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...

My ultimate favourite is Carbs plus Fat plus Sugar mmmm

Hello bread and butter pudding my darling

Sinister

joules absolutely agree about people moving more as well.Exercise was built into daily life.

Eating less sugar is easy if you start making stuff yourself and eating less processed foods. A lot of things have sugar added to them, but not if you make it yourself. Real foods, not reduced this or reduced that. Not made for you, basic ingredients, and then don't eat much of it.

And now I've said that, I'm off to get some cake...

Agree. The best thing about low carb is that it gets rid of diet / slim / low fat food / highly processed food. It removes that high sugar content.

I just think that blaming sugar alone for the obesity epidemic is wrong.

I agree that sugar can be addictive, as can all and any food. Addiction is a psychological construct.

Whenever I watch a TV programme about obese people trying to lose weight and they look at their diet they are always massively overeating - huge portions of calorific food several times a day in addition to their enormous 3 'regular' meals (takeaways/burgers etc). Are you really telling me it's just the sugar in the diet that's the problem? Rather than the cumulative effect of the huge volumes of food?

Having said this on a more lighthearted note I did lose 2 stone when I went to India for for months last year.

Don't really recommend 4 months of constant diarrhoea as a slimming aid tho...:)

Inspired by a thread on style and beauty (regarding French style) i decided that i wasn't going to diet but stick to three meals a day with no snacking in between and treats to really be for a special occasion.

It was hard at the start as i craved the sugar from my daily treats but it is working and the pounds are falling off. To me the aim is to re-educate my eating habits. So far its working as the pounds are falling off.

I like low carb eating. However. When I'm breastfeeding it trashes my milk supply no matter how much water I drink or fat I eat.

If lchf is the way forward what am I doing wrong?

YANBU to be pissed off, but YABU to think that one particular form of diet would work for all of humanity when in fact we have not all 'evolved' to eat the same diets (I wonder how much evolutionary theory people who spout this have actually studied?), and YABU to pretend that personal choice of diet rather than the food industry is the controlling factor in eating behaviour. There is no way I could afford to eat steak, cream etc on a regular basis- pasta is far cheaper per calorie, and research shows that low income people shop 'rationally' based on price-per-calorie measures. Most people are adapted to deal with occasional scarcity throughout the lifespan, but not constant stress and not the level of unnecessary added sugar (and salt, and everything else really) in processed foods. Demanding that someone comes in from an 8-10 hour day on their feet, and cooks from scratch every night with maybe a couple of hungry toddlers screaming at them, is bullshit. It's never, ever going to happen and why should it? Mothers shouldn't be forced into exhaustion just because the food industry can't be arsed to stop adding lots of crap to (normal/budget price) fish fingers and soup. There should also be healthy, subsidised canteens in all towns to assist working people to eat more healthily IMO. Until this happens then frankly it's pretty obvious that the government don't really care about preventing obesity (and if you disagree, it's pretty obvious you don't either and are just using it as a stick to beat poor people).

Processed food being what though?

Bread and cheese?

Ready made pizza?

The problem I find with dieting is this
Everyone knows eat less - move more
It's the emotional eating I can't control
Stress
Comfort eating
Boredom
It's my own fault, I'm not blaming anyone
But I get really fed up when people tut tut tut it's simple
Eat less..... !

I did that diet too Scarleto! It was effective but no fun.

Yay Fudgeface! I'm with you. I like the sound of the canteens.

A couple of years ago I gave up sugar for over a year, that was no sugar in anything, and not even fruit. I mainly ate vegetables, eggs and complex caveman grains. This was for a skin problem rather than weight, I'm not overweight. Nothing changed, I didn't lose weight, I didn't get any extra energy, my skin problem was only cleared up through antibiotics. Don't bother.

I only lost weight, and kept it off, when I stopped dieting and changed my eating habits for life. I eat everything, but less of it, reducing fat and sugar. I also run most days.

I find if I eat anything sugary I am starving hungry about half an hour later.

Processed food is rammed full of sugar (especially low fat food) because it is relatively cheap.

Eat plenty of fresh fruit & veg, and a balanced diet (not excluding any one food group, just eating sensible portions) and do exercise, that's how you lose weight (or don't put on weight) and stay healthy

Any kind of 'fad' diet isn't sustainable, and they're generally out to make money, not care about people actually being healthy, it's not the 'authorities' that are at fault, it's people falling time and again for fad diets and blaming anyone/anything other than themselves, it's just basic nutrition education that people need to be aware of

I'm not saying I don't eat crisps/cake/chocolate/chips but I'm not daft enough to think that if I ate nothing but that kind of stuff I'd be massively overweight

I went on a proper 'diet' once - it was the Rosemary Conley diet. Low fat, plenty of carbs, even those low fat yoghurts that are supposed to be so terrible.
Guess what - I lost weight really easily, just like other people lost weight on the atkins diet. Then when I went back to eating 'normally' ie as I did before, all the weight went back on again.
And apparently Dr Atkins was obese when he died, so presumably he had weight issues himself.

Fudgeface I agree with you and this is definitely not about criticising poor people. But equally poor people shouldn't be expected or encouraged to eat nutritionally poor and fattening food just because its cheap.

TamerB me too, I only lose weight (and not keep to a healthy weight) when I make sure I do exercise 2-3 times a week, and keep an overall balanced healthy diet

Lis

Oops, I mean 'and keep to a healthy weight'!

Losing and maintaining weight loss is a complex issue and our modern lifestyle is not one which encourages it. The point I wanted to highlight is simply that for years ( IMO ) many of us has been given the wrong advice and since we are approaching an obesity epidemic it badly needs rethinking.

Op have you read articles by dr john briffa? I'd recommend his papers. Quite interesting if nutrition and effects on metabolism interests you.

Apparently this is how Dr Atkins died...

lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/atkinsdiet/a/dratkinsdeath.htm

The Dr. Briffa books are excellent.