Re low cal dinners: I believe in keeping it simple. I try to make one half of my dinner plate vegetables, prepared in healthy ways. Usually that means salad plus one other vegetable, or sometimes it's an extra big portion of the vegetable. I make about one fourth of my plate lean protein, like chicken, turkey, or fish, prepared in a healthy low fat way, in a portion of around a half of a pound or a little less. The other fourth of my plate is about a half of a cup of some kind of whole grain or whole wheat starch - brown rice, whole wheat pasta, or one slice of whole wheat toast. I try new recipes for chicken and turkey all of the time to keep things interesting. My husband cooks fish for us on the grill; I never seem to get bored with it, so I haven't investigated fish recipes much. About once a week my half cup of starch at dinner is sweet potatoes. My husband -- who is underweight and has trouble keeping weight on, the lucky dog -- eats the same things I eat - he just eats much bigger portions of protein and starch, and usually a somewhat smaller portion of vegetables. He also puts butter on his vegetables and his starch, while I don't.

On low impact exercise, I'm a big believer in walking.

On snack food, I go for vegetables. My favorites are celery, carrots, cucumbers, and cherry tomotoes. I also like lightly salted almonds, and I keep the portion small, like 20 nuts. (Yes, I actually count them out. It's the only way I can make sure I don't go overboard.) If I am really hungry I might have one third or one half of a cup of cottage cheese, or some low fat cheese (string or Laughing Cow), or half of an avocado.

Best of luck with it. A lot of us who never succeeded with "diets" have succeeded in making "lifestyle changes." You might think about what you are doing in those terms, since "diets" are temporary and easy to discard, but lifestyle changes are forever.

Hello June! I wish you all the best in your journey! First tip, don't consider it a diet...consider it a new, healthy way of eating. Calories are good to count, but something could be low calorie, and high in fats or sugars. I have had good luck with eliminating (for the most part) white flour, cutting sugars and fats. Dinners that you can make might be something like fish or chicken, brown rice, and a veggie. As far as snacks go, I like the Skinny Pop, low calorie, low fat popcorn. Also things like pretzels, greek yogurt, fruit, etc. If there is something naughty, like cake, or pie that I REALLY want, I get a small medicine cup, and stuff it with what I am craving, and when it's gone, I am done. That way, you aren't depriving yourself, yet you have a handle on portion control. Also, don't beat yourself up if you stray from your new eating plan. It's not easy.

I think any kind of exercise is helpful.

Wishing you the best! :)

Have you considered the e-cigarettes? They are supposed to be a lot easier on the lungs but like smoking and you still get all the stuff you are addicted to. I wish they had been around when I quit years ago.

As far as food goes, try cooking without oil. Water is a good way to saute most veggies. Try replacing meat dishes a couple times a week with things that have beans. Beans are great for your heart, have as much protein as meat, and are much more filling not to mention economical. A really, really big thing, and I cannot stress this enough, is watch what calories you are drinking. 100% juice may sound like a good idea but it's a lot of calories. Sodas are bad on multiple levels, mostly sugar and sodium plus they cause serious bloating. Be careful with smoothies and coffee as both can be good for you but they also can be serious calorie traps if you aren't making them yourself. For snacks, we like fruits, chips and salsa, wheat thins and hummus (I make it myself so it's low fat, I use little to no olive oil, a dash of sesame oil for flavor and then smooth it out by gradually adding water until I like the texture), air popped popcorn with just a spritz of butter spray, pretzels and little Laughing cow cheese.

For exercises, I would say just get some light hand weights to start working on your upper body. You can find different exercises for using them all over the web. My sister in law is a personal trainer and teaches a bunch of different fitness classes and she told me to go to shape.com because they have great tutorials and slideshows showing you what to do. It's pretty handy. So between light weights and biking that will get you a good start. That's what I've done to start and I've lost 30 pounds since the end of November. During January I started adding in some ab exercises and some heavier weights. This week I started working on a different cardio machine.

You'll get it figured out. The biggest piece of advice I can give you is don't try to change too much at once. That makes things so much harder to keep up. Good luck!

This is not directly answering any of your three questions so feel free to ignore this, it's just an aside :) I found counting calories really tedious, so I started keeping track of food groups instead and was able to keep with it. I looked on choosemyplate.gov to find out how many servings of each kind of food I should be eating. Then I found out how many servings of protein, fat, etc. were in the foods I ate most often. I made a chart on the wall and throughout the day I just put a number of servings in the appropriate food group box. At the end of the day I add them up and try to have them sum to the appropriate number of servings. Counting calories might work better for you, but this is just an alternative in case you're lazy like me and it's easier for you. Best of luck!

I did not like the idea of dieting, but was able to get behind the concept of lifestyle change. I realized that there were 3 different lifestyles that I needed to be aware of: the one that got me overweight in the first place, the one that will get me back to a healthy weight, and the one that will keep me at a healthy weight.

I realize that these styles are not 100% rigidly defined, and that helps.

If you look at it as an overall change to a more healthy lifestyle that may help. Exercise is a big part of losing weight and keeping it off. Since smoking makes exercise harder, you might want to add tapering off cigarettes as part of your lifestyle change.

I went with portion control, and bought some small dinner plates. I try to NOT have seconds, and I focus on healthy snacks. I'm not perfect in any of this, but these general things have worked well for me.

Welcome to the group, and I hope you find what works best for you!

I too have made what I eat a lifestyle change in that I have chosen the diet that I can live with and can actually enjoy and not feel deprived - I no longer look for the food or pill or diet that will give me wonderful weight losses any more but what I like to eat. The same with exercise, I don't enjoy it! But I don't mind walking or swimming so now every day that is what I do and after slightly more than a month my exercise has become a question of not how can I avoid it but when do I do it during my day, a new habit takes 21 days to form.