Weight

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Okay, so I need some help. I have gained almost 40 pounds in 9 months and I barely eat. I eat maybe a bagel for breakfast, no lunch, just small snacks, and then a small dinner. I walk about 4 miles a day, and go to the gym for at least an hour two days a week. I try to eat healthy as much as I can, but it is really hard with my fiancée because he doesn't like healthy food and I cook for us everyday. I went to the doctor and they said all my blood work was normal. Somehow, I don't think that's right. Now, I don't know what to do. Does anyone have and good gym workout plans that are proven to loose weight? Like on the elliptical? Any good (and cheap) healthy food recipes?
Thanks

These are your options:

1) Consult another doctor for a second opinion.

2) Eat less (cut out those "little snacks"), and exercise more (run those four miles, and hit the gym no less than 3 times a week).

3) Do nothing and pretend that the cause is beyond your control.

Your diet sounds like a major problem.

A bagel for breakfast and not much else is bad because it's almost entirely carbohydrates and no protein or fat (I don't know what the snacks you're eating but I can imagine things like chips or crackers). Additionally it sounds like you're not consuming enough calories in general

It sounds like you're operating on close to a starvation diet. Because we've evolved as animals that would not always be able to eat, our bodies will react to periods where we don't eat enough by becoming more efficient at turning food into energy and consequently storing fat . Your metabolism adjusts based on your diet.

Adding cardio to a diet such as yours would likely just exacerbate the fact that your body is putting on more fat with not much food. If it got used to the exercise and you suddenly stopped, it would still be causing you to put on fat and you would probably gain a lot of weight over a short period of time.

That's why you hear about people who went on a diet, lost a bit of weight, gave up the diet, then gained back more than they started with.

If you very gradually started adding calories to your diet day by day, you might not really gain any more weight. If you immediately start eating a lot more, obviously you would gain a lot more weight before you metabolism adapts so if you want to fix this, it will be a slow and gradual process. sorry if you expected immediate results.

Gradually switch to higher calorie diet mainly of protein and also some fats (that you'd find in tuna or salmon or almonds) (obviously don't cut out the carbohydrates completely but do the opposite of what you're doing now).

While "eat less, exercise more" sounds good in theory and is pretty much true on a simple level, the body is much more complicated and there are many factors at play governed by your metabolism. It's also a little bit insane to say that you should do more than 4 hours of exercise a day (she walks for 4 hours a day. are you saying she should do more? running for four hours a day would be insane. High intensity interval training is the answer. you can do 15 minutes of it a day and it'll benefit you more than the walking or the running).

If all you're doing is cardio, that's a problem too. I would focus on muscle building instead of cardio because muscles burn energy even when you're asleep. .

reversing your diet would be better.
eating almost nothing and substituting snacks makes you burn almost nothing, so everything you eat gets instantly turned into fat.

instead, eat more often, but tiny portions. try eating 30-40 grams of (unsalted) peanuts every hour. this keeps your metabolism active which makes you burn your energy.
aside from these, have 'normal' breakfast and dinner (healthy and 1/2-2/3s of a portion, but leave out the potato/pasta/rice half of the days), keeping up with the nuts starting from breakfast all the way untill you go to sleep.

Assuming you have destinations or routes in mind, buy and/or enjoy a really nice bike. Yes cycling is mostly about the rider but the right machine always provides entertainment along with motivation. Drink tea to keep stress down/metabolic rates up and balance your diet gradually; I eat anything I want in between seeking out lots of veggies. Sometimes I eat 100% healthy and sometimes I'm closer to 40% but with enough time outside I feel all the positives of being a health nut without the rigorous commitment.

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