Lose Weight The Slow, Boring Way 717
urbazewski writes "As spring gets underway (in the northern hemisphere anyway) it's a good time to start undoing the effects of a winter's worth of websurfing and gameplaying on your physical condition. A meta-analysis of studies of currently popular low carbohydrate diets by doctors at Stanford and Yale reveals that they are really just low calorie diets in disguise: 'findings suggest that if you want to lose weight, you should eat fewer calories and do so over a long time period." John Walker's 'engineer's approach' to losing weight is built around this astonishing insight, as described in his online book/weight loss plan The Hacker's Diet. The spreadsheets are out of commission, but the basic insights are an excellent antidote to fad diets." Ramen, Ramen, Ramen is not on the approved list.
More lies (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More lies (Score:3, Funny)
2. Repeatedly post [slashdot.org] a reply to every single story claiming it's false.
3. KARMA!!
Re:Lean Weighs more than Fat (Score:5, Informative)
if you want to be lean, you actually have to weigh MORE,
since lean strong muscles weigh more than fat, but they
look more toned.
therefore, using weight to guage fitness is totally bogus.
a lean person will look 'skinnier' but weigh MORE.
the other thing that makes people fat is 'Low Fat' food.
if all you eat is low-fat stuff, your body never gets the
nutrition it needs, and hence you have to eat more of
the stuff to make up your body's requirements. the best
thing to do if you want to lose weight is to eat more
of the 'Regular Fat' foods, and then your body won't
need so much of the stuff to feel 'full'.
best regards,
john [earthlink.net]
Re:Lean Weighs more than Fat (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lean Weighs more than Fat (Score:4, Insightful)
That has yet to be confirmed. Fat is not necessarily bad.
You eat the same amount of it because your body needs a certain volume to feel full, not because you have to reach a certain fat-content before you can stop eating.
The parent post was implying that your body eats to obtain a certain amount of *calories* before it feels satisfied (not volume). Since fat packs more calories per pound than any other digestible ingredient, you can eat much less fatty food than low-fat food, and yet be just as sated. Furthermore, most fats have a certain chemical component which when broken down in your stomach makes you feel fuller than you really are.
But take all claims with a grain of salt (especially what the government says about healthy eating - they know less than anyone in the field and even the people in the field aren't sure what the answers are).
See:
Thread on food [kicks-ass.net]
Comprehensive NY Times article discussing fat in diet [nytimes.com]
Re:More lies (Score:3, Interesting)
The future, as told by localghost.
Re:More lies (Score:3, Insightful)
Optimist.
hacker's diet works (Score:5, Informative)
-eating less than 2000 calories each day
-exercising every day
I ate whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted, as long as the daily total remained under 2000 calories. You do have to pay attention to serving sizes to get accurate calorie counts.
I did the 5BX (http://www.flwd.com/5bx/main/) every day, which takes 11 minutes a day to do. Its simple, good exercise that requires no equipment and can be done pretty much anywhere.
I was fat and not while I'm not thin, I'm at least less fat. I would recommend this approach to anyone wanting to loose weight.
Re:hacker's diet works (Score:2, Funny)
Re:hacker's diet works (Score:5, Interesting)
If you eat less then you burn you lose weight! It really is that simple, but the problem is doing it. I have some interesting calculators that help guide your calorie limits at Health and Fitness Calculators [webcalc.net] (and going to number 6 Health and Fitness)
YES! DRINK NOT SNACK! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem I have though is stopping eating, when I'm hungry, or at least think I'm hungry I eat/drink. I'm starting to work on grabbing a water bottle instead of a coke now though and other such changes.
This is the KEY to losing weight, and no one I find focuses on this enough. If trying to lose weight, and you get hungry outside your meal allotment, then do not eat, drink (and NOT pop).. Get a tal glass of ice water, or a tall class of OJ or other citrus. The water has no calories, and the citrus much less than anything you would eat for a snack. Plus you will find the coolness perky and actually wake you up, unlike fatty snacks like chips that slow you down.
You will find that a nice cold glass of water/juice more than cures your hunger for the few hours until your next meal. Not only does this help keep your caloie count down, it hydrates your body, which any doctor will tell you is good for you anyways. I find that this tip, the tip of drinking, not snacking, is one that is not metionened nearly enough in popular weight loss literature.
Re:YES! DRINK NOT SNACK! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:YES! DRINK NOT SNACK! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:YES! DRINK NOT SNACK! (Score:5, Informative)
Orange juice 8oz: 100 to 120 calories
Coke (or cola)8oz: 95 calories
Didn't want to argue, its just shocking how many calories, and carbs are in fruits and juices. You would have been better off with the coke. (fructose is not much better than sucrose)
I prefer the Atkins [atkinscenter.com] approach. I researched it for many months and spoke with my doctor about it. In spite of rumors to the contrary, it is quite healthy if done correctly. I have lost 20 pounds, 10 more to go, and feel better than I ever have. I lose it slow, and never go hungry. Ever.
Re:YES! DRINK NOT SNACK! (Score:4, Informative)
1. the glycemic index rating of OJ is much lower than coke's index. this translates to a difference in the amount of insulin that is released when you ingest the product, and is directly proportional to the energy you gain, the effect you feel later (slump) and the amount that goes directly to fat cells.
2. OJ has VITAMINS! Gasp! Coke? ZILCH.
Regardless.. both of these drinks will leave you dead tired after the sugar wears off. I'd drink OJ over Coke, but water is by far the best choice.
~j
Re:YES! DRINK NOT SNACK! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not colon cancer expert, but I'll bet it takes quite a bit longer than 3 to 4 months for polyps to form and become malignant cancers.
Re:YES! DRINK NOT SNACK! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:hacker's diet works (Score:3, Interesting)
I had to cut out all the middle of the day snacking, switched entirely to diet soda, and ate smaller portions, but still just the food that I liked.
There's some diet program whose slogan is "A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and a sensible dinner". It works just as wekk if you follow: "A sensible breakfast, a sensible lunch, and a sensible dinner".
Frankly, I didn't really do much of the exercise.
Re:hacker's diet works (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:hacker's diet works (Score:5, Funny)
Not very hard??? I'd rather give up meat than potato, rice, sugar and beer.
Re:hacker's diet works and spreadsheets ARE there (Score:3, Informative)
BTW--the article is wrong about the spreadsheets being out of commission. You can get them from here [fourmilab.ch] and you can get the PalmOS versions here [fourmilab.ch].
You need Microsoft Excel to use the spreadsheet macros, but the actual spreadsheets themselves (without the macros) work fine in OpenOffice.org.
Summary misses point of low card (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of low carb diets is that they don't spike your blood sugar, which means that they don't spike your insulin levels, which means that your blood-sugar doesn't end up plumeting again, which means you don't end up feeling hungry even though you just ate 90 minutes ago, which means you don't eat more, which, of course, means that you keep your calories low.
In other words, low carb diets avoid various physiological responses that lead to you eating more calories than you need/want.
Not magic.
Re:Summary misses point of low card (Score:5, Informative)
Fruits, for example, have carbs (fructose) that doesn't spike blood sugar very much at all. The same goes for beans and legumes which have a lot of indigestible carbs (and this is the reason why they cause gas). Whole wheat breads made without flour are also good for keeping blood sugar levels down.
And not only do you get benefits out of these foods by controlling insulin spikes and blood sugar crashes, but complex carbs are digested more slowly. That makes you satiated for a lot longer. I can eat a single sandwich made with whole wheat bread and it'll take a long time for me to get hungry again. While I can eat half a dozen sandwiches made with white bread over the course of a night.
One thing I've noticed by sticking with a low glucose diet is exactly how badly addicted I feed to those foods. I slipped recently and I'm breaking myself of the need to eat simple carbs again and its horrible for a few days. I eat like a horse and probably gain a pound or two because I can't satisfy the carb craving eating fruits, vegetables, meat and whole wheat bread.
After I get over the addiction though, I should be able to back off on the calories that I consume and start losing weight again. I lost 10 lbs this year in this fashion.
Also, the advice given in the Hacker's Diet book to drink Diet Soda is bad. Diet soda will cause an insulin response without dropping any calories or glucose into your system and you will get hungry. Most fruit juices are bad too. If you want to lose weight start drinking water, at least around the office/school. Just make it a habit and stop drinking coke and coffee. This is the biggest thing you can do to start breaking bad habits. I'd note that I didn't start losing weight after drinking water alone, I had to make other adjustments to my diet. But there's no way you'll lose any weight with the extra 1000-2000 calories a day you consume from Coke.
For a good reference table for how foods affect glucose levels see Foster-Powell, et al. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition vol 75 pp 5-56, 2002. The simple rules of thumb are to stay away from highly processed flour (white rice, white bread) and high carb foods like potatoes. Stick with whole grains (whole wheat bread, brown rice) or carb-less foods (vegetables and meats). Adding fat to a high glycemic food will make it digest slower and release glucose slower, but at the same time the fat content has more calories packed in it. You still need to watch fat or you'll continue to eat too much.
Also historically this diet makes the most sence of any of the popular diets. This is what humans used to eat. We didn't used to have potatoes and highly refined rice and wheat flour along with highly refined sugars. This is the major way our diet has shifted in recent history. We didn't used to all eat low-fat diets. We didn't used to eat no-carb diets. We didn't evolve under those circumstances, so those diets don't necessarily make a lot of evolutionary sense (although there's a lot of variation in human bodies and if one of those works for you, I enthusiastically support you using it). A diet which doesn't spike our glucose levels though is more in line with how we used to eat. Americans are also drowning in the amount of high fructose corn syrup and other sweeters which are added to otherwise healthy foods. Other nations don't have nearly the added sugar in our foods that we do, and they don't have our obesity problems. More and more I think there's a connection there.
p.s. There's also some scientific evidence that its not only eating too much which causes bodies to store fat. There is getting to be more and more evidence that insulin's effect
Personalize Weight Loss (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, how do you explain the fact that I can gain so much weight by not watching every last gram of carbohydrates I eat while a friend of mine can have his "nights of 10,000 calories" and not gain a single pound ever.
I think it all comes down to taking a step back, looking at your body, and picking what's right for you -- not some predetermined plan that you get off of a website.
Re:Personalize Weight Loss (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Personalize Weight Loss (Score:5, Informative)
I get a lot of funny looks when I mention this (especially from women who want to not bulk up). However, the key ingredient to weight loss is an increase in your resting metabolic rate (how much energy your body consumes on a regular basis). The only true way to do this is to increase your muscle tissue because muscle burns more energy than fat.
Obviously, resistance training is essential to increasing the muscle tissue and resting metabolic rate.
Re:Personalize Weight Loss (Score:3, Interesting)
Its not essential but it helps. It boosts your metabolism. But you arent supposed to diet and lift weights at the same time, you cycle between a bulk phase and a cut phase.
When you cut, you diet for months and lose about 1-2lbs a week.
When you bulk, you bulk and gain about 1-2lbs a week. Eventually your ratio of muscle to fat goes out of balance and you get the ripped look.
Re:Personalize Weight Loss (Score:2, Interesting)
I definitely lost nearly 35 pounds by lifting and eating a little less.
The weight training makes the diet cut that much more effective in burning the fat from your body.
Re:Personalize Weight Loss (Score:5, Interesting)
What is to criticize with this book? It is a free book where he endorses no commercial products but instead relays his own experience losing weight.
Re:Personalize Weight Loss (Score:2, Insightful)
The real key to a healthy lifestyle is your body composition folks! At 5'11", 225 lbs, I'm considered obese according to height/weight and BMI standards, but that doesn't take into account my body fat percentage.
Re:Low carb diets do work (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Low carb diets do work (Score:3, Informative)
I don't buy this complex carb theory. It's not how complex the carb is, it's how quickly it is absorbed, and how good for you the food is. Maltodextrin is a complex carb, but is absorbed the most quickly of any carbohydrate.
Check out the Glycemic Index (GI). If you eat mainly low GI foods, you will generally be less hungry, and your body will have more time to deal with the carbs without turning them into fat.
Eating some fruit every day is great. However if you eat a lot of fr
OK - let's review biochemistry (Score:5, Informative)
Any sugar or starch you consume is converted to glucose. Sucrose is two glucose molcules stuck together. Fructose is a sugar with 1 carbon missing. Starch is a chain of sugars. All of these are converted into glucose.
So, what happens when not enough sugar is around? The body draws on the reserves of fat and protein. Glucose is able to come out of fat pretty easily. For protein, the body does some complex conversion which use the protein to create glucose to stuff into the Krebbs cycle. The downside is some unpleasant byproducts need to be dealt with by the liver.
So why does the body burn fat and protein? Because, when you burn protein, you reduce muscle mass, and hence your caloritic requirements. Kind of like a layoff.
Ok, so after all that: Glucose (sugar) is the only thing the body "burns". It all comes down to how much you take in. It is simply accounting. If you eat more than you need, you gain weight. If you eat less, your body starts cutting back on muscle and uses up fat. Carbs have 5 cal/gram, while fat has 9cal/gram (I don't remember protein).
So you can think all you want about high GI and low GI and fat and so on. You still get X cals from Y grams of carbs, and X cals from 5/9Y grams of fat. End of story.
I think that the real reason that these diets are effective is because they are less "boring" than high carb diets and also self-limiting. If you can only eat the patty and not the bun, how many burgers are you going to stuff in your face?
Of course, my belief is that people really evolved eating mainly vegetables and only occasionally fruit, meat, and grains. Do I eat that way? Hell no! But I do try to eat vegetables whenever I can.
Re:Low carb diets do work (Score:5, Informative)
First off: "The body is not designed to burn sugar."
Ugh. Go to the bookstore. Pick up an introductory biology textbook (biochemistry would work too). Find out that, in fact, the preferred source of energy for living organisms is sugar. Can the human body process other compounds for energy? Yes, but you'll find that none of these processes are as efficient as the catalysis of sugar for energy production, and that nearly all are overlooked in favor of glycolysis when glucose is present.
Next: Bacon is easier to burn and digests slowly
First, you have to define "digest," and you have to define "burn." If, by digest, you mean that a chunk of bacon is absorbed by the intestines less rapidly than a chunk of rice, you may or may not be correct. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the body will absorb these things, and will somehow break these foods down into molecular units it can use. Fat, protein and sugar can all be converted to glucose through molecular pathways of varying efficiency -- this is what is traditionally meant by the "burning" of food.
Now, is bacon really easier to "burn" than rice? No. That's the opposite of the truth, actually. Bacon is muscle, which means that it is mostly protein and fat. And protein digestion is the metabolic pathway of last resort in humans. Thus, the body will (in an average person), digest the fat in the bacon first (and don't forget that, pound for pound, fat contains 9 times the caloric content of sugar!), store whatever it doesn't use as fat, use some of the protein for non-metabolic needs, and, most likely, squirt the rest of the protein out through the kidneys (via the liver). This is why people on extremely-high protein diets tend to have problems with kidney and liver function later in life.
Moving on: "Rice has no fat, so your hormones may get out of balance."
Bzzzt. Wrong again. Let's take another look at that biology 101 textbook: hormones are, by and large, cholesterol derivatives. Testosterone? Cholesterol. Estrogen? Ditto. In fact, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find an important human hormone that wasn't derived from cholesterol, metabolically. And guess what? Plants have cholesterol too. More than enough for hormone synthesis needs, actually. This fact has been well-known by dieticians and doctors for decades.
So what about this gem: "Rice...is a complex carb, your body is not designed to handle it, so it takes a longer time to burn"
Nope. Compared to the protein or fat in bacon, rice is trivial for the body to "burn". It might take a smidge longer to digest, depending on how it's cooked, but we're not talking nutritionally-important differences here (your body will digest it one way or another). And the suggestion that the human body "is not designed to handle" complex carbohydrates? Utter nonsense. Go spit in a glass. See that? You're looking at a highly efficient mixure of enzymes, designed by evolution specifically for the digestion of complex carbohydrates. Pick up that biology book again...look up "alpha amylase," and you'll see what I mean.
So once we clear away the pseudo-science, what are we left with? Well, we know that protein is burned more slowly than fat, which is burned more slowly than sugars. And carbohydrates are sugars. So there is a bit of truth to your conclusion: when we eat high-protein diets, the body will find other mechanisms to meet it's sugar needs. It will do everything it can to create glucose without digesting protein. Of course, in the real world, no one eats pure protein (and for good reason -- see above), and protein has the nasty habit of coming in animal form, which means that lots of fat comes with it. It doesn't take much fat
Re:Low carb diets do work (Score:3, Insightful)
Who is teaching you this stuff? Look man, our bodies burn glucose. "Food" is an abstract concept that makes it easier for us to think about what our bodies are doing to the stuff we eat. And, you're wrong -- our bodies do know what to do
Re:Low carb diets do work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Low carb diets do work (Score:3, Informative)
Jim Fixx had a genetic proclivity to heart problems. Several of his relatives died very young.
Jogging added about 10-15 years to his life. He also wrote one of the best books about running (for fun and competition) ever written.
But there's a lot of fat-assed idiots out there who can't resist giggling at a potential "Ironic" tag on Fark.com wh
Meta-study? (Score:5, Interesting)
participants older than age 50 years, for use longer than 90 days, or for diets of 20 g/d or less of carbohydrates. Among the published
studies, participant weight loss while using low-carbohydrate diets was principally associated with decreased caloric intake...
A more realistic and reasonable conclusion: Aggregating data from artfully-chosen original research and running it through a 'statistical' analysis provides insufficient basis to conclude anything about anything other than the bias of the 'researchers'.
This is the equivalent of a high school science fair project being treated as if it was actual research.
Seven 'researchers' "identify 2609 potentially relevant" articles (i.e., a MEDLINE search for "low-carbohydrate") and then reduce them to 107 articles by reading the abstracts, carefully avoiding anything that contradicts any currently-held beliefs... As I have mentioned here before, 'research' on nutrition resembles religion far more closely than it does science.
Publishing this article is the equivalent of publishing a google search, except that if it had been written by non-doctors, it would not have even been considered. If you doubt that, ask Dr. Richard Bernstein about his experience with JAMA.
Re:Meta-study? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Ketogenic diets have been shown to be safe in young children for periods exceeding 3 years. These include ketogenic diets with carb levels much lower than those advocated by Dr. Atkins. These studies span a period of over 6 decades, and were concerning treatment of epilepsy.
2) Low-carb diets have been shown to reduce all currently known indicators of heart disease and stroke, after an initial period of approximately 4 w
Is Eat Watch still impossible? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now that sever
Weight loss my way (Score:5, Funny)
STOP EATING!
-
You'll lose weight and muscle is overated anyway.
Re:theresa accountant in there (Score:3, Informative)
I can help. Here's what you do, and I promise you it works:
1. Before each meal, drink an entire glass of ice water.
2. Eat your meal slowly and leisurely until full, but not stuffed. Avoid reading or watching TV while eating your meal, because it tends to make you sit there and keep eating, distracted from the fact that you are already full.
3. Drink another full glass of ice water after your meal.
4. Don't snack between meals. Avoid soda
It's not a joke, this diet actually works. (Score:3, Informative)
I lost the will power to keep on the diet and have gained most of that weight back over the last two years, and am currently trying to work up the will power to start it up again. I'm 6 feet tall, so it would be nice to be back to a nice lean 170lbs again.
Re:It's not a joke, this diet actually works. (Score:2)
I myself used to be horribly fat. Over a 1.5 year period, I dropped 90 lbs (this morning I reached that mark).
I didn't follow a diet, I didn't exercise more (I do less, actually), and I didn't eat right. Today I even drank a grande Starbucks coffee, 2 mountain dews (12 oz cans), a stewart's cherry cola, and ate a portobella mushroom club sandwich.
My trick? If you read closely, you would have seen that I ate only one meal. My trick to losing weight is
WHEN will people learn?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is this premiss so hard to understand? I truely believe some people have something wrong with their heads that blocks that out. Ask those same people what will happen if you sit around eating twinkies and drinking mountain dew all day while playing everquest nonstop and they will say "you will get fat" but you won't ever hear "you will get skinny" to the less calories + more exercize fact.
I read somewhere that a doctor wanted to test the 10,000 steps a day theory. Even as a very active doctor, who took the stairs, and parked his car far away from the building, he could hardly ever get to the magical 10,000 steps that everyone should take a day becuase it is set in our genetics by our ancestors who HAD to walk a lot. They didn't have the option of just sitting all day.
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
If you actually read Atkin's books, he explicitly says weight loss comes down to cutting calories. The advantage of a low carbohydrate diet is that the calories you do take in make you feel more satisfied, as well as not driving up your insulin levels.
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:3, Informative)
The advantage of a low carbohydrate diet is that the calories you do take in make you feel more satisfied, as well as not driving up your insulin levels.
This is so important. Read Dr. Mercola's [mercola.com] pages [mercola.com] on [mercola.com] Insulin [mercola.com]. Eating a diet based around carbohydrates is a lot like filling your car with gasoline, and neglecting the rest of the regular maintenance - no oil changes, no tranny service, no brake pad replacements, never rep
THe kicker (Score:3, Interesting)
SO le me get this straight, 20 fucking years of struggling with weight loss, on high carb, lofat, low carb diets, and they say that his is wrong because, it dosent do anything special, yOU JUST DONT NOTICE THE FUCKING LOW CALORIES?!?!!??
CARBOHYDRATES TRIGGER HUNGER!! NOONE EVER FUCKING TOLD ME THAT!!
SOrry bout the
As Opposed To... (Score:5, Funny)
As opposed to John Walker Lindh's 'terrorist approach' to losing weight that is built around hanging out in a flooded prison for a week with no food at all.
Eat less then you burn off... (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget all the diets, just burn more then you eat.. you loose weight...
For the couch potatoes, EXERSISE how to use energy.. And dont eat a lot of garbage..
Just use some common sence. But then again, that wont sell books or diet foods will it...
Re:Eat less then you burn off... (Score:2)
He may spell like a drunken 5 year old... (Score:4, Insightful)
The translation, for those of us who've finished our "Hooked On Phonics" (only spelling corrections, grammar be damned):
Poor linguistic abilities aside, this fucker's right. The way to lose weight is to eat right and exercise.
Your goal (for men) should be to drop your body fat percentage to well under 10% (under 15% for women).
I've found a mix of something like 60% carbs, 30% protein, and 10% fat to be a good distribution for my food. Don't put much faith in those numbers (I change it as needed to gain/lose weight). I typically consume anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 calories/day (even a fat bastard would have an amazingly hard time taking in 10kcal/day, trust me on that!)
Fuck being skinny. Pack on some serious muscle too.
My lifting consists of 1-2 hours typically (depending on how focused I am), and I have a 6 day split (2 days on, 1 day off, all 6 to cover my whole body). I aim for at least 30 minutes of cardio per day, sometimes I do more sometimes I do less...
Aim for 1.5-2g of protein per pound of lean bodyweight. I'm currently using Phosphagen XT, which seems pretty damned good. I'm not a huge fan of creatine, but this seems decent (Cell Tech isn't bad either).
Re:Eat less then you burn off... (Score:4, Interesting)
> Its that simple really... Forget all the diets, just burn more then you eat.. you loose weight...
To belabor the increasingly obvious: yep. To a first approximation the cure for "industrial disease" is to 'consume' less energy by eating and 'consume' more energy by exercise. (The second-order approximation spells out some preferences about which items you cut back on, such as sugars, refined starches, saturated fats, and carcigens. But the exercise itself will help with blood sugar and lipoprotein ratios, regardless of diet.)
There was a really nice article suggesting a revised food pyramid [sciam.com] in the January 2003 issue of Scientific American, and interestingly the base of the new pyramid was "exercise".
Re:Eat less then you burn off... (Score:2)
Just use some common sence. But then again, that wont sell books or diet foods will it...
Dan? Dan Quayle [globalseeker.com]? Is that you?
The slow boring way (Score:5, Interesting)
Now what she discovered from all that hard work is that she actually enjoyed it (which she had never realized before, since she had never tried it.
I confess, I didn't read the article, but if it is advocating good old fashioned "straightening up", then it sounds right. I shudder when I walk into the drug store (of all places) and see bottles of tablets that are supposed to help lose weight. I think of all the people that get sucked in by that - I've seen my wife doing fad diets and other quick schemes. The only thing that worked was to change her lifestyle.
Stop consuming refined sugar (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that those "fat-free" desserts have even more sugar than the regular stuff. You'll never lose weight that way. Y'might give your chance at developing diabetes an additional boost though.
I don't know about the rest of you... (Score:5, Funny)
Puhleeeez! (Score:2)
No wonder people can't control their blubber. The dumbfucks think Blubber Control is Rocket Science.
Screw that shit. Just KNOCK OFF WITH THE FOOD INTAKE.
Started to diet (Score:3, Insightful)
This is my first real diet where I'm conciously cutting down on calories. I'm not starving myself but only because I constantly snack on fruits and veggies. I feel like I have to have something in my mouth every hour. Weird feeling but one can get used to it.
I'm not following any particular dieting fad. I just stopped eating all the junk foods that are served at your typical lunch place. No more burgers, pizzas, fries or doughnuts. I firmly believe that Russian females are so slender because they diddn't have junk food for so many years. Accordingly if I remove all junk food from my diet I should get slender too... Time will tell.
Look if you want to lose weight... (Score:2, Funny)
I lost 100 pounds over the past 8-9 months and it really wasn't hard. How? 30 minutes of weights daily to build up my heart rate and get the blood flowing. Then I would run 30 minutes. Initially it was walking of course. At 300 pounds my ankles couldn't support me running!
As for the diet I did go for lots of protein. But I didn't neglect other things like the importance of v
Exercise anyone? (Score:2)
Yeah, I know that there are complications due to gender, body type, genetics, etc. but if you are so fat that an unbalanced, low-cal diet is good for you, then a little exercise can't hurt.
A lot of exercise may not hurt, either.
Re:Exercise anyone? (Score:2)
I tried to enter taekwon-do group and a hard way got that my heart can't tolerate it now.
I heard a lot of stories, and even about my close friends who got heart attacks after they start to run every day.
It's a good idea to consult a doctor.
A question list for a doctor (please add to this list if you can - I really need ideas on what to check)
- heart condition
- bone condition
- diabetes
- ?
Be careful!
So... (Score:2)
What's wrong with the "Stop eating everything you come across, move your butt around a bit more and go participate in a physically active sport" method? Excercising like mad isn't a good idea btw, muscle tissue weighs more then fat, so evetually you'll GAIN weight. You'll look all buff though and you can shatter wood with one hand...
pr (Score:2)
Hacker's Diet Testimonial (Score:2)
I'd say the Hacker's Diet is worth a shot for those who really need it. Be honest, that's quite a few of us Slashdotters.
DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION (Score:5, Funny)
Heh...in all seriousness, DDR has slimed down many a geek...including me.
Re:DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION (Score:5, Funny)
Just what the world needs: more slimy geeks.
Re:Let them poke fun (Score:4, Informative)
ddr rules
There's no secret (Score:2)
What I used to do in school was work for however many hours/days on coding for my assignments. Once they were handed in, I'd hit the gym for a few hours and burn off some steam. Lifting weights is a great way to relieve the stress of incompetent teammates and pointless assignments. Before I graduated, I could bench ov
The Secret to my Success (Score:2)
Work at a bike shop.
First off, you will, regardless of how far you live from the shop, have to bike to work. If not, you will be ridiculed, tortured, and, finally, fired.
Second, in the workshop, you will spend 12 hours straight standing up. The only possible way a mere human can do this is by consuming upwards of three liters of caffeinated beverages over the course of a work day. By simply drinking diet cola, you've go
Not just low cal in disguise (Score:2)
Lots of Confused People (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to read a REAL nerds book on nutrition, how about one that explains [amazon.com] the molecular structure of different fats and explains everything in technical terms. I didn't know any biology before reading it and I was able to follow along. The book actually teaches you all about fats, carbs, free radicals, anti-oxidants, etc. If you're interested in bodybuilding, this one's [amazon.com] a must for most of us.
I'm 6'2". In the last year, I've gone from little muscle at 155 lbs to 10% body fat at 180 lbs. Yeah, a year is a long time, but I've done it in a healthy way which is more permanent and life sustaining. :)
-Lucas
Physiology... (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is that most of the commonly held beliefs about losing weight are exactly wrong and only serve to lead one down the path of endless cycles of losing and then gaining back more. If you've ever tried a traditional diet, you know exactly what I am talking about.
I, myself, have struggled with it for many years. I took just about every approach imaginable (and a few I won't even mention here). Sure, some things had short-term benefits but ultimately they lead me right back where I was going.
So what really works?
First I'll tell you, and for many people you'll hate to hear it: eat right and exercise.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, here is the semi-techy explanation. Excuse my over-simplifications because I am looking to cover the subject lightly:
Consider your typical overweight person. He has a high percentage of body fat, and he knows it. How to get thin? Well you could start by reducing caloric input. Sounds reasonable, right? After all, the less you take in the less that becomes body fat.
True, but here is what really happens: When you reduce your caloric intake your body responds to this as if it were a crisis of famine. Blame evolution, but your body is going to think that food is scarce. If the amount of energy input is less than the output needed to live, the body must make up for the excess somehow. And it has two main choices: It can either munch on energy stored in our fat cells (which would be swell) or it can chew away at energy stored in our muscles.
In making this decision, the body considers this critical fact: Muscle mass requires energy to exist, whereas body fat requires very little. So, in a leap of perfectly sound logic, the body consumes the wrong kind of weight. And since muscle weighs a lot more per volume than body fat, the result is weight reduction. The diet seems to work!
It works for awhile, yes. But as you lose muscle mass your basil metabolic rate drops. This causes you to need less and less energy to exist. Do the math. Eventually you reach equilibrium with the input (your diet) and you hit the dreaded plateau we all know too well.
This is so disconcerting that people eventually give up. But here is the killer: Your body has been ravaged! You may have lost weight, but your percentage of body fat is probably worse than when you started. And now you are start eating the "old way" again and soon you are ballooning back up again. And, often, you get worse than when you started.
That's the cycle. And I'm sure a lot of you know it really well.
So how do you break that cycle?
The basic principle is simple: Do the opposite of what doesn't work. Duh.
To do this, you increase your muscle mass. When you do this, your BMR goes up and your body requires more and more energy. Efficient and effective cardio and strength training out requires a really good understanding of how they work to do them right. You can bang away all day long in a gym and not get much results if you don't know what you are doing. More on this in a bit.
Second you feed yourself carefully. I hesitate to use the word 'diet' here because this has nothing to do with starvation. In fact, you typically feed yourself a lot more than you use too. Most importantly, you eat six times a day. This feeding pattern prevents your body from going into "oh my god...we're going to starve" panic mode. You also hydrate a lot more than you are probably use too (10 glasses of water a day).
I'll simplify here for brevity, but the meals consist of a portion of protein and a portion of carbohydrate. A couple of them you add a portion of veggies. A "portion" is roughly the size and thickness of the palm of your hand for protein and your clenched fist for carbs. That simple hand rule is all you need. Note: there is no need to count calor
Smoke more (Score:4, Funny)
As one wag remarked... (Score:3, Funny)
All these fad diets, when they are successful at all, are only successful because they make people eat less. If the only thing you're allowed to eat is spinach, well, it probably won't take very long before your caloric intake has dropped significantly. Humans are wired to like a diversity of foods, but we're also very bad at counting calories (because over evolutionary timescales, more calories was always better).
Yo Grark's Rules to losing weight. (Score:5, Informative)
2. Slow and steady wins the race. I have lost 45 pounds in the past 6 months, not the fastest out there, but at 1 or 2 pounds a week my body is GRADUALLY changing, which means it's VERY fogiving when I blow my diet once every couple of weeks. Like a rubber band my weight snaps right back into losing weight. It's the law of averages, if you eat 2000 calories a day for 3 weeks, then all of a sudden eat 4000 in a day, then the next day go back to 2000, your body expects and DEMANDS that 2000. It won't store the exceess because you're not starving yoursef.
3. Find your DMR (Daily Burn Rate). Because I sit all day, my caloric DMR is about 2000. Therefore I eat 1850. if you burn 2000, and only feed yourself 1850, where does the other 150 come from? YOUR FAT. It's a beutiful simple concept.
4. Eat the right foods. I can have 1/2 bowl of pasta or 5 bowls of chili (insert "fart joke here"). It's all in the calories. Lots of calories in rice and pasta, very little in beans. I eat a lot of fruit now, lots of salad piled with veggies and low-fat dressing. Oh and another choice is 2 tblspoons of regular salad dressing or 5 bowls of salad piled high with lowfat dressing, your pick.
5. DON'T RELY ON ANYTHING. Don't do exercises. I don't do exercises because I know I can't keep them up. Too many stories of "oh I lost 50lbs once, but now it's all back" what did they do differently? Stopped anything they were doing which shocked their body.
6. PROFIT!......a wonderful program I use for my palm pilot called e-diet has an entire database of foods (yes pizza and coke are in there) and you can modify it with your foods and calories. It helps me maintain my daily calories while also telling me what specific exercise and for how long to burn off calories when I go over (stuff like laundry, cleaning, coding). You plug in your height, weight, activity level, and how much you want to lose in how long and it shows you the path you need to take. Losing weight really is just plain mathematics, which should motivate at least SOME of you geek's out there.
Good Luck and drop me a line if you have any questions.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering (bread and butter is 200 calories a slice!)
What worked for me: a little effort, a mild diet (Score:5, Informative)
Around new year, I decided I'd got heavier than I'd like. I'm reasonably fit, and a good weight for my height and build, but as a result of an injury I hadn't been doing nearly as much of my physical hobbies as usual, and I'd put on around a stone. So, I decided to try a genuine, honest-to-goodness diet + exercise regime to lose that weight.
For three months, I kept a spreadsheet of everything I ate or drank, with calorie counts, amounts of protein, carbs, fats and fibre, etc. I also kept a record of how much significant exercise I was doing, and my weight, daily.
Curious facts I discovered while researching/doing it...
So there you go. My top tips for healthy eating with almost no change to your lifestyle:
I lost the stone I wanted to comfortably in three months, and now feel much fitter as I get back into training. And I'm the laziest guy in the world, so if I can do it, anyone can.
Eat different... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm about 6'4" and I decided to start losing weight when I hit 240, which is firmly in the "obese" category. I'm still in the middle of the diet right now having lost 30, and while I don't know precisely where I'm going to stop, my still-overly-ample gut says "not yet". (But not as ample as it used to be...)
I chose the Atkins diet because A: It made some degree of sense and B: I knew I did not have the willpower to engage in any diet based on staying hungry all the time, which for instance the Hackers diet does. This is especially true because I couldn't fully control the contents of my residence, since my wife lives here too and she's one of those people who can eat whatever she wants, as much as she wants, and not gain significant weight, whether or not she's exercising. (She does a lot of physical stuff at her job now but this was true when she was a college student, too.) This means I could not just throw all X out so that I couldn't possibly eat it, because she happens to like X (starchy products in the case of the low-carb Atkins diet).
The reason I posted is that I decided, both out of laziness (I freely admit) and out of scientific curiousity, not to change my exercise habits. Right now I walk maybe a mile a day in discontinuous chunks between classes and walking to work. I was curious if I could still lose weight just by changing my diet. Part of this curiousity stems from the Atkins discussion of how it works, which if true would imply that exercise would not need to change (though to be clear and fair, Atkins does recommend more exercise; this is my experimentation, not Atkin's).
So far, as I said, I've lost 30 pounds.
One person does not a study make, but when you're working with yourself, it's all you've got; you can't do a controlled study.
One thing I did not really experience that Atkins said I should was an increase in energy after the third or fourth day on his diet. Possible explanations include not exercising, or something internally wrong with me that also requires me to take abnormally large doses of iron just to function normally; it may be physically impossible for me to have a "normal" energy level. (Still working on it.)
Right now I'm dropping diet soda back out of the mix to see if that's contributing to my energy problem, as against Atkin's advice I had been drinking Nutrasweet-based beverages anyhow. Results after two days are still inconclusive, but hopeful. (Nutrasweet has been reported to slow the metabolism in some cases, both slowing weight loss and causing energy problems.)
The point? "Just eat less and exercise more, dufus!" didn't help me much. To others in my position, I recommend reading up on the available alternatives, and trying as much as is possible with a sample size of one to experiment to see how you lose wieght. For me, there was a chicken and egg problem: 240-lb me didn't really want to exercise. 210-lb me has been much more open to the idea. 190-lb me will probably enjoy it. But if I had to start with a program of heavy exercise, I probably wouldn't have started at all, which is the worst possible outcome.
I needed something a little formal, but flexible. (Technically, I'm no longer "doing Atkins" but doing an Atkins-inspired diet, as once I got the gist of the diet the strict regimentation didn't appeal to me; it does not seem fundamental to the system and makes me suspect Dr. Atkins lays it out as he does to serve the Average Reader who expects complete regimentation out of a diet book. Less carb counting and a more free-form approach is working for me where a regimented diet would have made me quit in disgust, YMMV.) Maybe you just need to drop the cola out of your life and replace it with water or other calorie-free choices. Maybe you just need to exercise and your diet will fix itself. Maybe you need something extremely strict. The most important thing i
I'm on Atkins, it kicks ass (Score:4, Insightful)
After putting up with those shakes that caused me to overindulge my whole life, I tried Atkins. After about a week of no processed carbs, I felt a noticeable difference. The shakes were gone for good, and the pounds have been coming off easily. I've never been one to stick to a diet, but this one is easy. You don't feel like you're starving yourself, and that's one of the diet's main benefits.
Not being a slave to my hopoglycemic shakes and brain fogs is the number one benefit, though. I never realized how often that brain fog had me under its grip until about a week after starting Atkins. Since then, I've felt remarkably clear-headed. I know others on low-carb diets who report the same thing.
Don't knock low carb diets until you understand why they work.
Personally, I think that the low-fat mentality generated by the medical community in the 70's, 80's, and 90's was the biggest failing of Science in the 20th century.
One step at a time. (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest problem I hear about (and see in any office) is that people have two modes of operation: 'regular' and 'diet,' so -- at best -- they diet and work out until they get what they want and then stop, and then this repeats indefinitely.
If you have trouble keeping up the willpower to follow one of the regimens linked to in these comments, don't do at all once. The BEST ADVICE YOU CAN TAKE AS A NERD:
Give up soda. No real soda, no diet soda. The worst thing in the world to put into your body is sugar, and that's all you're getting with soda. Replace it with water. If you drink a lot of coffee, a) cut the sugar down to the minimum you need for the coffee, and b) drink even more water. Soda does nothing but dehydrate you and fill your body with shit. At @200 calories a pop for non-diet, you can easily shave 400-800 calories off of your daily diet. That's about how many calories you burn when you run a few miles -- down the crapper in the couple of minutes it takes you to drink a coke.
The key is to make these habits routine, so you don't have to think 'oh, I'm on a diet this week.' Even the best 'whiz' diet will not help you if you do not adapt a healthy living style. Don't aim for going to the gym twice a week. Aim for doing something EVERY DAY (even if it's the 11-minute 5BX Plan [flwd.com]) -- and then augment that daily routine with a few _serious_ work outs.
Being in shape half the time and spending the other half trying to get back in shape doesn't help your health very much. Change your lifestyle and then you can 'cheat' without it being even being cheating, because you do the right thing 95% of the time.
The Paleo Diet (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been on the Paleo Diet for 5 months now, and I am very happy with it. It took about a week for my digestive tract to get used to more fiber in my diet, but other than that I have had a very positive expirence. Being an athlete, it has definitely helped my recovery time, and I have been much less injury prone this winter
For the most part I eat only fruits, vegetables, and meat. Some would see this as restrictive, but I find it quite liberating. So much of the American diet is centered around bread, rice, and potatoes we for get the bounty of other foods out there.
Less Soda (Score:3, Informative)
STAY BUSY. Always have something todo, no this doesn't mean sitting in front of the computer all day.That isn't something todo, go running, play a sport, work on your car or even just hang out at a friends house...it will keep you away from the fridge when you're bored.
DRINK LESS SODA, or none at all. Not even diet soda, see the next section for my shpeil on corn syrup. I just stopped buying the stuff, all I drink is water now, and occasionally, fruit juice. REAL fruit juice, not hawiian punch.
AVOID High Fructose Corn Syrup. It turns into fat faster than almost anything else, processed sugars in general do this. The thing about processed sugars is that you're going to find them in almost any sweetened processed food. The deal is that corn syrup is much much cheaper than regular sugar, but also much worse for you. Which do YOU think is more important to food producers?
Anyway, thats about it. I mean, if you really want to look good and be healthy, not just thin, go exersize.
AND GUYS: Don't use "She care more about my mind" as an excuse to not work out. The truth is, she DOES care more about your mind, but you probably won't get a chance to talk to her if you don't look good first.
SIGBUS' Four-Pronged Diet Plan (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Eat smaller portions; stop eating as soon as (or before) you feel full. This is especially important if you eat out; lots of restaurants give you unnecessarily big portions. Eat a Whopper Jr. instead of a full-size Whopper; throw out half your french fries. Pay attention to portion sizes on food packages. Remember, feeling a little bit hungry is not a bad thing.
3. Cut down or eliminate deep-fried stuff. It's loaded with fat. Eat grilled chicken instead of fried; have broiled fish instead of fish-and-chips. Substitute flank steak for hamburger. Have an occasional vegetarian/vegan meal. While I have no intention of going 100% vegan, there are plenty of meatless meals that I've found I like.
4. Avoid between-meal snacks. The calories can really add up. It's OK to have a treat now and then; just don't overdo it. Choose low-calorie snacks, and eat fresh fruit instead of candy.
I once weighed 245 lbs/111 kilos. Then, I made those four changes to my eating habits. For a month, I avoided stepping onto the scale, and when I finally did so, I found that I had lost a little weight. After six months, I was down to 210 lb/95 kg, and after a year, I leveled off at 170 lb/77 kg.
As for keeping the weight off, get some exercise. After my weight leveled off, I dragged my old mountain bike out of storage and started riding for the first time in eight years. I then switched to a recumbent [ransbikes.com] for more comfort and speed (Mine is the 2001 model). I've taken many long rides on it; my personal distance record so far for a one-day ride is 150 miles/241 km.
This winter, the weather discouraged me from riding much, so I went back into diet mode when I noticed that I had gained a little. Now I'm down to 165 lb/75 kg...
My experience with the Hacker's Diet (Score:4, Informative)
The hacker's diet is very simple: you can eat whatever you want, just make sure you eat less calories than what your body needs. You can feed on hamburgers if you want as long as you eat less. You can worry about exercising or eating healthy stuff later, this will come automatically once you've lost some weight.
4 years ago I was at 215 lbs (for 5'10), loathed any form of physical activity, and was not very happy about this situation. After skimming through the hacker's diet I decided to lower my daily food intake to around 1000-1200 cal (the average intake for a man is between 2000-2500 cal)
This wasn't very pleasant at first but it worked and 12 months later I was down to 155 lbs (60 pounds less), without any exercise at all. To keep the same weight I started eating a bit more and I immediately felt like running everywhere instead of walking! So I bought a bike to get some low impact exercise and a year afterwards I found myself cycling 20 miles every day to work (not in the snow though)
Today, 4 years after I started this very simple diet, I'm still at 155 lbs, very active and generally much happier. Also I'm not closely counting calories anymore as my body automatically knows how much food is enough.
The most difficult part I found when starting the diet was evaluating calories in food. You can find calories on most food labels (usually in cal/100g of product) but it took me a while to learn what type of food would bring me the best quantity/energy ratio. I found some great low cal food are veggies (I am lucky to love beans and 1kg of beans is about 200cal - you can stuff yourself on this without any problem), chicken, fish...
All this food happens to be very healthy too, so as you see there is no need to worry about knowing what's healthy and what's not because if you want to eat a lot (as in volume) without taking in too many calories, it will have to be healthy food anyway.
Read the Hacker's Diet for more info, it is definitely worth it!!
BTW the first time I heard about the Hacker's diet was on Slashdot, 4 years ago [slashdot.org].
blop.
Simply don't eat every day. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a hundred thousand years of evolution where your ancestors bodies have coped admirably with low food and no food conditions. Simply changing from a must eat every day to an eat when hungry mentality i've gone from 112kg (245lbs) to 90kg (196lbs) in around 6 months.
Another 10kg (22lbs) to lose, no bother at all.
Facts about low-carb diets (Score:3, Insightful)
1. If you simply eliminate 80-90% of the rice, other grains (and products made from them like bread), starchy roots, and sugars from your diet, you will lose weight.
2. Cheating is good. Simply put, if you do the above you pretty much need to cheat in order to maintain some balance in your diet. I recommend a glass of OJ or V8 at least once a week and a bowl of high-fiber cereal once a week (Fiber One has a good fiber/carb ratio).
3. Losing is easy, so is gaining. The problem is that you have to have an exit-plan because after a year of this diet, you may have lost 50 lbs like I did, but you're going to be sick of not eating sandwiches.
4. The Carbohydrate Addicts diet is somewhat less effective, but does give you a major win: dinner.
I started my original diet again and a doctor suggested, for reasons unrelated to weight, that I switch to the CA diet (you can find the book just about anywere, but you don't need it). The diet is simple: even more strict carb reduction with no snacks coupled with a one-hour dinner of whatever the heck you want. The book has some maintenance plans that basically leave you on the diet permanently in a way that is not very difficult live with. The way this diet works is by tricking the body's insulin-release process. By eating low carbs for 2 meals and then limiting yourself to one hour for your "reward dinner", you end up processing that dinner pretty much the same way as you would a low-carb meal.
5. The cold hard truth is that while a low-carb diet will work, excersise still can't be beat. If you get 20 contiguous, minutes or more of sweat-inducing activity in per day, at least 3 days per week, the aerobic benefit is gigantic.
Good luck all!
If atkins is low-cal, you're doing it wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
Just my salad dressing is about 500 calories, 95% of which are from fat. Of course I like bacon on my salad, more fat! Breakfast this morning consists of eggs (1g carbs per egg and a bunch of protein) and sausage, yay fat! In the sausage anyway. I don't know what I'm having for lunch, but you can bet... it'll be fat.
Atkins is not a low-calorie diet, and even if you screw it up and make it that way, that is not the primary reason it works. The primary reason it works is because it is ketogenic; It causes your body to go into ketosis, a state in which lean muscle loss is slowed and fat is not stored. For more information on the Atkins diet, check out my atkins diet writeup on e2 [everything2.com] which I think is an excellent primer, though by no means comprehensive.
Some advice... (Score:3, Insightful)
My birthday is coming up (the "big" 3-0, of course) - so I thought it would be in my best interest to have a full physical done. I had an idea that when the blood work came back, there would be hell to pay. I am your typical geek - little in the way of exercise, high fat/high carb food consumption (ie, Jack in the Box and KFC on a weekly basis, lots of home cooked meals like polish sausage and fried potatoes, grilled rib-eye steak, homemade fried pork chops), and worst of all, funky eating habits (no breakfast, no lunch, three helpings at dinner).
That all changed when I got my blood work back the next week, and was prescribed Lipitor for high cholesterol.
Attention all geeks - I cannot stress this enough - if you are overweight and eat like I eat, get your blood work done, and change your habits - before they get to a point where they kill you. It isn't hard to do, and can be a little fun (ok, not much - but it is interesting, to say the least).
Ok, so now I am on Lipitor for the immediate future. As soon as I got my bloodwork back, I was what could be called something like "low-high" range - in that I had more than reccommended total cholesterol (a bit over 200), a lot more of the bad cholesterol, and less than needed (a lot less) of the good cholesterol. I immediately (the night I picked up my prescription) changed my diet and my habits.
1. No more fast food, unless it is a healthy alternative like Subway (no mayo, etc), or some kind of chinese food (chicken and white rice, but the chicken can't be fried).
2. No more fried foods.
3. Eat on a regular basis - I now eat a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner, all normal size portions - no more triple-helpings at "dinner".
4. Eat more grilled foods - chicken and seafood mainly, every now and then, pork (lean chops). The upside is that I love chicken - I just can't have it fried.
5. Eat more baked foods - lemon-pepper baked salmon and rice - yum!
6. Take a walk on regular basis - I now walk about 1-2 miles every evening after I eat.
7. Park further away from places - this isn't something I always do, but I do more often now - not only do you get a parking space all the time, but you get a bit of exercise as well.
8. No more "sweets" - ie, processed snack cakes, candy bars, etc.
9. Drink less soda - no more 44 oz drinks from Circle K - I drink a lot more water now, I also buy flavored/carbonated water. I also drink a fair amount of soy milk (Silk brand is the best I have found, so far).
10. If you drink milk, go with 1-2%, and where you can stand it, drink soy milk as I noted above - I tend to buy vanilla flavored, and have it with cherrios for my breakfast.
11. Eat more fruit and vegetables - steam your vegatables when/where you can - or roast them, or bake them, or have them raw.
12. When you are full, stop eating - this isn't as hard if you are eating regularly. When I switched to a breakfast/lunch/dinner schedule of eating, I found out I was eating a lot less food, and I filled up quickly.
When you buy food, look for the lowest of everything on the back - however, most of the time you will have to compromise. Typically, if it is low fat, it is high carb - or it will be vice-versa. Rarely will you find foods (especially processed foods) that are "perfect" in all categories. Many foods are actually completely "empty" - they have calories, and that's it - Redi-Whip is like this. What is nice about these is that if you keep your daily calorie count low enough, you can use redi-whip, chocolate syrup, and low-fat vanilla ice cream and have a nice "sweet" that isn't too bad for you.
Eat more fish and seafood - salmon, catfish and others are pretty good eats, prepared right. Just don't dip in batter and fry - bake or grill instead. Grilled pork chops with barbeque sauce are fi
Re:Exercise (Score:5, Funny)
I wait until mid morning to go into work.
Re: Exercise (Score:4, Insightful)
> Hey you might think its boring but exercise makes you feel good.
For geeks the badly needed aerobic exercise (walk, run, bicycle, swim, etc.) is a great time to get away from the terminal and think out that problem that you've been throwing code at in vain. My daily walk is some of my most productive "programming" time. Figure out bugs, replace inefficent algorithms, design application architectures - all are easily done during the course of a mile or two's walk. Perhaps done better, for getting away from the terminal and thinking about the problem in more abstract terms, or at least at a higher level than a screen full of source code.
Re:Excercise (Score:2)
1)Take in less calories
2)Burn more calories
The best is a combination of the two. This is a basic fact, and there is no way around it, I don't care what Oprah magazine says.
Actually low carb does work. (Score:5, Interesting)
The low carb diet works, bodybuilders use it, I use it. But its supposed to be for bodybuilders, not just for general weight loss. The reason people go on low carb is so they can lose weight QUICKLY while keeping muscle, if you go on a starvation diet of one meal a day for a month you will lose weight, but half your weight will be in muscle and the other half in fat. Low carb allows you to lose 90 percent fat and maybe 10 percent muscle, these is extremely important to the athelete, the body builder etc who want to lose FAT, not lose weight.
I want to lose fat, I go low carb because I can continue to eat fat. You must eat fat if you want your body to remember how to burn it, your body burns what you eat, if you eat low fat and high carbs your body burns carbs, if you eat high fat low carb your body burns fat, and if you eat high protien and low everything, your body burns protien.
What you want to do is make the body adapt, so that you burn fat for fuel with more efficiency while on your low calorie diets, its more of a metabolism boosting diet, and its safer than the traditional starvation diet.
Re:Actually low carb does work. (Score:5, Informative)
When is a calorie not a calorie? When it's protein. 1 g of protein has the same calories as 1 g of carbohydrate. However, it takes your body more energy to digest the protein, so the net result is that 1 g of protein provides you, in the end, with less calories than 1 gram of carbs. That is also something to consider if you're on a high-protein bodybuilding type diet.
Ahem... no! (Score:5, Informative)
1 gram carbohydrate = 4.3 kcal
1 gram fat = 9.5 kcal
1 gram protein = 5.7 kcal
But you were right on the other part. It does take more energy to digest the protein, as it needs to be converted by the liver into a usable sugar.
SF
Re:Actually low carb does work. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The human diet! (Score:3, Informative)
Using the same logic, one can treat kidney failure by drinking less fluid - if you drink only as much fluid as you lose, you cant get fluid retention and swell up (as people in kidney and heart failure tend to do).
But the problem with this "black box" analysis of the human body is that it grossly simplifies the idea of metabolism. The body is alot more complex than this, and people are just starting to realise this. Delete a gene from a mouse,
Re:The human diet, spiked with addictive drugs! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not 100% accurate. In normal mammals in the wild, this would surely be true, but humans do not consume a natural diet. Salt and alcohol are two substances which will cause water retention. Another major culprit is cooked food, as heat damaged proteins cannot be utilized by your body and instead are secreted through your sweat glands as a waste product (same way as certain proteins in onions, giving your sweat a different odor). All protein is hydophobic, thus resulting in water retention in the outer layer of your skin. This results in acne, dry skin, and in many people facial edema.
Delete a gene from a mouse, and it gets fat, even on the same caloires of a normal mouse.
I have heard this before, but there was no such study. The gene in question seemed to involve hunger. The mice in question did consume more calories than the other mice. You cannot magically produce fat from nothing. A glucose molecule or a fatty acid molecule is the same size in an ant, elephant, or mouse. These people were also feeding mice wheat based pellets, ignoring a well known fact that wheat products contain opioid peptides and are addictive. Most likely, the genes had nothing to do with hunger but response to mu-opioid agonists, ie those mice crave opioid drugs more than others. This is also the case with humans. Opioid peptides derived from wheat and dairy products are added to pretty much every junk food. MSG is another addictive substance.
Point is, we didn't spend thousands of years in evolution without developing tight regulation of our metabolism.
There is not tight regulation as you speak, your metabolic activity is supposed to be tightly connected to appetite. Unfortunatley, our shift to a diet of cooked food, wheat, and dairy products has created a situation where people aren't craving the food but the drugs they contain. You have a drug delivery system rich in calories.
Thus the problem with simply dieting - for most people, in the long run, it just doesn't work.
It can easily work, if people eliminate addictive foods from their diet. But to comment on your statement, if what you say is true, then all hope is lost for the human race.
Because they are fighting their programming.
Programming? You mean like genetic programming? It is an absolute myth, plain and simple, that human beings are predisposed to gluttony. It is simply not true. A simple survey of photographs from past would show you that humans today are SICK, and it is not normal. Food has been plentiful in the US for most of its entire existence, yet obesity of the level today simply did not exist in the 19th century and early 20th century. Look at pictures of the beach at Coney Island in 1920 for example, when food was plentiful in NYC. There were no fat people at all.
There are plenty of examples, but the evidence is overwhelming that humans eating a normal western diet are following an addictive behavior pattern, not a normal human one.
I will give you a hint, governments do not want it to become widely known that opioid drugs are found throughout our food supply. It is only a secondary reason that companies add them so that profits increase due to customers eating and buying more of their crap. Governments want opioid drugs in foods because they create contentment in the people. Secondary effects like asthma and constipation are also quite handy in keeping a people from revolting.
The Evolutionary Perspective (Score:2, Informative)
Grain was never part of the fuel that our bodies were designed to run on. 10,000 years is hardly long enough for a selection event to occur, and so grains are quite artificial in the human diet.
Sugar, partially hydrogenated oils, and other refined foods that hit the market this centu
Re:The Evolutionary Perspective (Score:2)
yes and they also point to a life expectancy of about 30 years, so if you can live with that, bring on the meat!!
Re:Solution to American Obesity Found! NOT! (Score:3, Informative)