Author Topic: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread (check first post)  (Read 698940 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #140 on: January 11, 2010, 03:01:57 pm »
San Francisco's also great for walking.

I will probably be out of town on February 1st, but I MIGHT be able to report to you my progress in person!! I'll tell you more via PM.

One thing that's inhibiting my progress that Meryl touched on earlier is stress. This fall I was very active and didn't overeat, but because I was majorly stressed out most of the time, I lost ground in the fitness area. Stress causes cortisol to be released into your bloodstream and that tells your body to add weight and conserve energy. It also makes you very tired and you can't have a good fitness regime when you're alway tired.

Last week was relatively stress free until Sunday when I was at home. I always find being at home very stressful. This time, my teenage son was just being himself, and by the end of the afternoon, my nerves were shot!! I wanted a drink so badly, but instead I lit my new soy oil candle. Have you seen them? The soy oil is warmed and liquified by the flame. You can scoop it out with a little (included) silver spoon and put it directly on your skin and massage it in. Heavenly!! However, I welcome more stress busting tips. I think you can all guess what my second favorite stress busting activity is...hanging out here!!
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #141 on: January 11, 2010, 03:31:20 pm »



Want to know what they call chicken in Wyoming? Vegetarian food!!


 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #142 on: January 11, 2010, 08:39:25 pm »
I found a good way to improve my workout. For an outdoor hike, I loaded two gallon jugs of water into my backpack (total of about 25 pounds) and went about 1 1/2 miles in 33 minutes with mostly gentle but some moderate inclines/declines. My ankles hurt a little about halfway through but then I didn't notice. I was able to walk moderately fast (for me) about 3-4 steps a second. The extra weight made just walking worthwhile!
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline SFEnnisSF

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #143 on: January 12, 2010, 08:09:00 pm »
Ok, gettin' back involved in a regular gym routine startin' today!  Here we go...

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #144 on: January 12, 2010, 08:12:38 pm »
Ok, gettin' back involved in a regular gym routine startin' today!  Here we go...

It's not easy going back after some time away.  Congrats on taking the step today! 


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #145 on: January 12, 2010, 11:32:18 pm »
It's not easy going back after some time away.  Congrats on taking the step today! 

I just keep reminding myself how much freakin' hard-earned cash I have to spend for a gym membership.  >:(  That's a powerful incentive to keep me going!
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline SFEnnisSF

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #146 on: January 12, 2010, 11:35:52 pm »
My gym is free and at work.  I ain't got no excuse!

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #147 on: January 12, 2010, 11:42:31 pm »
My gym is free and at work.  I ain't got no excuse!

We've got one of those, too, and I could work out there, but before I could use it, I'd have to jump through hoops of some kind of physical assessment (presumably so I don't die of a heart attack on company property), I'd have to stay late--and take public transit home after rush hour  :-\ --and it wouldn't be accessible on weekends, and I'd be working out surrounded by middle-aged women--instead of by the cute and hot gay men and boys who frequent the gym in my neighborhood.  ;D  The way I see it, if you're gonna work out, you might as well have nice scenery while you're doing it.  ;D
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline mariez

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #148 on: January 13, 2010, 08:28:33 am »
That's a good suggestion Paul.  I love salads with fresh lemon juice. Acutally I often will squeeze the lemon into a little bit of olive oil and add some crushed garlic and a dash of salt.  Totally delicious!  And, I firmly believe that olive oil is very healthy.

That's exactly what I do, Amanda!  I love the taste of lemon and  I use fresh lemon juice a lot while cooking - it gives a nice fresh zing to just about everything.

There was some talk about candied ginger a few pages back, and last night Alton Brown made some on his "Good Eats" show on the Food Network.  Looked pretty easy - and delicious, and the reviews for his recipe are great:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/candied-ginger-recipe/index.html

Candied Ginger
 
Recipe courtesy Alton Brown, 2008

Show: Good EatsEpisode: Ginger: Rise of the Rhizome

Rated: 5 stars out of 5Rate itRead users' reviews (15)

Cook Time:1 hr 0 min
Level: Easy
Yield: about 1 pound
Prep15 min Inactive Prep-- Cook1 hr 0 min Total:1 hr 15 min

Ingredients
Nonstick spray
1 pound fresh ginger root
5 cups water
Approximately 1 pound granulated sugar

Directions:

Spray a cooling rack with nonstick spray and set it in a half sheet pan lined with parchment.

Peel the ginger root and slice into 1/8-inch thick slices using a mandoline. Place into a 4-quart saucepan with the water and set over medium-high heat. Cover and cook for 35 minutes or until the ginger is tender.

Transfer the ginger to a colander to drain, reserving 1/4 cup of the cooking liquid. Weigh the ginger and measure out an equal amount of sugar. Return the ginger and 1/4 cup water to the pan and add the sugar. Set over medium-high heat and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently, until the sugar syrup looks dry, has almost evaporated and begins to recrystallize, approximately 20 minutes. Transfer the ginger immediately to the cooling rack and spread to separate the individual pieces. Once completely cool, store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks. Save the sugar that drops beneath the cooling rack and use to top ginger snaps, sprinkled over ice cream or to sweeten coffee.


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Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: I Wish I Knew How to LOSE You--The Weight Loss Thread
« Reply #149 on: January 13, 2010, 02:03:50 pm »


We needed a study?  ::)



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/nyregion/14calories.html?hp


Calorie Postings No Match for Holiday Gluttony

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published: January 13, 2010


When a study on New Yorkers’ eating habits was released last week, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, city health officials and the report’s authors focused on what appeared to be a triumph of government policy: After the city began requiring restaurant chains to post calories, customers ordered lighter food.

But the study also revealed a stronger trend, one that speaks to the weight of human nature: Around Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Yorkers seemed to lose all control. Statistically speaking, they pigged out.

The gluttony response detected by the study, which looked only at what New Yorkers were buying from Starbucks, may not surprise people who have eaten their way through Thanksgiving dinners and multiple office parties.

Then there was the New Year’s effect: While the average customer did buy lighter food from Starbucks after the calorie posting law took effect on April 1, 2008, the calorie drop was even greater right after Jan. 1, 2009.

To those with a more psychological than statistical bent, like weight-loss specialists, food industry analysts and, yes, the Starbucks customers who are the guinea pigs in all this, the study sums up the resilience of the human spirit in the face of good government, the persistent urge to eat, drink and be merry, to make New Year’s resolutions and then break them with impunity, and to go on yo-yo diets, despite the best-laid plans of the nanny state.

“I’ve always known that seasonability is more important than anything else,” said Harry Balzer, vice president of the NPD Group, a consumer marketing research company, who has been watching the way people eat for 30 years. “If we did what we say we do, we’d be a thin nation. We like food, and food has a place in our lives at different times in our lives.”

As reliable as, well, winter, spring, summer and fall, the eating season begins at Halloween (soup consumption soars in the fall) and peaks around New Year’s, Mr. Balzer said. The dieting season, he said, begins “sometime after the Super Bowl, and they keep making the Super Bowl later and later,” but people still indulge in chocolate for Valentine’s Day and begin seriously cutting calories only in March, as they contemplate stripping down for summer and beach wear. (The study, conducted by Stanford University researchers, showed the calorie drop occurring before the Super Bowl, suggesting that Starbucks customers do not set their body clocks by the football calendar.)

Starbucks gave the researchers access to millions of receipts encompassing every transaction in New York, Boston and Philadelphia from Jan. 1, 2008, to Feb. 28, 2009.

Before the law took effect, customers buying sandwiches, muffins or snacks from one of New York City’s 222 Starbucks shops ordered items with roughly the same number of calories as did Starbucks customers in Boston and Philadelphia.

After the law took effect, New York customers ordered 14 percent fewer calories from food than before — either by buying less food or lower-fat food — and came in below Boston and Philadelphia, where there was no calorie posting. (There was no appreciable reduction in calories from lattes, caramel macchiatos and other drinks, the core of Starbucks’ business. Over all, the average New York customer walked away from the counter with 6 percent fewer calories.)

As the year went on, New Yorkers gradually began ordering higher-calorie foods, but remained below the other two cities, peaking around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Around Christmas and New Year’s, New Yorkers were once again consuming as many calories in Starbucks food as Philadelphians or Bostonians.

“One interpretation is that it’s the holidays, so you cut yourself some slack and you don’t really worry about it,” said Alan Sorensen, an associate professor of economics and strategic management at Stanford who was a co-author of the study. “Another, given our study design, could be that you just get a different type of customer during the holidays, but I don’t think that’s the explanation. It’s more likely something about consumer psychology.”

To show how ingrained eating habits were, one of his Stanford co-authors, Phillip Leslie, suggested putting the word “calories” into Google Trends, which tracks the words people enter in Google’s search field. Up popped year after year of graphs that looked a lot like the one in the Starbucks study.

“I think it’s hilarious,” Dr. Leslie said. Mr. Balzer, the marketing analyst, noted that similar graphs result from search terms like crockpot, soup and especially recipes.

That pattern can have a long-term impact, said Dr. Marina Kurian, medical director of the New York University program for surgical weight loss. Over the course of a year, she said, people typically gain a pound, despite dieting, and over a decade, that adds up to 10 unwanted pounds.

“We think, maybe wrongly, that we’re going to lose that weight gain by dieting in the new year,” she said.

Starbucks, too, is aware of seasonal imperatives, and so it offers the Pumpkin Spice Latte in the fall, Cranberry Bliss Bar in December, and 90-calorie beverages in January, “because customers are thinking about getting the new year off to a good start,” said Sanja Gould, a spokeswoman.

Some customers interviewed at the Starbucks at Broadway and West 95th Street in Manhattan this week said that the calorie postings had changed their buying habits. Others were unmoved.

“Aren’t the holidays like a good way to celebrate gluttony?” asked Erich Fuchs, a consultant to nonprofit organizations, sipping a coffee, black, insouciantly. He said he bought Starbucks scones for his partner, but preferred home cooking for himself, and never worried about calorie counts, only portion size.

A friend sitting across from him, Patrick Stucky, nursed a tea and said he never made New Year’s resolutions, explaining, “I think I’m perfect the way I am.”
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"