Go to a nutritionist and join the YMCA. Some YMCAs have free nutritionists on staff and nurses for that matter and all kind of classes and programs. Personally I think the YMCA is better than the gym. It's a community thing. The first of the year is the best time to join. You won't have to pay a joining fee and it's cheaper.

You might met a girl at the YMCA. So you might get lucky. And you will be killing three birds with one stone.

I lost 26 pound in a year because i ballooned up to about 240 lbs. Now i eat 4 times a day. breakfast, lunch and dinner and for a snack Cheerios or healthy choice cereal. The thing is i only eat a small portions of food about the size of my fist. No second helpings ... well once in a while. I avoid sodas and sugary foods. I'm 6'2'' 224 lbs. I went to a nutritionist and we went over all the food groups and what should and should not be eaten to maintain a healthy life style. As we get older we cant digest the fatty foods like we did when we were younger, it turn to flab.

I don't eat subs and take out foods daily except for once a week sometimes i treat myself to a 8" steak sub.
It's not only what you eat it's how much you eat eating twice a day and having a heavy portions will not work to lose weight.

Also never eat and then take a nap or go to sleep right afterwords. Thats a big no, no. After you eat you should move about for at least 20 minutes. It aids in digestion and burns some of the calories. When trying to lose weight you must stick to a strict regime until you get your weight down and stay that way. Good luck

Using Google look for lists of what some call:

Negative Calorie Foods

Also look for the:

Glycemic Index

Next drink a lot of pure water everyday

and also do aerobic exercises.

For example little by little get used to walking and doing breathing exercises.
Deep abdominal breathing is said to be good for you.
Using Google look for:
aerobic exercise
Deep abdominal breathing
-------
http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100138677

I think daily physcial activity has a lot to do with a persons weight . All depends on the type of work you do also. The more physcial the job the better chances of maintaining your weight.
My work requires physcial activity all day long. Walking , lifting , up and down ladders. Working the muscles all day.
I am 6'1 225 lbs But my weight is proportionatly balanced from head to toe. A mean machine LOL.
Oh I eat any type of food when I want it. Never had to worry about dieting all my life.

I have been watching a few episodes of the Biggest Loser show.
Their thing there is what food you consume but their thing also is a lot of physical activity to go along with it.

I had two friends that lost a lot of weight eating a cabbage soup diet. It's a tasty meal, easy to fix, affordable, and always available.

thank you guys...Is great to hear support...I think from now on i am going to eat small portion meals the size of my fist, and even though i can run 18 minutes, i am going to run for 10 minutes twice a day until i get to enjoy it...I also going to eat breakfast everyday, something i never do...Last night when i wrote this blog i was kind of discouraged...

It's not rally how often you eat, Pumpi, but what you eat and and how your body assimilates the calories. In other words, if you ate one meal late at night and went right to bed, you would not burn the calories as quickly as if you ate a good breakfast and exercised. Eating smaller portions more often is better than eating 2 big meals.

Regarding the sugar content, processed sugar is addictive so, when we get older, our body craves it. You need to adjust your taste buds and that might mean putting up with a little bland food for a while. In Panama I assume they have Splenda or other forms for sucralose. There is a little controversy about this product however, just like there was about saccharin in the past. Molasses is very sweet and is also very nutritional. Processed sugar is void of any nutritional value. Blackstrap molasses takes getting used to, but it also will give you lots of energy. Just be careful - it also works as a colon cleanser (which is good) but like magnesium, you need to be aware of its effects.

Without getting too personal, you mentioned in other posts/blogs that you have some personal issues for which you've been diagnosed. Medication can change your body's metabolism and make you gain weight. My sister was a stick and gained 50 pounds after taking medication & the steroids for her asthma puffed up her face.   You should ask your doctor about that.

You mentioned "I don't have sex" or I wouldn't bring it up (no pun intended) but that won't make you gain weight and might solve some of your problems. I'm not saying to go out and find a lover & all of your problems will go away. I am saying that, if you are lonely, you might tend to eat more or be more lethargic.

Running - don't do it unless you know you are in good physiological condition (heart, blood pressure) It's a proven fact that walking briskly is just as therapeutic as running. It will get your heart beating and provide good cardiovascular exercise, but exerting yourself if you are very overweight isn't safe. Lifting weights might make you stronger and will turn fat into muscle, but won't necessarily take off the pounds.

Last of all, no matter what people tell you, our genetic makeup often determines what we are going to look like. Were your parents heavy people? So first you need to look in the mirror and decide that no matter what you look like, you love yourself just the way you are. Then comes the dieting. It's not good to be fat of course, since it's unhealthful. But being thin doesn't automatically guarantee happiness. There are people who spend tens of thousands going to a plastic surgeon getting liposuction, chin tucks, tummy tucks, etc., and they're still miserable.

Good luck and smile.

I did it again- started out with a typo (rally instead of really) I also wrote twice as much as I thought. Sorry. Wish we could edit blog entries. Well, hope I contributed something useful. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

I am not going to say my real age for fear that someone out there could be lurking to steal my identity...But the great thing the encouraging news is that i am less than 30 years old and i have sort of speak 10 years to lose all this weight (let's say from 30 to 40)....My real mom is skinnny, my dad is a little but jut a little over his ideal weight but you can't notice it...And EVEN, if my parents were big i REFUSE to be like them..I don't believe in destiny...Good thing i have a threadmill were i reside...
about me not having sex, i meant that so far i have not succumb to man's vices...That's what i meant...I think a person will gain weight whether he has a woman or not...

The reason i haven't had sex is because i don't want to have sex with a person i will not want a kid from...I always ask myself will you feel comfortable having a kid with this person and raising him as mother and father, that's why i haven't had sex..Not only that but I want to help change the world more than i am worry about fatherhood...This is how i see it...If you have kids and continue to have kids your freedom is compromise and you will not have opportunity to help out...
scenario: if you have 3 kids and you go to work from 6 in the morning to 5pm in the afternoon that leaves you with 1 hour to get home and at night you have to take care of the kids...So how are you going to contribute to change the world? On your 1 day a week off? I don't think so, because on your 1 day of the week that you have off you are going to spend it at home with the family and friends...That's how i view things...

hard life.your correct.ironic thing is you described me.believe me it isn't easy working from 6p until 5 in the morning then on both days off your kids are screaming and raising hell.i love 'em and i wouldn't trade it but yeah the nerves can get a little raw and the paycheck is already spent.be careful with sex too.i hit the wrong foxtrap one time and um lets just say the dr. stuck a huge needle in the place where i pee and it hurt like no tomorrow.taught me about trying to be a playboy,lol.i'll never ever be with another female again except my girlfriend.yep these vices and stuff can hurt you.only vices i have now is drinking caffeine like a fish and popping painkllers for a bad back.thank goodness i don't drink or smoke anymore and i haven't in seven years.and whatever you do stay the hell away from drugs.i almost lost my life and pretty much everything a decade ago to marijuana and cocaine so stay the hell away from it and don't even think about trying.yep vices can hurt you but you can overcome.best thing to do is don't even start in the first place.lottomike is probably ten years older than you and passing on wise advice.enjoy your life and beware of the pitfalls....

the doctor can prescribe you something to help with metabolism.

Pumpi,

- Religiously limit yourself to 1500 calories a day

- Eliminate as much fat as humanly possible from your diet (for example, skim milk only, no beef or pork, no fried foods, etc.)

- Exercise like you have been doing

- Limit your diet to fruit, vegetables, rice, fish, cereals and eat as much of these things as you want.

- No alcohol

My son lost about 100 lbs. doing this over a period of 1 1/2 years. Good luck with your goals.

Forgot to include, no sugar or any kind of pop too often...drink water, home made iced tea and things like that.

Pumpi, there are a lot of ways to make love like taking a walk on the beach or playing in the snow or eating a pizza & watching a movie together are ways to enjoy being with someone.

I was only saying that it sometimes helps to have support when you are going through a difficult time.   Good luck and have a wonderful weekend.

Hi Pumpi.

You mentioned above that you will go back to eating salads in December. You might want to try increasing the amount of greens far and above what you think is possible for a human to eat. If you notice the biggest mammals on the face of the earth are those that eat greens, so its perfectly feasible for you to eat greens and get a big part of your nutrition from it. Our closest relatives the bonobos, chimpanzees and some of the other primates consume 75% greens for their nutrition requirement. Look at the gorilla - same thing. The biggest difference between their eating and when we eat greens is the quantity and the chewing.
The primates eat pounds of greens a day. If you want better health eating greens you have to eat about 1 to 2 pounds daily. I know that sounds like a lot, its just that we are not used to it, but if you try it you will see a difference. Besides the oil, salads give you a feeling a satiety because of the fiber in the salad which helps to give it its volume. Their are a lot of fiber-less foods out there that are easy to over-eat because of their lack of volume.

When you eat the greens you have to masticate or chew thoroughly. I'm not saying to chew like a madman, but don't just chew about ten times and swallow. The more you chew, the more nutrients you will extract. Just like the animals do. Just follow their natural intelligence. Salads or rather greens have their nutrients locked into the fiber, so you have to chew thoroughly to get them out. If you don't, it could promote nutritional deficiencies if greens are the main foods you want to eat.

Be careful of dosing your salads with oil. There is tendency to do that to help make it more filling. What then happens is that most of the calories you will consume from that salad will come from the oil. The body has a hard time breaking down that pure liquid oil without the fiber or its other constituents. Basically in this form the oil is concentrated. Too much oil in one sitting will sit in your blood and then lymphatic system for about 12 hours. This can throw your blood sugar off. Bottom line is that you will store the oil as fat. Its better to gently blend an avocado and squeeze and orange or lemon as your salad dressing or use no oil at oil. if you use no oil, and you are just going to eat LEAFY GREENS, you can blend some strawberries, or blueberries, and pour it over you greens. Remember that leafy greens go with everything and it will not clash with the fruit. You can eat any leafy greens with fruit for that matter and it will not clash. Just don't eat oil with the fruit. It can throw the blood sugar off.

What I do is to make a green smoothie. Go to www.rawfamily.com for further info you want be disappointed. In a crude nutshell, a green smoothies when you use a high-speed blender to blend leafy greens and fruits.
It won't taste nasty because the fruits will a mildly or strongly sweet taste to your greens The blended greens breaks will break open the fiber and release more of it nutrients than you could ever get through chewing. Blending a half a pound to a pound of greens per day will super-saturate your body with nutrients and you will be fed at the cellular level. You will see changes in your skin, hair, energy levels, and etc...after doing this for a week. As a side note, many people do this green smoothie thing and experience loads of changes, I can vouch for it. People like Anthony Robbins, and even Montel Williams drinks it throughout the day for his multiple sclerosis.
Again, the greens and fruits won't clash as long as its leafy greens. The more you do the better you will get at making them. You can take a mango, a banana or 2, a big handful of strawberries, or a big handful of blueberries, and then take handful of greens like lambsquarters, kale, romaine lettuce, spinach, and etc...and put them into the blender. Blend until its as smooth as you like without blending for too long, because you don't want the nutrients in the smoothie to oxidize too much and degrade. Again go to www.rawfamily.com for loads of more recipes.

As far as exercising - do some sustained deep breathing throughout the day. You deep breathe when you do aerobic exercise, so by just by deep breathing preferably outside, you will obtain the benefits of taking the oxygen deeper than you normally do without the joint and pounding issues that come with regular aerobics.
Deep breathing has been shown to help significantly decrease weight so please take it seriously.
Lifting weights is fine, but I would recommend you go to www.matturey.com, and www.eddiebaran.com for more functional body weight exercises. I promise you those exercises will stoke your metabolism, help you lose weight, and get you stronger than weights ever could.

This is the second part:

For some movement try to get access to a rebounder or mini-trampoline, and start jumping on it to your favorite tunes. If you can rebound 4 to 5 days a weeks you will get tremendous cardiovascular benefit along with helping with the weight loss. The next best thing is to power-walk instead of running. I won't go into the biology of what happens to the body under sustained running, but I would just recommend that you power-walk instead. Learn power-walking under someone competent. Powerwalking is not just walking normally at a fast pace. The arms, hips, and feet have to move in a particular way. If you do it properly it will give yo a full body workout. It can be very, very strenuous but with 10X the benefit of running and without the pounding to the body. If you still want to run, do some interval running with periods of intense running like for an all-out run for 1 minute followed by a 2 or 3 walking-rest. You can do this for ten minutes and that's it. later in the day you can do it again. The shorter duration of aerobic training, but reasonably increased intensity has been shown to benefit more than the endurance running. I also run for endurance from time to time, but if you do that you have to compensate for it in the repair department. I won't go into that now.

One other necessity for weight loss is proper and Deep Restorative Sleep. About 6 hours after sleep you start to peak in your melatonin secretion. Melatonin is a hormone that you secrete form your pineal gland that helps you to sleep, and provides repair and protection to different organs in the body. protects from cancer, free radicals, etc..So to get the full blast of that melatonin you have to sleep past 6 hours in a pitch black room. Any light perceived by anywhere on the body skin cell's will shut melatonin production down. The body perceives a crack of light as daylight and you won't be able to sleep deeply. That's why is having the very bright lights on at night can be a deterrent form sleeping on time and well. Also it stimulates appetite. Its stimulates the natural biological mandate to load up on carbohydrates. I won't go into it now, but the artificial light(sun) increases the tendency is to overeat at night. So dimming the lights will help you sleep a little sooner. Computers, and tv's, although fun to use, will also keep you awake. Its been proven that sleeping before 12 AM, or ideally at least 2 hours before helps to give you deeper sleep and better bodily repair than if you slept after at 12 AM for the same amount of time. Also its been shown that you lose more weight sleeping earlier than later.

So Sleeping deeply in a pitch black room, eating lots more produce and masticating thoroughly with the help of blending if possible, moving your bowels each day as many times as you eat in a day, or at least in copious amounts, getting good sunlight at least 45 minutes a day preferably before 10 AM or after 4 PM or at dawn or at sunset, drinking 2 liters of water a day, consciously deep breathing throughout the day along with functional bodyweight exercises will help to promote sustained weight loss.

I also would not worry too much about the genetics. Its been show that the environment or rather lifestyle factors are the real maestros in biological functioning because they are the ones to really turn-off and turn-on the genes. That's why there have been quite a few studies done of twins who lived apart while growing up, and one gets cancer or a certain disease, and the other doesn't, even though both have the genetic marker for that particular disease. its the environment the manipulates the expression of the genes. This is the new science called epi-genetics. So in essence, genetics generally accounts for a 5% window in your propensity to get a certain disease. Lifestyle accounts for 95%. its also been shown that you can OVERCOME many of your genetic predispositions in getting certain diseases if you overcompensate and supersaturate your body with the things it needs to detoxify, repair and rebuild itself.

All in all I would say focus on copious vegetables, some fruits, few nuts, and seeds. Use your imagination to make it palatable for yourself. Eating doesn't have too be healthy and boring.

To help you along, get Joel Furman's EAT TO LIVE. His website is www.drfuhrman.com. Or you can go to the bookstore of course and sit there and read and take notes. Even though, I'm a little more extreme than what the book describes, I love Dr. Furman's integrity, and good research along with a wonderful, easy variety filled weight-reducing eating plan. Its very normal, balanced and not extreme. He's helped thousands of people.

Lastly, take a tai chi, yoga, meditation course or just wake in nature and deep breathe that will help to distress. Stress interferes with biological function
can make you put on weight. Emotional Stress, mental and stress and dietary stress all promote a toxic body. Crudely put, the body doesn't want those toxins coming near the internal organs, which it will do anything to protect, so it creates fat to hold those toxins at bay near the extremities.
One of the best ways of dealing with stress is to laugh. Even when you don't feel like it. rent a comedy a few times a week and laugh. Laugh in the morning and at night. This laughing also helps to increase metabolism and stimulate weight loss. Its a very powerful tool because the body thinks you are laughing even when you are faking. And when you laugh, you belly laughs, your heart laughs, your eyes laugh, every cell in body literally laughs. Any emotion or mood you feel your whole body also feels it. Scientists say, a baby laughs many times a day, and adults generally laughs 0 - 2 times a day. They also say that the tears of laughter are chemically different than the tears of sadness. Quite glaring isn't it? So laugh with abandon and know that its truly the body's favorite and best medicine. And if you don't feel like laughing, just smile. It may sound a little out there, but smile to each one of your organs, and especially your heart. That will also help a whole lot.

Peace.