... even if I don't remember to follow it all the time.

We have all heard that it takes a while for your body to get around to telling your brain - "Hey, I am full. You have eaten enough for now... cut it out." If I eat what I have portioned out for say dinner. I may still feel hungry. I might decide to have just a "little" bit more or think to myself - maybe I should have a little something else. The tip I got was this. Make a deal with myself. Stop at that point. Just stop. Make yourself wait for 20 minutes. If you still want it - then and only then get it. When I remember to do that 90% of the time or more - I feel full and don't end up eating anything else.

Try it sometime.

Do you have any tips that you know work for you but maybe you don't follow through on them consistently? I would love to hear about them.

I wish you all the best!

P.S. I am excited about the new season of the Biggest Loser! The show helped me so much on my own weight loss journey to lose over 340 pounds. 562.3 --> 220

Thanks for the tip, Charles.

Keep 'em coming, folks.

I'd like to remember this one at the appropriate times: Food Cravings will go away even if you don't stuff your face with the craved food. Responding as if a craving is a life or death situation (GOTTA HAVE CHOCOLATE NOW!) is nonsense.

Charles,

One tip I need to stick with is not eating after 8 PM in the evening.

Congrats on your weight loss! THAT is amazing!

Michael

I agree, Charles. Your weight loss is amazing. Thanks for the example!
I'm 270 trying to get to 190.

Best tip, burn more than you consume.

Keep a food diary. I've found that my best loses occur when I keep track of what I've eaten.

Here's one my boss told me recently:

Take the weight you want to be, and multiply it by 10.
Eat that many calories every day.
Take the weight you want to be and divide it by 4.
Walk that many minutes each day.

A slight variation, in one of the Biggest Loser books Jillian says to take your current weight and multiply it by 7, and that is how many calories you should be eating a day if you want to lose weight. When you do the math it is actually pretty spot on.

What I do not understand is these calculations are not always accurate....correct?

If I do the calculations, say 7 times my weight, (ex) eat 1100 calories....I will lose the weight.........if a person's activity level does not allow them to burn more than 1100 cals, you will not lose weight. So, are we back to the simpler formula, calories in vs calories out?

It is always Calories in vs Calories out. 7 times weight is the general rule because if you think about it FEW people can claim a BMR (basal metabolic rate; what you would burn if you stayed in bed all day) lower than 1000 Calories per day. Between heating your body, heart rate, thinking, etc. your body should be burning more calories than that.

A nice little tool to figure out a rough estimate of your BMR from Discovery health: http://health.discovery.com/tools/calculat...asal/basal.html

Thanks for the link......I need to read more info because I just cannot relate to the BMR at all.

Going along with the op, I remember my grandmother saying she was taught to chew each bite of food something like 24 times each(im pretty sure this was for choking reason, although it may have been a manners thing as well). if you did that with every bite of food that required chewing, it would take a lot longer to eat and possibly get full during the meal. Although i will say, i tried it once, little boring.

You would require a very expensive test to determine an accurate BMR. They put you in a completely controlled room and measure the amount of CO2 your body is giving off. That allows them to determine how many Calories your body is oxidizing, or converting food/fat energy to usable energy.

I know you are a "Calories in vs Calories out" girl Chazee... if you don't know the base line of how many Calories your body burns then how can you even guess about a proper daily Calorie budget?



I seem to remember hearing that part of the reason French women trend much slimmer than their American counterparts is because there is a social manners rule about only taking three bites of any individual item at a meal.

I bought a simple little wristwatch/heart rate thing for around $60 and wore it for about a month to gauge how I was burning. I found out that my heart rate was dropping extremely low, below 50 bpm! Turns out I needed adjustment on my thyroid meds, and that corrected that.

It had a calories burned function. On a day that I did no exercise, just go to work and back (desk job), I burned on average 900 calories total. On a day that I started out at 7 a.m. with a 22 mile bike ride, I had burned 1500 calories before noon. Of course, these were estimates only, but I got a pretty good feel for when my heart rate was in the target zone, when exercise gave better results (morning workouts!), etc...

I am on the cals in vs cals out theory, but have never calculated what I needed to lose weight. I just kinda figured how much I needed to consume and burn. I just changed my lifestyle, and I mean totally changed, and I lost the weight, and lost it fast. My son and lightfst got me into biking, so that was a huge plus.

My mother has always nibbled at meals. She was taught that at a young age. To this day, she has never drove a car. She insists that she live in the city so that she can walk to wherever needs to go. She said this was the way in France. Every meal was purchased the day it was to be prepared, by walking to the market. I have only one uncle out of many relatives in Paris that owns a car, but rarely drives it.
None of my European relatives are over weight, including my uncle who owns a bakery/pastry shop.

I was always thin, up till I had a heart attack, then I got sedentary........but now, the fear has diminished.

Another tip, smaller plates. You are less likely to take larger portions. Also leave things such as the bones on your plate. It will help you gauge just how much you have already eaten.

They also have a way better handle on portion size than we do here. Restaurants don't serve dishes that could feed two or three people.

They don't gobble down their meals. Dinner takes a lot longer, so they give their brains time to "catch up" to how full their stomachs are.

They walk much more often or ride bikes.

They eat far less fast food (changing in the big cities though) and processed junk. They eat fresh, wholesome fruits and veggies from the neighborhood markets and their meat/fish/poultry isn't pumped full of hormones, antibiotics, and "tenderizers."

They are incredible looking and pay a whole lot of attention to their clothes. Very stylish and it just seems to come natural.

Those were my personal observations anyway.