It's a fact: I lost five pounds without exercise! What should I do next?

I don’t know why people are under the impression that you need exercise to lose weight. You don’t. You need it to look good, though. Moving on…

This is a really hard question to answer if we don’t know what your diet is like now. I’m guessing you want more “eat this not that” suggestions as opposed to “eat this many calories,” but how are we supposed to know what could be switched out in your diet if we have no clue what you eat?

Have you stopped losing weight from the first switch?

My sister cut out whites. Bread, rice, potatoes, etc. she’s lost about 10 lbs.
You could try that if you haven’t already.

Well, I Never touch frenchfries but I eat a lot of pasta. I will never give up bread. GA

@Aster Maybe you could try whole grain pasta?
I totally hear you about not giving up bread! I love bread!! lol
Maybe you could add a few more veggies to your diet?

Whole grain pasta…blech! Tastes like cardboard and has the consistency of dirt.

Add in more vegetables in place of meat and starches. I don’t mean you have to fully replace those things. If you feel like you are craving sugary things when you do this, think about adding one fruit a day to help replace the other carbs you have cut out. I am not suggesting a no carb diet or anything close. Just suggesting more vegetables, especially leafy greens, but anything helps. Basically changing your plate so you are eating less calories, and getting more nutrition. If you usually eat two slices of bread a day, it might go down to one. Or, your plate of pasta might be a little smaller with a larger veg side. Or, your pasta bowl is the same, but you eat it only 2 times a week instead of 4. Or, you might now have one meal a day that is all veg and fruit.

Eating foods packed with vitamins really helps lose weight I think. It reduces cravings. Adding fruit helps reduce cravings for pastas and breads, because you meet your sugar needs. Make sure your food is very colorful through the week. Red peppers, yellow bananas, green spinach, plums, peaches, green zucchini, mushrooms, etc.

@livelaughlove21 Hahahahaha Right??
But if she’s trying to lose weight, and she eats a lot of pasta, it would be a better option.

@JLeslie thanks so much. I eat a banana each morning and I was adding a peach per day but they’re out of season now and dreadful. I eat a tomato almost daily. Crazy over cantaloupe but they’re going out now, too. I’m afraid pears are coming in now. I’ll eat them but there’s no thrill in a pear.

I doubt whole wheat pasta really makes a big difference for weight loss and it does taste terrible.

@Aster I actually like pears. Honeycrisp apples are one of the best fruits ever invented in my opinion; you could try that instead of a pear. Don’t overdo the fruits though, sounds like you already have two a day, which I think is plenty. Increasing vegetables is probably where you should focus, or reducing fats in your cooking. Like if you use a lot of oil or butter in your preparation, cutting it in half or more could easily reduce your calorie intake by 200 a day. I don’t know how you cook though.

Also, some fruits vegetables are more caloric than others. Corn and carrots have quite a bit of starch and so they have higher calories than other vegetables. Obviously potatoes are high in calories because of their starch content. Avocados have a ton of fat and calories. I am not saying stay away from those things, just pointing out calories so you are moderate with them.

I love pears if they’re ripe. I mean if they’re just right. I cook with extra virgin olive oil and put extra virgin coconut oil on English muffins in the morning instead of butter or I should say one English muffin. To that I add sugar free blueberry preserves and Salba seeds. I never eat corn. The GMO crap has scared me to death.
I have never heard of honey crisp apples!!

All oil has the same calories.

@Aster Do you like fish? I believe salmon is supposed to be good for weight loss. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong.
One of my favorite meals is salmon with a ton of grilled veggies.

What does 1K mg turmeric mean? It’s a unit I don’t understand. You can also sprinkle turmeric on anything that you can stand.

5lbs/month is perfect. An average of 1.25 lbs/week.

Skip the other animal proteins; add complex carbs rather than bread.

Quinoa, brown rice, barley, amaranth are delicious with various vegetables, nuts, dried cranberries and a light vinaigrette.

All the peppers are great (red, yellow, orange and green), beets come in many colors, as do carrots now, and sweet potatoes are almost as good as dessert. The very dark leafy greens are considered miracle foods; steam or saute with a little EVOO and garlic…kale, collard greens, spinach, beet greens, mustard greens.

A small baked potato with salsa spooned over it is a perfect small meal.

1k mg turmeric means one thousand milligrams of turmeric.

Oh. That’s the same as one gram.

Digestion of turmeric (curcumin) is enhanced by added freshly ground black pepper. And turmeric root (if you can find it in your market) can be grated just like fresh ginger in soups and stews.

You can bake the good apples with cinnamon, ground walnuts and some honey for a nice change also, even though nothing does beat a fresh raw apple.

I have never had a problem with whote wheat pasta but love spaghetti squash with a decent marina sauce.

@Katniss totally love fish! In fact, when he has steak I have fish tacos with cabbage. I buy it at the store or he catches it at our lake lot. No; I fry it in EVOO; I don’t bake it. I happily have two packages of it in the freezer right now.

@Aster Have you tried throwing it on the grill? It’s really good that way.
I also like to put lemon juice and salt and pepper on it, wrap it in foil, and bake it.

no’ I think it would stick then fall apart.

I bake all my fish with no added fats.

You can put it in a piece of foil or a wood plank. :0)

Here’s a link to 50 ways you can cut calories
Here are the first 8 listed.
1. Split a 20 oz. bottle of regular soda with a friend. Save 120 calories!
2. Drink 1 cup of diet soda instead of 1 cup of regular soda. Save 97 calories!
3. Swap a 12-oz. glass of whole milk for skim milk. Save 96 calories!
4. Drink two 12-oz. light beers this weekend instead of two regular beers. Save 100 calories!
5. Instead of 1 cup of prepared lemonade, try 1 cup of a sugar free variety. Save 103 calories!
6. Eat a medium orange instead of drinking 12 oz. of fresh orange juice. Save 106 calories!
7. Prepare your coffee with 4 oz. of fat-free half and half instead of regular half and half. Save 88 calories!
8. Enjoy 5 oz. of chocolate milk instead of 5 oz. of a chocolate milkshake Save 110 calories!

Thanks. That was fun to read but I don’t drink alcohol or soda. What I drink is a quart mug of filtered water with one squeezed lemon and some “leaf” sweetener that costs a fortune since it’s so weak. I don’t drink milk at all anymore; just plain soy. My main sin, shall we say, is salted , mixed nuts. I can’t stand those dry ones in the jar. I’d rather not even bother than eat those “dry roasted” peanuts. Gag!
I wish to add that I had enough beer and hard liquor from ages 16 to 20 to fill a lake.

LOL.

Nuts have a lot of calories and fat. Maybe just keep in check how many nuts you are eating.

@Aster, could you, for the sake of your weight loss replace the nuts with air popped popcorn?
or maybe MOST of them?

Good idea @Judi
Air popped corn has a little bit of a nutty flavor, I think.

The nuts do have some good things about them. Protein and what many people consider to be good oils. Maybe a nut mixture? With dried fruit. Or, use the nuts in salads with fruit. I like spring mixed greens with apple slices and walnuts. Add a little rasberry dressing.

Or, even a mix of popcorn and nuts.

I am growing tired of popcorn. I eat Orville’s at night with 2 tablespoons of butter on it. It’s the dangerous, horrific microwave Kettle Korn that allegedly poisons the body. I do not eat it every single night; some nights I have Oatmeal Crisp with Raisins cereal at bedtime.

The microwave popcorn has lotds of calories already and if you add butter then you have a lot of calories you don’t need. If you get an air popper and then put your butter on it you are still saving ton’s of calories although for me I would just use butter salt. (I don’t have any blood pressure problems.)

Make sure you eat dinner before six o’ clock. My mom always says “After six, it sticks.”

@AshLeigh Shit! I thought it stuck after 8 o’clock. lol

@Katniss Neither is necessarily true. It’s recommended that you don’t eat 2 hours prior to going to bed, but there’s no specific time.

But really, it’s calories in – calories out. Time doesn’t matter nearly as much as people seem to think. If you’re eating 1500 calories per day because that’s what it takes to lose weight, it really doesn’t matter when you eat it.

@livelaughlove21 Thank you for clearing that up. :0)
I’ve always felt guilty for eating after 8. lol Isn’t that silly?

I don’t think time of day matters either, and that is also how it was taught in nutrition class in college. Total calories during the day is what I believe matters.

However, there are people who will nosh in the late hours mindlessly and those are often extra calories. Those people do well to not eat late, because they are eating out of bad habit. Personally I think those people who like to munch late should shift their calories so their last meal is late, instead of feeling deprived at night. Better to eat their total 1800 calories (random number) even if the last 500 are at 9:00 at night, than to eat all 1800 by 6:00 and then find themselves cheating late at night another bunch of calories, or very uncomfortable trying not to eat. Just my opinion.

I’ve found that if I eat to late, my stomach is hella messed up in the morning. Ugh!

I can’t sleep if I am hungry. However, I actually am not a late snacker, not in the compulsive sense. If I eat my last meal very late though it doesn’t unsettle my stomach. Everyone is different.

Exercise. So you don’t gain five pounds and everything was in vain. Not exercising is even more dangerous than being slightly overweight.