To be pissed off about the so called healthy eating advice we've been given for years ?

[Scarletohello]

I did the Atkins diet about 8 years ago when it was considered faddy and dangerous. Low fat was the healthy way to go. I got so much hostility about it, almost like I was a climate change denier. To my surprise,I lost 2 stone easily and quickly. Unfortunately I got scared by all the health warnings about how bad it was for you so eventually went back to a ' normal' diet. And put it all on again. Am currently watching the C4 doc about how sugar is bad for you. Of course it bloody is !!

Why can't the authorities wake up and realise its not fat that makes you fat? It's sugar and fast acting carbs.

It's time we had a major overhaul in our thinking about what really makes us fat...

I've been low-carbing for the past year. My skin has improved, no more sallowness, regained a healthy glow, it looks like it did before i started having dc and i barely need to moisturise, my eyes are brighter, my eye bags have shrunk away, my stomach does not bloat, I am never constipated, I am more even-tempered. I have also lost masses of weight, slowly and gently. I find it easy to stop eating when I have had enough.

I do not have carb cravings. Yes, I fancy it from time to time, and the smell if toast is almost irresistible, but that's all it is. When I actually put some toast in my mouth, it's - a disappointment!

In the last few months I have been reducing my fat intake and reintroducing carbs in tiny amounts. Not processed stuff, but the unrefined foods you suggest. Within days my carb cravings returned, together with the urge to eat until I was stuffed. The knife-edge temper returned, and the rattyness when hungry.

I dropped the extra carbs on Friday. The cravings are fading (none today, yay!) and my mood is more stable.

Definitely sustainable.

Exercise actually has very, very little impact on weight loss per se. It's important for health and wellbeing, and can of course make you look better by toning, but weight loss depends predominantly on what you put in your mouth, not by how many miles you run.

Maybe not for you, but personally I can never lose weight without a combination of exercise and healthy eating

I think a lot of the issues people have with weight is assuming that everyone is exactly the same or that just because something makes you lose weight it's automatically healthy.

The most weight I ever lost was on slim fast shakes which in hindsight was an utterly ridiculous and unhealthy way to lose weight, people might have thought I was being healthy because I'd lost a tonne of weight but it wasn't a sensible way to do it and wasn't very good for me

Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss?

Nonsense. The change in levels of obesity has as much to do with activity as it has to do with food. We are actually, on average, consuming fewer calories than we used to, decade on decade - but moving a whole lot less. People drive instead of walking or using public transport (which involves more walking and standing). Far fewer people have jobs involving heavy manual labour. Etc. etc. etc.

Anecdotally, the best weight loss trick I ever found was walking to work - went down two dress sizes by walking from the mainline train station to my office. (Sadly have put them back on since I left that job...)

I think it's about 70/30 - ie 70% diet related but of course exercise speeds up metabolism, plus likely to feel less like unhealthy food after exerting yourself.

I think if you are doing one or two fitness classes a week, it really isn't going to impact much on your calorie requirements.
The other thing to consider is that exercise stimulates the appetite or at least it should do if your body is trying to achieve a calories in calories out equilibrium.

The trouble is the word exercise as it conjures up images of the gym/muddy sports field etc. If you don't enjoy sports or gym training then exercise sounds like a punishment.

We are much more sedentary these days. If we substituted the word exercise for movement, for example, then it seems less imposing.

I want to move more in everyday activities (walk not drive, stairs not escalator, not slob on the sofa so much...) This is much more do-able if you don't enjoy "exercise".

I watched something on TV where they followed some people over time and the non-exercising waitress who spent all day on her feet was healthier and fitter than the office worker who hit the gym for an hour most evenings.

I'm not surprised at that. Moving more is key.

if you worried about this you would die an early death through stress.

eat lots of food groups but not too much food.

a little of what you fancy does you good.

take excersise

don't smoke

we all are going to die at some point so enjoy it while you are here.

Low carb (lots of veg that grows above the ground included) is the only thing that keeps the pounds off for me too. Plus, skin better, mood better, concentration better, energy levels better etc.

Different people respond differently to insulin. For some of us, this is the route to reducing risk of CVD, diabetes, some cancers and, if recent research is to be believed, some forms of dementia.

I am bemused by comments about exercise not helping you to lose weight.

Food is fuel. Put more fuel in than you burn, and your body stores it. Put less fuel in that you burn, and your body will burn itself (i.e. you lose weight). The exact point of that balance might be a bit different for different people, but I can't see how you can get away from that principle without somehow overturning the laws of physics??

I think the thing is we have a tendency to overestimate the number of calories in food, the number that we actually need, and the amount that exercise will burn. When you realise how far and fast you have to run to burn off that 800 calorie cake you ate as a 'treat', it is a bit eye-opening. I count myself in this: it's alcohol calories that have seen me gain a few pounds lately!

On the other hand, if you do start doing long, sustained bouts of strenuous cardiovascular exercise, it actually becomes difficult to eat enough! When I was running 50 miles a week, I couldn't actually eat enough (about the only time that has ever been the case mind! Such a good feeling). This is why I am currently focused on increasing my weekly mileage to a point where I can eat anything I like and still lose weight.

I think if you are doing one or two fitness classes a week, it really isn't going to impact much on your calorie requirements

Totally depends what kind of exercise classes you're talking about, it's all relative - if you do two sessions of Aqua Aerobics, it's better than not doing that obviously, but it's not the same as doing two sessions of boot camp/circuits or spin classes

I'm doing 2 boot camps a week and I can definitely see the impact, no questions asked

I do 2 sessions of bootcamp a week and i still think that's not enough ...yes it helps to build muscle but I still have plenty of fat kicking around and I still have to watch what I eat. We all respond differently and I think the danger comes when you do a couple of classes a week and you think that means you can eat anything - maybe it does but often it doesn't!

The thing with exercise is that people tend to overestimate the calories they burn doing them so they go overboard with food thinking they 'earned' it through their exercise. I burn max 400kcal during a very intensive bootcamp type training (as per my heart rate monitor). That's like one slice of cake for a whole hour of strenuous work out.
But I love exercising - I feel energized, it keeps me on right track and it's actually apetite supressant for me. One more thing - if you are smallish and you want to lose weight, you need to go very low in calories in order to achive weightloss. I prefer to make calorific deficit by exercising rather than going crazy low with calories. My maintenance calorific level is only 1500kcal, so to lose weight I need 1200kcal max which is not much really.

I think a lot of people over estimate the calories burned by a lot of exercise, for example, if you went swimming for 30 minutes each morning, that would only burn around 130 calories a time. a standard bar of dairy milk is 220 calories - 30 minutes swimming a day isn't enough to be able to eat "treats" and lose weight.

I completely agree with bodygoingsouth. Too much of anything is bad, too much sugar, too much fat, too much salt. too much protein etc, but we can't live without these. I suspect it's all about balance and variety. A little bit of what you fancy but nothing to excess and nothing missing.

Any other diet is just a fad without any scientific evidence and will probably be proven bad in the end. All this about about a paleo diet for instance being the best because we haven't evolved since then is bound to be dis-proven at some point. Why would we stop evolving?

and that people go and "do some exercise" driving there and back and that's it for the day. What's needed is to incorporate much more movement into your daily life. Walk as much as possible, be on your feet, etc.

I do intensive zumba for 2.5hrs a week. I think this is helping me maintain my weight. It might only be burning up 1000 cals a week, but this equats to say 12 biscuits or a couple of big slices of cake, which is what I probably overindulge in over the course of a week, rest of my diet is healthy. If I didn't do this 2.5hrs a week I reckon I'd be putting on weight very very slowly, easy to gain up to 10lbs a year? Also intensive exercise is good for you, gets your heart going and keeps your metabolism high so that you keep burning more calories for awhile after you've finished exercising.

I did try the lo carb approach but I decided that life was too short for that. There is no joy in eating a curry without rice. No joy in eating cheese without bread or a stiry fry without noodles. We don't eat white rice/pasta/bread at home, and a loaf of bread goes off before we eat it and we eat shed loads of veg. I think that's a balanced diet and with exercise thrown in (I cycle to work everyday and DH cycles to work 20miles a day and we don't have a car so even at the weekend we cycle or walk) should be fine.

YANBU though OP, low fat stuff is not nice. Although I do like diet coke.

Completely agree choceyes.

Conversely, I think you could lose weight by doing the exercise and not eating the chocolate bars. However, as you say, this might only be 10lb a year. This is still weight loss, but many dieters are trying to lose weight more quickly.

Does anyone have any experience of eating no sugar/low carb while breastfeeding? Would it affect my milk dramatically? Currently 36+6 and have been vaguely following a low-carb diet for the last few weeks because baby seems very big and I am ginormous. Bad idea to keep going after the birth? Or sensible?

Labyrinth hop over to the Low Carb Bootcamp threads as there are women on there breastfeeding. I started low carbing when my baby was seven months and had no issues with milk supply, at 14 months I'm still low carbing and still breastfeeding.

When I supposedly had GD I was told I absolutely HAD to eat starchy carbs for foetal development. I rather ignored them but felt very guilty.

Thanks, Stunt, will do.

Sid, my friend has GD and has been told to eat 60g of starchy carbs per meal or the baby won't be getting fed! I don't really know enough about it all, but she's constantly worried because her blood sugar levels are always too high.

Jaded, that's encouraging to hear, thanks.

gnushoes I understand where you're coming from (and am actively trying to get out more at lunchtime, even for a couple of miles walk) but in some jobs it can be difficult to get out. I'm lucky in that I am senior enough to pace up and down in a meeting room on calls without raised eyebrows (which is as much for my back as anything else) but it can be hard to carve out time or artificially engineer opportunities to move around in an office job.

I figure it's better I go to the gym (near work) and drive home than do nothing. I also love interval & strength work, so motivating myself to run in the dark is not appealing.

When you're contracted for a 7hr working day and have 8hrs of conference calls & meetings in said day or random travel at short notice, a (portable) gym routine is one of the few ways I can ensure that I get at least some exercise.

Exercise is more about health & fitness than weight though. Figure starts in the kitchen unless you're skinny fat.