2. As already mentioned, a vegan diet can be great for health and weight-loss. Even if you don't follow it whole-heartedly, as Annie said, many of the recipes can be integrated into your diet.

One book I wholeheartedly recommend is Donna Klein's The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen. This is but one of her cookbooks. It's gourmet food (not frighteningly whole-grainy or tofu-y) which draws from cuisines which historically have emphasized minimal consumption of meat and dairy.

The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen.

3. For optimal health, balance your plate. This illustration shows what I mean:

Does Your Plate Look Like This?

4. Finally, vary your colors. In other words, don't eat all yellow fruits for days on end (i.e. bananas and grapefruit). Throw in orange (oranges and cantaloupe), green (kiwi) etc. Same with vegetables. For some reason American diets tend to be very "narrow." We not only eat too few fruits and vegetables; we also consume too few kinds.

The end result will be that you not only lose weight but feel better and have more energy (to fulfill the commands of SWMBO, LOL).

Think of your diet as an opportunity to explore new foods and develop improved relationships with what you eat. If you're feeling deprived or frustrated, it's time to do something different.

Carol

I lost almost 20 lbs in the past year. I've given up all sugar (including honey, syrup, molasses), white flour, white rice, and white pasta. The easiest way to avoid sugar is to forego processed foods. We eat more veg and fruit (I allow myself the sugars in fresh fruit), and less meat, particularly red ones.

My "diet" is a variation of one a friend, who is suffering similar health issues as I am, subscribes to, and swears has saved his life. I find his version needlessly restrictive (as in, full of junk science) but otherwise quite healthy.

I never thought I could ever say that I don't miss donuts at all, but I sure miss my regular glass of wine! (When I cheat, it's with a glass in my hand!)

cooksnsews, that just didn't sound right. "when I cheat, it's with a glass in my hand". LOLOLOL

Heard in bars around America. (grin)

Annie

Hey! I'm just trying to be realistic. How can you undertake a radical life-long lifestyle changeover, and think you'll never ummmm, cheat. Mind you, I have a DH who always seems to be looking over my shoulder and preventing me from tippling. I'm not sure how he expects that I'll be a pleasant traveling companion on our planned 2 week culinary tour of Italy this summer if I can't partake of the local plonk.

But regardless, life is too short to eat bad food!

What, your husband expects you to spend two WEEKS in Italy and not drink the wine? Oh, I agree, that's unreasonable! I don't even like wine and I think there's some kind of law that if you go to Italy you have to eat pasta and you have to drink the wine. Or grappa. Or both.

Annie