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You can eat what the hell you like. The key is, don't over do it. If you eat fresh food, don't over indulge in processed stuff like cakes, biscuits, takeaways, stay reasonably active, most people will be just fine.
You can obsess about fat, carbs, protein all you like - all you need balanced nutrition, and activity.
Most people who are overweight, or lardy, are that way because they had eaten too much crappy food for too long. ALl the exercise in the world is a waste if you don't eat properly.
5/2, paleo, Atkins, keto, whatever diet: they are vehicles to sell books and youtube space. IMO its largely all unnecessary.
Go back a few decades and most people weren't overweight. At school in the 70s and 80s the fat kid was a rarity. What's changed - the availability of more cheap easy crap food.
So, I'm not a believer in diet plans tbh. But I am a big believer of eating fresh balanced food, in moderation.
There's nothing wrong with bread, just eat wholemeal, and not at every meal, and not umpteen slices. Nothing wrong with butter - just don't ladle it on. Full fat milk? Complete food, full of everything you need.
Potatoes - marvellous, just don't eat a whole sack.
There are very few "bad" foodstuffs: the problem starts when you eat too much of them.
About 6 years ago I gave up going to the gym and I much prefer old fashioned exercise, running, cycling, press-ups, pull ups etc. I'm also a lot more focussed on fitness rather than body building as I get older as the last thing I want is any extra weight.
A physicist wouldn't use an archaic imperial unit like a Calorie. Use a sensible unit like kJ. / pedant rant
I can relate to a lot of what has been said. I don't have biscuits, because when I do I tend to eat the whole packet.
I don't have sugar in drinks but that is for dental reasons. About 25 years ago, when I went to the dentist after not having been for several years, I had to have 5 fillings. Stopped sugar in coffee and tea overnight. These days I can't abide coffee and tea with sugar - it just tastes sickly.
My normal eating is ok. I don't put on weight, and I might lose weight very slowly. My problem is that as soon as I drink any beer, I just tend to balloon. My wife and daughters like baking as well, so I tend to end up with lots of stuff to eat as an end result of that.
Exercise does make a difference. I could eat a lot more when I was cycling a 15 mile round trip to work than now when I am cycling a 4 mile round trip.
I've either got to find a way of eating slightly less, or upping my exercise a bit.
With eating, I think the whole fault lies in any sort of diet. To keep trim requires proper eating, not a diet (which is time limited), but a change in attitude to food that becomes the routine. Mostly that (all IMO and IME) relies on portion control.
Its easy to slip into eating relatively massive meals, but it doesn't take long to change that back to more reasonable sizied portions.
Not eating between meals too - hard at first, but once you get into it, easy to maintain.
Eating is too often seen as something to fill boredom, or as a pastime. Food is fuel firstly. I love good food as much as anyone, enjoy cooking, eating out etc. But, once it becomes something you simply do when you get a bit bored, or its an accompaniment to say watching TV, or relaxing, then the calories soon rack up. When you start eatin for the sake of it, that is when the gut will start to grow.
If you eat only at mealtimes, 3 a day, good food, you'll be reet.
All this skipping meals - bad news. If you do that, your body shifts into starvation mode and begins to convert ingested calories into fat stores, more than it would usually. You are better off eating regularly and particularly eating a good breakfast. I feel rank if I don't have a good start to the day.
Its basic stuff eating, but these charlatans with their hokum diets are making big money out of peddling malarkey to people.
But basically if your dieting to lose weight you need to burn more calories or kj's than you consume. If you do that you will lose weight. ( unless you have some underlying health problem- thyroid etc ). Simple. It doesn't matter how you do it. It's just really hard to keep it up for long periods.
If your dieting to be healthier, you've got to change your lifestyle permenantly , so you have to find something that works for you, and you can stick at and is healthy.
If you do you'll be fine.
But its not easy, increasing your veg and limiting carbs and junk food is a real challenge.
Do you build/cut along with your weights, when I did body build I used to make a homemade protein shake from a recipe I got from a swimming club:
1 pint semi skimmed milk, 4.5 heaped tablespoons dried skimmed milk powder, 3 heaped teaspoons drinking chocolate:
The "why" of why so many people are over-weight isn't to do with the maths, or misunderstandings of "so many diets" - (I've not seen that many advocated really,. Mostly just an acknowledgement that processed food with its hidden sugars is problematic for weight reduction, and positive suggestions which are variations of eat veg and limit carbs which is what you've suggested too).
It's the second part of what you wrote which is why so many people are over-weight.
How to make behavioural change. Not what to do, but how to do it.
I was reading some studies of cases of bariatric surgery where subjects had lost a ton of weight, were down to a healthy weight, but were still terribly, terribly unhappy. Interesting stuff.
Not body building mate. Just using heavy weights on large muscle groups which is better than cardio for burning fat. Also whole body exercises. You want to burn fat you need to get those big muscles working hard. It also keeps your testosterone levels up and also increases your metabolic rate for longer. Only 35-45 minute sessions too.
To keep on top of my protein intake I use pea protein (about 2 or 3 tbsps) which I put into a smoothie that I have most mornings for my breakfast (with usually nothing else) - spinach, kale, banana, almond milk, chia seeds, bit of cacao, ginger, cucumber, celery, maybe beetroot, maybe a few blueberries, a few cashews or walnuts, couple of spoonfuls of Skyr. That does a couple of breakfasts.
Where someone is very overweight, addressing the weight is sometimes only part of getting them to a place where they can be happy with who they are.
I can go on and on about weight, but I am very aware that for many people its not just a physical problem, its a mental one too, and that is much more difficult to sort out.
But I think you're correct. iirc there had been a sense in which they used to look in the mirror and couldn't really accept themselves "because they were fat" -- except that it wasn't because they were fat. It's just that the fatness was the focus. Once the fat had gone some of them were in a worse pickle because they'd actually lost the focus for their problems. They looked in the mirror, saw the slim version, and still couldn't accept themselves -- and being slim they didn't have the "excuse/reason" of fatness as the cause of their misery.
The thrust of what the psychologists were trying to do from there (again, iirc), was to establish and clarify a values system with the subjects. Basically, there's no point in losing weight if you're not going to do something useful and valuable with your new body.
it is indeed interesting stuff, and also sad in many cases.
My mother in law is over weight by 15-20kgs and lives a life of constant guilt.
Watching what she eats without ever losing weight. Starting diets and never lasting more than 2 or 3 days. Exercising once and then doing none for months.
always miserable about it too.
I don't think she'll ever do it. My wife and I can't help either.
I lost a decent amount of weight; I look better now and I am much fitter, but I am still definitely me with some better habits and smaller trousers. That's fine, but I don't think losing weight has made me happier - nor did I expect it to. Just as there have been times when I've felt short of money and caught myself thinking "If I could only win the lottery..." - but didn't buy a ticket because I recognised that I wasn't telling myself the truth.
I am happy that I did a thing that I decided I would do.
Well do to those giving this a go. I'm trying to lose weight as while I still have a 29" waist I'm heavier than I've ever been at 13stone. I'm finding it generally pretty easy to cut down the food during the day (especially after having eaten everything within sight over Christmas) by eating boring lunch to enable me to have a nice dinner whilst still only being on around 1200 calories per day, more when I go swimming a few times a week to offset kind of thing. Hopefully it works.
I think the key though is more restraint and less deprivation - I understand people saying that sugar free versions of stuff should be better, but let's be honest they taste of sweeteners which are not great and I'm not fully convinced that some of the artificial sweeteners are any better for you than sugar overall. But each to their own I think, some may find it better to have none at all than compromise I guess.
A handy tip I've learnt and followed is to still have the odd treat, say a Dairy Milk bar, but cut it in half. Eat half of it, and put the other half in your drawer or if you're up for the ultimate test of your willpower, in clear view. Eat the rest tomorrow. not only are you still getting your treat, you're cutting your intake in half, and you're getting into the habit of restraint and steering away from portion distortion.
Having said that, what I am struggling with (and would appreciate any tips from you lot) is that whilst I will feel better for this day to day, the fact remains that I do actually enjoy stuffing my face with an entire box of Guylian seashells, and whilst this may be unhelpful to the thread, i'm not 100% sure feeling healthier feels better than those damn fine seashells taste. I'm hoping that restraint pulls me through, it's working so far but I do currently have a HUGE box of Guylian chocs in my living room which if I try to eat one per day will go stale before I finish them (i'd say it was like a2 paper sized box) so that will be my ultimate test of willpower
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I think there's quite a lot of research pointing to the contrary. Your body doesn't go into starvation mode for skipping a meal.
You can go 72 hours without food with your metabolic rate staying the same. I think most diets go against this principle because we're told to eat ourselves thin by the diet industry. But if you don't want breakfast, it won't do any harm if you get your required nutrition at other meal times.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/9B489A336FA5E425637450982AD386AD/S0007114594002151a.pdf/cardiovascular_metabolic_and_hormonal_changes_accompanying_acute_starvation_in_men_and_women.pdf
There are actually quite a few benefits to having periods of 'not eating', decreased insulin levels and improved insulin sensitivity, increase in growth hormone. I don't think as humans we're biologically supposed to be full of food all the time. Obviously fasting with an otherwise health balanced diet is not to be confused with bad eaters who don't get the required nutrition by long term random meal skipping and eating the wrong things.
I agree with almost everything you have said, but fasting can be a way of a life rather than a diet and there are tangible benefits, as long as it is controlled and with an otherwise balanced diet.
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I'm doing the 8/16. It's great, eat for a 16 hour window then sleep for an 8 hour fast.
Eating the same calories predominantly as sugar is going to cause a whole host of medical issues regardless of your weight and compared to things like fat and protein that are filling result in you craving more food shortly afterwards.
I lost a ton of weight mainly by running and trying to cut back sugar. I am also a breakfast hater so I'm glad the "most important meal of the day" thing is largely debunked.