Regarding dieting

[Climbingthewalls12]

Just watching that Channel 4 program about people who used to be fat, then thin then fat again and its got me thinking.

AIBU tonot see how people can claiming dieting and exercise don't work and to say that of course they bloody do if you stick to it and do it properly. As someone who has previously lost a great deal of weight this way it really grates on me that people use it as an excuse.

I know there can be medical issues but the general reality is that people don't do it properly!

Given that mostly people understand roughly what a healthy diet is, and that eating less than your body needs makes the weight drop off, why can't so many people do it?

There's got to be more to it than dieting.

Why do so many of us not just eat to live but eat to excess day after day so that they never lose it and continue to gain? A huge proportion of this country is overweight or obese.

I know mine is self abuse and self medication (I have BED)and I overeat too. I'm gradually improving but still suffer setbacks.

If everyone always made the right choice about what to put into their bodies, no-one would ever drink alcohol or smoke.

A good question joysmum . To me it just clicked for me one day. I had been overweight for about 10 years and had made a few attempte to lose weight, often losing a stone or so, then backsliding and ending up heavier. The last time it just sort of fell into place, and I started to feel differently mentally.
I do think it's much harder for some people though. I'm lucky in that I don't have any 'demons' or history of abuse, and I could also remember being slim, and how much better life felt (that's my personal take on it, others may feel different). I also believe there's something in the culture of 'fat families' where people just get used to overeating and don't know any different. That didn't apply to me.

The problem is that people think they are eating healthily when in fact they are not. Look at the what did you eat yesterday thread.

We need food for our bodies to function, overload it and it wont function properly.

BTW I just did 10 squats while I wrote this.

I lost about 18lb on Rosemary Conley diet in 2010-20 11. I wanted to lose weight before I turned 40. I worked bloody hard exercising and also stuck to the 1200 calories. It meant I could have one day "off" for a meal out per week and really I had to plan every meal and I had such guilt trips over going off the diet.

In 2012, my mum was seriously ill for months and then died in the August. Slowly, from that period I put the weight back on.........yes, I think comfort eating is a major issue. But also, with so many other emotional problems to deal with, I couldn't handle the stress of punishing myself on counting those calories to only 1200 a day.

For me, I suffer with allergies and food intolerences, and my relationship with food means it dominates my life. What with trying to avoid the foods that make me ill, then trying to keep to low fat/low carb/low sugar it feels like it really does dominate my whole life, and it is a struggle. I do think quite honestly that modern processed foods contribute to our struggle with obesity.

Yes I CAN lose weight, yes I can exercise and diet - but when you're dealing with life's other problems like nursing a sick mum, managing a child with SEN, plus trying to fit in work.........putting this strict healthy diet and counting calories does tend not to be top of the list.

Diets work if you stick with them but what happens afterwards when you have lost it?

None of the diets really set up people for life (well they wouldn’t make any money would they)
Take WW, which on the one hand preach healthy eating then on the other advertise and encourage people to buy ready meals or ice cream and treats stuffed full of sweeteners and anything artificial.
Other diets encourage you to cut out whole food groups, which again is not sustainable.

Then you are bombasted with advertising for food you really don’t need and don’t give you any nutritional benefit like surgery snacks and then you have companies like coca cola and MacDonald’s sponsoring huge sporting events or putting up vending machines in hospitals. Half the supermarkets are filled with crap, which often have great deals on, and anywhere you go like the cinema etc you are encouraged to eat, often with good deals on the larger portions.

People say well ‘just eat less’ but food labels are not the clearest a lot of the time (wonder why) and it is not simply a case of eating less. A banana and a curly wurly have roughly the same amount of calories for example. A pile of nuts or some avocado will have significantly more – is it any wonder people get confused on low calorie diets?

BTW I am not over weight but it is no wonder many people are when almost everything in their environment is not encouraging them otherwise.

Weight loss diets do not work because they are based on a lie.

People do not need to be slim - because body size is linked to details of skeletal shape
but they should aim to be lean
and reducing visceral fat is one of the most important lifestyle choices you can make.
It is possible to do that while still enjoying cheese, chocolate and wine.
No excuses.

When I was 29 I weighed 3 stone more than I do now.
Its hard work but it can be done.

The number of calories you need drops by around 5% per decade of age through adulthood.
The supermarkets do not want you to save money by eating less.

It is possible to lose weight at any age, but to be honest, having got so fat you need to diet/ lose a large amount of weight by the age of 22 means you are probably far more likely to pile it back on again.

I think once you have got to the stage of having to diet, you have already lost part of the battle. That's not meant to be offensive to anyone, and I'm not implying anyone is weak or whatever by having got to this place. However, excluding underlying medical conditions, if you have put on lots of weight it is probably due to overestimating the amount of food you need to eat, eating the wrong things, or having a poor relationship with food.

Once you have got into those habbits it must be much harder to break them than never having got into those habbits at all. I imagine that is why a lot of diets don't work for people- they can't change to a healthy lifestyle, or have never properly learnt what one is. There is a lot more education about this (imo) now than there was in the past.

It's not about weight as such, anyway. It's about being healthy and fit for your natural body shape. In my teens I was obsessed with being really skinny, although my natural body shape is more hourglass/curvy. I weighed probably about 1/2-1 stone less than I do now, and I was fainting and feeling light headed on a semi-regular basis. That's no more healthy than being fat.

Now I eat more sensibly and try to do regular exercise to stay fit. It's not rocket science, but if people never learn what eating sensibly is, or what a sensible amount of exercise is, then this is very hard for them to achieve. "Diets" that involve cutting out whole food groups, meal replacement, and crazy detoxes don't help with this at all, really.

I think for me personally, it's so easy to overeat by way more than I could hope to cut down on by dieting (and that's without the bingeing episodes!)

So say I wanted to lose a lb a week and cut down by 500kcals a day for 7 days and then went and had a curry, a desert and a few drinks, that would equate to more than I had cut back on in the previous 7 days and I'll have lost nothing.

I think for many, the treats and days off ondo the good work and they get despondent and it becomes unsustainable.

Serviceplease - you are living your life on a diet. Calorie counting to 1200 every day and doing exercise as penance is no kind of life- and be prepared for that 1200 calories to get lower and lower as the years go by, the combined effect of food restriction and ageing. Not how I want to live and not an example I would ever want to set for children.

Pinkglow and slowlor have a much healthier approach, really learn what is healthy, what suits your body in terms of food types and exercise and - 80-90% of the time, do that to maintain a healthy weight without obsessing or constantly trying to exercise self control, a battle that ultimately will be lost by 99% of us.

Where there are extraneous reasons for emotional eating or weight retention these need to be tackled as a separate thing, whilst it can be exacerbated by attempting to restrict food intake, emotional/binge eating has nothing at all to do with food, greed or willpower, it is a coping mechanism, in the same way other people may use alcohol, drugs, screaming at people, exercise, gambling or even self harm.

joysmum what you are describing (a curry, dessert and a few drinks) doesn't need to equal 3500 calories. It is possible to have the odd night out, or the odd slice of birthday cake eg, and still lose weight. It's just a matter of balancing it out over the long term.

Its all about moderation. Its absolutely fine to have a curry and a beer every now and then, we certainly do. So long as that is offset with nice healthy meals and snacks otherwise then it isn't going to cause significant harm.

I by no means live my life on a diet. Having adjusted my portion size and by bulking up my meals with veg etc. its possible to live a decent life and to stay at a healthy weight. Its not one or the other.

The problem with dieting is that it makes you think about food constantly.
Its much easier to just decide not to eat foods that are bad for you

Make a meal planner for the whole week.
Research the foods you are thinking of eating.
Throw away bad things
Buy a healthy cookbook
Prepare carrots, cucumbers etc in case you want to nibble.

It isn't as simple as saying "Im not eating that its bad for me though" again that doesn't look at the wider issues, and for a lot of people cutting things out of the diet makes issues with regards to craving food much worse.

Learning to eat things in moderation is much better for most people than completly cutting things out

Yes, but you will get over it, honestly.

I used to drink 3 cans of coke a day if not more. Four sugars in my coffee one day I just stopped. If I have anything with sugar now it tastes horrible and if I have it at night it keeps me awake for hours.

The same with Mc Donalds or M&S ready food I eat it then the next day my hands are swollen, my lips are chapped it is so unbelievable, it didnt effect me when I was eating it all the time its only when you stop.

Why not address your issue with food one by one. I know its hard but really it can be done.

I have addressed it thanks but without the need to take anything out of my diet completly.

The problem with that is your body still craves the bad stuff because its still getting it, over time we go back to old habits and start putting on weight again.

What is this fascination with keeping things that are harming you in the diet ?
I dont get it. Its like someone smoking saying 10 a day wont kill me.

Sleep - I'm really not sure how pinkglow and slow lot have healthier or better lifestyles than me

I don't cut out any good groups or starve myself, just eat within the calories I need to stay at the weight I want to be (a 10-12). I have never gorged or eaten loads of sweet stuff, just had poor portion control.

I would love it if my body was one which needed 2,000 cals a day to stay the same. It isn't, so I don't eat so much. I don't log my calories either, I just know what is calorie dense and what less so and adjust my eating accordingly.

This is why people think it is a penance or you can't live your life that way. Well you can - I have plenty of food for my needs and don't get fat. That is my choice but I do hate it when others say 'that is no way to live' or moan about being overweight because that lifestyle would t suit them.

It's a choice we all make (harder for some with emotional food issues or disabilities preventing exercise than others ill grant you)

Oh and I love getting some exercise every week - great for physical and mental health.

I do not crave bad stuff
I do not think about food constantly
I cannot plan a week of meals in advance because of work
BUT
doing 5:2 I only really worry about what I'm eating two days a week (when the answer is not much)

when I got married 20 years ago I was size 14/16
now I'm size 8
and I know how to stay size 8 forever while having a roule sandwich for lunch every now and then

No Snacking
Drink plenty of water
Exercise as much as you can
Do not eat things where you do not know the ingredients

same as people did for thousands of years before the "obesity epidemic"

I don't crave "bad" stuff. I eat what I want in moderation which is sustainable very few people can completly cut things out their diet long term

Different people do different things. I thought the whole point of posting was to share ideas to help people.

If diets worked there would be only one diet on the market.

Change of lifestyles do work......they change your life for the better.

Service, based purely on what I am reading here, which I grant you may not give the whole story, I would say they have better lifestyles because they sound like they eat in a more natural way, make choices based on health and nutrition and pleasure rather than how many calories foods contain. I simply don't believe your natural metabolism only requires only 1200 calories per day and I don't believe that this would give you adequate protein, fat and nutrients over the long term. So not only are you damaging your metabolism but you are risking health issues, which may already be showing up in the form of headaches, fatigue, low mood, poor skin or hair, digestive issues....the list goes on. Ideally we would all be properly in touch with our appetites and listen to that, not refer to a calorie counter....eat when hungry, stop when full, choose what our bodies tell us we need, much more like children or animals do. Constantly counting calories is a boring obsession (for the counter, let alone people he/she eats with) and unnatural.

Also, calorie dense food isn't necessarily bad, particularly if it is nutrient dense...the trouble is that too many calorie foods are most definitely not nutrient dense. The avocado and nuts example given up thread is a perfect one, you would be much better eating 500 calories of those than a bowl of pasta in tomato sauce for example. All calories are not equal.

But a change of lifestyle doesn't have to mean excluding things. That is what trips up so many people and why it is much better for most people to learn to eat whatever you want in moderation. To start trying to cut things out is what creates problems in the first place for many 'dieters'

'Too many low calorie foods'

sleepwhenidie
My TDEE for weeks when I cannot get to the gym is 1500 - ie that is the total number of calories a day that I need to stay the same weight.

Many, many people under 5'2" have a TDEE in the 1200 to 1300 range, especially those who are older.

The 2000 calories a day is a figures based on a time and motion study of a 1950's housewife.
It has no relevance to most people today.