I drink a lot of tea, especially in the am. While I drink iced tea with Splenda, I cannot stand the taste of any artificial sweetener in my hot tea! I like it on the sweet side, too. There is really no way I can give this up. I do not drink coffee. Most days the tea is all I have in the morning. I work at a large home improvement retailer and am on my feet all day with little time for small meals during the day. I am having a really hard time trying to lose this weight I have gained.

I was working out pretty well for the first time ever and probably looked the best I have in my adult life but I got sick and couldn't go to the gym for about a month and that was that. i seemed to have rebounded and now I have gained about 8 pounds. I still fit into my clothes but they are tight and I feel uncomfortable. I have a hard time getting to the gym now because I am so tired in the morning (even though I am usually in bed by 10 pm) that I can't get out of bed early and after being on my feet all day I can't make it more than 15 minutes on the Elliptical because my feet are burning! Wow I really sound pathetic.

I'm just worried because i just turned 39 and see now that my metabolism has changed and my body's natural weight seems to have increased. That is the weight I seem to stay at without really trying to do anything. I've always been very lucky and have spent most of my life eating more or less whatever I want and staying a size 8. Now I am pushing a 10.

I really don't know where to start and I lack focus and willpower is sketchy. I know my eating habits are working against me. Not eating all day only makes me scarf down whatever I see when I get home and have have no energy whatsoever.

Any thoughts on how to get going would be really appreciated.

Please and thank you in advance!

Elise

Hey, obviously you are like the rest of us. Concerned about your weight and feeling powerless to fix it. Personaly I have no great answers but I will just quickly say what I am doing.

There is a forum that lists and explains some various diets. I think the reason so many diets work is because they all require you to focus and think about what you eat. For me I am doing the one called the Hacker Diet. While the name sounds funny, it could be called a "calorie counting" diet. The thing I liked the most about it is he provides some excel tools to help you keep track of your weight loss and a good system.

What it has meant for me is waking up in the morning weighing myself, writing it in a log book and then every week i input the values into excel and it shows me a graph of how im doing. Its pretty cool to see a graph decending.

As for eating I still have my coffee, I do my best to put the least ammount of sugar i can handle in it. Eat cereal in the morning.

For lunch I work in a office and so i do the frozen dinner thing, for the fact that they can taste less than amazing you will have the benefit of knowing exactly how many calories you are eating. With my bowl of cereal at like 200 calories and my coffee being another 150 (sugar yumm) The frozen dinners are like 350 that puts me at 700 through lunch. Been adapting drinks to diet (still funny tasting, but gets better) I can have a 700 calorie dinner and a 100 calorie snack and that puts me at 1500 for the day. Which for my size and weight is 500 calories shy of what i burn a day. 3000 calories equals a pound of fat. so I am losing about 1 pound a week.

Its not fast, but If i actualy started being more active and exercising i would loose a bunch more. Anyways point is find something you think you can do over a long period of time. Because it will never happen fast. Sadly

Thanks for the response. I'm not really looking for it to happen fast. I only want to lose about 8-10 pounds. Any more than that and my body would be constantly fighting me and I think I would look too skinny. I do not want to have be crazy dieting for the rest of my life. I like my desserts too! I like having a little meat on me and I don't want to lose my butt, lol! I just want to make better choices for my daily eating. My husband works out almost every day and knows a lot about protein, etc but is not good at converting the knowledge he has for himself into something that would work for me and I do not like a lot of the foods he eats. My main problems, I think, are planning and discipline. The planning part is having good choices in the house to eat and bring something to work to eat for lunch which will mean I don't have to be as disciplined in not eating bad stuff because I will have good options and also not be famished when I get home.

I did find that it took about 6 weeks in the gym for me to really get results and of course it was a lot easier to be disciplined when I could see the fruits of my labor. Oh well, I guess it;s just going to take a lot of work.

Thanks again!

Elise

I think this will be extremely easy.



Deal with it, or try a different sweetner.



Of course you can.



This is because you insist on drinking sugary tea all day, and eat large irregular meals, you said it yourself....



Right, so time to bin the sugars, plan your meals to take with you at work (it is so easy, i don't know why people find it hard, ten minutes preparation in the morning and you can make 4 small meals...)



You DO know where to start, because you have already told us that you know you should be eating regular small meals, upping protein, stop drinking sugary tea and that you've done all this before with good results ! Now stop making excuses and make those changes. So what if your tea 'doesn't taste AS good', do you want results or what??



I hope I haven't come across too harsh, and its exactly what you needed to hear.

Nick

I think that it's quite easy to get frastrated when you see the weight increasing. And of course the thought of DIETING for the rest of the life is depressing. But what if you start thinking the other way around - not to diet - but to start living a healthy lifestyle without depriving yourself of your favourite but very "inappropriate" things. Believe me one occasional chocolate bar or a piece of pastry will not make you fat, it just should be "one" and "occasional". So if you just start step by step without making any lifelong drastic promises to yourself, you will do just fine. Though the metabolic rate slows down with age it's not a verdict. Start your gym again and weight training will increase your metabolic rate, have some cardio activity - and you'll start burning, that's the fact! I'm sure in this case with the positive attitude you will lose all you want to lose and stay healthy and beautiful. I'm 36, and I work out 6 days a week with my personal coach, and I really enjoy that. I don't have any excess weight but as I can put on weight very easily, I have to watch it all the time. And that's fine. So there's nothing frastrating about thinking what you are puuting in yourself, it's your precious body and you should take a good care of it, right?

I drink Yogi tea, Vanilla Hazelnut. It has carob and stevia in it, and while it's not as sweet as tea with sugar, I find it does the trick


Is it because you are on your feet all day that your feet are burning? my boyfriend has the same problem. Have you tried using rowing machines? Or perhaps exercising before work...?

P.S....you can get used to drinking things without sugar. I used to dislike tea without sugar too, and then I adjusted to something different

Like my great hypnosis instructor always said; people do it, you are people, you can do it. You can do anything you put your mind to, don't box yourself in with can'ts. If I can do it, you can do it.

Elise

They (whomever they are) say that you cannot change something till you know what it is that needs to be changed. It seems you know a bunch of things that can be done to start your self back in the right direction. Be bold and be public! You won't get anything but support from the people at Traineo. And when you need it you will even find some tough love too (looks at Nick).

Thanks guys

Try switching to a different type of tea- try green tea with peach. You should enjoy the flavor and aroma of the tea without adding sugar! Try honey instead of sugar. There are so many options for tea- try something different! Train your taste buds- it will take some time!

As for food- try sitting down on a Sunday and plan out your week of food. Make sure to eat a breakfest! If you don't have time, take a banana with you to eat on your way to work. Eat an apple and carrot sticks with lunch. I am not sure what food you do like, but try to eat some fish a couple times a week- fresh if possible! Don't eat too much tuna. Also try making your breakfest the largest meal of the day followed by a small brunch, medium lunch, small snack, and a light dinner. And make sure to stop eatting four hours before bed.

I hope some of these suggestions will help! I know you won't need it, but good luck!

I have to add that stevia is best, it is a herbal extract, natural and isn't controversial for your health (such as splenda is).

Mary

Nutritional Consultant

I used to have lots of sugar in my hot drinks too. I kicked it by reducing it slowly - it tastes horrible while you reduce though. The key for me, was every now and then (not too often though) to have a drink with the same amount of sugar as I used to have - then you'll find out the real meaning of disgusting! Everytime I did this, the reduced sugar drinks started tasting great so I could start reducing again.

Sweet hot drinks really make me wanna puke now - if I accidentally put too much sugar in a drink I simply can't drink it now. Bleh!

The whole process didn't take long at all - a couple of weeks max...

I really, really agree with Nick. I was SO hooked on Diet Coke, and if I can give it up, you definitely can give up tea, too. All that caffeine/theine is LOUSY.

Also, skipping breakfast is not an option. There is a bunch of good articles on this site, and online in general, that could really, really help you figure out a good diet plan. I'd suggest eating six times a day - this way you'll keep your energy levels constant and you'll never really feel tired or hungry.

If you want help trying to figure how a well-balanced diet could look for you, I'd be delighted to help you.