Bill Maher triggers with “fat” again…

The portions that they give at restaurants is waaay too big. When I would go I would order just a house salad or something and my sons would always have left overs that I could finsih. It's wasteful of not only food but money.
I would rather they serve smaller portions and charge less.

 

Eating healthy is expensive unfortunately although you pay for it even more on the backend.

 

I order off the kids meal when they'll allow me. With that being said, people will start complaining if they get smaller portions

 

The medication I take to keep cancer away also makes losing weight harder. I was walking 4mi a day and still gained some pounds. I found Barre class at the Y helped with my core and helped tone my muscles. Now i went back to corp world and I can't get motivated to get up extra early to go to the gym and at least get on a treadmill. I do watch my sugar intake (black coffee only), have all but eliminated some of my weaknesses like fries, and drink tons of water in stead of anything else during the day.

Love my red wine on the weekend though. So far I've done ok keeping the weight off, but I'm afraid it'll creep up on me due to inaction. I keep wearing my size 4's so I know immediately when they start to get snug.

 

You trust the government to say what is healthy and what is unhealthy? Damn, we’ll all be dead in a year if we go this route.
Hint: they’re all on the take.

 

Come on fellow. Doesn’t it depend on the establishment? Some places offer reasonable sized meals, others can send you home with leftovers.

 

Your sons had leftovers at a restaurant? How did you do that?

 

My wife has a similar situation. Thankfully she only has two years left on the medicine but the cumulative effect got worse after 4-5 years.

For her what worked was to go back to more proteins (I even got her to eat a filet for the first time in eight years and she loved it). I have had to adjust to eating more chicken and turkey. Eating more seafood was easy for me.

Don’t know your situation but for her, fear was driving her to dietary extremes and the mostly vegetable diet raised her carb intake. She has been eating more balanced lately ( she even had some ribs I made for the boys a couple of weeks ago). The fear is understandable but the side affects of the diet and medication isn’t healthy either.

Good luck with your journey!

 

It's all relative. I trust the government more to say what's healthy or unhealthy than big agribusiness, the large food manufacturers and retailers and the restaurant chains.

 

And that’s a big difference between left and right leaners.
Drawbacks on both big govt and corporate America. I just find govt people to generally be Karens and less likely to relax and have a beer.

 

People in general have no concept of portion control or moderation. In my leanest and strongest days I still ate pizza, burgers, fries and donuts. I typically ate a "clean" breakfast and lunch then ate whatever I wanted for dinner but controlled the portion size. I also combined guilty pleasures with healthy food. Never counted calories but had some simple rules.

If I wanted pizza I ate a salad first and had 2 pieces.

If I wanted a burger I ate it with broccoli. Fries? I'd combine it with grilled chicken.

I snacked all day on apples, yogurt and nuts. My pre workout meal was a donut and a black coffee.

Apparently I unknowingly follow the "intuitive eating" method. Basically eat till you're satisfied not full and make some common sense decisions. If I tried to eat a "healthy diet" only I would lose it on day 3 or 4 and eat tons of junk. If you give yourself a little fat to satiate with each meal and simply wait 20 minutes after eating you will feel full. That's probably the biggest mistake people make. Eating until they are stuffed instead of just waiting for your stretch receptors in your stomach to tell your brain you're full.

 

Bill Maher always says the quiet truth out loud, and though I don’t always agree with him I think he’s right on this. In this country people need to be more concerned about what they put in their mouth than the words that come out.

 

Take the biking off the road.

I too struggled to enjoy road biking. Boring AF, yet scary. Mountain biking is infinitely more athletic and fun. While you have a higher chance of minor injury, you're not gonna die or get horribly maimed (unless you start sending it at downhill bike parks).

 

I've found the trick is to find an exercise that you find fun so it isn't exercise. I learned how to ice skate in my 20s and started playing hockey. Been playing at least once a week since (I'm a couple months shy of 49 now). Not sure of your age, but if your knees are good (you say not running is a mental thing) you should know that ice skating is zero impact (unless you fall of course).

 

Turning 57 in a couple of weeks so I know I had to take action on my health a couple of years ago. I have siblings that have a myriad of health issues and I had the markers and was told I'd be a Type II diabetic inside of 5 years. I was a carbaholic. I loved my breads, starches, sugar, and I ate all day and inside of an hour before bed (and sometimes be seen eating popcorn in bed). I ended up going on keto and intermittent fasting and dropped nearly 50 lbs. After almost 2 years, the only issue I have is lower back pain that can't be fixed. But at least I no longer am Pre-Diabetic, take nothing for GERD, and slowly weaning off of my beta blocker. Next step is to add an exercise regimen. But I will never leave Keto because it has reversed every bad marker that I had and there were nearly 50 of them. Even my doctor has had to back-off his threat to put me on statins. My LDL is high but all of the other vascular markers are great. High LDL = bad has been a fallacy for decades. When as many people with high LDL die as those who have good LDL, they are looking in the wrong place.

 

It seems like a cruel trick. Evolutionarily, maybe we'd crave things that made us healthier. So why do pizza and chocolate taste so much better than vegetables? One theory I have read is that in nature, sweet berries - for example - are less likely to be poisonous so maybe part of the appeal of sweets relate to that. I guess also our ancestors didn't have that much food available at will so taking in a lot of calories at once made sense back then. But now we (in many parts of the world at least) have food available all the time, and our brains are still back in the past.

When I was younger, many in the bodybuilding community used to say things like, "If you want to look like a cow, eat what a cow eats. If you want to look like a lion, eat what a lion eats." Joe Rogan made a funny point about this noting we are more closely related to apes and how they could [mess] someone up. Pretty funny since I think they mostly eat fruits and vegetables and maybe some insects? I'm not convinced that we're supposed to be eating as much meat as we do, if any. But I admittedly do like eating meat despite my ethical conflicts about it. I have three family members who have gone vegan, and each of them looks and feels better than ever.

 

My husband is in his 70’s and still bench presses 240 pounds and looks very fit. He has very direct answers when people ask why he still works out so hard, and he says he getting in shape for when he gets really old so he can get off the pot without help. When they ask him what the best exercise to do is he says “One that you’ll do.”

 

That is seriously impressive!

 

I talked to a dietician and while I do avoid red meat and pork, I haven't taken them out of my diet entirely. My husband makes a mean rack of ribs!

I've read so many conflicting articles on diets like keto etc., that I've just decided to eat a balanced diet, avoid sugary foods (or at least have them on a rare occasion) and carbs. I was on the Optavia diet which has their own bars, shakes, foods and a guide to cooking dinner with just a lean protein and certain veggies (low carb). It was more higher fat and low carb while you ate every 2-3 hours to jumpstart your metabolism. I shed over 30lbs in 3 months. It was great, and I did learn how to cook smarter.

I've been on the meds for 7 years, and we (my oncologist and me) are thinking that maybe next year I can get off. There was a study that 10 years was ideal, but another study states that 7 is as good as 10. Tough decisions to make all the time

 

Back about 3 months ago I decided that when I turn 70 next January I wanted to be in the best shape I’ve been since I was 48. I was 233 and pretty damn hard back then, a workout warrior. Back then, When I first started going to gator club meetings in Gainesville many who didn’t know me would ask if I played football at UF. Oh the good ole days.

I’m 69 now and 260ish. I live in a 9 story building with interior stairwells. They have AC. We have 2 located on each side of the building. I figured why not use them for exercise. I would enter the north stairwell on the 1st floor, walk up to the 2nd floor, exit into the hallway, walk to the other side of the building, enter the stairwell and walk up to the 3rd floor exit, and proceed to go up and across until I reach the 9th floor. My walk up the stairs is slow but steady and my walk from one end of the building a little faster than a regular walk. Once at the top I’d ride the elevator down to the 1st floor and start over. The elevator ride was my chance to stretch and rest a little. I wear ear buds and play a set of oldie Goldie songs that are my favorites. I love music so the walk is not so bad. Without it I would be bored to death. On my first day I could only do it 4 times which is 36 levels (9X4). Eventually I worked up to 11 times which is 99 levels, which was my best day. The 11 times took me 1 hour and 37 minutes to complete. I was drenched in sweat and felt it through the next day. Then I got covid. That killed all my stamina and momentum. A couple days ago I started again and did only 4 levels. (36) floors. I hope to eventually get back to the 11 where I was before covid. I’ll try to go 5 today, more if I’m feeling it.