General Discussions > Health, Fitness, Nutrition, and Medicine
Weight loss tips and tricks--- From the Obvious to the surprising
Karyn:
Walk everywhere. Moving to a city where everyone walks has done me a lot of good. Living a mile away from work also helps. It encourages me to walk or jog to and from work daily. We also walk about a mile to get groceries. I think 3 miles away is the limit on our destination distance, and that's more a time thing. I also make sure I'm the one that runs all the errands in the office, and if I want to talk to someone, I'll get up instead of dialing their extension. I've noticed the overweight people don't tend to do this. Now if I could quit taking naps at lunch and go out for a walk instead, I'd be super happy. Unfortunately my body has decided it wants naps.
DonA1979:
My one trick that hasn't been mentioned yet is to have a small cup of coffee before my cardio workouts. Takes advantage of the caffeine being a vasodiolator and getting the HR up a bit. Doing this, however, you have to remember to stay well hydrated since coffee is also a diuretic.
Plastique:
--- Quote from: DonA1979 on Apr 25, 2012, 09:09:51 AM ---Doing this, however, you have to remember to stay well hydrated since coffee is also a diuretic.
--- End quote ---
If you're habituated, it's not really a concern.
By the way, why do you think it's advantageous to have a slightly higher heart rate from caffeine?
Cognoscento:
When you boil it down, all I did was eat less and exercise more (a lot more LOL).
That being said, when I started my weight loss quest, my biggest problem wasn't will power, it was unconcious impulse. I would conveniently forget that I was restricting my diet and just eat out of habit. To combat this I did two things:
1. I wrote a contract out specifically stating the "rules" and signed it. I taped it to the fridge. Believe it or not this really helped because there were clearly defined limits with no grey areas. Also, everytime I would restlessly head over to the fridge to grab a snack, the contract would be right there to snap me out of it.
2. My mantra for this quest was HTFU (acronym for Harden The F*#K Up). I attached that acronym to the mental image of myself being lean and muscular - an image of myself running unashamed along the beach with my shirt off. I wrote HTFU on my forearm with indellible marker so that every time I was feeling "weak" and wanted to grab a chocolate bar or skip a workout, I would glance at my forearm and instantly, my resolve would return.
Needless to say, it worked.
Squarebanks:
Buy a device that tracks steps and movement like a simple pedometer, or something more sophisticated like the Bodymedia Fit. Having a device that tracks movement pushes you to move around and exercise more. I treat my daily calorie burn like a game and try to beat my "high score."
I love my device which tracks intensity of movement with an accelerometer and gives me an estimated calorie burn. I've tracked my diet estimated calorie burn, and weight over several months and I found that the burn estimate from the device is spot-on. Devices like the Bodymedia Fit are perfect for the OCD nerd/scientist/engineer. The body is just an energy balance system after all.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version