Weight loss supplement for my g/f

[Smithers1]

Hi everyone,

My girlfriend is feeling hopeless when it comes to losing weight. She tries to maintain a healthy diet and exercises pretty consistently, and every so often she'll make some progress, but she always bounces back up to her "normal" weight. She's 5ft 2in, 148lbs. This would seem pretty heavy for a girl her height, but she's relatively thin. The fat is primarily in all the typical spots - stomach, thighs, butt (which i don't mind). Plus she has DD boobies, which are pretty heavy. Anyways, I feel that she would have a better morale if she found a supplement to give here a jump start. She's tried Hoodia - but we think that she may have had a bad reaction to it. She also does the Hollywood diet drinks once in a blue moon, but it doesn't seem like a very practical thing to do. Can anyone give me some advice on what she could take? Thank you!

 

[Daisy_Girl]

Post up her diet and training - SPECIFICS. We can certainly help tweak things!

 

[Smithers1]

Well I'd just talked to her, and she wanted me to tell you that she doesn't exactly have a daily regiment. But is generally something like this:

During the week

For breakfast, she'll usually have either cereal (ex.special K or smart start or captain crunch...), a cereal bar (special K or Nutragrain bar), or oatmeal (women's health vanilla cinnamon) with a cup of coffee or milk.

For Lunch, she'll either have a turkey or ham sandwich with yellow american cheese on various slices of bread. She uses about a tbsp of mayo on the sandwich. Every once in a while, she'll also include some carrots.

For dinner, (this is where the inconsistency comes in) she could have: pasta with red sauce (sometimes w/ groud beef) - or grilled chicken with mashed potatoes and veggies - or lean cuisines (more often than not).

Weekends

All types of everything!! When we go out, she goes all out!! Steaks, pizza, chinese food, you name it. Snacks include popcorn, a lot of rice cakes, Doritos (which will disappear in the matter of minutes), and anything with sour cream or mayo.

EXERCISE

Includes walking about 20 blocks in NYC - to and from work all together. She goes to the gym 2 to 3 times a week. This includes an ab class and the occassional spin class. She's made a habit of running a mile each time she goes. She also does supersets or light lifting - bi's and chest. She also does crunches every chance she gets. And she benefits from the crunches a lot!!, but she can't get past the chub to show it.

I also want to include that she can be a binge eater and she eats very quickly. There are many times where she feels her appetite is never satisfied.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and i apologize for the length of this post - i just didn't want to miss any details. Thanks very much!!!

 

[Sassy69]

If she really wants to QUANTIFY exactly what she is eating, she should put one day's meal plan into a food counts program like www.fitday.com - its free, online, takes a few minutes to set up - but gives you the total calories and macronutrient breakdown -% protein, % fat, % carb.

Her diet isn't bad but its not great - just eyeballing it- here's the truth about nutrition tho - your body reflects your lifestyle. If she doens't like where she's at - LOOK AT THE LIFESTYLE. Lifestyle includes what you eat & your activities.

Just so she understands how nutrition works and doesn't feel completely helpless trying to get control of it - I REALLY suggest getting the book by Bill PHilips - BODY FOR LIFE - not the one for women but just the regular Body For LIfe book. It lays out a program that is very flexible and can easily fit tastes & a lifestyle along w/ some training 3x/week -- but it has an excellent intro to HOW nutrition works - why you eat 5-6 small meals / day , when to eat certain foods, etc. Its not rocket science but it isn't intuitively obvious either.

There's a certain amount of deprogramming that people need to go thru in order to win when it comes to "fitness" - the whole thing about finding the ultimate fat burner or whatever is NOT what she needs. That's just an easy way to put all your dependence on that drug, whatever it is. Its even more fundamental than that - its what you eat and how you stimulate your body. Eat efficiently so your body can burn efficiently for the activities you demand of it.

It is literally 80% diet but no one ever wants to understand how easy it is to change that isntead of looking for quicky drugs to make it all better.

 

[Smithers1]

If she really wants to QUANTIFY exactly what she is eating, she should put one day's meal plan into a food counts program like www.fitday.com - its free, online, takes a few minutes to set up - but gives you the total calories and macronutrient breakdown -% protein, % fat, % carb.

Her diet isn't bad but its not great - just eyeballing it- here's the truth about nutrition tho - your body reflects your lifestyle. If she doens't like where she's at - LOOK AT THE LIFESTYLE. Lifestyle includes what you eat & your activities.

Just so she understands how nutrition works and doesn't feel completely helpless trying to get control of it - I REALLY suggest getting the book by Bill PHilips - BODY FOR LIFE - not the one for women but just the regular Body For LIfe book. It lays out a program that is very flexible and can easily fit tastes & a lifestyle along w/ some training 3x/week -- but it has an excellent intro to HOW nutrition works - why you eat 5-6 small meals / day , when to eat certain foods, etc. Its not rocket science but it isn't intuitively obvious either.

There's a certain amount of deprogramming that people need to go thru in order to win when it comes to "fitness" - the whole thing about finding the ultimate fat burner or whatever is NOT what she needs. That's just an easy way to put all your dependence on that drug, whatever it is. Its even more fundamental than that - its what you eat and how you stimulate your body. Eat efficiently so your body can burn efficiently for the activities you demand of it.

It is literally 80% diet but no one ever wants to understand how easy it is to change that isntead of looking for quicky drugs to make it all better.

Thank you so much for taking your time to write this response. It's a very conscious and level-headed approach to achieving results. I agree on everything you said, it's just hard for her to implement these things. I think getting that book may help though. It's something that I've done in the past that has helped me in certain aspects of my life and keep a good process going. Thanks again for your help!

 

[Sassy69]

Part of it is just getting your mind around how it works. Otherwise you spend your whole life chasing these crazy "weightloss aids" or the latest fad diets and all this shit that can just be a recipe for self-induced mindfuck, and this on-going self-defeating feeling that you've "failed again" or "will never be thin".

I heard story this morning on the news about this big study about how eventually almost all diets "fail" anyway because people put the weight back on afterwards.

DUH! Its not a "diet" - its a LIFESTYLE. Your body reflects your lifestyle - it can only respond to how you treat it - its not a static thing that you run thru the wringer to get down to a size 2 and then expect to stay there while eating how you used to "normally" eat while you weren't happy w/ yourself.

Sure its an adjustment - but its a healthier way to live. A good diet has room in it for a cheat on a regular basis - this is good and healthy to do . Diet is NOT DIE w/ a T. Its just a way to live that doesn't give in to complete decadence & temptation - we were NOT designed to survive on Ben & Jerry's. The human body is a fantastic biochemical machine that is designed to run efficiently - but it needs you to treat it efficiently.



Some first line things she can do to get a sense of where she is at now --

1) Put that meal plan into www.fitday.com and get a REAL quantification of what she is eating - "she eats healthy" is not good enough if she isnt happy w/ the results. Don't they define insanity as when you do the same thing over & over and expect different results?

2) Good rules of thumb for a good diet plan - 10-12x your weight = total cals consumed in a day. Macronutrient ratios of 40% protein / 30% fats / 30% carbs -- fitday.com will help you get there.

3) Eat "clean" foods - if it comes in a box, is white or has a long list of stuff in the ingredients - its not "clean". When you shop at the grocery store, stick to the aisles around the outside - inside is where you find all the processed stuff.

4) Make some time to prepare foods that you can carry w/ you so you don't get stuck eating whatever is available.

5) Be consistent & persistent - don't think that after 5 days of "clean eating" you should be losing weight and then throw your arms up in the air & say "the diet isin't working" when you don't see the scale drop.

6) Throw your scale out the window - all it does is measure the SUM TOTAL of al your bones, muscle, fat and water. That doens't give you enough to draw any sort of conclusion about "how fat you are". Get your bodyfat done if possible - but don't get hung up on the number - its the RELATIVE CHANGES that are more important. (The absolute measure is often not accurate anyway , so no point freakign out about it). And go by how you feel & how your clothes fit.

7) Drink LOTS of water. Like 1 gal or more. (Don't worry about OMG I'm drinking TOO much water - not likely.)

8) If you want to try a fat burner - sure go for it. But look at it more as a kick in the pants when you hit the gym and not think it will make or break your results. The "fat burning" capability of any of those things is so miniscule it will NOT be the difference. It all depends on how tight and consistent your diet & training are.