Losing weight and saving money
 

I am on this stupid fad diet. Or soI thought then I noticed that, yep I am losing weight, saving money and as a nice side benefit, learning to cook a bit.

Living on about $22/day food wise. 3 meals and two snacks.

Bad news is I am as hungry as fuck most of the time. :(

I tried the 2-5 diet and found it hard on the starve days but when i normally dont eat all day i feel fine its when i know i can not eat all day that is messes with my head.

$22 a day and you are saving money? Damn, what do you usually spend?

I don't spend anything close to $22 a day. I eat good.

What's the diet look like?

I used to diet too. Turns out I was just starving myself.

You need to exercise. A lot. I bike twenty miles a day, every morning and every night, and play basketball for an hour every day. I do this seven days a week.

This is from my FB page yesterday - I had been sick with the flu all week so I had stopped riding daily.

https://scontent-2.2914.fna.fbcdn.ne...9a&oe=54E80CFC

Yeah, I know, bright colors.

Combined with eating better... I went from 251 lbs at Phoenix Forum to 223 lbs today. And I'm just getting started.

I shot hoops this morning, I have a family thing to do this afternoon, then back out on the bike!

good for you Rochard

What are you doing with the money you save? Got your Roth IRA yet?

Breakfast 2 eggs(.32) and coffee (2.70)(keurig)

Lunch chicken breast(3.75) and broccoli(2.19).

Dinner chicken breast(3.75) and asparagus(3.99).

Cut veggies w/dressing(3.70) or protein powder(1.69) are the two snacks.

I switch in spinach and ground turkey or ground beef. There are some changes but i bought a few days worth today so i added up a typical day. I also live downtown so my grocery store is not for the budget minded.

not enough fats, thats why you are hungry all the time, and thats why this isn't a long term solution to being healthy. organs need fats, brain needs fats.. You mostly burn muscle and proteins on a low fat diet which is unhealthy as it gets. Even if you want to do it with nuts and seeds instead it all works, fish too.

hey rochard? what happens when you stop 'biking' 20 miles a day? you swell up... diet is 85% and exercise only helps maintain when it comes to fat loss... diet does not have to be lowering calories, there are better options.

I used your frozen dinner tips some years back and totally saved money and it was super convenient. :thumbsup

Not really low cal but yummy and a nice cash and time saver.

Glad you liked it. It was pasta, if I recall correctly, which I don't eat often now. I do the same things though with meats mostly. I like to do a marinade and then vacuum seal the meat, freeze it for a rainy day.

Yeah, not my thing. But It would be over a thousand for the 17 days i am on the diet. Not even thinking about nightclub savings as that is out of the question when you are hungry grumpy and can't drink.

I tend to think of it as low carb versus low fat as I eat beef in there. Also when I enter into my MyFitnessPal, it shows 26% fat for the day versus a goal of 30%. The carbs are way low.

And yes no one would want to live on this diet. It is a crash to get you to where you want to be quickly.

If you are still starving after eating your meals and snacks, you can eat extremely low calorie veggies to stuff you up

Low carb.

Stop eating so much chicken ...

why are chicken breasts more expensive per pound than the rest of the bird? anyone?

check that diet out he posted, he's on ~zero carbs!

if you're hungry as fuck then you're probably eating too far under your maintenance calories. You're training your body to digest its own muscle.

And people should stop being scared of fat. Fat isn't what makes you fat. Carbs make you fat.

go to mountain, take walk every day and some gym/sport, work from cottage, eat natural stuff, sleep on time. in month you will have 5kg off

Eat about and in two weeks you will 5 kg off and you don't have to waste so much time living in the woods. hahahaha.

Thousand island dressing has fat. And the hamburger has fat. Brutal but effective and doing some lifting every day. Not much aerobic as I hate it and am already grumpy with no carbs.

I make my own dressing. Check it out if you like. Really good with a spinach salad, pinenuts, chopped protein of choice (chicken breast, tuna steak, salmon fillet are my favorite,) and craisins.

1/3 cup red wine vinegar
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic
crushed black pepper
shake well for each usage

Tastes better, cheaper, healthier than anything you'll buy at the store.

Funny you call 22/day saving, you can not be serious to think it is saving... 660$/mo lol. Who even spends that much eating and cooking at home?
Who was the member who posted a nice quality diet for 20/week? Maybe Si?

Staples for me:

- Chicken Breast $10/kg (I spend $100 a month on it)
- Oatmeal or Oatbran sometimes
- Eggs
- Peanut Butter (reduces cravings, good for shakes or eating straight up)
- Whey protein obviously
- green beans, broccoli

There's more I get but that's the jist of it. Spend about $200-350 a month CAD.

I am currently doing the 5-2 diet and have been off and on for the past year, I like it because it helps me deal with hunger. I also find that after a day of fasting I don't really go running for McDonalds the next day, and eat a lot more frugally than normal. Also instead of doing the fast on a certain day, I pick a 24 hour period. Today I had a good lunch and since then have consumed just 600 calories, I'm about to go to bed and will not eat again until after lunch tomorrow this seems to work the best for me.

Its not zero carbs. :)
Its low carb and probably less then 20 grams of carbs a day which is good.

I have been doing low carb, low fat the last 2.5 months.
I dropped 15 kilo and never felt hungry.

It was Sly.

I remember your original post about this. But I don't remember how much you said you were spending on food, how much was it again?

I live in two cities and one is Rio where McDonalds is about 10-11 dollars for a combo meal. Anye eating out where you sit down is $22 for the one meal.

And even in the states i can't eat out and snack etc and keep it anywhere near $22/day. Granted I have asked around and i can get this down a lot by buying more at one time. So that is next. I will go to a bigger grocery store and see if I can get a huge chunk of this stuff for a week or something.

Looks like some extreme Paleo or Low carb.

You'll lose just as much weight and feel A LOT better if you add a couple of potatoes or a bit of rice to one of your meals.

Read up on it, many early paleo/low carb have hit plateaus, gone back to potaotes, and lost more weight while feeling much better than with zero carb.

After two weeks I do that. Honestly, this is a crash to look good for new years in Rio.

If it's only two weeks it's find :upsidedow longer than that I have weird symptoms when I go zero carbs like a really slow heart rate. It's in the lower 50's most times, goes lower 40's when in keto. Others report the opposite, heart palpitations, pounding, constipation....

I take fiber pills. It can get ugly otherwise. I also add in a multivitamin as the diet seems a bit narrow to provide everything.

That was me. :winkwink:

I'm not sure what I spend offhand, but I can tell you that I spend more on beverages than on food. Bit of a Red Bull junkie. :winkwink:

I would be surprised if I spend more than $10 a day, I'm sure I don't. I eat good, too. Steak, salmon, tuna steak, good vegetables.

Tip to get you started: don't buy boxes or packages.

eating out is another story, I assumed you meant 22/day cooking at home..
By the way it looks like you are eating at some tourist trap or fancy establishments if you pay 22 dollars for one meal in Brasil.

I live in one of the nicest parts of Rio. So not fancy just spendy. But that being said Brazil is not cheap. They don't really have fast food like we do so there is not the $6/meal option in some areas.

I was thinking this myself. I eat really good, healthy nutricious foods every day, my wife too with left overs for lunch next day at the office and it probably doesn't cost me $22 for both of us. My wife just went grocery shopping yesterday, total cost was $140 for our entire weeks worth of shopping. That included some cleaning products and air fresheners too. :1orglaugh

15% fat in the diet and 10% or less of carbs with the rest protein. then exercise.

I know, it is on par with Eastern European prices, I have been there.

I'm on day 47 of my diet/strength training program. Started at 156 and I'm at 135 even as of this morning.

"Diets" don't work for me.

Just eat healthy stuff (the more natural the better) and try to do a little exercise. Cut out one bad thing you eat every week (or even once a month) until you're not longer eating processed garbage. Nature gives us everything we NEED. Eat that and you'll be fine. Splurge once or twice a week if you must on something you enjoy, but if you want to slim down, and stay down it's a lifestyle choice.

i went from about 25%+ bf to around 12% in about 40 days doing very low carb and high fat 65/30/5 with minimal exercise and wasn't starving myself in the least. Obviously exercise speeds things up as well.

you need fats every day, not once every few days. Like i said, nuts and seeds are fine for in betweens, don't have to do it with cheese and bacon.

Glen,
Could you post your diet during that weight loss. What you ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner etc. I am looking to do a quick cut too.

Cheers

In June 2012 I was 240 lb at 5 feet 11 inches. I started such a diet:
Breakfast: 2 boiled eggs, 1 piece of rye bread with liver spread, 6 green olives, 1 cup of green tea.
Dinner: 1 tomato + 1 cucumber salad and 1 piece of rye bread.
I also drank as much water as possible. That's it. :))
OK, I also used walking - about 10 miles per day. So in September 2012 I was 160 lb and felt fine.
Now after two years and a half I'm still about 170 lb and still feel fine. So I think everything is up to one's will. :))

Does that include going out? My thought was that since I am restricting myself to these specifics, I am saving on going out. I almost never cook so I am surprised that people can live on less. Are carbs cheap? Do you eat the same thing all week long?

Example: I love to order Jimmy Johns sandwich and chips. $11 after tip. Add a cookie and 66% of my daily budget would be gone, and I have drink water with it.

Not sure how you guys can do it. A bottle of wine is $10 at least where i live. Friends come over, we have wine and then go out to dinner and I have spent $50-100.

cocaine keeps you thin:-)

Did you blend a few diet ideas together or is there one plan that you sort of followed. I am up for a change on some of this as it gets monotonous.

You refer $22/day as a cheap? By yourself, or is that some four member family? In the latter case I would say "cheapish", in the first case not so much.

What are you eating?


EDIT: Nevermind, it is already answered.

the war on fat needs to end. I've been doing pretty much the same thing you are. Good fats and less carbs have been great for getting leaner. I use ketostix to check my ketone levels and I've pretty much figure out how to get into ketosis at will. For those who don't know what ketosis is(I'm sure Glen knows), it's when your system is using bodyfat as an energy source instead of carbs. Basically people need to change their systems from being a sugar burner to being a fat burner. It takes a while, but doing high(good) fats lower carb will make it happen.

Dropping calories without focusing on macro balance will cause you to drop muscle weight. Having less muscle means slower metabolic rate 24/7. It's lose-lose all the way.

Things like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig have trained people to think that eating fat makes them fat. Then they sell all of this low fat crap, and add addictive sugar so they can keep selling their garbage-ass food products.

You get Jimmy John's, chips, and a cookie, and now want to crash diet?

You are going to need to change your habits across the board. :-)

Learn to cook. You'll save even more money, you'll eat much better, you'll eat much healthier, and what lady doesn't like a guy that cooks?

Wrote it down, will try it, thanks :thumbsup