The Health and Wellness Thread

[REPO Man]

Given a surge in such discussions elsewhere, I decided to start a thread for topics relating to diet, exercise, and just health and wellness in general.

[Sload Soap]

A retro gaming board populated by mostly fat Americans in their late 30s/early 40s is definitely a good place to get health advice from.

[Anapan]

One time I deep-fried tofu

[Ziggy]

A retro gaming board populated by mostly fat Americans in their late 30s/early 40s is definitely a good place to get health advice from.

While America still has a problem with obesity (which has spread to other countries as well, we're not alone in this) I have seen it start to turn around. I know so many people my age that eat very healthy. A lot of people are concerned with eating healthy these days, even if there's a lot of misinformation and trendy diets out there. And the younger Americans are very likely to make better food choices than our age group. Every time I'm in a takeout place, I always hear the younger people ordering things like egg whites this and veggie that.

The UK isn't far behind the USA in obesity rates, so says this random webpage I pulled up (which I don't have the time to cross reference and fact check): https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/

Also, don't know if you saw, but this thread hatched because we were doing a lot of talk about diets and exercise in Repo's New Year's Resolutions thread. That's what he meant by "elsewhere."

PS - I didn't take offense to anything. I'm just saying this more as a matter of fact.

[marurun]

A retro gaming board populated by mostly fat Americans in their late 30s/early 40s is definitely a good place to get health advice from.

Knowing what to do is actually pretty obvious and easy. Finding the willpower power to do it is what’s hard.

[Reprise]

A retro gaming board populated by mostly fat Americans in their late 30s/early 40s is definitely a good place to get health advice from.

Knowing what to do is actually pretty obvious and easy. Finding the willpower power to do it is what’s hard.

Yeah. You eat less. Reduce fatty, unhealthy, sugary, high salt, processed foods. Increase healthier foods. But overall, eat less.

Check the calorie numbers on the back of any pre-packaged food you buy. One chocolate bar can be like 2-300 calories or something. Eat two of those in one day and you are already like 26-28% of your recommended daily calorie intake. That's crazy.

Check the calories on food you buy for dinner too. Oven pizzas can be 1000 calories (at least in the UK), maybe even more, depending on the size.

But the main thing is to start taking real notice of what you eat each day and how much you eat. And what you drink! And work on reducing it.

I see all these extremist health influencers who are constantly saying "avoid this", "avoid that", "don't eat blah blah blah, it's not food", but what worked for me, as cliched as it sounds, is just having everything in moderation and eating less of certain foods. I love pizza, I love chips/fries, I love crisps, I love chocolate, cake etc, but I still eat them. I just eat less of them.

I lost around 13kg last year by just following the above. I didn't follow any diets or anything. I just decided one day I needed to do something.

[stickem]

Of course, a good nights sleep is also important for weight loss and gym gains. Just to add.

[marurun]

I’m starting a little physical training soon to build some muscle, but I’ve still got some hurdles to get over for weight loss.

[Ziggy]

I fell into some bad habits because of stress. Mostly in the time frame of 3-6 years ago, and some (different) in the last couple of years. But now, even without the stress, the habits remain. I was at a point where I could lose 20-30 pounds, or so says various weight calculators based on age, sex and height (but I think those calculators are kind of BS). But instead of losing that weight, I've actually gained another 15 pounds LOL. However, it's hard to say how much of that might be muscle. In some way, I'm in better shape than I was 3 years ago. I am definitely stronger. But my belly is definitely larger. It's gotten to the point where it feels like something is in the way when I bend over. And that's the point for me where I absolutely have to do something about it.

I said in the other thread that you can get a cheap treadmill off Amazon for like $250-ish. Well, 3-6 years ago I did exactly that. I used it for a short while, but then some shit happened and I wasn't able to use it. I almost got rid of it, but I still have it. And sometime soon I want to start using it again. I just need to get some running shoes because my shins and knees tend to get fucked up easily these days from hard impact.

It's not exactly a new year resolution, but I was waiting until the new year to start eating better. Just because there's so many holiday foods that I want to enjoy. And the past few years I've been enjoying an alcoholic eggnog in December. Life is too short, I didn't want to deprive myself of these things. But now that the holidays are over, there's no excuse.

One thing that I gotta do is cut out the sweets. Moderation doesn't work with me because I have a bad sweet tooth. I can't eat just a couple of cookies, I end up eating the entire sleeve. And getting hungry after dinner is the worst because that's when I tend to eat bad things. I tend not to eat many desserts outside of that. I just need to keep healthier snacks in the house. That, and eating right at dinner so I'm not hungry later ( or at least, not as hungry). Or supplement my dinner with a protein shake or something.

Speaking of, I had protein powder in the past, but I haven't for the longest time now. Any one have any recommendations?

I also want to cut out soda. I got in the habit of drinking soda often, and that definitely has to stop. Soda is the absolute worst. I just have to make sure I don't have any in the house, and make better choices when I do takeout for lunch. Like Reprise was saying, I'm not going to be an extremist and say I'll never have soda again. But having it every day needs to stop. I'd like to have it on a rare occasion, at least until I lose a good amount of weight. A lot of people say to drink seltzer in place of soda, but I hate seltzer.

And in the same category of soda are other soft drinks with just as much sugar. It's funny when you go to pick a drink in a pizzeria. You look at a 20 oz soda and it has like 80 grams of sugar or something crazy like that. So you think, OK let me get something with less sugar. So you look at an iced tea and it has like 65 grams of sugar. The only other soft drink choice in a pizzeria is water, and I hate drinking water with pizza. That's why pizza is probably the worst lunch for me, because bread and sugar makes up most of what you're eating. At that point, you might has well have cake for lunch with a hunk of cheese.

So for me personally, I can probably lose a good amount of weight if I simply tackle the blatantly obvious things. No soda (or high sugar drinks) everyday, and no eating an entire sleeve of cookies in one sitting.

[REPO Man]

If it helps, belly fat helps kill most illnesses. Or something. Seriously, im hardly ever sick aside from a seasonal head cold.

Also, having a shredded six-pack is actually unhealthy since you need to get to an unsafe low level of body fat. Seriously, look up Brendan Fraser talking about how he had some degree of memory loss due to the physique he had to maintain for George of the Jungle.

As for soda, I'm also very bad at that. Sometimes I grab a bottle of Sparkling Ice. But I try to drink lots of water. For my morning job I try to take a big bottle of alkaline water to drink while there. And I grab another for my afternoon job, drinking that on my breaks, but I'll usually snag a soda for my lunch break. And when I'm at joke I only drink soda. But to mitigate some of the dental damage I drink beverages with lots of sugar and/or acids with a straw.

And don't get me started with sweets.