Hey you guys,

What do y'all do to stay healthy?

Having a bit of a wake-up call and realizing I need to make some pretty big changes. Currently looking for a bully to take with me grocery shopping that will yell at me and make me take all junk food out of my buggy before check-out. This is a total fat girl problem -- 80% of my friends are overweight, too... so even though so far this year I've been TRYING to make better decisions, they typically pull a "but fudge rounds taste SO good" or "don't make me go to McDonald's by myself!" .... I don't think they are actively trying to sabotage me, but I've finally BEGGED them not to do these things -- and a couple of them are even wanting to get healthier, too. I will never, ever be skinny (and i'm okay with that), but I need to be healthy.

Drink excessive amounts. The alcohol will kill any harmful viruses. It's true you know.

I saw some red velvet cupcakes at the grocery store. Picked them up then I was like naw and put them down.

Hahaha you guys are great!

I'm not healthy in the slightest myself and I've noticed it has started to become a problem. I need to start working out and watching what I eat. I pig out too much. My metabolism is fantastic though.

Stop eating out. Don't be afraid of veggies/fruits. If you're on a budget, pasta and rice is your friend. They're easy to make, absurdly cheap, and --as long as you don't cover them in bullshit-- pretty good for you.

As far as pasta is concerned, stay away from alfredo and shit like that if you're trying to cut out fat. That shit is loaded with it. Instead use a tiiiiiny bit of butter and olive oil.

Also, buy a bike and ride it everywhere. Not only is it retarded good for you, but it's fun and doesn't take too much out of you like running does since it's zero impact. If you live relatively near a city/town, bike EVERYWHERE. Basically only use a car if you absolutely need to.

I walk most places and I work out just about every day. My work out is mainly jogging, weights, push-ups, and sit-ups. I just need to get my diet under control and I'll be set.

Work out, 3-6 days a week

Cardio Tuesdays and Thursday. We've got this thing called Jacob's Ladder that will fucking annihilate you, but gets you in shape real fast. We have a leaderboard at work for feet climbed per 10 minutes. I'm competitive (I started it) so it helps with incentive to push yourself

Lift Monday, Wednesday, Friday, with light cardio. Again, leaderboards help with incentive (e.g. 100 lb bench press reps, gonna start one for pull-ups, etc.

Overall, those times are some of the highlights of my week. I blast music, break it up with table tennis, bullshit with friends, etc.

I also plan on buying a bike this summer and riding it to work. Will save gas money too

I used to be over-weight, but lost it all during in high-school. I combined running (had a lake that was about 3km around. I'd run until I couldn't run, then walk the rest, trying to run as much as I could, eventually I made it around), quitting candy cold turkey for a year and going over to diet coke (only makes a difference if you consume insane amounts of regular coke).

When I started gaining weight a while ago I bought one of those crosstrainer thingies, and started just pedaling two-three times a week, usually in front of my laptop with an episode of something on (Eddie Izzard's Marathon Man was great for it).

The fact that I started biking more definitely helped too, and now I get at least 5 miles daily. It's not much, but it sure helps. And this summer I got 10 miles daily when I worked a bit further away.

Here's the thing: diet is important, but in the end, it's inferior to finding good exercise. All the easiest stuff is pretty obvious (lower the sugar, lower the starchy foods and fat). Using veggies to complement your meat rather than starch is an obvious one. But you'll always be fucked over by your friends and your urges.

Keeping weight down just through diet is possible (especially if you start out from a shitty diet), but what's gonna keep that weight OFF is a good exercise routine.

Running, power-walking, treadmilling, biking. Any kind of cardio is gonna keep you healthier and more alert. The problem is often that people set too high goals, can't achieve them, and then just quit. As long as you go into cardio knowing that everything is better than nothing and just attempt to get better (rather than think you're gonna "run the 10k by May!"), it's probably gonna last.

And for me, I think the best thing these past few years have been regular Wing Chun practice. 2x90 minutes every week. You're fucking drenched afterwards.

Edit: Protip: before you go shopping, make sure you plan it and write a shopping list devoid of unhealthy stuff. Then KEEP TO THE GODDAMN LIST. Once it becomes a habit it's great, and it'll help you curb your impulses.

Yeah, grocery lists definitely help. Saves a lot of money too; you spend less time just wandering around the store, so it'll prevent impulse buys of shit you don't need. I know if I have a list, I think, "okay, gotta go find milk..." and completely ignore every product I see until I get to the milk.

I'm definitely going to try to start shopping from a list. That is something I've never been very consistent about. I've been overweight since like 2nd grade, so there are a lot of unhealthy habits I need to over-ride.


And I haven't ridden a bike in probably 8 years. Geeeez. Wish I still had mine!

First thing you gotta do is stop referring to a motherfucking shopping cart as a "buggy," for fux sake.

I don't even think I can ride a bike

Cghost21 wrote:

I don't even think I can ride a bike

You should hang out with Lox then.

I never got past training wheels as a kid D:

I was overweight when I was a kid, but I've lost around 25 pounds during college over the past couple years. The main things I've done have included not drinking soda entirely (I only drink water now; I used to hate it as a kid, but now I love water ), and I now walk a lot. I rarely just go on walks for the sake of walking, but I walk to/from school, as well as to different bus stops when I need to go someplace like work, or my friend's house. Even though I take the bus there, I still end up walking anywhere from 5-10 blocks there and back, depending on which bus line I'm taking. Wii Fit also helped me That gave me the motivation to first keep track of what I'm doing. For a few months straight, I'd make sure I exercised for at least half an hour with Wii Fit (sometimes well over an hour) each day, and that also helped a lot. I haven't kept up with Wii Fit though, but it was fun for me, and I lost my first 10-15 pounds while using it

You can do it Shea! Good luck

Yeah the water thing is key. People at work tell me to pick them up soda. I do. But when they drink it and offer it to me I say no and drink water. And they all say why do you buy the drink but not drink it?

A lot of eating healthy and exercise has to do with self control and discipline. Sometimes you don't feel like running or exercising but just do it. I personally don't exercise much, just enough so I don't feel like shit. So I run once a week and maybe work out once or twice a week but I do it on the same day of the week so I know hey I'm going to run today and get it over with.

I'm less disciplined with food so I'm not the one to talk about for keeping healthy. I usually just eat cereal in the morning and then a sandwich and some fruit for lunch, then whatever I want at night.

If you really want to lose weight my mom is on the Zone select diet which helped her lose a ton of weight. It's all based on math sort of. You have minimal amount of carbs and lots of protein, but it has to balance out to 2 - 2 - 1 or something like that. So mainly cut out a lot of bread, cakes, and sweets, you can still have them, just not a lot. Eat a lot of protein and vegetables. Eat fruit but not fruit that is too high on the glicemic index. Bananas are high in sugar so don't eat a lot of them but you can have a lot of strawberries and stuff.

Anyhow that's my unhelpful 2 cents.

I don't really try to stay healthy. I've eliminated soda, fast food, and trans fat from my diet. That was all surprisingly easy to do. Plan on getting a gym membership again so that should help me out. I try to avoid mass amounts of carbs as I'm not that active, but it's difficult as so many dishes revolve around high carb foods.

I actually only drink Coke Zero, water, and Iced Tea (not sweet). If I'm having a REALLY bad day (and I mean like today -- so maybe twice a month), I'll get a fountain coke because they just make me happy.

I think one of my biggest problem is my eating schedule is basically whenever I have time. Like today, I had a Nutri-grain bar for breakfast around 9:30, lunch with friends around 1 that was relatively healthy other than mac & cheese.... then I didn't have time to eat again until 10:30 where I ate a fairly healthy meal again. But since there is often so much time between my meals, I'm usually REALLY hungry when I DO get to eat and often over-do it. I keep telling myself I need to eat slower, but most of the time I don't have the TIME to eat slow.


Wah wah wah excuses, excuses. I know.

I switched over from regular soda to diet soda sometime in middle school, and drank that through to around when I started college, and switched to water. It didn't help me lose weight at all; I lost weight when I started drinking water exclusively though.

long video, but this is good info.

Yeah, pretty much the rule here is to stay away from sugar. By that I don't mean carbs in general and that Atkins bullshit, but processed refined sugar/high fructose corn syrup as much as you can. People aren't fat because of fat intake, they're fat because of sugar intake.

Also, as Kurt has mentioned, diet soda doesn't do that much good for you. It's a long complicated reason why, but the short story is that diet soda (and soda in general) is very acidic to your body, and eating/drinking things that greatly raise the acid level of your blood fucks with your metabolism. Hence, it won't help you lose weight and will still probably make you gain weight. Try to drink mostly water and tea.

Also, you need to do at least a tiny bit of exercise. Walking helps, but if you really want to increase your weight loss, look into High intensity Interval Training. It's hard at first, but it only takes maybe 15 minutes a few times a week. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Do it with a jump-rope or with running. It's much faster than standard cardio and has much better results, win-win.

Awwww, bye-bye Coke Zero. And I was so proud of myself for swapping from real Coke. It SEEMED like an accomplishment!

I almost died (TRUE & EMBARRASSING STORY) trying to do a 4-minute workout that consists of 2 rounds of this: 20 secs each of squat thrusts, mountain climbers, high knees, and jumping jacks. I know nothing about workout, but the very vague research (according to a video "Japanese scientists" discovered this workout), it burns as many calories as a 40-60 minute run and boosts metabolism for up to 36 hours. I figure if it does even a third of those things, it is at least better than my previous exercise plan : avoid it.

Eh, I would start out with something a little less intense and ease yourself into. 4 straight minutes of even small things like that will get hard fast. I'd try machine workouts with light weights, and a stationary bike or elliptical, to start. Exercise isn't something you try to hit like a brick wall and hope for results right away. You have to work towards it. Which is why so many give up