[ SECRET POST #2384 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2384 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 086 secrets from Secret Submission Post #341.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

12. http://i40.tinypic.com/2gv6d0p.png

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure what you're expecting, but I lost weight when I became a vegetarian. The thing about any of those diet/exercise plans is that it has to be a permanent change. If you go into it with the mindset of "I'll just diet until I lose fifty pounds and THEN EAT EVERYTHING I WANT," you'll fail. Pretty much any permanent change in the direction of healthy will make you shed weight (barring, of course, genetic conditions.)

[(Anonymous)]

Remember this: Do NOT starve yourself. Your body stores fat when it thinks its starving. Eat well balanced meals through out the day. Cut out processed foods and white flour. Don't drink sugary tonic or teas. Try for water or un-sweetened drinks. Walk a lot

[(Anonymous)]

It helped me to track everything - what I ate, what I drank, what I did to exercise, my weight, my measurements, etc. I like the free online program SparkPeople to keep track, since I can do it anywhere.

It seemed like a lot at first, but I lost over 50lbs doing that 4 years ago, and it's stayed off. It's mostly that I'm mindful about what goes into my body, and I'm consistently so.

[visp]

Just remember it has to be a lifestyle change, not a short-term thing.

[(Anonymous)]

What everyone is saying, OP, is spot on.

In my case, what helped me was getting really into a sport. As soon as I did that and began practicing/spending as much time as possible playing, I found it significantly more difficult to eat food that was bad for me. It wasn't giving me the energy I needed and was causing a lot of bloating--I was feeling sick almost constantly.

So, after that, it was an easier thing to switch into eating well. From there it's just a matter of proportions. If you are more active, your body will demand better foods. Lean proteins, fruits, and vegetables.

However, in terms of losing weight, it's pretty much 80% diet and only about 20% exercise. Be persistent and good luck!

[(Anonymous)]

I highly recommend the dvd "Exhale: Core Fusion 30 Day Sculpt". It's a 30 day arrangement of 20 minute workouts that are effective, but gentle and easy to modify and grow into.

I never really exercised until I picked up this dvd. It's a small amount of time to commit a day, everything is planned out so there's no stress and it's an easy routine to fall into. The first time through I couldn't do all the repetitions it asked for and had to do a lot of the easier modifications, but I found myself getting noticeably stronger, healthier and leaner as I went along and could do a lot more the second time I did it.

You won't be a supermodel, but finishing this dvd is an excellent goal to set and physically sets you up to start other exercise routines.

Also, the only equipment you really need are a mat, low-weighted hand-weights and a chair - all things you probably already have if you've done any other dvds- and it's an inexpensive dvd. More than worth the price.

http://www.amazon.com/Exhale-Core-Fusion-Day-Sculpt/dp/B006W7L3TC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373750346&sr=8-1&keywords=exhale+30+day+sculpt

[(Anonymous)]

This February, I resolved to quit drinking soda for religious reasons, drinking water instead.

By May, I lost about 45 pounds, and as of July I've kept it off.

I'd already been taking daily walks for exercise and making veggies the bulk of every meal for months before that, but quitting soda was the turning point, and boy was it dramatic.

[baranohanayome.livejournal.com]

I don't think Korra would want anyone to feel bad about their body.

But if you want to get into shape for your health, the best thing to do would be to ask a doctor to refer you to a licensed nutritionist who can help you to come up with a diet plan and exercise regimen that will work best for you. That way you don't crash on any fad diets or end up hurting yourself doing exercise your body isn't yet ready for.

[(Anonymous)]

The best I can say is try everything *realistic*. Don't go after the plans that say "you'll loose 50 pounds in a month!" Hate to say it, but everybody is different and what works for some won't work for others. Just keep trying until you find what works for you.

[(Anonymous)]

Do something that you like and if you can, find someone to keep you company. Humans are actually pretty hardwired not to like exercise unless it's something fun, or something that easily integrated into our lives.

After I adopted a pit bull/lab mix, I started hiking with her every day to take care of her exercise needs. I quickly found that I loved it. The scenery was beautiful, and we met tons of different dogs and people. I get about thirty minutes to two hours of exercise every day because my dog needs it and because it's my favorite part of the day.

So, maybe hiking isn't your thing, try biking around your city and discovering things. Or join a low-key sports team. Or maybe you can be like Korra and learn marital arts! If there are no activities you find appealing, ask a friend to go running or to the gym with you. Having people around makes boring exercises more fun. At the end of the day, do something fun!

[pantasma]

I loved and moved in with a gluten-intolerant vegetarian who forced me to sleep properly so I wouldn't kill myself from sheer exhaustion.

Not eating all that pasta (my lazy default), and eating aaaall those extra veggies helped. And sleep. Sleep is a wonderous thing. I didn't notice until people started making comments ("Oh, what are you doing?" "What's your secret!" or my favorite, "You're disappearing. Where are you going?") Not long after that, my pants started falling off without a belt. yea, that was awkward.

I hate food/calorie diaries, I don't really exercise (not that that's a good thing), and I still eat sweets and drink juice and soda. I'm also not *trying* to lose weight, it just kind of... happened.

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

I've lost 35 lbs in the past 5 months doing a program through my local university. Some of the important points I've taken from it:

- the "and exercise" part of "diet and exercise" is crucial to maintaining weight loss. Diets alone take away slightly more mass, but that includes burning muscle. Most people reach the end of a diet, return to their previous eating habits, and are surprised when they balloon up past their original weight. What they don't realize is that their diet resulted in less muscle to metabolize the calories they're eating post-diet.

- the best exercise is the one you will do. The best equipment is the kind you will use.

- schedule your exercise like any other appointment. It's preventative medicine after all, and people (including you) won't try to co-opt your workout if you're saying you have an appointment.

- a 2000-calorie diet as "recommended" by whatever institute it is? Does not necessarily match your metabolism. I personally needed only 1500 to maintain my weight 35 lbs ago, so I've been aiming to eat 1200 a day. Doctors recommend not going under 1200 without medical monitoring, btw.

- don't deprive yourself. I've got my 1200-calorie target, so when I'm hungry I've got this mental ticker saying "you can have that 230-cal ice cream bar, but don't you think you'll get hungry later? you've got 400 calories left for the day, if you have the ice cream you'll be having toast with curry greens for dinner". I can have the cookie if I really want, I can eat out, I can drink alcohol, but it's going to cost me the steak dinner on offer.

- track your habits. It doesn't necessarily matter what you're tracking (other than the number on the scale, that's not a good one to pick: muscle weighs more than fat, and carbs and hormones -- if you're female -- make you retain water), nor does it matter if you're turning the results in and therefore feeling held accountable to someone else. I track my meals/times, calories, and exercise. Other people track the level of stress they're under (good to monitor if you're an emotional eater), or use a pedometer, or count up servings on the food pyramid.

- pay attention to when you're hungry, and why you are. HALT - am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? (If you aren't actually hungry, great: go do something to relax. A walk, a shower, listen to music, read a bit-- if you're at work, depending on the workplace you might only be allowed to go to the bathroom and just breathe for a few minutes. It's still something other than grabbing a handful of chips.) If you are hungry, is it "I could snack" or "omg I am so hungry I can't wait to cook something drive-thru here I come"? If you aren't all that hungry really, give it ten minutes and see if it goes away. If you're super-hungry, drink some water to buy time, eat, and then work on figuring out why you didn't notice before you got super-hungry and how you can fix that.

- have goals and use non-food rewards. Pick whatever motivates you to turn off the tv and go for a walk after dinner, or eat one cookie instead of six (or even pick berries, or not eat dessert at all). "When I lose five pounds, I'm going to reward myself with [item that is not food]." "When I move up to 10-lb free weights, I'm going to go [do that thing that does not involve food] I'm looking forward to." etc.

- find things to do that are not about eating, tv, or the computer. Everyone has more interests than that. Maybe it's art, or sports, or volunteering, or travel. Track what you actually do over the course of a normal week and see what you could switch out in favor of an activity you like more.

- and most importantly, start small. If you can't take a thirty-minute walk, do ten. If you can't stand skim milk, switch your 2% for 1% (and measure the milk, cereal doesn't need as much as you think it does). Pick the lowest-calorie cereal of the kinds you like. Try one new vegetable this week. Go exercise once more than usual this week. (You don't have to do all these things in the same week.)

And as some people commented above, consider it a lifestyle change, not a diet. Don't worry too much, though; as you work on it, you'll find healthy foods you like, and activities you enjoy, and get used to having a workout in your appointments calendar. Good luck!

[thene]

I lost about 25lbs last year and I wrote a long post about both what I was doing and what I'd been reading on the topic. I'm just going to copy-paste the linklist I made for that post, because it's all stuff I found interesting and useful.


The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet from Greta Christina - this is a series of which I habitually link to the fourth part, because it's a good place to start and the others all neatly branch off from there. The series is a little repetitive but it covers a lot of research and goes into the mental depths of it very well, and I used it as a primary starting point.

The Fat Trap from NYT (if you hit the paywall, reload and then hit the stop button once the article text has loaded. I guess someone in the NYT web design department hates the revenue department because the paywall is the last piece of javascript to load, wtf). I've seen a fair bit of wank over this one, mostly from NWCR paleo types who swear they can keep weight off just fine, but they would say that wouldn't they? And this is interesting and the writing is good. [ETA: see also Yoni Freedhoff's response.]

The Perfected Self from The Atlantic - about rehabilitating Skinner via behavioural apps, with a focus on healthy living. It also notes that, contrary to the oft-quoted 90% fail rate statistic (more on this later), something like 30-40% of people can keep weight off successfully if they have medical support, which is what apps are now trying to replicate. I've been using the free version of LoseIt since July myself, along with four friends; three of them flaked out after a month or so, but the two of us who kept at it are still very much on track; this is nothing more than an indication that some people like counting things.

Cooking Isn't Fun But You Should Do It Anyway, self-explanatory from Slate.

DIET score from Weighty Matters - "Weight lost through suffering will almost certainly be regained." Also, Weight Ain't About Exercise.

Obesity and the human brain on BoingBoing - the tone is overly simplistic but it's interesting if you want to know about what happens when you feed human junkfood to rats (it is amazing what researchers can get paid for!)

[(Anonymous)]

there is no quick fix. getting into shape is hard work.

[elephantinegrace]

Pick an activity you like to do, because in order to achieve any results, you have to do it for a LONG time. Do it for a week or a month, but don't weigh yourself until the end. It'll take a long time and you'll achieve very small increments. Don't try to compare yourself to anyone else, because what works for them or gives them better results might not work for you, and if it's something you don't enjoy, you'll end up putting it on the wayside and it'll definitely never work. Remember that this is a change you have to commit permanently to. If you stop after the first year, month, or week, you're just going to gain the weight back. But most importantly, you have to make sure you're doing this to be HEALTHY, not to lose weight, because your weight doesn't always correspond with your health. According to my doctor's BMI chart, I'm almost overweight, but I run at least one marathon a year.

/cool story sis

[(Anonymous)]

I'm still at the beginning stages of my weight loss plan, as I'm on a medication that makes me impulsive and gives me the munchies. It's a terrible combination! :-p

I use a weight loss app on my phone to track what I eat. If I know I've got 1200 calories per day, it makes it easier to turn down unhealthy food. It makes the calories feel like money - I don't waste my money on stuff I'll regret buying, I'd rather save the money for something better at a decent price. So why would I waste calories on ice cream when I could have a huge meal of something healthy later?

Tracking what you eat also makes it easier to forgive yourself for slipping. If I have McDonalds but still haven't gone over my 1200 calories, then I don't beat myself up as much as I would if I didn't know how much that meal affected my diet.

My other trick is to focus on the positive, not the negative. No matter what I weigh I always want to lose another 10lb. So instead I track the numbers that go up. How long can I run for? How many sit-ups can I do? How many vegetables have I eaten today?

You can't see the changes from day to day so you need to record it and look over the month-long view. In month 1 you could only do 5 sit-ups and never ate vegetables, in month 6 you can do 100 sit-ups and always eat at least 3 vegetables a day - now instead of giving up because you haven't noticed any changes you realise how much you've achieved.

Basically - exercise, diet and spreadsheets!

[(Anonymous)]

You can be fit and fat, OP! Seems you mostly want to LOOK like that cartoon.

That said, in the process of getting fit (which has little to do with diet), you may lose weight. Or not. It depends on your genetics - what our ancestors survived on and how many carbohydrates were available. Some are gonna be fat unless they start eating twigs and leaves, and I know someone who got suicidal after nothing, not even three hours of exercise a day, made her skinny. The social pressure to push someone to that is Fucked. Up.

So, do you want to be fit, or do you want to be not fat? Be honest with yourself.

[transcriptanon]

[Picture is Korra from the animated show "The Legend of Korra". She is a young woman with a slight build but with muscles, with lightly dark skin, and dark brown hair tied up in a pony tail, with some chunks of her hair from the sides of her head also tied up in pony tails. She has bright blue eyes and is wearing a light blue sleeve-less shirt, a brown and dark blue furred jacket tied around her waist, blue pants, brown boots made of fur and white and light blue arm bands and dark blue forearm bands. She is in a martial arts dynamic pose, looking determined and fierce.]

I thought I was over feeling bad about my body. Then, I watched this show. Now I feel disappointed in myself for being so out of shape.
I plan on going back to the gym and doing other things to help me get healthy, but I've tried so many times before, and I've failed that I'm a bit hesitant about trying again. I'm scared.
Does anyone have any weight-loss success stories that don't involve some stupid easy-way-out diet/exercise plan that you have to give your soul for?

[(Anonymous)]

Well I've lost 12 kgs in 6 months, so I guess I could help by leaving a comment? (Sorry for the kilograms and meters system, but I'm from latin america and that's what we use)

I started going back to gym (yup, I've tried gym before) and I was weighing 104 kgs which is way too much for someone who is 1.64 m. I'm weighing 92 kg now and it really feels so much better. So, what's the secret?

I started seeing a nutritionist too. It helps a lot that the nutritionist is a good person because I'm sure if mine was as nice and polite as she is, I would have left time ago. The trick is to learn how to eat. Now, I LOVE sweets and I could kill for chocolates and cookies, but I had to start avoiding them, but I don't do tht much! I mean, the thing is you can eat ANYTHING, but you have to compensate that! If you eat a snack which has 90 calories, for example, you could do 15 minutes of bike instead. Or if you eat a chocolate cake for lunch then you can't eat bread/fruits/potatoes for dinner. And one thing that helps a lot is to eat a lot of salad! Getting the habit of eating salad on lunch helps more than you think, it really helps me to fill my stomach and it also helps my whole body, since it gives you a lot of good things. Now, I would say that exercise makes everything better, but since I've been too involved in uni things lately I've just done my diet and haven't gone to gym and still got results.

So you can do it too!! Look, I'm 21 and I've tried too many times going to the gym before. I finally started doing it seriously until now and the change is really notorious and makes me so happy! Lots of people comment on that and cheer me up (I used to get too anxious and embarrassed over this so in the end I didn't achieve anything, but part of the problem is admitting you've got one and once I told everyone I was into this they rushed to help me instead of judging me as I was expecting). And I know that if I can do it then so can you!

Let's do this together, anon <3 and if you need a friend (because I found out I really needed people to help me on this) then you can tell me and I'll give you my contact information.

YES WE CAN!

[(Anonymous)]

You can do it. I did, and I've kept the weight off for a lot of years now.

People will give you all sorts of contradictory advice. Since presumably all of it worked for somebody, the lesson is that there's no one path to success; you have to find the one that works for your body and your mind and habits and way of living in the world. FWIW, though, here's what worked for me:

1. Make sure you get enough protein every day. Otherwise you may lose weight, but your body will begin cannibalizing itself for proteins and it will be bad for you. For women that's usually somewhere around 40-50 grams a day, which doesn't sound like much, but it's more than a lot of women think they need or routinely eat. (I'm basing this on American women with a more or less ordinary diet, though. Maybe it's different if you've been eating differently all your life.)

2. Get rid of as many of the other, unnecessary calories as you can.

3. Try to treat food as fuel, an annoying but necessary part of your life. If it's an important source of pleasure to you, you're going to be fretful about the pleasures you're foregoing. If it isn't, you stand a chance of forgetting about the deprivation part of this. Eat stuff you don't particularly like. Don't try to avoid getting bored with what you eat. If you're hungry enough, it's all going to taste great, and if you're not so hungry that it tastes great, it's time to stop eating it.

4. Forgive yourself when you fall off the wagon. Which you will. As long as you don't give up because you think you're a big failure, it'll all be fine. Regret it and go back to not eating, and you'll be fine.

5. Don't even try to bullshit yourself that this is easy. It's hard. Succeed, and it'll maybe get easy in five years or so, but short and medium-term? Don't kid yourself, and then you won't be angry and resentful that you're still struggling with this stuff years after you started.

It's hard, but you can do it. Don't trust anyone who says they know a way you can do it that will be easy for you, but don't trust anyone who tries to tell you that you can't do it at all, either. Unless that person is your doctor, and they have some medical reason for saying it.

[(Anonymous)]

There's a lot of great advice here, anon.

My 2 cents is just to eat slowly, listening to your body. When you begin to feel full, stop eating. Wrap it up and save it for dinner later or lunch the next day. I used to eat until I was literally stuffed full, especially at buffets. Then I started to hate that stuffed feeling, loathed it actually. So I scaled back on the portions and ate slowly. It did wonders.

I also park further out in the parking lot of whatever establishment I am patronizing so the walk is longer. I do it at work too. I take stairs instead of elevators, and I try to get in at least twenty minutes of something that makes my heart pump a few times a week.

I hate gyms, they are mind-numbly boring and become a chore after a while. I found it best to find a physical activity I enjoy doing, like walking and climbing hills.

Good luck, OP!

[(Anonymous)]

For me, I was too concerned with "losing weight" and not concerned enough with being healthy. So what worked best for me was to throw out my scale (I am dead serious about this). Then I found a buddy, signed up for a reasonably priced gym (we claimed to live together to get a discount for both our memberships) and started trying whatever looked interesting. I personally like the YMCA, because it is oriented as a "family" gym, so it had a hundred different types of bodies in there, so it wasn't intimidating.

I got to take lots of different classes and figure out what was *fun*, plus it was amazing to, for example, take an aerobics class with women who had twenty years and fifty (or more!) pounds on me who could run circles around my sorry ass. For me, the most amazing thing I did for my body was readjusting my mindset about women and weight and fitness. And one day I realized my clothes didn't really fit well any more, and I looked in the mirror and flexed and just loved my body, as much for the strength and success and potential I could feel in it as for its new shape and size.

Find what works for you, OP. Find something you enjoy, or people you enjoy exercising with, and focus on being fun and strong or flexible or just the way your body feels when it moves (or all of those!). Obviously exercising and eating healthily are important, but teaching yourself to feel good doing it matters the most for maintaining it, imo. And if you can't do the gym, there are lots of great videos that you can try out via Netflix or, erm, other sources, so you can find what you like that actually makes you want to work out.

You don't have to throw out the scale like I did, but if it helps you focus more on health and fun than on weight, I'd suggest that too. :)

[(Anonymous)]

See a doctor and a dietician about it, rather than looking for tips on Fandom Secrets out of all the places.

Be warned that our science is still not quite up there when it comes to knowing how to make fat people thin. I managed with an eating disorder for two years, then there comes to a point that I just had to accept that giving my life up to be unfat isn't actually worth it.

[(Anonymous)]

I can share what worked for me, but keep in mind that people are different and what works for one may not work for everyone. Okay, so, some years back, I decided I was a little too sedentary and started exercising – not for weight-loss, just to not feel like a big lump. I got into a routine, about an hour of exercise, three times a week. My knees are not great, so I can’t do the high impact stuff they tend to show on TV, instead I have a recumbent exercise bike (this means that I’m not putting a whole lot of weight is on my knees and although I’m working them, I’m not jarring them) plus some low-key resistance band exercises. I had more energy and that was fine. But then I was getting ready for a trip and weighing my carry-on bag by stepping on a scale with it and without it and, wow, I weighed a lot. So I was exercising , but not losing any weight.

I went on the internet and found out about how many calories I would need to reduce to see some real weight loss. But first I needed to know how many calories I was taking in on average. I kept track of the calories for everything (food, drink, vitamin chews, gum, etc.) I was putting in my mouth and found I was way over the 2000 calories (the average USDA dietary guidelines). I got myself a kitchen scale and paid a lot more attention to portion size and was able to reduce my calories down. The first couple of months, I was down to about 2300 and then I went for 1900, where I stayed for about a year, then for four months went down to 1600 (for the last stubborn 15 pounds I wanted to lose). As I lost weight, I did more exercise (now it’s about an hour and a half, four times a week). Now, and for the last year and a half, I am maintaining my weight with 1900 calories. I lost 85 pounds (about a pound a week), went from a size 22W to a size 8. I still have a little stomach pooch and wouldn’t have minded if I’d lost a little more in my thighs and not so much in the breasts and my wrists are bonier than I’d like (because, wow, the weight can come off in weird proportions), but overall I’m much happier with my appearance and my fitness. I won’t say I always eat right, but I do eat less and I’m much more conscious of what I’m eating.

The important thing, I think, is to find something you can stick with, that won’t feel like a punishment (it’s okay if it sometimes feels like a chore, as long as it’s something that doesn't make you feel bad).