Eating at night...

[Lyion]

The trick is to 'train' your body. If you stop eating at a set time, like 8 PM you'll lose weight quicker. It is about caloric intake, but generally people get enough calories between 8 AM and 8 PM or so. Late night snacking is just added calories that make it harder to lose weight, and are generally 'bored' food.

The trick with dieting is metabolism. If you eat several small meals, and then don't eat at night, plus do some exercise first thing in the AM before breakfast you'll drop weight silly fast.

Although, given your pics you don't seem to need to lose any weight.

[Martrae]

Nice Avatar

[Diekan]

That's his real life pic.

[Gargamellow]

Honey, you don't need to lose weight. And if you are getting hungry, just eat a salad or a banana.

But you seriously look great. Don't make yourself crazy.

[Adivina]

Thanks for the kind words Lyion and Garg. I know I am not overweight, this is more of a small weight loss and then toning project for me.

I gained weight that I needed desperately, being 90lbs was not healthy for me. However in the process my tummy is not the nice thin washboard tummy that I had before. I want to lose maybe 15 pounds tops and then continue to retone my stomach. I am happy with the rest of my body, I'm just a bit out of shape compared to how I used to be.

PS: I lost 3 lbs! I know its not a lot but I'm pleased because its a start!

Edit - Glaring spelling error!

[Gargamellow]

Do situps if you want a flat tummy.

[Harrison]

I don't understand how people can say they lost 3 pounds.

I seriously fluctuate 5-6 pounds every few days up and down.

[Adivina]

Do situps if you want a flat tummy.

I can do all the situps in the world and it will not show until I lose a little bit of the padding I have developed on my tummy. :P I do lots of ab work though, I just gotta lose a bit to go with it.

[Gargamellow]

muscles eat fat, girly!

[Adivina]

I don't understand how people can say they lost 3 pounds.

I seriously fluctuate 5-6 pounds every few days up and down.

Gotta weigh yourself at the same time of day each day. There are small fluctuations through out the day depending on if you tummy is full, how much sodium you have had, etc.

[Martrae]

Weighing yourself everyday is bad...you freak if you gain and (sometimes prematurely) celebrate when you lose. Once a week should be sufficient to keep yourself on track without stressing over every ounce.

[Narrock]

Weighing yourself everyday is bad...you freak if you gain and (sometimes prematurely) celebrate when you lose. Once a week should be sufficient to keep yourself on track without stressing over every ounce.

I weigh myself twice a week. Seems to work just fine. 15 pounds to go... lol

[Jay]

On your back with legs bent at a 90 degree angle, hold a medicine ball between your knees and do crunches. It's a pretty good lower ab work out and I find it's harder to target your lower abs and that there's a somewhat limited amount of routines for lower abs.

[Adivina]

On your back with legs bent at a 90 degree angle, hold a medicine ball between your knees and do crunches. It's a pretty good lower ab work out and I find it's harder to target your lower abs and that there's a somewhat limited amount of routines for lower abs.

Been doing this actually :P

[Jay]

I willed it to you with my mind before I posted it @@

Oh and it burns more calories when you do it naked and post pics on NT.

[Diekan]

On your back with legs bent at a 90 degree angle.

oh what a beautiful image.

[leah]

you should join a gym that offers cardio classes, omg.

the class that i go to every day is about an hour and a half long and combines agressive step cardio (step aerobics), other cardio activities (jumping rope, kickboxing, wind sprints, cycling, etc.), weight training (lots of repetative movements with 4 and 5 pound hand weights, combined with stepping), and ab work (the last 10-15 minutes of class are abs, and the pain is excruciating hehe) and OMG is it awesome!! my arms are toning up like you wouldn't believe and my waist is getting trimmer from all the oblique work.

probably not the best way to lose pounds (from all the muscle building) but you'll lose inches and get a ton of tone!! i love it.

[Trielelvan]

Regarding eating at night before bed:

I know this probably doesn't work for most people, but I eat my meals in reverse. I eat a dinner portion sized breakfast (usually, dinner type food as well). I am usually starving after about 10 minutes after waking up (completely opposite from how I grew up). About 3-4 hours later, I eat a pretty decent sized lunch. After that, I eat 2-3 snack sized meals (like half an apple with peanut butter) throughout the day with the last one happening a good 4 hours before I go to bed.
All in all, my caloric intake is around 1800 calories or so on a good day, usually a bit less - around 1600, and since all my activity is in the morning and afternoon, I am able to burn it all off and then some.

My metabolism has always been pretty damned slow thanks to my dad's genes. If I eat at night, I always gain weight, so I never eat right before bed.

[Martrae]

I'd love be able to join a class like that Leah but I'm lucky if I can get 30 minutes of uninterrupted time a day to exercise in.

[leah]

bummer. i can't imagine how hard it would be to stay in shape with kidlets running around, especially when you're in charge of the schooling, too! most moms of older children would at least have schooltime to themselves.

more power to ya for your devotion to your children.

[Phlegm]

Weighing yourself everyday is bad...you freak if you gain and (sometimes prematurely) celebrate when you lose. Once a week should be sufficient to keep yourself on track without stressing over every ounce.

From Reuters:

NEW YORK - Losing excess weight is often easier than keeping it off. A new study shows that stepping on a scale every day, and adjusting eating and exercise habits accordingly, can go a long way in helping dieters maintain a weight loss.

“If you want to keep lost pounds off, daily weighing is critical,” said Dr. Rena R. Wing in a statement accompanying the study appearing in The New England Journal of Medicine this week.

“But stepping on a scale isn’t enough. You have to use that information to change your behavior, whether than means eating less or walking more. Paying attention to weight — and taking quick action if it creeps up — seems to be the secret to success,” noted Wing, who is director of the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at The Miriam Hospital and professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School in Providence.

The finding comes from a study in which Wing and colleagues split 314 successful dieters who’d lost at least 10 percent of their body weight — averaging nearly 20 percent of their body weight or 42 pounds — within the last two years, into a control group and two intervention groups.

Women in the control group received newsletters in the mail four times per year on the importance of eating right and exercising.

Women in the intervention groups were taught — either in face-to-face group meetings or via an online program — techniques known to prevent weight regain such as advice to eat breakfast, get an hour of physical activity each day and weigh themselves daily.

The women reported their weight weekly and were given a goal of maintaining their weight to within five pounds. Women in the intervention groups were also introduced to a color-based weight-monitoring system. Women who remained within three pounds of their starting weight after the weekly check-in fell into the “green zone,” and received encouraging phone messages and green rewards, such as mint gum.


Gaining between three and four pounds landed women in the “yellow zone” and prompted advice to tweak their eating and exercise habits, while gaining five pounds or more landed one in the “red zone,” prompting advice and encouragement to restart active weight-loss efforts.

The investigators report that significantly fewer women in the intervention groups regained five or more pounds during the 18-month long study; 72 percent of women in the control group regained five or more pounds, compared with 46 percent in the face-to-face intervention group and 55 percent in the Internet group.

“The Internet intervention worked, but the face-to-face format produced the best outcomes,” Wing said.

Daily weighing was key to keeping the weight off, the authors say, noting that women in the intervention groups who stepped on the scale each day were 82 percent less likely to regain lost weight compared to those who did not weigh themselves daily.

However, in the control group, daily weighing had little impact on the amount of weight regained. This suggests, Wing said, that women in the intervention groups used the information from the scale to make constructive changes in their eating and exercise habits.

[Martrae]

I don't see how the daily weighings helped when all they did is report weekly anyway. IMO the interventions did more than the daily weighing.

[Diekan]

If I masturbate before bed every night, will I go blind?

[Adivina]

I want to start doing some of the cardio classes at work Leah, but they just do not fit in with my schedule. As far was what I use my work for: I use the gym to do the elliptical and treadmill, and a full nautilus circut. I also take Vinyasa Yoga, my old boss teaches it and she is an amazing instructor, I never thought it was possible to work up a sweat and feel tired doing yoga, but she works the hell out of you.

At home I use "The Firm" series of workout tapes because my mother has them and they are a decent comprehensive workout.

[leah]

"The Firm" is what my mom does too hehe . . . that's actually pretty similar to some of the stuff i'm talking about. scheduling is really a bummer sometimes, isn't it. it's lucky that work provides you those kinds of resources, though, hurray!

omg and i totally know what you mean about vinyasa yoga. they teach that at my gym, too, and it is SO hard. i've only tried it once so far (because it kicked my butt so badly the first time, and because i'm terribly un-flexible) but omg i was sweating more in that class than i ever do in the cardio fusion class. vinyasa yoga is a great workout. ^_^