I don't want to be fat anymore.

Good luck, sounds like you're doing great. Though it sounds like you're having trouble dropping soda, I would say a good way to let your weight plummet is switching to an all-water diet. I did that once over two months and lost a lot of weight. Unfortunately, I gave in to alcohol, and just couldn't maintain that. But, if anything, drop diet soda. Shit's loaded with carcinogens.

Though not to the same extent, I'm in a similar ballpark, and probably put on thirty pounds from a frame I was pretty happy about last year. The improving weather helped, but I definitely had to make dietary changes, and within the last week, which was full of exercise, I dropped one pant size.

My main motivation, oddly enough, was "American Reunion." These characters were all supposed to be thirty, on their downsides, not doing too well. But they were HOLLYWOOD thirty, and even Jason Biggs looked respectable, to the point where there's supposed to be a joke about these thirtysomethings fighting a bunch of eighteen year olds, but they all have roughly the same body types and such.

I've suffered a lot of minor injuries over the last few years that, even with some weight fluctuation, were taking longer and longer to heal - a sprained ankle here, a twisted wrist there, sudden balky knee, etc.. Eventually I just figured, hey, I'm getting older. If I'm not careful, this could be my body starting to decompose for good.

So I'm two years from thirty, and I've decided, I don't want to be thirty. I want to be HOLLYWOOD THIRTY. So if I can be like Jason Biggs in American Reunion, I'll be happy. Basically, I'm noticeably aging, and this is my LAST SHOT to be young one more time. So that's what I'm trying to do, and I've noticed that injecting very small routines each day within a packed schedule can mean all the difference, whether it be taking the stairs (I live on the eleventh floor) or walking home from the train (about a mile). 

In other words, it's not the heavy duty four hour runs that help as much as the steady, small, helpful steps. Dropping non-waters. Taking the stairs. All based in repetition.

Find healthy food that you actually like and enjoy eating.  Start with ingredients you like and look up recipes online containing them.  Look for healthy alternatives to the stuff you regularly eat.

Cook your own food.  

DIETS DO NOT WORK.  You either change your lifestyle permanently or you'll yo-yo forever. 

You'll need to change your workout regime every few months to avoid plateaus.  

Protein and fiber.  Protein and fiber.  Protein and fiber. 

SLEEP!

And if you feel a craving for something, go ahead and eat it right then and there.  Otherwise, you'll drive yourself crazy holding out, and when you get your hands on it, you'll binge. 

I suppose I'm in good shape.  I work out regularly, doing a yoga/pilates/walking/running/swimming/krav maga blend.  When I was a teen, I'd drink a soda daily.  Now, it's once in a blue-ass moon.  I can't stand the stuff anymore.  I like the way I feel after a big glass of water.  Also, motherfuck cereal.  Shit's awful for you.

Baby steps.  About 3 years ago, I was around 216 pounds.  Now I'm a little over 160.  

It's really all about what you can maintain.  That's the tricky part for me.  I've done running, swimming, weights, high intensity interval training... and none of that helped until I changed my eating habits. Don't take this to mean that this is something that you should try... but I've most recently cut out my main sources of carbohydrates.  Rice and bread.  I'll still have it when I really want some, but putting myself on that restriction gives me a discipline to hold onto.  I also try to avoid too much fructose and sugar.  I've also started fasting for one or two separate days a week.  

In terms of workouts, I mostly just take my dog out for a walk and really go for the pull ups.  I can do about 8 of them from a complete hang in a row now!  

After I get tired of the current thingy... I don't know what I'll do next.  Hahahaha  

Also, when you're hungry, chew gum. Next time I go shopping, I'm going to replace a good amount of my food budget on gum instead.

Please keep in mind, my dietary advice may be the least-reliable in this thread.

Oh, man.  I chew so much gum.  

Stride is my go-to brand.  These days, I just chew half a piece at a time.  Keeps a pack going longer.

Oh, and it goes without saying... exercise caution as you exercise.  You injure yourself due to carelessness and you'll end up slacking and gaining everything back.  In fact, it was due to rolling my ankle on an apple while jogging that I took up swimming for a while.  I didn't want to lose that fitness momentum.

I whole-heatedly agree with the importance of proper nutrition.

You can get into all sorts of in-depth discussions about the most effective workouts, how to tone up muscle groups, getting a V-taper, etc.  But at the end of the day, your diet is about 75% of your overall body composition.  The primary point of exercise is really just to keep your metabolism up (so you burn more calories in the same amount of time).  But you can always out-eat your metabolism, so you can't rely on exercise to make up the difference.

The trick is to maximize your nutrient to calorie ratio.  Obviously simple sugars and fats are high-calorie but low nutrient while things like whole fruits, veggies, and non-processed lean meat are nutrient-dense foods.

I've always been a generally healthy eater since i cook all my own meals.  But I never seriously sat down and scrutinized my diet until I hit 30.  Now I'm more toned than I've ever been in my life, and a big part of that is finally clamping down on my diet and figuring out exactly how many calories I really need.  It's no coincidence that body builders actually have extremely precise diets.

I cannot stress the importance of this.  Aside from getting on that tread mill and challenging yourself every day with sprints, change your entire diet routine.  It sounds extreme, but it's not actually so bad at the end of the day.  Throw out all of the bad food in your house.  Chips, sugar, even get rid of the bread.  If you can see it and it's an option you're GOING TO EAT IT and feel like shit about yourself.  Instead cook up whatever heathly food you like, lean chicken breast or salmon, brown rice or quinoi, and then store it in tupaware containers in your fridge.  You get hungry?  No problem!  Grab a tupaware and instant healthy tasty satisfaction of a well balanced meal.  No desire to order out because you've got food instantly ready for you whenever you crave for it.  This is by far the number 1 tip I have for getting started on that fat loss and I can't stress how important consistent diet is combined with working out.  A lot of my friends get hung up on that "I'll have one bad meal here" and "I'll sneak a beer in there", which is fine, but it's SOOOO easy to accidently eat a lot worse than you think you are.  Take willpower out of it.

Jesus christ, don't just chew gum if you're hungry. You're probably not taking in enough calories (healthy calories from whole foods, not Taco Bell) as it is, which will help stoke your metabolism.

Joon's right about at least 80% of weight loss being solely diet-related. You can work out until the cows come home, but if you're either starving yourself or eating crap, you're sabotaging any bit of progress. And yeah, grab every soda near you (diet or regular) and throw it as fast and far away from you as you can. I used to drink up to 6-8 per day (I'm surprised I don't have diabetes, my teeth are kinda fucked from it though) and when I finally kicked the habit, the weight flew off. Don't push yourself TOO hard on the exercise, especially with running considering that the extra weight is probably causing hell on your knees.

Eat a healthy snack/drink water/eat fruit or a vegetable. Nuts are high in healthy fats too. Make sure you're getting 1 gram of protein per lb. of lean body mass - there are LBM calculators/calorie calculators out there that will give you a great breakdown. Are you taking any supplements? Vitamins, fish oil, protein powder? Also, go to Misc Culture and read the Going to the Gym thread. Tons of great advice in there. I'd merge these posts with that thread but I'd probably screw it up.

Diet is definitely key. If you've got good eating habits dialed in, a nice walk on a sunny day with a book is just as valid a step to getting that six pack as some stupid fifteen minute ab workout. I was in a similar situation to you a while back. I got a desk job after college and gained back a bunch of weight that I had lost in college (got whipped into shape by joining the crew team). I was up around 230 (this latest go 'round, in high school I was pushing 300), but am now around 180 with some ab starting to show.

One resource that's been really helpful to me is Mark Sisson's book, "The Primal Blueprint." Some of his caveman rhetoric can be pretty ridiculous, and it's part of that whole paleo thing, but there's a lot of good advice in there about macros, what good exercise habits look like, the importance of stress management and sleep, etc. It also helped me discover some autoimmune issues that I didn't know I had (mainly chronic fatigue related). You might not be on board with his advice to ditch grains, but it's done me a world of good. But your mileage may vary. Anyway, I think that that book is a good starting point, as it's not a program as much as it is a set of decent tips that are open to tweaking and expansion.

Also, definitely check out the gym thread.

Great advice so far.  The one thing that I'll add is to eat your food more slowly.  Chew each bite 20 times.  If you eat fast, you tend to gorge on food and overeat.  If you take your time, you'll find that you'll get satisfied on less food.

Best of luck.

Good on you, mate, for getting yourself in order. It's worth the effort. Some food avoidance tips and tricks you might want to consider are to fill up on cold water and things like greens or celery. A good exercise idea is to get yourself up on a bicycle. I've been biking to work the past two months and already I'm noticing my stamina and muscle definition increasing, the best part is it doesn't feel like a chore since tooling around on my bike is a blast.

Hmmm. Yes the whole weight loss thing really does call for a complete change in your worldview, at least when it comes to food, if you're serious about losing it and keeping it off.

Towards the end of my last relationship I'd got really heavy. I'd gotten way too comfortable and completely sedentary. I drank too much and ate large meals with snacking in between. I didn't eat a massive amount of junk food, but just ate a lot of fatty nuts, cheeses, cured meats and way too much wine, punctuated by huge meals. Once my metabolism slowed down when I hit my thirties it was a pretty quick descent into having trouble reaching down to tie my shoes and getting puffed out getting out of the shower. I reckon I made it up to around 158 kilos, which for my American friends was just shy of 350 pounds (I know, I know).

In the months before our breakup while my ex was away I really made a concerted effort to change my food attitude. I started drinking less and signed up to a low food delivery service to eat well and learn a bit of portion control. I started losing weight and was looking forward to impressing her when she returned. Obviously, things didn't work out that way but I'm still eternally grateful I'd already started shedding by the time my breakup occurred. Had I been at my heaviest when I fell into a bit of a post breakup hole, there's every chance I'd have seen trying to lose any weight as simply too difficult and gone the other way, getting fatter and pushing myself into serious health issue territory, but as it was my logic was, "I've started this now, I don't much feel like eating anyway, lets see how far I can take this."

So off I went. I all but gave up drinking, had to basically fall out of love with food and give up the vice of eating out of boredom of for pleasure and treat food like the fuel its meant to be, eating only when actually hungry (an almost blasphemous idea coming from the family I grew up in). I'd have fruit or muesli bars for breakfast, a proper big lunch of meat, veg and carbs and then barely any dinner, a muesli bar or fruit again if anything. I also try and drink a lot of water through the day.

So after twelve months of this regimen I began back in March last year, I weighed myself a couple of months ago and can happily report I had shed a grand total of 70 kilos or just under 155 pounds bringing me down to a much more human 88kgs/194lbs.

I'm intending to keep this weight off. I know with my metabolism and temprement I'll never have any problem putting weight back on, just maintaining what I've achieved, so my attitude change has had to be a real rewiring job in a lot of ways.

Damn it's great to be able to see my dick in the shower again tho lemme tell ya.

For me, ditching carbs altogether didn't do jack shit. Thats a relapse waiting to happen, and satiety is weirdly kind of the unspoken wolf at the door behind dieting tactics. You need it, but people think that can't happen once you've limited what you can and can't eat.

What helped for me was simply finding ways to make the things I want, but healthy. On top of being fatter once (stats: I dropped from close to 400, down to 210. I hover around 275-300 now, but a great portion of it is muscle. The rest is switching jobs to a place where I'm not walking as much. Figuring out how to fix that as we speak.), I also have salt intake issues that pretty much ace me out of eating too terribly anyway. Both those factors threatened to ace me out of a LOT of my favorite things, including pancakes, which was a big Hell No for me. A good year of experimenting led to me changing to whole grain and brown rice flour, changing the milk, using egg substitute, club soda and lemon juice to create airiness instead of baking powder and buttermilk, adding oats and flaxseed, putting *just enough* syrup in a container to dip instead of slathering it all over. The amount of fat is minimal, there's virtually no sodium. It's still carby, BUT, the important part is, instead of my meal instantly evaporating in my stomach and being hungry later, I'm satisfied most of the day, and not in a lethargic way. It tends to hold me almost till dinner without me feeling like every cell in my body is covered in rich creamery butter.

So, yeah. Less white flour, more oats/flax/brown rice, getting sweets where I control how much sweetness goes in, instead of it being pre-packaged, eating a piece of fruit instead of mindlessly downing juices. All of which get easier with time. And discovering how you feel when your body's running on better fuel is one of those factors that'll push you to do better as well.

And for gods sake, pay attention to nutrition labels. Especially once you start making things deliciously healthy at home, you'd be surprised how much excess shit gets crammed into packaged food, and it makes avoiding it so much easier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin Clark 

 

And for gods sake, pay attention to nutrition labels. Especially once you start making things deliciously healthy at home, you'd be surprised how much excess shit gets crammed into packaged food, and it makes avoiding it so much easier.

Oh GOD, yeah.

Yeah, nutrition labels are a huge deal. People tend to overestimate how much "a serving" actually is (note: it ain't half the box).

Those servings RARELY ever portray reality!!!  What a joke!

I saw a nutrition guy on Oprah ages ago, and one thing he said really stuck with me: 

If your ancestors wouldn't be able to recognize it as food, don't eat it.

Also, controlled cheat days are a god send.  Not only do you get to cheat, you also get to keep your metabolism up, which means you burn fat faster.
 

I went out with some friends for the first time in a couple of years last weekend and was approached by a couple of girls.  After talking for a bit, they figured I was "no older than 27".  Not bad for someone who'll be turning 37 in a few months.  I'm Hollywood 30!  Yay me!

Anyway, my advice - as alot of people here will tell you, diet (and I mean that in the proper way - what you eat, not what you eat for a month or two) is 80% of the battle.  Contrary to popular belief, carbs are NOT the enemy.  You need them or you'll struggle.  Just read up on how and when to use them to YOUR advantage.  Like anything else, overdoing it is where the problems start.  Good luck!

I highly recommend The Carroll Test for Food Intolerance. Most GPs should be able to administer it. It's a simply blood test that will tell you if certain foods are causing inflammation. I took it, found out I was intolerant to Diary, cut it out of my diet, and dropped 30 pounds in 4 weeks. One thing: I didn't simply drop weight with no side effects; essentially my body was de-toxing, just as it would if I was a drug addict and "drying out". Lots of depression and bad feelings, but after about 4 weeks I felt better than I've ever felt in my life.

This test also tells you what foods are optimal for you. In my case, Barley is a great match for my metabolism. I'd never had Barley in my life, but upon trying it I found it has an amazing and beneficial effect.

I really need a good workout routine that I can stick to, but with some diet changes, I lost 25 pounds over the past year and have (mostly with some ups and downs) kept it off. You;d be surprised what the BMI considers "obese". Big breakfasts (eggs, oatmeal) to carry me through the day, smaller meal/snacks consisting of fruit/granola/hummus/veggies/smoothies/yogurt/etc throughout afternoon, and a smaller-portion dinner with sensible homemade foods (fish, rice, chicken, veggies, soup, etc) in evening. I use to consume more food in the later part of the day because I worked up such an appetite and then my body would just store it. The bigger breakfast also means I'm not a raving low-blood-sugar lunatic by lunch with a headache and the shakes. I know juice has more sugar than water, but it's healthier than soda.

I can't give up coffee (to wake up) or ginger ale (for stomach nerves) though.

Right, all I can I say is how I do things, I hope it''s sound advice, it works for me. Now, I can dress like Spider-Man and damn it, I look like Spider-Man, it is awesome. So, this is what I do, I've been exercising a lot for many years now, since I was 16, I'm 22 now. Everyone's talking about diet, that's all good, it's all great advice and you should listen but also don't forget to run.

That's it - run. Can't run? Walk. Walk everywhere, gotta drive somewhere, don't! Walk instead. Then once you're down with that, jog. Jog slowly if you need but jog. Then get to running. Run as far as you can go, then do it again the next day, and the next, run farther each time. Soon you will be able to run a mile, and you will be able to do it comfortably, then you'll be able to run 2, then 4. Always increase, don't stop building upon it, as soon as you get satisfied with the same routine, make it harder.

Get some dumbells, lift them, do curls, hammer curls, be careful, use proper form. Man, I increased the weight by a lot recently, failed to exercise proper form, messed my neck up bad, had to get housemate to make me a coffee because I was unable - it was okay after an hour or so, but it really was unpleasant.

Push-ups are your best friend, again, proper form is essential, there's a whole bunch of videos on youtube which showcase the proper form but in short, straight back, no dipping, tight abs. Push-ups are great cos they give your whole upper body a good seeing to.

Sit-ups are cool n' all, but some peeps I know seem to think they will make your abdominals nice and awesome, well, they will! But there will be no six-pack for you unless you run, you could have the most awesome abs on earth, it don't matter none if there's a layer of fat over them.

Eat fish, and chicken, the good kind, not the stuff with breadcrumbs on it, eat loads of it, just keep the exercise at a high level, remember lifting weights burns calories too, and it builds muscle, and muscle is awesome. Eat fish while watching JAWS, laughing all the way through at the irony of it.

Also, building muscle is cool, but it needs time to rest, do running on the days where you don't build muscle, give time for the muscle to re-build itself bigger, faster...stronger! Get a good amount sleep.

And finally, and this is the most important thing..... enjoy it! Exercising is fun, do whatever it takes to get you jazzed, download the Rocky theme and blast it out on your MP3 player, whatever, but if you treat it like a chore you might give up, you learn to enjoy it, then you won't ever want to stop.

In the end you'll feel good, about yourself, about eveyrthing, the girls, or boys, whatever's your thing, will come running.

It's true that diets don't work, but changing your lifestyle does. Keep track of your calories. Give yourself a realistic goal and be brutally honest about documenting everything, keeping track of every bite, sizes, portions, etc. It's a pain in the ass at first, but it helps in a huge way, especially once you realize the kind of stuff you can eat that fills you up but doesn't pack on a lot of calories, and is really nutritious to boot (as others have pointed out, watch out for processed foods). I recommend a calorie/nutrition/fitness counter/planner like MyFitnessPal. Good luck!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parker 

I recommend a calorie/nutrition/fitness counter/planner like MyFitnessPal. Good luck!

MFP works so well. It's amazing how much it reinforces good eating choices and exercise, and makes one think of alternatives better than their usual temptations. The biggest thing I've noticed is how it totally exposes soda for the black hole of nutritional emptiness that it is. You'll think about a bottle of soda and how it will just eat up your daily calorie allowance and realize that it's not that tasty.

"Let me see, should I have that bottle of Coke.....or a bowl of soup/soy burger/hot dog/nutrition bar/cereal/etc etc etc...instead?"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Upgrayedd 

Wow. Thanks everyone for the replies. I've been keeping it up. I've gone from doing 2 miles a day to 3 miles a day on the treadmill. I've given up almost all pop. I'll get a diet coke if I go out to dinner. But I've cut back on fast food, cut out on a lot of the junk food. I've been looking up healthy recipes and eating a lot of fruit and vegetables this summer. 

Most importantly tho - do you feel better for doing these things?

I just had a whole chicken for dinner!

</goddammit>

P.S  I used to be an Adonis for christo's sake.  Fuck aging.

P.P.S.  No real contribution to make, except I think I need a "support/commitment" group to make any serious lifestyle changes at this point in my life.  Like the running group at the local rec centre.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Upgrayedd 

 I'll get a diet coke if I go out to dinner. But I've cut back on fast food, cut out on a lot of the junk food.

Not trying to overload you with too much at once, but try to ween yourself off of Diet Coke too. I know it doesn't have any calories, but in many ways it's just as bad for you, if for no other reason than that it increases your appetite, which makes you want to eat more calories to make up for the lack of calories you're not getting from the Diet Coke (your body is essentially tricked by it, thinking that it's getting something, then realizing it's not, so it kinda demands that you compensate). Plus, it's horrible for your kidneys and other organs. 

Dropping it is hard. I suggest moving to iced tea or coffee, if it's about the caffeine (I know that's what it was for me). Unsweetened if you can handle it. If not, drop a Splenda pack in one or the other, but try to ween yourself off that stuff too. You might surprise yourself with how much weight you'll lose once you kick the diet coke habit as well, trust me. Good luck and I'm glad you're doing well!

This is a good watch if you're looking for motivation to give up soda. Holy crap that stuff is bad for you, I need to eradicate high fructose corn syrup from my diet ASAP. 

Thanks for that video!  Some of this is familiar info to me from reading WHY WE GET FAT,  but this guy focuses much more on HFCS itself as opposed to carbohydrates in general.

To add on to the pile-on against soda, I read once that diet soda may cause strokes, or something like that.

Harvard's Healthy Eating Pyramid seems relevant here too: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/pyramid/

Best tip I can give you.  Eat small meals throughout the day.  And workout whenever you have free time.  I'm always throwing in push-ups and crunches throughout the day.  

Problem I see people run into, is doing to much to early.  working out hard right away, getting sore, then not wanting to do it.  Set mini-goals and go at it.  

Oh, and buy a swiss ball.  If you are watching TV, on the computer or even eating dinner... sit on that swiss ball.  Just doing normal lazy activities on that, makes it into a mini workout. 

So during Comic Con week, I got one too many comments about how skinny I've gotten.  I'm starting to freak out a bit, because I think my self-body image is getting all fucked up.  At times, I still think I look fat.

In response to this, I'm gonna try getting back to a more comfortable diet in moderation. 

I took my dog for a walk this morning, and I could feel my ass crack hitting air.  And I just bought these shorts a couple of months ago!

Great advice here.  I am 6'1".  Graduated high school at probably 130 pounds.  8 years later I got married and weighed 211.  Of course, when we got the wedding photos, I was shocked and embarrassed.  I bought a weight bench and a treadmill.  My wife went to Weight Watchers.  I used a lot of their concepts and applied it to a better diet.

After getting some stamina back I introduced HIIT into my workouts.  I would do 4 minute sprints on the treadmill, 25 pushups, 100 jumping jacks...and then repeat like 6 times.  Or, sprint on treadmill for one minute, then walk fast for one, then sprint, etc.  Confusing the heart in that way is wonderful and super effective.

I didn't see this in the thread, but perhaps it is there somewhere.  EAT BREAKFAST.  I saw comments on the type of breakfast to eat, but none that stressed the importance of simply eating breakfast.  It is amazing what skipping a meal does to your metabolism.  I never ate breakfast.  The people I know that constantly bitch about their weight don't eat breakfast.  You don't eat breakfast? Force yourself.  Eat oatmeal, yogurt, fruit.  I personally believe that if anyone with weight issues introduced breakfast alone, they would lose some weight.  Then, cutting back to better food, adding buckets of water, sleep and exercise?  The fat will melt away.

Lastly, I will add (also which I have not seen explicitly stated) that weightlifting is an awesome way to plan for future weight management.  More muscle burns more calories.  This may be something you want to consider introducing later because muscles also really like calories for fuel, so there can be a delicate balance.

It has been 6 years since I committed to this new lifestyle.  I went down to 155 before I started piling on muscle.  I now weigh (a too thin 158).  Before my surgery I was pushing 170 and was getting a decent body.

One thing to add, again...make sure you are kind to yourself regardless of where you are or weigh.

You might look at your body like an old friend who has been there and done the best it could no matter how you've treated it or put into it. Perhaps that in itself will be motivation to treat it better. But true health comes with patience and kindness, and letting go of thoughts contrary to that--against others, yourself, or your body.

Wow, I can NOT picture some of you as fat as you're saying you were in the past. Especially nooj and Justin, who look perfectly healthy from their Facebook pics.

Anyway, I'm not even remotely in the 200-350 pounds ballpark, but I've still been trying to change my eating habits to include more fruits and veggies. Thankfully, I've never been a soda drinker, and my body told me it pretty much hated alcohol after I tried some on my 21st birthday. I've also never smoked or taken illegal drugs (no, not even pot).  My main hurdle is exercise. I find gyms to be too expensive and crowded, but thankfully we have an elliptical machine in the house. I think I'll start doing stretches, using the machine, maybe walk our dog more.

I vote that you talk with your primary physician or your psych (whoever recommended the meds, basically) before you go changing anything.

I know medication effects everyone differently, but when I was on prozac (generic) I never experienced increased sweating.  I would talk to your doctor, and considering you suffer from anxiety (same here), NEVER look up side effects or symptoms online.  Google is great, but when it comes to medical stuff, all it does is cause anxiety.  

Hows the "healthy" lifestyle going?  I work out daily, and on those days I just don't want to do it, I just remind myself that I was given one body, and I need to keep it running well.  Just yesterday I nearly broke and went to McDs for breakfast.  I was craving a bacon egg and cheese biscuit.  I walked in, and right in front of me was this obese woman, ordering 2 value meals, an extra sandwich, and making sure the cashier put TWELVE packets of sugar in each of her small cups of coffee.  I walked away after seeing that, and went to the local health food store and got some oatmeal. 

Good for you Pete.  That is awesome.

It has been my experience, that you know you are in a good place when you are pissed you can't work out or be healthier.  Takes some time, but it's a great place to be.

I felt good knowing that the oatmeal I was eating, was going to give me energy as time passed... as compared to feeling like SHIT 45 minutes later.  McDonalds breakfast tastes really freaking good, but the crash you feel afterwards is not worth that 5 minutes of buttery bacon bliss.