i aam going on a diet

I feel partly responsible for this puttting up the body mass index calculation.

• go running once a week just til your pretty out of breath (like you remember from running round the park as a kid)
• choose a habitual snack (say crisps/chocolate) and every time you want it, have an apple/banana/orange instead.

I'm 1.92m (6'4'') and 85kg (13 stone 5 lb) and set out to lose 13 kg three years ago, as I was out of shape at 15 stone 4 lb. I didn't look *fat*, but certainly felt heavy and sluggish. I was already playing a fair bit of soccer, but eating too much, so I cut down across the board by having smaller portions of everything and no chocolate, biscuits etc. At the same time I started running. First I went for 20 minutes at a time, 3 times a week, which is really all you need to do to start losing weight. If possible build it up to 4 x 20 minutes or 3 x 30. Doing this I lost the weight in about 10 weeks. The feeling of hunger wears off after about a week and you can blunt it by drinking more water.

I kept up the running, and I've stepped up the frequency and distances so that I can run 10 miles without any problem. I do 4 miles most lunchtimes in the week. That's not for everybody, but it means that I can eat and drink anything I like, in just about any quantities.

If you're going to run though - WATCH YOUR KNEES!! Take it easy if you feel pain around the knee and get some decent running shoes to absorb the shock.

It's not a question of recontextualising your mindset, so much as a question of health. Mental Health and Physical Health are so tied up in one another, you cannot separate them. Even if you don't become a skinny minx through exercise, it will stimulate the production of serotonin, which will just make you feel better in general, and therefore feel more loving towards yourself.

That's my answer and I'm sticking to it. It works for me.

Yes, I know it's wrong to discriminate against fat people (and I can say this because I *AM* one) but there is a pervasive sense that if you are fat, it is somehow through lack of willpower, or more commonly laziness. Yes, this is a fallacy, and there are lots of people who are obese through no reason of their own. *BUT* there are enough people who ARE obese through their own laziness, lack of willpower and common or garden IGNORANCE about plain simple nutrition.

Blah blah blah blah blah. I know this is making me no friends, and just confirming enemies, but I've been average weight, and I've been fucking fat. There's nothing more annoying than an reformed smoker or reformed alcoholic, and weightgain police are just as evil.

The 'diet coke' thing is ludicrous but on the other hand when you drink as much fat coke as me you can't help but feel it would make some difference. I lost half a stone when I went veggie for a month in April and felt great (though had terrible heartburn) but it's too easy to slip back. I need some kind of willpower pill.

Seven stone/100 lbs for someone of my build and height is *perfect*. My waist is tiny and the weight goes to one place only, ie. below the waist. It means that I have to have all waistbands tailored and can never find my proportions reflected in the clothes on the rack, and it looks ridiculous because I am small on top if I become LARGER on the bottom. So if I gain half a stone/seven lbs. my body weight rises by seven per cent, too much, bleaurgh.

Everyone wonders why I can't show willpower but they are confusing this quality with STUBBORN, which I've got in spades.

From does exercise make us thinner?:
dieters who restrict carbohydrates but not calories invariably lose more weight than dieters who restrict calories but not necessarily carbohydrates. Put simply, it’s quite possible that the foods -- potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, pastries, sweets, soda, and beer -- that our parents always thought were fattening (back when the medical specialists treating obesity believed that exercise made us hungry) really are fattening.
Dammit, one of potatoes, pasta, rice or bread are part of almost every meal I eat.

not beer?

god if I drank beer as much as I eat bread and potatoes I'd be a fat, tall shane macgowan

In fact, I've just remembered I had what is basically a fried potato sandwich for breakfast today.

hey you know what other than exercise makes me hungry? sitting on my ass for a few hours.

e was “short, fat, and bald” when he started running in his thirties and he is short, fatter, and balder now, at age 68. In the intervening years, he estimates, he has run close to 80,000 miles and gained about 30 pounds.

"in his thirties" - you think maybe the dude might have started too late? might have "estimate"d incorrectly? i'll see your highly significant 30 pounds over, you know, forty years, and raise you negative 20 pounds in 9 months running at best a handful of miles in a week.

these studies are stupid if only because they fail to differentiate b/w the varieties of carbohydrates we /should/ eat, and those that people /do/ eat.

There's a theory we don't need carbs at all. I'm very suspicious of it, despite the fact that for an extremely long time I didn't eat carbs (except maybe once a week). So who knows, maybe I should go back to that soopahdoopah healthy diet once I deliver our baby? That said, I findi t hard dieting when I'm in a relationship. :-(

i wouldn't give up or severely restrict carbs anyway, it would have too much effect on my quality of life and make me too picky an eater. i eat everything and love it. lots of people manage to be in good health and great shape and still eat pasta. so whatever.

(i am way healthier than when i posted here 6 years ago though, despite being way fatter as well. yay high school is over!)

Remy makes a good point that you need to differentiate between your carbohydrate sources. Go for brown rice and brown bread over the white versions, cos the higher fibre content means they'll fill you up more, and also because they release their sugars more slowly, you're less likely to store the energy as fat.

so, if i cut out potatoes, pasta, rice, WHAT do i eat for dinner?

i cook most of what i eat myself, and always with one of the above as a side. this doesn't seem to be a problem, as long as i keep an eye on the portion size.

cake, biscuits and ice-cream are the real problem.

i must try running, but, as above, there aren't that many places near me to do that with impunity from either traffic or possible violence.

YouGov poll says that people in the UK would rather die than do any exercise:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6994632.stm

It's correct, actually. The corpses piling up around the six or so gyms I can think of within a one minute radius are testament to that. YouGov is the new Wikipedia!

Must smell sort of funny surely?

That's the stink of the no-carbers manky ketone addled breath innit amiRITE!

have started first diet ever in a bid to lose about 2 or 3 stone. if i keep to around 1500 calories per day (5'9, 13st) with exercise 3x week, how fast will the flab drop? should i be eating fewer calories? fat consumption per day is around 20g or so. is this healthy even?

am managing to cope with new way of thinking about food (as a kind of points system) and chucked all bad stuff away and bought only veg, fruit, lean meat, low cal hot chocs, etc. hoping i can stick to this permanently, as a way of life. not planning to be too strict, ie still eat out on special occasions, still drink at w/e.

have heard horror stories about people eating around same number of calories, working out in the gym and not losing anything because their body has kicked into 'starvation mode' - and once she started eating more the weightloss started. what are the factors for this to happen?

(sorry if this isn't appropriate for this thread! if not, is there a rolling diet chit chat advice thread?)

that sounds like not enough calories? i'd say eat normally (but healthy foodz) and exercise more, if you can (which will make you eat less anyway). that's just me, though, i don't really know.

Nathalie, are you also breast-feeding? I think that makes a big difference!

Laurel, I realize that but the main "culprit" was cookies, sprite and large portions of food. Breastfeeding is my fitness routine. My husband dropped the same amount and, as far as I know, he's not breastfeeding. ;-)

There's no risk in losing that much IF you eat very healthily. I dropped all the crap stuff - well, most of it anyway - and eat more bread'n'food. I know that if you crash diet, which I don't, it can be risky. But I am seeing a dietician and she said it was a big amount but, after checking my food diary, it actually meant I was eating way too much fat 'n' sugar.

Also, the breastfeeding-weight loss thing is mainly in the first weeks. Elisabeth is already four months, so the effect is still there but much less than before. Of course I do realize that as soon as I quit breastfeedig, I'll need to eat less calories to maintain the same weight.

I also started running a bit. And I will play tennis again in september. HURRAH

Good for both of you! Men frequently do lose weight faster than women even on the same diet/routine, though...the breastfeeding could be what's allowing you to keep up with him.

I think my sister's weight loss kicked in later...I remember her being frustrated with her figure for a while after delivery. But ymmv.

Well, I do know my hips haven't *shrunk* yet. Very annoying cause I want to fit in my jeans again. :-)

I mean bones. Hip bones.

i still don't understand the eating MORE bread thing, nath!
if i eat bread more than once a day i will totally gain weight! i guess everyone is different. but do they also recommend low-fat diet to go with that?

winter + stress these days + no bike riding = carbohydrate overkill = route to my own personal fatification which i do not want
but i have no desire to eat salad when it's -15C every day! also i need to find some time to cook proper vegetable+protein-oriented meals again :/

i guess i aam going on diiet?

but i have no desire to eat salad when it's -15C every day

Haha I have the opposite here most of the year round. "I don't want to eat anything hot, and I definitely don't want to have house heat implosion by cooking." So no cooking. I just drink beer and wish I knew how to make gazpacho (without ever looking up how).

my diiet should be the just-move-to-temperate-climate-already-girl-please diiet

haha gazpacho is easy! you can do it. tho personally i can only half stomach cold soup - one of those things brain can't get past

um my diet went down the drain as my boyfriend kept baking more and more cookies, and delicious italian dishes. okay i've also been eating a lot of bagels and french fries and stuff.

what to do??

i guess the choice is whether you are ok with being slightly fattey or not. if not, then we have to understand that the bagel gods will not forsake us for not making sacrifices to them for a while. tho i hear the french fry gods are kind of wrathful.

Ah, yes, I don't have a blender or food processor. That's why I haven't made gazpacho. (Looked up recipe.) But probably when I get married I will get one. And I'm buying myself this upside-down tomato plant grower so I can get delicious omg yum and cheap tomatoes. So: gazpacho party this autumn I guess.

Surmounter clearly your boyfriend is a feeder. Has he been uploading videos of you eating pounds of tetrazini to youtube? (joek...hopefully.)

those planters are crazy!
you will *totally* get some kind of bladed chopping machine for wedding. i just use a cheapo hand blender for everything tho.

ha, he is a feeder! i fear he secretly relishes it b/c he is able to control his appetite more, so he whips up these delicious dishes in part to satisfy his urge to cook, but in large part to watch me sink my waist. of course he denies this.

the french fry gods are indeed relentless!

I just started a diet, and am counting calories, and yesterday i found that nearly 1/3 of my calories came from vodka :( Yet another reason drinking is bad.

i still don't understand the eating MORE bread thing, nath!

Those are good for (my) stool and also they are slow sugars. She wants me to avoid craving/eating cookies (in the evening) so she stresses I should eat more bread.

This weekend has been a slippery slope. I will resume on monday. The problem is that I am not ready to "sin" yet (her words). I should do it once a week, she said, but I can't (yet). As soon as the sugar hits the palate I am a goner. :-)

(More as in: I didn't eat much bread before. A problem most people have when eating bread: they put too much *junk* between their slices of bread. *That* is what makes you fat or ups the calories. Bread also contain cals of course..)

So who has lost more weight? It's been difficult. I realize cause it's the last five/six kilos. I have to focus on the fact I have lost about 8 kilos now. Not on those six I want to lose. That way I will remain positive and once I am ready cut down on pastas and other shit. I lost about one kilos since the last time I visited the dietician. Not a whole lot, but at least I haven't relapsed and gained weight.

I stopped eating bread on the morning and switched to muesli. URGH! It's horse's food, if I didn't pay attention I'd start fucking mewling after said meal. BAH. But with a little honey and perseverance, I can actually... eat it. Did you think I would say enjoy? Well, no way. Not yet. I eat it with soy milk which fits better than cow milk somehow. The muesli meal enables me to NOT snack between breakie and lunch. YAY me. Only BOO aspect of my diet: I discovered belgian choco soy mousse. *sigh*

Oh yes, I threw out my post-pregnancy jeans cause they literally dropped off if I didn't wear a belt. Now I wear my old jeans again. Not my Sevens though as I need to lose at least another five kilo to fit in those slim jeans again without appearing like a sad muffin. hah

So how is everyone's diet going? Apparently I can't lose any more weight but somehow I do. I'm at 62 kilos now which is below the target weight (during breastfeeding). My dietician said I had to stop at 62 (after I stop breastfeeding). I am playing tennis twice a week which is probably causing me to lose weighth quicker? My body is more toned as a result, that's for sure. Everyone has been commenting on it (which is not always a nice thing, like that pervy guy who asked me how I am so slender... af ffs).

62 kgs = 136 pounds.

I do want to get back to my original 127 pounds, fuck what the dietician says.

good for you girl! i'm doing well but my waist is a little more stubborn this year. a little more to go! i need to get a fucking scale (or do i?...)

No no no! Or you'll turn into me: step on it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Well, I don't do it every day anymore, but I'm still watching my weight like a hawk. My husband said I had to keep this weight (cause my face is a wee bit too gaunt looking, is that how you say it?) That said, I still want to drop a few more kilos. My arms and legs are much more toned. I love it. And my bum is melting away. Even better.

see that's the problem -- my face ends up looking all gaunt! 'tis a fine line

i know, you're probably right in that i could do without a scale

We can become the Gaunt Twins. :-D

:)

whats for dinner?

twizzlers for dinner work in a pinch

So my weight is at 61,8 kgs. Hurrah. This means I can have my "sin day" tomorrow. Hotdogs, cheese dorritos and Sprite here I come. hah. I'm slowly going for 59 kgs. Should be doable. :-)

what is worse for your weight and general health: a big greasy takeaway of friend chicken and chips or a night out drinking about 6 or 7 pints of lager?

also does anyone know of a list ranking takeaway foods in order of unhealthiness?

has anyone here read THE HUNGRY YEARS by william leith? brillint book, perfect account of what its like to be fat, looking at why people let themselves get fat, how it relates to his other addictions (cocaine mostly) then turns into an atkins screed halfway through. gotta say, it convinced me. gonna test it out in a few weeks as i feel i go a bit overboard on carbs.

ive not searched for the atkins threads on here yet but has anyone tried it? im worried about the rule of thumb whereby if you do a diet your body uses calories most efficiently and so lets the weight pile on once the diet is over - does this apply to atkins or is it more of a new way of eating forever, a low-carb lifestyle?

I have no idea how, but I am wearing pants that I purchased 12 years ago, and they fit fine.

s.rose -
I did Atkins and lost a bunch of weight, but it came back on instantly the second I started eating carbs again (and I didn't get off the diet and suddenly go nuts; I eased them in - still, literally, the first time I ate bread after a month without it I could feel the change in my body - within a couple of days I had put on 6 lbs.

I have been doing Weight Watchers now and I have lost 3 stone now (in 9 weeks). And it's not hard once you get into it - you can eat whatever you want; just smaller amounts. And after you've done it for about 10 days, you get full really quickly anyway. I don't cheat on it, though - I've switched from beer to hard liquor (mixed with Diet Coke), etc.

But it's worked for me so far... hoping I can keep it off...
Good luck either way!

Yeah, the key to Weight Watchers is portion control. Shit, the key to life is portion control.

Moderation, yo.

update, i didn't bother doing the atkins because hell i really like carbs and i dont want to be denying myself things i like.

so back in jan 2008 i was overweight at 13ish stone, i cut down to 1400 cals or less per day, gym 3x a week and by summer was a decent 11st. i slowly began eating what i wanted but at the same time got better and worked harder at the gym so stuck at just under 11st, chomping happily (but much healthier overall) and working out hard. for the last half of december 08 i pigged out pretty bad, didn't put much weight on but didn't feel so good so i'm back on a fairly strict routine again. my aim is to get to 9.5st but i'll likely settle at just under 10st.

current routine: eating 1500 cals max per day, all decent healthy stuff. 90mins of gym 3x per week and the weight is dropping quite quickly (lost about 4 pounds after doing it for 2.5 weeks), which i guess is because i'm used to the gym and not having to start from nothing.

so yeah this post is mostly for myself, keeping track of my weight via this thread. i expect i'll ditch the 1500 cals thing by summer but still be eating healthily, but allowing for the odd blow-out and drinking at weekends.

how's everyone else doing?

and also:
what is worse for your weight and general health: a big greasy takeaway of friend chicken and chips or a night out drinking about 6 or 7 pints of lager?

also does anyone know of a list ranking takeaway foods in order of unhealthiness?

Good lord, a few months and I'm at 65 kgs. Urgh. At one point I was at my desired 59 kgs. :-( Back on the diet wagon. Double urgh.

what do people actually believe about diet? have we done this on ilx?

the more i read the more conflicting opinions there are.

i guess the nutrition nazis thread kinda counts?

eat like a king at breakfast
a prince at lunchtime
a pauper at dinnertime

eat real food, not too much, mostly vegetables iirc

Burn more than you chew.

eat real food, not too much, mostly vegetables iirc

yeah this is what i do, more plants, etc. is anything beyond this just into the realm of argument/fad diet?

I've lost 34 pounds since Nov. 30th--it's a plan done through my dr's office called "First Line Therapy", and i think it was invented by the people who make this shake you can drink as a meal (Metagenics)...basically, you have to eat every 3 hours, and you have to eat a certain number of portions of different food groups by the end of each day (fruit, veg, concentrated protein which is like tuna or chicken, legumes, etc...) It's sort of a no brainer--no bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, sugar, dairy (i allow myself a drop of skim milk in my daily coffee). I think the hard part for people is laying off the alcohol, which I don't seem to need even though i feel like the most addicted person ever. If anyone is interested in a copy of the daily sheet I fill out, it has the list of all the acceptable foods on it, email me and I'll shoot you a pdf of it. I didn't have to exercise which was the best part...I am 44 yrs old and need to lose 6 more pounds and I'll be "done", although I don't think I'll ever go back to eating the carbs listed above, or sugar. I am much happier in my cage of approved foods than running around in the jungle of deliciously bad for you stuff.

what do people actually believe about diet? have we done this on ilx?

the more i read the more conflicting opinions there are.

― Know how Roo feel (LocalGarda), Tuesday, August 21, 2012 6:50 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

the nutrition nazis will tell you that dont think of it as a diet, think of it as a lifestyle change

anyway, based on received nutrition nazi wisdom and the results of this study which were just recently released: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/calorie-calorie-harvard-study-compares-popular-weight-loss/story?id=16654506

I tend to eat by food groups, try to stay away from sugar/foods that spike your glycemic index (GI)

another interesting thing that I've read but haven't seen corroboration for is that GI is also affected by the combination of foods you eat in a sitting - like combining low and high GI foods in a meal might result in a medium GI effect overall. to me that feels right but I am not a nutritionist. but it would explain why there are billions of people who eat white rice as a staple but seem otherwise pretty healthy.

my roommate is on a 'fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and sliced meat' diet fyi

Sounds like my kind of diet. Just add beer.

even that article is sort of symptomatic of the confusion tho, like "maybe it's this, maybe it's that" followed by "oh actually just eat vaguely healthily."

i've generally been eating more healthily over the last few months but not necessarily following something like paleo really.

i've lost a lot of weight but i exercise decent amount too.

well yeah nutrition is a constantly evolving field, nothing's ever gonna be concrete

but what feels right to me atm is to control portion size, and the types of food you eat, and to mostly stay away from sugar, and if you're gonna eat carbs, combine them with other food types

I find it really hard to maintain weight. My weight has yo-yo'ed quite a bit over the last 10 years, high as 250, low as 140. All I want to do is stay the weight I am right now, but I can either closely watch what I eat, or just ignore it all together.