It's your window to weight gain!

[substitute]

According to my physician, I am at risk for, or may already be in, insulin resistance syndrome. It's now called "metabolic syndrome" which seems insufficiently precise to me. But he makes a convincing case.

Therefore, the best thing I can do for myself is to get to my target weight of 200 lbs in one year. This will be ~50 lbs, or 1 lb per week.

I repeat, I have to lose 50 pounds in one year.

Aiiigh.

I'm already eating a much better diet than I was a year ago. This is why I weigh ~250 rather than 275, which is where I started on this journey. However I suck at the exercise. There is an exercise machine in the house that my mom used before that I can make use of, so I shall. I sweat like a freaking PIG when I exercise and hate to do this in front of strangers so the health club is a big washout. Paxil is great for making the depression go away but it makes me into a kind of perspiratory fountain apparatus.

And walking is to smile. It burns like 1 calorie per 1000 miles. Anyone else tells me to try walking, I'm splattering lipids all over them from my bulging midriff.

It surprises me that I am overweight. I was always a skinny kid. Stupid depression, stupid depression meds. Blurg.

Comments

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Yeah, walking is great. Idling is even more fun. But I already walk for exercise, and it doesn't do much more than cause a very slow weight loss, like the bird sharpening its beak on my butt every 100 years. :)

[brianenigma.livejournal.com]

When I was living in Boston, I walked everywhere, using the car only once every week or two for things like groceries and laundry. I really did not lose any weight, but I ended up eating twice as much as I normally do. Of course, this might be due to the cold.

You might want to talk to the vegemitelover for Weight Watchers info. He is, more or less, following the plan--not going to meetings or keeping absolutely religous about it, but trying to stick close to the points. He also has a really nifty Palm app with a database of points for just about every dish, chain restaurant, and fast-food place on the planet. I keep asking him for points, just to gauge how unhealthy I am eating. "How many points in this Quiznos veggie?" "About one and a half of my meals." "How much for the La Salsa taquito and quesidilla platter?" "That is a little bit over a day's worth of points." "How much for this raw carrot snack?" "Well, that ends up being a negative point."

It seems you can eat a taquito and quesidilla platter, then forty carrots, you get a net balance of zero and can start your eating again. But seriously, talk to BC about it. It really does work out pretty well as long as you do not try to "cheat the system."

[stimps.livejournal.com]

Weight Watchers is a scam because it teaches you how to eat preprocessed crap food, not how to learn to cook and eat regular food, and what Real Life serving sizes are. Most people end up relying on their little bags of food too much than figuring out what works for them. It's pretty damned expensive even without the food investment. I understand it for the moral support aspect, but it's a huge moneymaking scamz0r. Foo.

I mean, it works in the short term for a lot of people, but they end up back where they were eventually. The numbers back that up, unfortunately. =/

[brianenigma.livejournal.com]

I am not sure if Weight Watchers is different now, or if the thing you are describing is somehow different from the Weight Watchers stuff Vegemite is doing. For him, there was no initial investment--several of his friends are doing it, so he learned the basics from them, then found all the point equivalents all over the web. You can eat whatever the heck you want (he is a pretty good cook, so that works out pretty well), there is no special (read: expensive) food, any every piece of food translates to "points." Even items that are not on official listings can be translated to points based on some sort of value--calories and carbs, if I remember correctly. You have to keep under your point value for the day--eating adds points and exercising subtracts them. I guess there are lots of gimmicks you can buy--playing-card-like things with points and wallets to store them in, dictionaries of food-to-point translations, etc. Supposedly, if you know what you are doing, you do not need any of that stuff because it basically boils down to those two scores (calories and carbs, or whatever they were).

So, really, I do not know much about long-term, since Vegemite has only been doing this for about 6 months. It seems to be working for him though, with little-to-no $monkey investment. What's more is that he is now much more conscious of the kinds of things he is eating and how their content can effect him, which I think ends up being the most important thing.

[stimps.livejournal.com]

Oh, that rules! They used to be a) very expensive and b) in it for mostly just selling their line of Everything, much like a Jenny Craig sort of thing, but slightly less Evil, because they didn't locate themselves next to phen-fen dispensers. That's great! =D

[brianenigma.livejournal.com]

Ha! Jenny Craig! I remember that! Are they/is she still around? I still see the occasional flyer for phen-fen stapled to a random telephone pole around here (right under "Make money fast! Part time! From home!"), which kind of scares me. I think they are spelling it differently now, though, so you still get the name recognition but without messy copyright issues or anything. It would not surprise me if it was now an "herbal" remedy like that "herbal eXstacy" stuff."

[stimps.livejournal.com]

Yup! Still around, still doing the 20 pounds for twenty bucks thing. =)

That herbal phen-fen is scary... probably some ephedrine thing, I'd guess. Hurp! Oh well. I think most of the sources of it here in canada are pretty controlled now, but who knows. It's too hard to keep track of all the scams at once!

[substitute.livejournal.com]

I think they have cleaned up their act quite a bit in the last few years. They are no longer basically a food sales operation, and have been acting more .org than .com. It's still not the approach I want to take but it appears to be somewhat reformed from the days when it was basically TRY THIS LASAGNE WITH LOTS OF ASPARTAME IN IT!!1!

Yay!

[stimps.livejournal.com]

That rules! It used to suck so much, and be so much more $$$$$$ oriented. I'm glad to see something change for the better. =)