to think that losing weight isn't as complicated as it's made out to be?

[upsylazy]

NB I am not saying that losing weight is EASY as i have learned from personal experience. But there do seem to be this plethora of methods, books, videos, personal plans out there about it. Through my lifetime, I've had to listen to people drone on endlessly abouy the grapefruit diet, the F plan diet, the Cambridge diet, diets where you can't mix food groups right up to Atkins and all the low carb stuff.
My understanding from biology at school is that food contains units of energy (calories) and I seem to remember this being demonstrated by burning a peanut and seeing how much it raised the temperature of a test tube of water.
The understanding I have is that if you consume more calories than you burn off, you'll put on weight and vice versa. I've never found that idea particularly complex. I don't doubt that a lot of these diets work but they can only work if you burn up more calories than you consume.
Also, can someone please please tell me why carbs have suddenly become so bad for you? I can understand that saturated fat is bad as it clogs up your arteries and that too much salt is bad as it can raise blood pressure and reduce bone density but what do carbs DO to you that make them so terible?
I'm sitting in an office with that food pyramid thingy on the wall which basically says that carbs are good and that your diet should contain more of them than meat or dairy products. So are they wrong about this?
I don't have a problem with things like weight watchers as I can see that group suport can be invaluable. It's just all the new books and plans and programmes which various people (none of whom seem to be dieticians) are obviously making a packet from. I am perfectly prepared to stand corrected BTW.

Wosh it was as easy as self control - I have PCOS which 10 years ago led to type 2 diabetes. I also have severe endometriosis, and some of the hormone treatments (Danazol. / Zoladex etc) caused massive weight gain, very quickly, with no change to my intake / calorie burning.

I've lost 2 stone over Christmas - I had major surgery and, following that, my diabetes is uncontrollable. Because I'm not producing / receiving enough insulin, my body is burning fat stores (apparently). So I feel and look great - but am risking blindness / neuropathy / renal damage. It'll be sorted soon - I'll be on permanent injections - but I'll be gaining weight again.

I really really wish it was simple! Low GI foods do make a difference for me, as well as carb control (not cutting out) - but that leads to less energy.

Sigh!

Self-control is the only way to maintain a healthy weight

Actually it was hearing (and stealing) the over eaters anonomous first step (think it is an american 12 step programme for people addicted to food, somebody mentioned it on an American forum)

"stop making excuses and put down the god damn fork"

that got me to actually give up smoking rather than talk about giving up smoking and focusing on getting areated about how hard it was and how other people didn't understand, which I then used to justify another fag or six hundred.

I then got fat cos I stopped smoking, so had to start again

Out of the two I think giving up fags is easier cos you don't have to smoke "healthily" to live. Food, you do need to consume so just can't hide away from your nemisis til the worst has passed.

Plus, your issue with the NHS recommendations smack of the typical Paleo core belief that carbs are bad (especially ebil grains) and a substantial increased of fat intake is not bad. The fact that Paleo and other diet gurus claim the above to be true, doesn't necessarily make it so. The NHS isn't going to change its guidlines for an entire population on the basis of some fad diets say so. They want proof, in bulk, good quality proof at that. And rightly so.

Loquace That's because I actually do believe that carbs (above a fairly small daily intake), especially grains ARE bad for us! We humans did not evolve to eat the way we do now. Grains in their current form didn't exist - we breed them from wild grasses and before the advent of fire (cooking), we couldn't have eaten any sizeable amount.

The current healthy eating advice is hardly "evidence based" - advice on grain consumption came from grain producers in the USA, advice on fat, salt and fruit intake etc, all based on flawed studies... but still taken as gospel, new studies start from the assumption that fat is bad, red meat is bad, salt is bad. And it's NOT free from commercial interest either - a lot of these nutrition studies are funded by the drug companies which make the drugs to control the diseases their nutritional advice is responsible for!

That's because I actually do believe that carbs (above a fairly small daily intake), especially grains ARE bad for us!

The key word there is believe.

Until there is proof, all you have is faith and a nice sounding, but unproven since the bleeding 70s when wothisface come up with it, theory.

The NHS can't change their recommendations based on that, it would be an outragous act of negligence.

Even pre Sumaria there is evidence to support the notion that we ate grains. So that's at least 3000 years odd of cultivation and consumption to support the notion that humans are able to digest and extract nutrition from grains. We may not need as much as we are currently stuffing into our faces. We sure as hell don't need it as fillers in foods where....you are not at all sure what the orginal food substance was before it all got processed. But you kind of need more than faith to make the leap to a corn or wheat phobia and call it "FACT!".

Put it this way. To me the way you talk about grains is more or less how a raw vegan talking trash about meat, fat and dairy sounds to you.

I'm not sure the NHS would ever be able to see studies on a primal diet working, because who would fund it?

The NHS has already commented on studies done on the paleo diet.

And here we go again, you have offered me "science" from a blog where right at the top of the page is written

Get The Book The Primal Blueprint

An author whose income stream depends more on his ability to be persuasive rather than accurate and unbiased. A man whose bio appears to skip over any science education he has achieved and instead waffles on about his "nutrition philosophy" and how ripped he is being a surfer dude and all.

It would appear that those offering evidence has collected their from sites that are the most prone to leaning towards cherry picking, making a big deal about statistically insignificant results and glossing over poorly designed studies.

That is not research and educating yourself. It is seeking out confirmation of what you believe to be true, by only reading the people who will agree with your belief, cos their next surfboard purchase depends on you liking what they are telling you.

What's your theory on the obesity epidemic?

Too much food that isn't even recognisable as food.

Too Much Food Faddism. (whole milk is not poisen for the love of god, ditto butter)

Too much food. (Espcially that of poor nutritional quality.)

but I live in Italy so my observations when I occasionally go home (and wander round the supermarket looking for the actual food that looks like food) and see what other people eat at mealtimes is just a snapshot, so the above may not be accurate.

Kids (and adults) are getting bigger here too. As cheaper, less recognisable as food, convience food is becoming more available and fads are catching on more quickly cos the internet makes it easier for new crazes to travel.

Basically I think sticking with, "eat actual food (not imitation bollocks), not too much, quite a lot of it plant based" as advice would improve the gen pub's weight/health in not insignficant numbers.

Two statements from the NHS website that have not been proven. Who's cherry picking now?

Seriously? You are prepared to go through the NHS's statements with a fine tooth comb and claim (is the proof these are unproven from another "I make money from Paleo"site?) they were unwarrented when they were put out, but waggle somebody's history as a carb eating triathlete as proof he is less unbiased, more equipped to assess the data, and his book sales have nothing to do with the conclutions he presents anyway ?

If you really think the NHS healthy eating advice is as likely to be as biased, cherry picked, poor quality and self serving than a surfer dude with a book to sell....well then I really don't know what to say other than,....good luck with that.

I personally do not subscribe to New World Order and Da Gubbermints Out To Get Me style of conspirscy theories, so while I know that all and every entitity will fuck up and be slow to correct mistakes from time to time I don't live in fear that they are trying to convince me to eat wheat as some kind of cunning plan to make us all very very ill...and therefore cost the NHS even more money.

I don't think that eating only food our ancestors would have eaten is a fad though.

And the raw vegans can't see what is wrong with emulating the diet of an even earlier precursor of the mondern human.

Doesn't make either theory correct and not a fad.

The orginal Atkins - the 1972 version was definitely NOT unlimited cheese

It said

Cheese: Four ounces a day of any hard aged cheese. No cream cheese or cheese spreads.

Loquace is right

There's far too much food of dubious nutritional value eaten

I know a few people who are strangely skinny, even though they seem to eat a lot, but most of the very slim people I know do not each much at all compared to me and do some form of regular excercise.

However, all of the fat people I know without exception are so because they eat shitloads of crap food and do zero excercise.

I dont think it is rocket science.

I used to think it was so easy. I ate whatever I liked and didn't gain weight.

I have spent the past yr restricted to about 1,200 calories/day and am still gaining weight. If I eat porridge I am starving hungry after an hour, it does not fill me up at all.

I had HG in both my pregnancies, after pg/bfing dc1 I was a great weight (bit puffy when bfing), after pg and bfing dc2 I have steadily gained weight .

I may have PCOS, was diagnosed along time ao when I had no weight issues and am now having it reinvestigated in the hope of finding a way to loose weight.

know a few people who are strangely skinny, even though they seem to eat a lot

That's me. When I wasn't in my giving up post giving up smoking piling on the pound phase.

But it was decpetive, cos I could go out with people, stuff my face, but what they didn't know is I would probably forget to eat anything for the next 18 to 24 hours, cos after all that stuff I wasn't hungry again for ages. I always have eaten loads in company, will do fork fights for the last bit of cake, but I don't actually eat very much (probably not enough some of the time) if you tot up all the skipped meals in favour of a bit of picking here and there.

As soon as I was hit by the munchies and actually ate as much as people thought I did, I got big, very quickly. But I had fecking bundles of energy that didn't require me racking my adrenline up to 90, just to keep going.

I even ran 5k on the race for life. And finished! Without falling on my (rather rounded) face. If I tried that now I am skinny again you'd be peeling me off the floor by 800 meters.

I think I need to eat more, more regularly and stop cooking healthy meals for everybody else while I slope off, bored with the whole concept of food after slaving over it for half and hour.

Stop sloping off I mean, not stop cooking healthy meals.

Anyone watching Embarrasing Fat Bodies? A man on there has just said he lost 26 stones by cycling to work and cutting back on rubbish he used to eat. Really impressive.

YANBU

Loosing weight is simple (eat fewer calories than you burn ) but for many people that is not easy.

What's your theory on the obesity epidemic?

Oh seriously? There is a massive obesity epidemic cos people stuff their faces with too much food and do too little exercise. Simples.

I've never met a fat person who didn't eat/drink way too much (yadda yadda I'm sure there are some medical cases etc etc blah)

know a few people who are strangely skinny, even though they seem to eat a lot

Yeah my DP eats a lot at meal times and is redic skinny and people always comment on his portions. But he doesn't snack. Doesn't eat any meat or cheese. Only drinks water. Drinks beers or other alcohol probably once a week with friends. And he is always bloody moving can't sit still and must burn some calories being up down up down up down while I'm lying sloth like on the sofa. Where as I'll have way smaller meals but ill have had a fruit juice at breakfast, a coffee with sugar, and a morning or afternoon snack depending on lunch/dinner timings. And I've probably had a pudding like a yogurt or orange or tinned fruit or something too.

Love the evangelical 'this latest fad paleo diet is the answer to all the worlds evils" stuff. It really isn't!

I'd be inclined to try more paleo recipes (as the food suggested is my kind of food) but unfortunately the evangelical harping on about it puts me right off.

Have lost six and a half stone in total, both post pregnancy (eat like a horse when pregnant and bf), once WeightWatchers (did lose weight but always felt hungry) once low carbing and mainly didn't really feel hungry (not Atkins - had a few carbs every day - it was more about measuring GL/sugar release levels, filling up on protein and veg).

Both times I would say I had to be very, very focused to do it. Plan ahead everything, keep a food diary, lots of self control and a bit obsessive about food, regular exercise prioritised etc. Doable, but not easy. It was also very, very boring.

Staying eating more or less like that (but not counting it, just eating healthily and occasional treats, at least once a week something like pizza and drinking alot of wine too) I stayed the same weight. It was very easy, and not boring, as I knew if I wanted the odd treat I could.

Then went to the US and put on half a stone in three weeks (!) as we were driving coast to coast and there was mainly only shit to eat and obv wasn't exercising as driving most of the time.

Then this summer I ran two 10ks and a half marathon (assuming I'd lose the weight) but was hungry all the time, especially for carbs/pasta, and didn't lose a single pound! Ok, I know muscle is heavier than fat, but also I think there's a limit to how much you can exercise if you want to lose weight, rather than get fit.

So am going back on the lowish carb, regular moderate exercise wagon for the new year to shift that pesky lingering half stone from the coast to coast excess.

Cross-posted with whois who has summed up what I was trying to say a lot more succinctly!

(the first post - simple but not easy!)

I don't know is anyone watched the C4 embarrassing bodies clinic last night, but there was a woman who was twice the size of the female doctor, they tested both womens hunger hormone and the hormone that tells their brain they are full.
The obese womans hunger hormone was always high, even after eating some rich fatty foods, where as the slim doctors levels peaked and then after eating reduced a lot more than the obese woman.
Her 'im full' hormone was also tellling her that she was full, but her brain wasn't registering that at all.
So,, yes the mechanics of losing weight is simple on paper, but the reality is that there are many things that make losing weight for some people very difficult.