I want to loose some weight! Will this work? Any advice on maintaining this?

letsbehonest

Well to start off with I am an 18 year old male. I am not over weight but I am close to being over weight. To start with I love take aways and deli food and fizzy drinks. I don't really eat chocolate/sweets at all.
When I eat take aways I enjoy them. They would mainly be chicken tenders and wraps and fish. The odd time I would have a burger. I don't enjoy poor quality food however. I haven't ate a Chinese for the last month.
I really enjoy meat and fish. I also enjoy potatoes. The only time I would ever really eat vegetables would be on a pizza or if I made a steak sandwich. This would consist of mushrooms/peppers/pineapples/lettuce/tomatoes. I hate veg and my mam hasn't made me eat them since I was 3. I would like to like them but they just seem so horrible to me. If I was pushed I could eat raw carrot. Would this be better or wrose for me than it being cooked?
I am planning on given up take aways asap and I am going to start drink more water instead of the fizzy drinks. I will also try and walk about 20 minutes a day or jUmp around in the house!
Will this work?
Any advice you can give me?
Thanks

Blatter

Nutrition and diet forum tbh.

Overheal

first off you want to be here: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=252

Secondly as far as veggies go you're overlooking a very wide world of food. Its very easy to get put off by veg if you have had bad veg. Either it was going out of date, cleaned/cooked poorly, or whatever. But theres a lot of flavors to explore in there. They are just not nearly as Potent as sugars. When you have a high fat high sugar diet you cant actually taste these things.

Ultimately I love meat and fish and poultry but I definitely have respect for other things like vegetables and vegan alternatives. My favorite example is vegannaise, which is to me a far less nauseating substitute to mayonnaise, and to my surprise tastes much better than the original. Then you start thinking about the fruits and the nuts, olives (mmm the olives), before you know it you're getting by on a diet that our bodies are built for, not the one consumerism has designed around our gluttonous demands. I eat a lot more salad now alongside my steaks and my fishes. I started having fun replacing iceberg lettuce with fresh baby spinach leaves and roma tomatoes. all sorts of things, most of it you never think of. Nobody is going to tell you meat and sweets are forbidden, but once you start eating healthy and your taste centers around that, you'll try and indulge in junk food and you'll be awash with this inane sense that it's just bad stuff to be putting into yourself.

Truth is that fast food you eat tastes like good food until you know and taste what good food actually is. Further to your want to lose weight, I also reccomend the vegetarian and veganism forum, http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=572 if only to pick up on some ideas of things which sound good to eat. I'm a fan of the vegetarian lasagne's and pot pies. For me though, the key was the Greek Salad. A really good greek salad with good olives and you'll understand. I'd eat olives by the can if I thought it was good for me.

Jack B. Badd

It sounds like you still have a rather juvenile diet. I don't mean this in a ridiculing way, simply that your palate hasn't evolved to a more adult stage yet - normal at your age, as far as my own experience is. Before my mid-20s I used to despise olives & certain types of cheeses, oils, etc but in the last few years I've found I could eat them by the bucketload. Keep trying different types of veg & foods and even if you don't like them initially, come back to them every few years. Part of the problem with sugar- or fat-heavy diets is that we love these as kids & some people don't realise that their palate will naturally shift away from them as they age. Because certain flavours like sugars are very powerful they overwhelm more subtle flavours & this combined with people deciding that they won't like another food, e.g. veg, as an adult because they didn't as a child means that the sugar- or fat-heavy diet is maintained into adulthood.

As for weight-loss, the biggest factor in my experience is portion size. A few years ago, I would have eaten a full take-away meal on my own but now it will do me for 2 dinners. Their portion sizes are madness. To cut down on your portions, realise that you are more than likely going to eat everything on your plate so use side plates instead of dinner plates, automatically put half the take-away into a tub for tomorrow before you sit down to eat, ask for a side plate & doggy-bag if you eat out (nearly all good restaurants are perfectly fine with providing doggy-bags btw). Top up your blood-sugar levels during the day by snacking on fruit & veg between meals (grazing on the RIGHT FOODS is a god send for weight loss). Drink lots of water. Plan your day's meals in advance - not in an OCD way, but know what you'll likely eat going to eat for breakfast, snack at 11, lunch, snack at 3, dinner. By all means have a take-away once a week or fortnight or treat yourself to something "bad for you" once in a while, in the right quantities they're not actually that bad

Hopefully you'll find that after a few months you'll naturally plan your daily intake of food and the reduced portion sizes will mean that what weight you lose will stay off.

A raw carrot here or there is not going to help you lose weight but if you plan well, it really isn't that hard. Either way, do try more veg & different tastes over the next decade of your life or so - if you don't, you won't know the culinary wonders your missing. Nyom!