My Next Life Goal Is To Spend Savings I've Been Accumulating In My Belly Bank.

[arakboss]

Now that I have my debt paid off and plans to start saving for retirement I am refocusing on my health. According to the charts I am obese (250lbs @6ft tall). In the past I focused on scale weight when trying to lose weight. Sometimes weighing every day and other times once a week. This time I am going to avoid the scale and go by waist measurement. My current waist measurement is 47 inches. My goal is to bring it down to 37 inches. 37" or below seems to be what most health experts think is healthy.

My weight gain was pretty well spread out until recently, but it seems like the last 30 or 40 lbs has gone mostly to my midsection.

I am still planning on frugality with my food shopping but I might spend a few extra dollars on some veggies to help keep my plate calories down and still feel full. I am going to start tracking calories again with My Fitness Pal app.

Has anybody else here focused on waist circumference vs scale for fat reduction goals?

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[clearconscience]

It's 70% diet.
I wouldn't cut normal "bad" food out completely. Cut sugar as much as possible, soda, sweets, and cut down on carbs (don't eliminate them)
One bad thing people do is cut out thing completely, then when the diet faze is over you gain it all back and then more.

And do some exercise daily. Start slow, and work your way up.
It's a journey not a race.

 

[joshkk]

I quit all sweets, cold turkey, over five years ago and its been great. In the first year, with no other lifestyle changes, I lost almost thirty pounds (from 218 down to 190, from the heaviest I'd ever been to the same weight I graduated high school), and now I've stayed plateaued within a couple pound range for years since then. I cannot recommend this strategy enough. NO candy, soda, baked goods, ice cream, desserts, etc. It's not strictly "no sugar" (I eat bread, ketchup, beer, etc. with sugar in it) and there are places where I have to navigate a line (I eat trail mixes that have dried fruit in them but not that have chocolates or candies in them).

Once your brain and body passes the initial withdrawal phase, it's pretty easy to stay away.

Good luck!

 

[alim]

I dropped about 50lbs over the past year.

Try intermittent fasting (IF). I'm someone who had issues with portion control and the types of food I was eating, so I found that limiting myself to a much smaller eating window helped cut a lot of weight.

The first 20lbs were lost through IF alone. I added small amounts of exercise plus IF to drop the rest. Now that I'm at a better weight, IF alone is enough to maintain it.

If you do IF, I suggest adding a daily multivitamin to your regimen.

 

[JustSomeGuy]

Not a fitness or weight loss expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I turned 77 a week or so ago, am 5'9" tall, have a 44" chest, a 32" waist and weigh 190lbs. Not much of that weight is fat. What works for me is eating natural foods and getting plenty of exercise. Fresh fruits and vegetables and meat with the occasional pancakes/biscuits/ whole grain bread is pretty much my whole diet. The pre-prepared or "processed" crap they sell in the grocery stores is nothing more than junk food prettied up to look and sorta taste like a meal. How anyone can survive for long on a steady diet of that crap is beyond me.
I do watch my weight and my calories daily and adjust my intake up or down accordingly.
It sounds time consuming, but once you get into a routine of healthy eating and exercise you will be amazed at how much better you will feel, both physically and mentally.

 

[revjen45]

I went from 255# to 155# (44" to 34") over about 15-18 mo. 167# now.
A widow maker heart attack is a mighty motivator toward changing lifestyle.

 

[arakboss]

Not a fitness or weight loss expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I turned 77 a week or so ago, am 5'9" tall, have a 44" chest, a 32" waist and weigh 190lbs. Not much of that weight is fat. What works for me is eating natural foods and getting plenty of exercise. Fresh fruits and vegetables and meat with the occasional pancakes/biscuits/ whole grain bread is pretty much my whole diet. The pre-prepared or "processed" crap they sell in the grocery stores is nothing more than junk food prettied up to look and sorta taste like a meal. How anyone can survive for long on a steady diet of that crap is beyond me.
I do watch my weight and my calories daily and adjust my intake up or down accordingly.
It sounds time consuming, but once you get into a routine of healthy eating and exercise you will be amazed at how much better you will feel, both physically and mentally.

32" that's a Hollywood waist. According to some article I read the average waist size for famously in shape male stars was between 30" and 34".

 

[arakboss]

I went from 255# to 155# (44" to 34") over about 15-18 mo. 167# now.
A widow maker heart attack is a mighty motivator toward changing lifestyle.

Congrats on losing 10 inches off your waist in less than two years. Did you have a heart attack?

 

[arakboss]

I dropped about 50lbs over the past year.

Try intermittent fasting (IF). I'm someone who had issues with portion control and the types of food I was eating, so I found that limiting myself to a much smaller eating window helped cut a lot of weight.

The first 20lbs were lost through IF alone. I added small amounts of exercise plus IF to drop the rest. Now that I'm at a better weight, IF alone is enough to maintain it.

If you do IF, I suggest adding a daily multivitamin to your regimen.

What length of feeding window did you find worked best for you?

 

[alim]

What length of feeding window did you find worked best for you?

The shorter the window the better results you'll see. If you just do black coffee for breakfast/lunch and you're busy working all day, 20/4 or one meal a day is easy to do. That's what I did pre-COVID. 18/6 is fine if you want to do a couple of smaller meals in the late afternoon/evening, which is what I'm doing now post-COVID.

Work from home has made shorter eating intervals harder. Easier access to food. When I was stuck in an office all day, at least I didn't have a fridge a few steps away.

 

[arakboss]

The shorter the window the better results you'll see. If you just do black coffee for breakfast/lunch and you're busy working all day, 20/4 or one meal a day is easy to do. That's what I did pre-COVID. 18/6 is fine if you want to do a couple of smaller meals in the late afternoon/evening, which is what I'm doing now post-COVID.

Work from home has made shorter eating intervals harder. Easier access to food. When I was stuck in an office all day, at least I didn't have a fridge a few steps away.

Wow, I might try a 16/8 but I will need to have a much busier life to try a 20/4 or even 18/6. I have experimented with IF a little in the past but not for any significant lengths of time. Thanks for the advice.

 

[HaveGun]

I cut out all sugars and grains and kept my carb intake to under 30 grams per day and lost 30 lbs in 3 months. I fell off the wagon for about a year and gained most of it back. I started getting serious about it again about a week ago and am down 4 lbs. Trying to do much more walking/hiking now, which seems to slow weight loss since some fat is being replaced by muscle. The tape measure would much more accurate in gauging weight loss.

 

[JustSomeGuy]

32" that's a Hollywood waist. According to some article I read the average waist size for famously in shape male stars was between 30" and 34".

I'm pretty sure their list didn't have a category labeled Geezers. My doc says that given my age, he would consider me "an anomaly".

 

[RicInOR]

Has anybody else here focused on waist circumference vs scale for fat reduction goals?

This is common. Typically by pants - those I used to fit in as an example.


If you have Prime Video, watch a couple of documentaries titled like "FAT"

FAT: A Documentary

there are a couple more

It's 70% diet.

I say it is 90% diet !

Move.
Post any movement / exercise to our thread here to help you stay on plan.
What did you do to exercise today?

It is important to move. No so important what you do.



And,
Make a commitment to your commitment.



Good Luck!

 

[arakboss]

This is common. Typically by pants - those I used to fit in as an example.


If you have Prime Video, watch a couple of documentaries titled like "FAT"

FAT: A Documentary

there are a couple more




I say it is 90% diet !

Move.
Post any movement / exercise to our thread here to help you stay on plan.
What did you do to exercise today?

It is important to move. No so important what you do.



And,
Make a commitment to your commitment.



Good Luck!

I will squeeze in some activity here and there but in my mind the diet is really 90%+ as you mentioned. I could easily eat more calories in 15 minutes than I could burn in hours of activity. I think honest tracking of my calorie intake will be the biggest help. I have my calorie tracking app set up 2200 calories and I will be starting to track again tonight.

 

[Medic!]

Shoot for around 2000 calories a day.

Consider all you consume.
A gallon of milk a week for example is almost 2000 calories.

Or a days worth of food.

You don't need eight days worth of food in seven.


Also a week of walking three miles a day burns about a days worth of calories.
So now you're only accounting for six days worth of calories a week.

And so on.

 

[revjen45]

" Congrats on losing 10 inches off your waist in less than two years. Did you have a heart attack?"

Yes, a classic widow maker - coded in the aid wagon (Note: It's not a good sign when the ambulance stops on the way out.). On the 5th try the defibrillator restored some semblance of a heartbeat, and it's on the road again. (2 min between tries to assess the effect.) At the hospital my wife said that upon my arrival the electro-cardiologist announced to the room that I was not going to make it, while the lead cardiologist assembled his team. (8 days in cardiac care with 1 1/2 in ICU.) The care staff told me later that they hadn't expected me to go home alive either, for a total of 3 times I was expected to check out that night. (1st being the EMS crew. I have spoken with them several times since then.) I have the EKG printout of my own death - If I had checked out, onset of fibrillation would have been Time Of Death. The fact that I'm still breathing and know my birthday is a statistical anomaly. One of the few things I remember clearly is the team lead asking me "What's your birthday?" in a most emphatic manner when I regained consciousness. In later conversation he told me that's a quick diagnostic to assess whether my custard was addled after ~ 9 min. in cardiac arrest. Issues with memory and balance are common after a code save.

Needless to say, my esteem for Snohomish County EMS is boundless. Another EMS team lead told me that SnoCo EMS has a particularly good record with code saves, and I'm sure not going to disagree. As far as I'm concerned they are thaumaturges.

In the interest of giving recognition to all who contributed to my unlikely survival, note that I called on the Holy Spirit while losing consciousness prior to cardiac arrest.
Also note that my wife had as much to do with my surviving as the folks who brought me back.