to think this food isn't unhealthy?!

[OkMaybeNot]

I'm doing intermittent fasting and trying to watch what I eat, and I don't know whether it's because when you're on a diet you notice these things more, but I've been seeing people in groups I'm in refer to meals like a jacket potato with beans and a salad, or shepherd's pie, or a stew as 'indulgent comfort food' lately.

AIBU to think there's nothing particularly indulgent or unhealthy about a jacket potato?

95% of dieters regain the weight so why single out keto as ineffective compared with any other weight loss method? The best diet is the one that works for you

because keto is so different to most peoples "normal eating" and the weight goes back on straight away,

yeah most dieters will regain weight, but i bet keto regain it the fastest,

my "diet" is the same things i would eat usually, so if i fell off the wagon and started eating bigger portions, sure the weight would creep on, but all a keto dieter has to do is a "normal" amount of carbs and they're done for.

the stricter a diet is, the easier it is to fuck it all up after all.

if you eat an avocado for lunch you won’t feel the same fatigue / hunger a few hours later that a potato or pasta laden lunch would give you

I keep seeing similar comments. Is this a usual thing then? Because if I ate a baked potato with tuna and salad for lunch I’d still be reasonably full for dinner and wouldn’t need much.

In fact an avocado for lunch might even allow you to feel comfortably full until dinner

a lot of its to do with your head as well though isnt it!

in my head, a jacket potato is a meal. I could eat it for tea and be satisfied.

I couldnt however, eat an avocado for tea and be satisfied, because in my head it is not a meal and my brain would be thinking WTF have i ate a single fruit for dinner?

When i went LC to try it, I actually growled at people at one point lasted week. Certainly didn't make me think clearer, the opposite in fact.

Back to op.
If someone calls normal comfort foods like this "indulgent" i think they are heading for trouble with relationship with food.
I loooooove cottage pie and make it for a freezer every few months. So tasty and comforting and filling.

I would describe a shepherds pie as comfort food because it's the food of childhood. But indulgent is champagne, truffles, expensive chocolates etc.

Avocado is disgusting and I am pretty sure it's, as are mushrooms, devil's poop.

Perhaps a "normal" amount of carbs is too much for people. If I was calorie counting and doing for example, 1200 cals a day, I wouldn't waste that on 3 chocolate bars. That would make me feel hungry all day and also feel crap.

As with ALL diets you can't go back to eating how you did before the diet. Of course you will gain all the weight back. That's why you were overweight in the first place. How could you not regain the weight?

Whatever way of eating you choose needs to be for life. So dramatic start with diet and then slowly reintroducing some foods back once at goal weight. With a bit of tweaking you then learn what works for you to maintain your weight.

On paper is comparable to a jacket potato, but if you eat an avocado for lunch you won’t feel the same fatigue / hunger a few hours

I’d actually feel very hungry and fatigued as I despise avocados and would throw it up!

Also, I’m not saying SW is a fail safe plan, no diet is and I actually use a mixture of IF/SW and calorie counting myself now (I do still cook meals the SW way though as they’re much less fattening).

My main rule though is that if I’m hungry, I eat - just the right things.

Dieting isn’t rocket science and all these people thinking a certain diet is “the answer” make me laugh. If you stick to a certain number of cals a day, exercise a bit you will lose weight. That’s it really.
And if you put healthy, unprocessed stuff in your body you’ll feel good too.

i dont think keto is sustainable for life, for most people.

I’m diabetic. A jacket spud is carbohydrate laden and therefore a treat to me.
I’m sorry you don’t understand that not everyone can indulge in everything.
My vegetarian friends eat different to my vegan friend, who eat different to my kosher friends who eat different to my muslim friends!

You don't do keto for life. You reintroduce foods back into your diet and then work out what helps maintain your weight. No strict diet is sustainable for life.

Losing weight and then going back to your old way of eating inevitable ends up with you gaining back all the weight you lost. As a PP said, it's not rocket science.

I keep seeing similar comments. Is this a usual thing then? Because if I ate a baked potato with tuna and salad for lunch I’d still be reasonably full for dinner and wouldn’t need much.

Yes if you eat a lot of carbs everyday (more than 100-200g) then your insulin levels spike and eventually over time your body will become resistant to the insulin it produces. There is a growing body of research that suggests that this process doesn’t just cause type 2 diabetes but also CVD - and low carb diets have been shown to reverse some types of heart disease.

If you look at the diets of the longest (and healthiest) lived people you will find that in addition to heaps of activity most followed a natural form of IF / calorie restriction / low carb diet. So even if they did build a whole meal around rice or noodles or roti because they only ate once a day they didn’t actually consume anywhere near as many carbs as the modern western diets we see now.

All these people criticising other people's diets/way of eating/calling it a fad, etc are being unfair.

Low carb is recommended to diabetics, because then you don't get the spikes. If you eat lower carb you need less insulin, and the 'white carbs' cause huge problems in blood sugars shooting up, quicker than the insulin injected (or by pump) can cope with.

So be careful and respectful west you call nonsense / a fad!

I don't think posters are singling out keto as the only ineffective diet. But I find with keto/low carb posters can get quite preachy, any thread related to weight loss gets derailed by posters saying "if only they were low carb/keto" "you must be low weight/keto" etc. As if it's the only diet. I find it quite tedious tbh.

My personal view is any diet which cuts out entire food groups is too restrictive.

Some people may get on with keto, personally I love bread so it doesn't work for me. I don't find that I am hungry after a sandwich or a jacket potato and if I have carbs for lunch I tend to find I snack less.

I really don't think people are talking about someone having to keep x diet for medical purposes.

^I’m diabetic. A jacket spud is carbohydrate laden and therefore a treat to me.
I’m sorry you don’t understand that not everyone can indulge in everything.^

This ^^ Likewise not knowing the ingredients in different types of bread. If you have wheat/dairy/egg allergies in your home then you'll recognise all the ingredients in keto bread. Not because you're trying to lose weight but because they are the ingredients in a lot of allergy-free breads too.

Same like gluten free diet is apparently not good for healthy person, but obviously celiac can't not keep it

Im not criticising low carb, I am criticising keto/low carb posters who criticise others eating.

I'm assuming the majority of posters on this thread aren't diabetic, as no one has mentioned it. Therefore if low carb diets are recommended for diabetics it's sort of irrelevant. I mean gluten free diets are important for coeliacs but that doesn't mean we all should follow a gluten free diet.

More vitamin C in one potato than six oranges btw

themagicians but the majority of people don't have coeliac disease. therefore the majority of people won't have heard of those ingredients. (And actually I was taking the piss a bit, I have heard of most of them)

If course if you have allergies/coeliac then wheat containing bread is bad for you (very bad lol). But it's not bad for everyone else,. And coming onto this thread and trying to guilt trip posters for disagreeing with one forceful keto poster is a bit shit.

I'm not trying to guilt anyone. That wasn't my first post on this thread. I don't understand why you're 'taking the piss' out of other people's choices. Posters shouldn't have to disclose allergies or diabetes for you to respect that they eat differently from you.

* More vitamin C in one potato than six oranges btw*

Raw potatoes. All the vitamin c disappears when you cook it

It’s all relative. If you usually eat nothing but junk and processed crap, fizzy drinks, biscuits, chocolate, crisps... then a potato is a perfectly healthy thing to eat instead.

If you’re on a keto diet or some other diet that involves watching macros more closely, a potato won’t do you any favours at all.

Keto is just the latest fad diet & will be out of fashion in a couple of years

Keto is life saving for some, actually. It helps people live seizure free, and stops others from needing to have their feet amputated. It's not a fad, and carb free meals (other than another poxy salad) needs to become mainstream.

There are various medical diets though, prescribed for various medical conditions, keto being one of them. Of course those will remain relevant and people will continue to follow them as necessary.

However, there are currently books being written about keto, websites, instagram posts, facebook groups etc and every man and his dog is "going keto". That is largely due to marketing. People are making money out of it. Most people will not stick to anything like the medically prescribed keto diet, particularly not long term, so they will either remain heavier than they want to be, or put weight back on. And then the next diet will come along, with beautiful people saying they follow it and others saying the weight just melted off. And the focus and the groups and the marketing will switch to that instead. And that's why keto is a diet fad, whilst also having real medical benefit for some conditions.

Outside a clinical setting, for most people, it's just about weight loss. And that does come down to calories in v. energy out.

Meanwhile, the poor, maligned baked spud remains perfectly healthy. In moderation, as with all things.