Unlimited How Not to Be a Fat Fucky Bastard thread: now 100% more fat free

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You could, unless the term is being used literally, stop bein' a bastard...then ya'd just be fat.

I like the bastard part, though.   

[Reginald Ret]

"Starve" strangely doesn't work for most people. I have no clue why.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My new schedule has me walking 5-6 miles a day and no time to eat, particularly. Should be good for my waistline.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have been shamelessly overindulging all break, and as a result I have failed to lose any of the pudge I was going to try to lose this summer. I'm not getting any younger and if I don't maintain a terrible vigilance I will likely become fat fat fat. I still have an overnight up the gorge with Hot Cowboy and a pig roast camping trip with my boyfriend before the return to school, and I have no intention of  being moderate on either of those trips, so my solution is that for the rest of this week, I will be eating and drinking only the most absurdly low-caloric and healthful of comestibles. For lunch I am having chicken broth with tofu cubes and spinach.

Add enough sriracha and it tastes like real food.

[LMNO]

Add enough sriracha and it tastes like real food.

This qualifies as a Universal LifeHack.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Add enough sriracha and it tastes like real food.

This qualifies as a Universal LifeHack.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have no idea where the original "How not to be a fat bastard" thread went, so I decided to start up another.

Previously, I was about 15 pounds overweight, and I'd been trying to lose it for fucking ever. Then I had surgery to remove a malfunctioning and tumor-filled organ, after which I weighed ten pounds less (yay!) but had complications (boo!) that restricted my exercise and general well-being for something ridiculous like six months. THEN, after that shit resolved, my internals took over a year to get back to something approximating 100%. In the meantime, I slowly packed on about 30 pounds.

Greeeat.

So, one of the things that nobody mentioned about about major abdominal surgery: not only do you have downtime from healing, and not only does it take a ridiculously long time for internal healing of severed musculature, but also, by the time you've healed you are so out of shape that flights of stairs you used to run up without noticing will make you feel like you're dying. Everything will be horribly out of shape, including your heart and lungs. That "kinda challenging" hike over the Waterline Trail to Skyline Tavern? Don't even think about it. So, after the actual healing part, it can take several months to a year to get your general fitness level back. AND THEN you can start losing all the postsurgery weight you've slowly gained.

With the help of an epic 180-step staircase in the hills south of the university, I lost five pounds before my trip to Borneo, and between Borneo and today, I'm down another five. So far so good, that leaves me with 20 to go. My current goal is five a month, and to that purpose I am walking four to five miles a day, and have cut alcohol out almost entirely (difficult, given that my son makes really excellent beer!) as well as carefully monitoring everything I eat. My school routine is easier than my home routine: a light breakfast, a small container of unsweetened full-fat yogurt with wheat berries, chopped nuts, and fruits, a hefty salad for dinner, and a snack of fruits and vegetables in the evening. Home is trickier because I'm here all day, usually in front of the computer. Boring! Boredom eating is tempting, and often almost autopilot.

Still, if I can lose five pounds in June, and five pounds in July, then in August I go to Peru, which will involve a lot of hiking and physical labor. Pretty much a guarantee that I will lose five pounds there. That puts me within a stone's throw of my goal by September, at which point I'll be back at school pretty much every day, making it easy as long as I maintain my relationship with the Cardinell stairs and stay far away from the taco cart.

Goddamn those are some delicious tacos.

[Eater of Clowns]

That sounds like an excellent plan!

What is the elevation going to be like in Peru? Colombia's thin air was a real challenge for me, making moderate activity much more difficult.

[Bruno]

While I've been unemployed, I've been trying to get into better shape. Job ended about 5 months ago in late December. I started out lifting weights and eating normally, except for eating more protein. I put on 5 more pounds between January, and the middle of March when I switched to walking and eating 1200-1500 calories a day. I was losing about 2 pounds a week for a while, but then the weather started getting kind of warm, so I broke out the exercise bike, and was doing 1-1.5 hours a day on that, trying to maintain about a 130 BPM heart rate.  I thought that would be as good as walking, but I've only been losing about a pound a week on the bike.

Altogether, I gained 5 pounds of, hopefully, mostly muscle, and then lost 15 pounds of, hopefully, mostly fat.

Riding the bike mostly just works the quads, so I'm picking up the weights again in addition to riding the bike. Hopefully, that will get me back on track. I've got another 50 pounds that I need to get rid of. If I can maintain 2 pounds a week, I should be down to a reasonable weight by Christmas.

Thing is, at 1200 calories a day, I should be losing 2 pounds a week just from the dieting alone. The exercise should be good for another pound or two, based on some internet calorie calculator I found.

Apparently, fat is bad at math.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That sounds like an excellent plan!

What is the elevation going to be like in Peru? Colombia's thin air was a real challenge for me, making moderate activity much more difficult.

Huaraz is over 10,000 feet, which means I am guaranteed a few days of elevation sickness. I was born and raised 300 feet above sea level, so unfortunately elevations over about 8000 feet can be brutal on me, although my past experiences in Colorado and mountain camping indicates that I should adapt relatively quickly, perhaps in part due to my Chiricahua and White Mountain ancestry. Part of my summer hiking plan involves high-elevation camping, since we do have all these convenient volcanoes around here.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

While I've been unemployed, I've been trying to get into better shape. Job ended about 5 months ago in late December. I started out lifting weights and eating normally, except for eating more protein. I put on 5 more pounds between January, and the middle of March when I switched to walking and eating 1200-1500 calories a day. I was losing about 2 pounds a week for a while, but then the weather started getting kind of warm, so I broke out the exercise bike, and was doing 1-1.5 hours a day on that, trying to maintain about a 130 BPM heart rate.  I thought that would be as good as walking, but I've only been losing about a pound a week on the bike.

Altogether, I gained 5 pounds of, hopefully, mostly muscle, and then lost 15 pounds of, hopefully, mostly fat.

Riding the bike mostly just works the quads, so I'm picking up the weights again in addition to riding the bike. Hopefully, that will get me back on track. I've got another 50 pounds that I need to get rid of. If I can maintain 2 pounds a week, I should be down to a reasonable weight by Christmas.

Thing is, at 1200 calories a day, I should be losing 2 pounds a week just from the dieting alone. The exercise should be good for another pound or two, based on some internet calorie calculator I found.

Apparently, fat is bad at math.

The body is a complicated device. When you start building muscle at the same time as going to a very calorie-restricted diet, you have a couple of competing processes going on: one, your need to convert aminos to protein, and two, your need to convert fat to energy. What's probably happening is that you are converting a lot of your food to muscle while simultaneously burning off fat. Once your muscle development plateaus, your overall weight should plummet.

[Bruno]

While I've been unemployed, I've been trying to get into better shape. Job ended about 5 months ago in late December. I started out lifting weights and eating normally, except for eating more protein. I put on 5 more pounds between January, and the middle of March when I switched to walking and eating 1200-1500 calories a day. I was losing about 2 pounds a week for a while, but then the weather started getting kind of warm, so I broke out the exercise bike, and was doing 1-1.5 hours a day on that, trying to maintain about a 130 BPM heart rate.  I thought that would be as good as walking, but I've only been losing about a pound a week on the bike.

Altogether, I gained 5 pounds of, hopefully, mostly muscle, and then lost 15 pounds of, hopefully, mostly fat.

Riding the bike mostly just works the quads, so I'm picking up the weights again in addition to riding the bike. Hopefully, that will get me back on track. I've got another 50 pounds that I need to get rid of. If I can maintain 2 pounds a week, I should be down to a reasonable weight by Christmas.

Thing is, at 1200 calories a day, I should be losing 2 pounds a week just from the dieting alone. The exercise should be good for another pound or two, based on some internet calorie calculator I found.

Apparently, fat is bad at math.

The body is a complicated device. When you start building muscle at the same time as going to a very calorie-restricted diet, you have a couple of competing processes going on: one, your need to convert aminos to protein, and two, your need to convert fat to energy. What's probably happening is that you are converting a lot of your food to muscle while simultaneously burning off fat. Once your muscle development plateaus, your overall weight should plummet.

That's what I'm hoping. I've lost about 2 inches from my waist so far, which is the most objective measurement I have for fat loss.

[Dubya]

Went to see the doctor recently for a checkup. My doctor was concerned. Said I was down 20 lbs from my last visit. Wanted to do bloodwork. Just to be on the safe side, I got it done.

So she called me a couple of days ago, telling me theres nothing to be alarmed about. I reminded her what I told her at the time. I was fifty pounds overweight this winter because I had nothing to do but sit around. Now Im still 30 lbs overweight and shedding it fast because I walk everywhere and work my butt off 6-10 hours every day.

At this point, I dont worry about counting calories or cutting fat or sugar. I worry about adequate hydration and maintaining flexibility

But. When I was a student, I found that an hour or three miles of walking once a day (whichever covered more distance) did wonders, not just for weight loss, but for my state of mind. Couple that with a little strength training and a healthy diet and youre almost guaranteed to get skinnier.

[hooplala]

First fat bastard thread is stickied in Discordian Recipes.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I walk about 4-5 miles daily when I'm attending classes, because the campus is ridiculously huge. One of the science buildings is over a mile away from the other two. And of course, I have to get there to begin with.

But I'm also fighting that uphill battle of "Oh, you're over 40? TIME FOR THE OL METABOLISM TO SLOW DOWN SOME MORE". Which is fine, really, but it also means that dropping a few pounds isn't the cakewalk it was after having my kids.