Getting Started

[ty]

Hey everyone, My names Tyler (Ty), I'm 16, and i weigh 219 lbs. I'm ready to lose weight. I have DDRMAX2 for ps2 which I am going to start playing once a day 6 times a week for about 1 hour. I plan on getting the other DDR games so i can keep my workout interesting. But I need help with a diet, I don't want one of these atkins or stuff, I just want help with a guideline for meals. What should I have for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and snacks.? I work at Chick-Fil-A 3 times a week at night so I plan on having plain salads for dinner. And I am going to cut out ALL soda. So please help me with my meals, Thanx guys

[abrannan]

Some simple rules to get you started:

No fried foods
No non-diet soda
No "white" foods (white bread, white rice, white sugar, potatos, etc)
No fruit juice (drink water and eat fruit instead)
No saturated fats (Watch the salad dressings you use)

Yes fruits and vegetables (raw is preferred, steamed if you have to have them cooked)
Yes fiber (whole grain breads, salads, etc)
Yes Olive oil
Yes lean meats (white meat chicken, fish)

[DrVegas]

Just to pick up on abrannan's point on fibre:

Choosing foods with very high fibre content can be a huge help when losing weight. A few of the benefits:

Since our bodies can't digest fibre, as a general rule, you can deduct approxmiately 5 calories per gram of fibre in each serving of a given product. For example, if a package of bread says that each slice has 90 calories and three grams of fibre, your actual calories for one slice would be 75 calories.

Again, given that our bodies can't digest fibre, it really bulks up in our stomach and keeps us feeling full for longer. I find this a real help with breakfast. Having a very high fibre cereal with some skim milk and some berries keeps me feeling full for pretty much the entire morning.

Fibre also helps clean our systems out...our digestive system anyway. As is passes through our systems in bulk (since it can't be broken down), it can carry a lot of impurities with it on its way out of our system.

Best of luck!

[frantep16]

Make sure you are getting enough protein at each meal, too.

[ty]

Cool thanks, what are good cereals to eat? Also say I lose alot of weight but I'm not "thin", will DDR do that for me too?

[Jsn]

Good cereals are ones high in fiber, high in vitamins and minerals, and low in sugar, fat, calories

Any cardiovascular workout will help you lose weight and with enough work and proper diet can potentially make you thin. Although some body types just aren't built for it.

[ty]

By what I've gathered so far is that stuff with lots of fiber is good. And i know to stay away from sugars and carbs. But what is with calories? I don't know much about those.

[Jsn]

Calories are basically everything as far as weight goes. Calories are energy. As far as explaining them, it's pretty complicated. You should have learned it in chemistry if you've taken it.

3500 calories (a food calorie is esentially 1000 chemistry calories. So it's really a lot more than 3500, but the term calorie is also used to describe the food calories, and is in fact what most people associate the word with) equals one pound of fat, up or down. So lose 3500, lose a pound. Gain 3500, gain a pound... Although it is a bit more complicated than that.

[DrVegas]

On calories...as Jsn indicated, it's a rather complicated thing to just explain in a few words..but a basic understanding is absolutely essential to losing weight.

In order to lose weight, you basically need to achieve a net loss in the amount of energy your body is receiving.

Indeed, approximately 3500 calories is equal to one pound, but to put this to practical use, you need to understand the bigger picture. Our bodies use energy (measured in calories) to do their jobs. That includes sleeping, breathing, thinking - and yes, DDR too!

Let's say you limit your caloric intake to about 1500 calories per day. Depending on your weight, muscle mass and other factors, your body will use at least that amount just to keep going. So although it'd be relatively hard to achieve with any accuracy, if you constantly took in 1500 calories worth of food, and consistently burned 1500 each day, your weight would stay the same.

It's for this reason that often simply by cutting calories can lead to weight loss.

Think about it. Your current diet may have included a lot of high-fat, high sugar foods (which are packed with calories), and you could easily be taking in over 2000 per day. So, without exercise, you're ending up with an excess of 500 per day, which'll pack on the pounds fast!

And that's were exercise comes in. Cardio activity burns calories at a high rate. So in the example above, if you're taking in 2000 cal per day, your body needs about 1500 to function, and you're doing 1-2 hours of good cardio exercise (let's say burning about 1000 calories), you end up with a net loss of 500 calories.

Do that for seven days, and you've lost 3500 calories, or one pound. That's the basics of it.

There are plenty of other factors, but with this basic understanding of monitoring what goes IN to your body (in the form of food) and what comes out (in the expenditure of energy) it should give you a good starting point.

You can get an idea of how many calories your body burns with different activities at:
www.caloriesperhour.com

** Also, Ty in response to your comment about avoiding sugars and carbs - don't cut them out completely. You just want to make smart choices on how much you consume. Eliminating them from your diet completely will almost always give you setbacks, particularly if you're starting our from a diet already high in carbs.

[abrannan]

For a good overview of the whole caloric process, I recommend reading the Hacker's Diet (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html). He goes a little too far with the diet portion, but the intro and setup explanations help lay out the process pretty well.

[Jsn]

Oh and um, since you're 16 keep in mind that any diet you read about is NOT NOT NOT made for you. DO NOT follow any diet guidelines exactly. You need more calories than an adult, as growing expends calories as well.

And technically we could get in legal trouble telling you how to eat if anything goes wrong, so uh yeah. Heh. See a doctor.

[ty]

Don't worry guys your safe with me. Also I'm not totally cutting out sugar amd carbs, just watching how much certain foods have in it. Thanks for the info. I'll keep you updated.