My routine which I plan to stick to during school days is to have a big breakfast, then snack on fruits and other healthy stuff throughout the day, then come home and have another hearty meal for dinner. I don’t know how healthy that is to essentially be skipping a meal, but for me it helps me to limit my food intake.

Good luck trying to lose weight!

It definately makes it especially difficult to eat right if you do not have access to a refrigerator or microwave. Here are a couple snack ideas that work for me (and you did not mention):
- pretty much any fruit that does not need to be cut (apples, bananas, pears, peaches, etc)
- baby carrots
- rice cakes
- nuts (walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, etc)
- pre-popped popcorn (as long as its not the super unhealthy kind)
- apple sauce (they sell little 4 oz ones that are perfect to bring along)
- dried fruit (apricots, mango, raisins)
- jello
- various cereals (I make my own chex mix by combining the Wheat, Corn, and Rice kind)

Also, you could invest some money in a little cooler bag that will keep stuff cold for a couple hours. That would give you a little bit more flexibility because you could bring some things that require refrigeration, such as yoghurts, fruits (melon,pineapple, or grapes), salads, etc.

Hope this gives you some ideas to try out…

I guess I was hoping for advice, and venting at the same time, I think. Like I said, I found this site through a link on the Well blog on the NY Times website, and just…felt compelled to post.

I do actually drink water. Probably not the recommended 8 glasses a day, or whatever, but still a decent amount. I have a water bottle I keep at home and another I take with me to school or work, to drink throughout the day when I’m thirsty or getting hungry and have no snacks on me. And when I go out to eat, I usually get both a Diet Coke and a glass of water. But when I’m eating a meal, water by itself just doesn’t do it for me–I want something to drink that actually has flavor. So I usually reach for the Diet Coke, Coke Zero, etc. I’ve tried substituting those with fruit juices, flavored waters, and most recently green teas that I find at the grocery, but, oops–those have sugar and/or corn syrup in them too. (And I’m discovering that I don’t enjoy the taste of tea that much.) So…I’m back where I started.

The problem with snacking is the fact that I’ve found I like salty, crunchy, and cheesy snacks. Which is why I usually eat chips and salsa/hummus (they’re whole grain tortilla chips, does that make them any better?), or mini-pretzels with a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese. Yes, veggies can be crunchy, but it’s not the same and doesn’t satisfy my craving. And then there’s the area of taking snacks with me to work or class–they need to be portable and not require reheating. This summer I’ve been relying on granola bars. I’m sure they’re not the best option, but I don’t know what else to bring. My lunches are the same–I know Sun Chips aren’t the best thing to pack along with my sandwich, but I don’t know what else to bring.

Thank you for the book ideas and recipe website. I’ll be sure to check those out. The only problem with recipe finders, sometimes, is the fact that I may have the ingredient I’m searching with, but none of the others the recipe calls for. I’m still in that time in my life where I’m moving two or three times a year (from home to school to home to school and on and on and on…), so it’s hard to build up a well-stocked pantry and fridge when I know it’s all going to need to be tossed or moved in a few months.

And while I know I’m pretty sedentary (I could spend all day vegging out in front of my computer), I’m not completely helpless. I don’t use a wheelchair or walker to get around. I’ll willingly park far away and walk to the store, or take the stairs. I’m at a big college where it takes undergrads 10-15 minutes to walk from the dorms to the main part of campus. So there is that. But exercising to lose weight…ugh. Not my favorite.

I was getting up that early because I try to work out for an hour–walk/run on a treadmill for about half of that, and then maybe do some crunches and pushups. Add to that the time it takes to get dressed and walk to and from the gym, and you have 1.5 hours. This is the routine I’ve fallen into, and I actually (ironically) followed it pretty regularly earlier this year, when I’d get up 3 or so times a week in the dead of winter and walk to my school’s gym to work out before classes, in an effort to shape up a bit before a Spring Break trip my friends and I were taking. But after that, classwork picked up, and I didn’t go back. And now, in the summer, when it should be easier, I’m finding it almost harder to go. Maybe because I have to wake up earlier (I got lucky last semester and had some pretty late-starting classes)?

I actually did force myself to the gym this morning, after hitting the alarm clock for half an hour, so I only had time to do treadmill portion of my workout. I guess I feel like I need to commit that much time to it because half an hour just…doesn’t feel like enough. I don’t know. And another part of my problem is the fact that, like I said, I don’t enjoy exercise that much. I’ll admit that once I was there I didn’t hate it as much as I did when I was just getting out of bed, but I don’t really get that “exercise high” people are always talking about. I’m thinking about what else I could be doing with that time, like work on homework during the school year, or sleep (a precious commodity to the college student). So, while it’s not a completely hateful task, it’s not something I particularly enjoy, so the idea that I’m going to have to do this every day for the rest of my life…is a little bleak.

And again, I’ve written way too much (I must be in a venting mood lately), so I’ll wrap this up now. I hope I’ve given you and your readers something to talk about.

But, there is a difference between diet books (atkins, south beach) and the ones I mentioned.

While the authors of diet books may be versed in nutrition, they don’t just tell it like it is, and tell us what’s good for health. They use their knowledge of food to devise an over-complicated, abnormal way of choosing your foods that no one can likely stick to.

Sure, it is possible to lose weight with these diets, but at what cost to your longterm health? And with such a strange alteration in eating habits, how can anyone be expected to maintain it for the rest of their life?

The books I mentioned don’t tell you how to eat. They let you choose that for yourself, after you have educated yourself about what certain foods do to your body.

You suggested a couple books one could read to educate oneself about nutrition. Now I’m no expert, but it occured to me that these may also be controversial (like diet books). I realize that they are probably backed by studies and research, but aren’t diet books also supported by science? I agree with Brit that it seems almost impossible for a person who is relatively uneducated about nutrition to weed through all this information and know what is really accurate.

I am 22 years old, 5′5.5″ tall (I am, really, and I’ll fight you for that half inch :-P), weigh somewhere between 210-220 lbs (although everyone I’ve ever told my weight can’t believe it’s actually that high), and wear a size 18/20. I know I’m overweight–obese, actually, if you go by BMI. I know I should lose weight. I know what I’m supposed to do: “eat right and exercise.”

I know all these things, and yet…it doesn’t happen. Because for me, it’s like it is for smokers. They “just” need to stop smoking, right? It’s easy to say, but SO much harder to put into practice. I know I should “eat right” (which seems to mean SO many things to so many people), and I am trying to eat more vegetables, but I still love cheese and tortilla chips and desserts. I know I should exercise, but for the past few days when my alarm has gone off 1.5 hours early so I can go to my apartment complex’s gym (because I think I’m even less likely to go in the evening), I end up turning it off, because that extra sleep is just way too tempting. I’m not excusing my actions–I know that’s not the right thing to do. But like I said before, knowing and doing are two entirely different things, and until I either somehow pull together the willpower or find something that can drag myself out of bed…I feel like I’m stuck.

I’m also a bit stuck because of my lack of knowledge. At this point in my life I’m on my own in the food department, without a college meal plan (although I am going back to school this fall for my masters degree). And while I’m finding that I do enjoy cooking, it’s a daunting and slightly overwhelming uphill climb. I know I should be eating more vegetables, but right now I’m limited to what I feel comfortable using, which is pretty much onions, bell peppers, lettuce, and potatoes. I got some baby eggplant and beets at the grocery today on impulse, but I have no idea how to use them, and many other veggies. How do I cook them? Do they even need cooked at all? What are they good in? And, importantly, can they be a part of a packed lunch, because at the work I’m doing this summer, and when I’m back on campus this fall, unless I want to grab some fast food I’m going to have to rely on a packed lunch that can be eaten cold, as I won’t have access to microwaves or anything like that between classes. So I usually fall back on a sandwich and Sun Chips, which I’m sure isn’t my best option, but I don’t know what else to pack.

And, like I said before, it seems like everyone has a different idea of what is healthy. Atkins, the Zone, Mediterranean style, low-fat, low-carb, no meat, no grains…it’s enough to make my head spin. For example, plain water isn’t my favorite beverage, so at meals I usually drink Coke Zero, since it has no calories. No, people say. Soft drinks are bad. So I got some fruit juices and flavored waters. Wrong again, I’m sure some people would say–too much sugar. And I’m sure others would jump all over my skim milk too. So I’ve been trying some different green teas (although those seem to have lots of sugar too), but I’m finding that I just don’t care for tea that much. So in the end, I go back to my Coke Zero. Does that make me a bad person? Should I force myself to drink only water, even though I don’t like it?

I keep telling myself that this is the time I’m going to start losing weight, but there’s so much conflicting information out there that I feel like I’m going in circles and/or banging up against a wall. That, combined with my lack of cooking knowledge and apparent lack of willpower, and I’m doomed before I even start.

And this has now gotten way too long, so I’m going to wrap this up and post it–and hope that I’m not eviscerated too severely.