Losing Weight

I'm also trying to lose weight.  I eat fish and chicken instead of red meat and I stay away from pop.  I'm also cutting down on my junk food.

I used to find it difficult to lose weight, and the only thing that worked for me was keeping portions of bread, potatoes & rice small, avoiding pies, pizza, cakes & biscuits and increasing fibre. Calorie counting didn't work as I became obsessed with the numbers and it was too exhausting.

Now I'm post menopausal I seem to stay at a healthy weight without trying, however I'm still in the habit of only having one slice of bread a day, a small portion of potato or rice at dinner and high fibre muesli for breakfast. 

I understand that eating healthily can be expensive, but most supermarkets have cheap fresh or frozen veg, bananas and salad tomatoes are fairly inexpensive, and if you buy the cheap mince you can dry fry it in a non stick pan and then pour off the fat, or get cheap chicken portions and roast in the oven.

You and your mum could also get one of those step counters and have a walk together each day.

I wish you luck in finding something that works for you.

Hi Robert124,

Thank you for contributing to this post.  Please be careful not to breach rule 6 and offer medical advice.

Many thanks

Suzanne Mod

I've been working hard to keep myself in shape lately, too, so, I  have a couple tips, I guess.

1. Keep an eye on how much calories your food has

2. Be persistent with exercise and keep in mind results aren't instant. Eventually, you'll thank yourself for going the distance and sticking with it.

It is hard when you have Afrid as I have, to eat healthy. I cycle six days a week and can eat up to 6000 calories a day and yet still lose weight. That was for a tough 80 mile ride. I am not suggesting you ride that sort of mileage. Going to the gym is great but it is not so easy as I have read many accounts of autistics struggling to use them. I love being out on the open roads and meeting others and enjoying coffee and cake at a cafe, all part of the fun. Plus I burn it off on the ride home. I have dropped down to 54 kilos which was worrying as I lacked energy but was still eating. I am now at 60 kilos and plan to drop to 57 ideally.    

It is hard to pick good food as many products advertise as low fat but then add huge amounts of sugar to make up for it, yoghurts are a classic example of this. I do feel you are being hard on yourself, comparing with others on here as we all different. It has taken me decades to find foods I like and am now happy in my choices. I hope you find food you enjoy.

AmyLR94 said:

After my posting on Facebook groups a lot of people said I should try calorie deficit. I have no idea where to start with that even though people have already explained things to me.

A great place to start is to keep a diary of exactly what you eat every day. Every thing you eat or drink goes into this (you need to be honest and consistent) and it will quickly get you into the habit of measuring what you consume.

With a little reasearch you can start to calculate the calories in each of these foods and every time you eat something you can add it on to see just how much you really do eat. Everyone I know who tried this quickly saw they were mistaken in how much they thought they were eating.

This shows you that current state of your diet and lets you understand when the odd binge has influenced any weight gain. I found it was a good incentive to improve my discipline in avoiding these excesses.

You can then re-read some of the advice or, better still, speak to a dietician and get a plan that can include the foods you like to eat, just in portion sizes that have the number of calories you need for your planned weight loss.

We cannot offer explicit dietary advice but the dietician should be able to give a lot of pointers to get you on track.

The rest of it is down to having discipline and managing impulses to break the diet. Personally I found it easier after the first week and a bit then it was a case of avoiding temptations and distracting myself when I started to think about naughty foods.

I was able to combine exercise with the diet to accellerate the weight loss and thinking about how much exercise it took to burn off my favourite biscuit or chocolate bar was a strong motivator to avoid them.

When a treat was on the schedule I kept the size small and took time to really savour it so it was such a high point that it made me want to earn the next one.

I dropped from around 200lbs to 150 using this method but also grew a lot of muscle through exercise and gained a load of stamina.

That was just my experience - I do recommend you get some professional advice on how to plan it to suit your own needs.

This works for me.  Will power and counting calories. 

You need 2000 calories a day to keep a steady weight, 1800 and under and you will lose weight.  Try to keep above 1500 to avoid illness and starvation.  Several days between 1500 and 1800 and you will see a difference on the scales.