JuDaX - Member

JuDaX

Joined June 2008

Posts

205

Following

110

Followers

117

Weight History

Start Weight

260.0 lb

Lost so far: 35.0 lb

Current Weight

225.0 lb
Performance: gaining 1.4 lb a week

Goal Weight

180.0 lb

Still to go: 45.0 lb

Challenge: 20 pounds in 8 weeks (56 Days)
Starting Date: May 23, 2009 (Saturday)
End Date: July, 18, 2009 (Saturday)

* Week 1
May 23 - May 30 : Week 1 (DONE) (49 Days) - 2 POUNDS LOST.
7 weeks to go! :)

* Week 2
May 30 - June 6 : Week 2 (DONE) (42 Days) - 2 POUNDS LOST.
6 weeks to go! :)

* Week 3
June 6 - June 13 : Week 3 (DONE) (35 Days)- 2 POUNDS LOST.

* Week 4
June 13 - 20 : Week 4 (DONE) (28 DAYS) - 2 POUNDS LOST.

-------------------

Helpful Website Tips:

1. www.traineo.com [dec. 4, 2008]
2. www.projectweightloss.com ( joined nov. 7, 2008 )
3. www.prevention.com - [joined nov. 25, 2008 ]
4. www.weightloss77.com [ I loved this site ]
5. www.sparkpeople.com [ amazing site ]
6. www.flatstomachtips.com [ flat stomach, not six pack]
7. www.iowaavenue.com {photos]
8. www.buzzle.com
9. www.weightlossforall.com
10. www.phentermine.com
11. www.extrapounds.com
12. www.lose10pounds.org ( a must read )

JuDaX's Weight History

view JuDaX's complete history

JuDaX's Latest Member Challenges

141

You can do it- No Excuses!

status:	Completed
ended:	29 Jun 09
view progress

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Following

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	last weighin: losing 0.8 lb a week

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	last weighin: losing 2.1 lb a week

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JuDaX's Latest Posts

This is why you're fat!
what?

posted 30 May 2009, 02:53

running
just walk and run sometimes.

posted 03 Apr 2009, 02:12

Is Your Diet Making You Gain?
Is Your Diet Making You Gain?
Avoid these 6 surprising healthy eating mistakes

1. You Hoard Calories
Yes, cutting total calories leads to weight loss. But bank most of those calories for the end of the day and your hunger hormones will go haywire, making you eat more. Middle-aged men and women who ate their daily number of calories in one supersize supper produced more ghrelin, a hormone that causes hunger, than when they ate the same number of calories in three square meals, found researchers at the National Institute on Aging.

Smarter move: Front-load your calories. Overeating at night keeps you from being hungry in the morning, setting off a vicious cycle in which you're never interested in breakfast but always starving by dinner. The key is to rebalance your day so you don't set yourself up for an evening binge. To get your appetite back in the morning, cut your evening meal in half. Then eat a breakfast of about 450 calories, such as a scrambled egg with low-fat cheese on a whole wheat English muffin with an 8-ounce glass of juice--an amount that should keep you satisfied until lunch, says George L. Blackburn, MD, PhD, associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School and author of Break Through Your Set Point. Once your appetite adjusts, don't go more than 5 hours without another meal of roughly the same size.

2. You Eat Erratically
Trouble is, grazing may contribute to weight gain, according to a 2005 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study. When researchers asked women to eat at regular, fixed times or to break their usual amount of food into unscheduled meals throughout the day, they made a startling discovery: The women actually burned more calories in the 3 hours after eating the regular meals than they did after the unplanned meals. They produced less insulin, too, potentially lowering their odds of insulin resistance, which is linked to weight gain and obesity. What's more, grazing instead of planning ahead can set you up to eat mindlessly, says Zied. In the end, we rarely realize how many calories all those little nibbles and noshes really add up to.

Smarter move: Figure out how many times a day you need to eat--everybody is different--and then stick to a schedule. "It's not great to feel starved, but it is okay to feel slightly hungry," says Zied. You can home in on your body's internal cues with a food diary. It's so effective that earlier this year, researchers at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research found that dieters who kept a food journal lost twice as much weight as those who didn't record what they ate.

3. You Don't Count Every Calorie
People consistently underestimate the calories in nutritious items such as yogurt, fish, and baked chicken, found researchers at Bowling Green State University who quizzed students on calorie counts. "Just because a food is healthy doesn't mean you can eat big portions," says D. Milton Stokes, MPH, RD, owner of One Source Nutrition in Stamford, CT. "A handful of nuts can be 200 calories or more. And if you add that without cutting back elsewhere, it could be the reason you're not losing weight."

Smarter move: Count all calories. Once you learn that 1/2 cup of cereal can have as much as 200 calories or that there are about 220 calories in that "single-serving" bottle of OJ, you'll be more prudent about how much you use.

4. You Crash Diet
Slashing significant calories might sound like the fast track to weight loss, but it's likely to backfire. In fact, nutrition experts recommend you don't dip below 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day. "If you crash diet for more than 2 weeks or so, your metabolism will temporarily slow down," says Blackburn. "So the same exact dieting effort results in less and less weight loss." The reason: Your body is conserving energy to keep you from losing weight too quickly. And that's not all. When you drastically cut calories, you lose muscle along with fat--especially if you haven't been exercising. Because muscle is your body's calorie-burning furnace, this can slow down your metabolism, even long after your crash diet is done.

Smarter move: Aim to shed about a pound a week--the slow, steady weight loss ensures you lose fat, not muscle. "If you want to drop 10 pounds, get started 10 weeks before your goal, not 4," says Blackburn. "You'll have a better chance of actually taking off the weight permanently." To drop a pound a week, shave 250 calories from your diet and burn an extra 250 calories through exercise each day. Visit prevention.com/myhealthtrackers to log your progress.

5. You Set Short-term Weight-loss Goals
The National Weight Control Registry estimates that only 20% of dieters successfully keep off lost weight for more than a year. That's because after we reach our goal, we let old eating habits creep back in. But people who win at weight loss consistently eat the same way even after they've slimmed down. In fact, the NWCR found that dieters who maintain their healthy eating habits every single day are 1 1/2 times more likely to maintain their weight loss in the long run than those who relax their diets on the weekends.

Smarter move: Think of healthy eating as a work in progress, not as a "diet" with a beginning and an end. The key: making small changes you can maintain so they become long-term habits. Start by creating a list of problem areas in your diet, then tackle them one at a time. For example, if you snack on a heaping handful of Oreos every night before bed, set a goal of having two instead of six, and cut back by one a day. Once you've made that a habit, pat yourself on the back and move on to your next goal.

6. You Think "Low-Fat" means "Splurge"
Research suggests that when a food is described as a diet food, we're subconsciously primed to eat more--even if it's actually as caloric as regular food. When Cornell University researchers offered the same M&M's candies labeled either regular or low-fat to visitors at a university open house, visitors ate 28% more of the "low-fat" snacks. While less fat does not mean fewer calories, people make the assumption that it does, setting them up to overeat, say scientists.

Smarter move: First, check food labels: So-called diet foods frequently don't save you calories. Take low-fat chocolate chip cookies--because they've been infused with extra carbs to add flavor, you save only 3 calories per cookie. Once you have that reality check, follow the golden rule for any food: Keep close tabs on portions. Limit yourself to two small cookies, for example, or trade in a bowl of frozen yogurt for a kid's-size scoop; measure out condiments such as low-fat sour cream or low-fat ranch dressing. And remember--if you prefer the flavor of full-fat foods, you'll still lose weight if you watch your portion sizes.

posted 30 Mar 2009, 05:28

4 Ways to Track Your Weight Loss Progress
4 Ways to Track Your Weight Loss Progress

"I've been exercising for a long time, but I'm still the same weight. Why haven't I seen any results?" That's a question I hear often, both from my clients and my readers and my response is almost always the same: A scale doesn't tell the whole story. In fact, your body is no doubt making small changes each day, changes that can't always be measured by the tools we have available. If that's the case, how do you know if you're making progress? A good dose of patience and a new method of tracking progress might be the answer.

Track Your Body Fat

Scale weight can be a useful number to know but, even better, is knowing your body fat percentage. This is important because scale weight doesn't always tell the whole story. As Elizabeth Quinn, Sports Medicine Guide notes: "An individual can be "over-weight" and not "over-fat." A bodybuilder, for example, may be 8% body fat, yet at two hundred and fifty pounds may be considered "over-weight" by a typical height-weight chart." (Body Composition vs. Body Fat)

Knowing your body fat percentage can give you a better idea of how much fat you really need to lose and, even better, whether you're making progress in your program...things your scale can't tell you. It's possible for your scale weight to remain the same, even as you slim down, especially if you're losing fat and gaining muscle.

There are plenty of options for body fat testing including:

* Calipers
* Bioelectrical Impedance Scales
* DEXA (dual energy X-ray absorptiometry)
* Hydrostatic Weighing
* Online calculators (used in conjunction with skinfold or tape measurements)

A healthy body fat range is 25 - 31% for women and 18 - 25% for men. To choose the right method for you, get more details at What's Your Body Fat? Keep in mind that most health clubs offer some type of body fat testing.

Get the most out of your body fat measurement by:

* Checking it once a week or every other week instead of daily. Body fat doesn't vanish overnight and you may not see those small changes if you measure every day.
* Having the same person measure you each time. Different trainers will measure you in different ways, so stick with the same person each time and make sure the person is very experienced in measuring body fat.
* If using a bioelectrical impedance scale, be sure to measure under the same circumstances each time. Hydration, food intake and skin temperature can affect body fat measurements.
* Keep track of your numbers in a journal or calendar.

Take the Body Fat Quiz to find out how much you really know about your own body fat.

Use the Scale

As I mentioned above, scales don't always give you the whole story about your body or your weight loss progress. For that reason, scales (when used alone) are my least favorite method of tracking weight loss. Another reason to dislike scales is what I like to call 'Weight Loss Psychosis,' or the tendency for otherwise rational people to abandon all reason, lock themselves in closets and/or ditch any and all healthy behaviors because...why bother if the scale doesn't change?

The problem with body weight scales is that they measure everything--fat, muscle, bones, organs and even that sip of water you just had. The scale can't tell you what you've lost or gained, which is important information if you're trying to lose weight...and by weight, what we really mean is fat.

Here are just a few things that can increase your weight, causing it to fluctuate as much as 10 lbs in one day:

* Water. Because the body is about 60% water, fluctuations in your hydration levels can change the number on a scale. If you're dehydrated or have eaten too much salt, your body may actually retain water, which can cause scale weight to creep up. Similarly, many women retain water during menstrual cycles, which is another thing that can make that number change.
* Food. Weighing yourself after a meal isn't the best idea simply because food adds weight. When you eat it, your body will add that weight as well. It doesn't mean you've gained weight, it simply means that you've added something to your body (something that will be eliminated through digestion over the next several hours).
* Muscle. Muscle is more dense than fat and it takes up less space, so adding muscle could increase your scale weight, even though you're slimming down.

That doesn't mean the scale is useless. In fact, it's a wonderful tool when you combine it with your body fat percentage. Knowing both of these numbers will tell you whether you're losing the right kind of weight...fat. Simply multiply your weight by your body fat percentage. For example, a person who weighs 150 lbs with 21% body fat has 31 lbs of fat and 118 lbs of lean tissue (150 x .21 = 31.5 lbs of fat, 150 - 31.5 = 118 lean tissue). Keeping track of these numbers on a weekly or monthly basis will help you see what you're losing and/or what you're gaining.

Take Your Measurements

Try these tricks to make weighing yourself a useful and more positive experience:

* Weigh yourself first thing in the morning before you eat or drink anything.
* Weigh yourself once a month instead of daily or weekly to give your body time to respond to your weight loss program. The scale won't reflect small changes happening in your body composition.
* Get yourself a good scale
* Remember, the scale weighs everything! Just because your scale weight hasn't changed doesn't mean you aren't making progress.
* Use scale weight along with body fat percentage for a more accurate view of your progress

If the scale freaks you out and body fat testing isn't an option, your next best choice is taking your measurements.

Take Your Measurements

This is one of my favorite ways of tracking progress because it doesn't require any fancy equipment and anyone can do it.

posted 27 Mar 2009, 05:59

My photo progress of 94 pounds lost
excellent and amazing!

posted 23 Mar 2009, 21:53

JuDaX has submitted 5 posts