I want a healthy lifestyle

[Banks2334]

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Stop eating fast food, start cycling. Done.

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I can't believe I didn't think of this.

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OK, I'll elaborate. Just like Ron mentioned above with cutting out sweets, just stop eating fast food. After not eating it for a few weeks, you will feel like s*** after eating a Big Mac or whatever. The quickest diet improvement you can make is to cut out the crap. And the cycling will help with the fitness and weight loss. People are always making it more complicated than it needs to be. Just do the simple things and you will see results.

[Robk]

cycling, treadmills, etc. are all well and good. but theyre much harder to get motivated for than competive sports. join a basketball, soccer, football league or 2 with your friends.

[ftball0000]

Ok, here goes nothin

Eat lots of lean meats and vegetables. Limit grains to whole grains, no refined garbage. Cut out sweets, no soda, very little alcohol. All your carbs should come from mainly vegetables, fruits and a few grains. Basically all you should drink is water. You can have other things, but they are generally wasted calories. Take a multivitamin and vitamin c pills (500mg is all you need) As previous posters have said, once you get off of the garbage foods for about 2 weeks, you will lose all desire for them. DO NOT have things with artificial sweeteners, like nutrasweet or splenda, even though they are 0 calories, they f-up your body and will kepp you desiring the bad foods.

As far as exercise, start out slow and gradually build your way up. This goes for weights and cardio. Work out a MAX of 4 days a week, you body needs time to recover and overtraining only hurts you. The main thing to do when exercising is to continously improve, if 1 week you run for 15 minutes each session, next week run for 15 min, 30sec.

You can do it, its not that hard and you will feel great about yourself for doing it. It will be hard work for about a month, then it will become habit and you will enjoy it. Most importantly, don't cheat, because then you are just cheating yourself.

Good Luck and Go For It!!

-Ftball

[Jules22]

stop drinking soda. im not a health fountain or anything, but ive felt much better since i cut it out, plus water is cheaper!

[Ron Burgundy]

Check out CSC's cookoff thread. I made two very yummy and healthy dishes in it.

[LittleOldLady]

If you stop putting salt and butter on potatoes and vegetables, you will discover that they actually have quite interesting tastes of their own. If you do eat packaged, processed foods, check the nutrition facts. Some of the processed foods have horrendous amounts of fat, sugar, and sodium, and some are much better (and this is true even within varieties of the same brand). Fill your cart with fresh fruits and veggies. Now that the veggies are all washed and peeled and ready to eat, there's really no excuse not to eat them. Fresh fruits are also cut up and ready to eat, so you don't have to struggle with trying to cut up pineapples and have a garbage can filled with watermelon rinds. A standard meat portion is 2-4 oz. and for fish it's 6 oz. You don't need more than that--fill the rest of the plate with veggies. Watch the cheese. Most cheeses are both high in fat and high in sodium. If you look around you can find some decent ones which are healthier. There are whole grain cereals around which do not have added sugar--the different grains actually have tastes. Who knew?

BTW you can get the nutrition facts for all the dishes served in fast food and chain restaurants. When you see the facts (calories, carbs, fat, sodium), you won't want to eat that kind of food any more. I mean 2000 calories in those fried onion mums--that's a whole day's worth right there.

[BTirish]

1) Cut all the sugar drinks and crap out of your diet. What everyone else has said is right--if you go without them for just a little while, they really lose their appeal. You don't have to fanatically keep track of the calories you consume, but cut out the snacking and just be mindful to avoid foods that are ridiculously high in calories and fat.

2) Find a form of cardio exercise that you really enjoy. Personally, the only thing that I enjoy is rowing--I hate running and I can only tolerate cycling. One nice thing about rowing is that you can become very serious about it, in a way that you can't with a treadmill or an exercise bike, especially if you own or have access to a Concept II rowing machine. I recently purchased a Concept II Model D rower (Concept II only makes one kind of rower--they're on their fourth model in 25 years--they sell for $850). It's sweet. The built-in monitor has a data card slot so that you can transfer records of all your workouts onto your PC to keep track of your progress. It also just makes for an amazing workout. Best purchase I've made in a long time. But do whatever works for you--I've just never enjoyed the gym or other exercise machines that much, while rowing was fun from the start.

3) Don't feel like you have to change all your habits at once. If you take on too much, it's easy to make excuses for doing poorly in one particular area, and then cumulatively doing everything poorly. As in, "Well, this is all new to me... I did run for 20 minutes earlier. So, it's okay if I get fast food." I would recommend, if it helps to take things a step at a time, to make taking care of your diet the first priority. It's a lot easier to start exercising if you're getting the right kind of nutrition and you're well-hydrated. In the same vein, cut out the kinds of food you shouldn't by groups, over a few weeks, rather than trying to radically alter your diet all at once.

[Blarg]

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One day I decided I was going to stop eating so many sweets. I didn't eat anything with sugar or corn syrup added to it for two weeks. Then one afternoon I was really hungry at work and the only thing I could eat was candy from a vending machine. I took one bite of a Milky Way bar and got sick because it was so sweet.

Try it. It works with salty food too.

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This is true. I rarely use salt or sugar, and so sugar hits me like a brick and food easily tastes very salty to me now. I used to be able to pile on the salt till my food was practically crunchy without feeling it was too salty, and I could gobble down candy bars no problem. No more.

This is one reason why eating healthier actually gets a lot easier over time -- you really stop wanting to eat the stuff you're skipping.

[Colonel Kataffy]

If you want to get healthy, start with this:

[Tron]

Where do you live? If you are in somewhat of a major city, find some new-age, hipster gym that has spinning classes. They are a hell of a workout and they will help get you prepared for your cycling trip. Plus, and this is a large benefit, there will be TONS of attractive, young women. Pay in advance so you're stuck with the classes.

If you happen to be in L.A., I can recommend a gym.