If diets worked then you wouldn't have to start a new one every few months!

[marchplane]

I've just returned to the workplace and my colleagues (predominantly women between 30 and retirement age) have spent most of the week discussing weight watchers, slimming world, 5:2, basically every diet under the sun. It is doing my head in.

It's nothing new though and I'd forgotten all about it in the lockdown world as this inane chatter didn't translate over into zoom. It doesn't help that most people (myself included) have gained a few lockdown pounds.

I don't believe that dieting is healthy. Yes they work for the odd person (no doubt those people will be here to tell me!) but very few of them keep it off and most yo yo about all their adult life. Like my colleagues. These diets do nothing to address any psychological reasons they overeat and just encourage a devil and a saint attitude to food. One lady, doing 5:2 had eaten her 500 cals by 10am so is now having fish and chips for lunch because, well sod it.

I'm not perfect but I like to think that I have a balanced attitude to food and I like to exercise, I've worked really hard at it as I had an eating disorder when I was younger. Part of my recovery was to not engage in diet talk so I don't engage in these conversations unless I really have to. I really like my colleagues, they are lovely people generally but there are only so many times that I can be told that I should make roast chickpeas with spray oil, lemon and chilli for a healthy snack every 5 mins!

@veryvery

Christ, that's some dedication to only eat 1200 calories a day and run 6 miles a day.

Not really. A walk in the park! I feel very Viking with it sometimes, (and I take cold baths afterwards!)

I read that as "A wank in the park! I feel very Viking with it sometimes, (and I take cold baths afterwards!)"

I'm sitting here in fits of giggles

Sorry - As you were

I think billions of women (including myself) have been genuinely hoodwinked by the multi billion pound diet industry for decades. It seems like everyone is looking for the next big diet/quick fix and the actualities of weight control have been lost over the years.

This isn't helped by diet clubs peddling what boils down to caloric deficit as syns/points or putting nutrition in meal replacements. It's also not helped when the CEO of WW admits that their business model is based on return cutsom! These people don't want us to all be thin and healthy!!

I would love to see kids taught about nutrition in school (not just food groups etc), how to manage calories around their TDEE for fat loss/maintenance/gain, how to exercise to build healthy muscle so that maintenance calories aren't ridiculously low at goal weight and how buying into the diet industry mentality can affect their health negatively and cost them an unnecessary fortune.

The cycle needs breaking but for some reason people are determined to spend their Thursday nights in a dank room at the back of their local working men's club, paying a fiver to stand on some scales, another fiver for some shit bars and then listen to Barbara-who's-been-coming-to-Knobhead-World-for-20-year-and-is-still-fat moan for half an hour about how she can't have a poo.

@veryvery

Yes if I'd kept it up (basically a low calorie low carb low sugar diet) I'd have kept losing weight. But I wouldn't have kept it up. It's have gone straight back on

But you might have if you got used to it. When I started running the running alone didn't make much difference to my weight. So I started to half my portions and add in more non starchy veg / salad, I already ate quite healthily. I got used to it. I found if I ate meals with everyone at the table and if it took me as long to eat as them I felt the same as before in terms of hunger.

I've been on a lowish calorie diet for over a decade. I still want to stuff my face with krispy kreme and star bars at every opportunity. My craving for crap has never gone away, I do not enjoy low calorie food that much (though I am a good cook) and generally dislike vegetables. I eat them because I should.

So I'm not convinced you ever "get used to it". I'm just resigned to it. And I look forward to the 2 weeks I give myself off at Christmas.

I'm sitting here in fits of giggles 

Yes, it makes me chuckle to myself sometimes.

I quite like doing the odd 2 week diet to reset my body and metabolism. I'm at a healthy weight and am happy with my body but I might do 2 weeks of Keto or high protein or raw food or intermittent fasting. I don't know if it is good for me or not but I like it and it doesn't do anyone any harm. I don't go on about it tho and just do it myself.
It would probably do my head in though if people were going on about diets all the time, especially if they weren't managing to lose weight so weren't sticking to stuff and just trying each thing desperately trying to find a miracle cure.

What else do you call moderating your food and moving a healthy amount?? That's the only way to maintain a healthy weight??!!

Fad diets don't work, but follow any 'diet' for long enough and suddenly it's not a diet anymore, it's your lifestyle but it still starts off as a diet!
Your thread has bugged me slightly op because it is very discouraging for people. I've been calorie counting (apps make it stupidly easy, i spend minimal time doing it) and i've denied myself nothing. My portion control is better, these to some people are just healthy eating but it's also a diet. You just need to find a 'diet' that you enjoy and can stick to and hey presto, it works. There's nothing mystical about it.

So I'm not convinced you ever "get used to it".

The only thing that genuinely reduced my appetite and actually got rid of my desire to stuff myself with chocolate and biscuits was low carbing. But it's still really hard to stick to long-term because it's restrictive and inconvenient and even without the cravings it's psychologically hard to accept you'll never be able to regularly eat bread and cake again.

But...my 76 yo dad lost a load of weight lc-ing, started 10 years ago, has never put it back on, reversed his pre-diabetes, came off bp tablets and totally got rid of his sleep apnoea. He wasn't even very overweight to start with. He never stopped eating unsweetened muesli for breakfast but cut all sugar, bread, potatoes, pasta, rice etc. He now has a little bit of carby stuff occasionally. He is very strong-willed though!

lazylinguist I tend to follow a high protein, high fat diet, except on days I do exercise where I have a carb meal afterwards. I still crave crap. Almost constantly. I'm rarely satiated. It's horrible!

@ktp100 I totally agree with you on all points.

The muscle mass thing is interesting as crossfit played a massive part in my recovery from anorexia. I am fairly muscular now and I can still fit comfortably into clothes that fitted me when I was over a stone lighter but had no muscle, I also eat well but a lot more. So what I'm trying to say is muscle is good - it means you can eat more :-)

Incidentally at my least I was eating 1000 cals a day (every calorie nutritious) and to keep to my macros, with 1 hour cardio. This sounds like it's a lifestyle for some people but for me it meant being seriously underweight, no periods, osteopenia and being very hairy!

If your BMI is 35 or over you have a 1 in 825 chances of losing the weight

And 1 in 10,000 or keeping it off

@MonsteraCheeseplant

Some diets lead to lifestyle changes and that's brilliant but a lot don't a lot lead to binge eating and regaining the weight. In my anecdotal experience of a group of 30 odd women over 30 the majority of them are on and off diets constantly and have been for many years. This to me indicates that the diet does not lead to long term weight loss, although it may in the short term.

I do think an awareness of your food intake is necessary, especially in a society where very unhealthy food is so abundant but that comes with a lifestyle change not a short term diet.

@LaurieFairyCake

If your BMI is 35 or over you have a 1 in 825 chances of losing the weight

And 1 in 10,000 or keeping it off

I saw this often and always think challenge accepted. Mainly because I do really enjoy the better food so I am quite confident I will, probably with small ups and downs to be realistic, manage it. When I started my BMI was 52. Now it's 46.3 Quite funny that I was size 20-22 now I am still 20🤔

A lifestyle change sounds twee but it is the only thing that works.
Many diets are extreme, cut all carbs or cut all fats, neither is sustainable as you will crave one or the other. Those who are successful will say oh low fat cured all my ailments or low carb did, when is was actually returning back to a healthy weight that cured them of type two diabetes or whatever.

Personally, I focus more on 'eating clean', its for health and political reasons really, I don't like big business taking over our food chains and don't like the idea of what processed food is doing to my health. I don't want my kids to prefer the taste of processed food to home made, or at least they will know the difference. You see lots of adults that have never developed beyond their childhood bland tastes. I've seen a lot of health problems (not just caused by food though) in my family so that has affected my outlook. I have lost a bit of weight through it, I can't see me going back to my previous way of eating as I know too much now. I enjoy cooking too so I can cook better than what you'd eat out or buy readymade anyway.

marchplane but what do you consider a lifestyle change vs a diet?

I have to watch what I eat, I have to restrict the types of food I eat, the volume, monitor my calories. Constantly. If I don't I gain weight, and very rapidly. So I consider myself to constantly be on a diet. Admittedly the diet IS my lifestyle but is still and avoidant and restrictive diet.

@dotdashdashdash

For a lifestyle change I think an awareness of what is healthy and the amounts. Choosing nutritious food most of the time but still allowing yourself treats. Making sure that treats are things that you really enjoy. Mindful eating.

I don't think it's necessary to count every calorie we eat, short term or long term. It's miserable and will lead to this black and white relationship with food. The worst thing about calorie counting is that it tells you exactly how much you should be eating on any given day, without taking into account hormonal fluctuations etc... some days I'm starving and I eat a lot, some days I don't eat much. That's ok and I don't want to feel like a failure for not hitting a target. If you must calorie count then you need to make peace with going over that allowance sometimes.

Lots of people are really clued up on nutrition but lots of people still have no idea. I know exercise is nowhere near as important as food but I also think that it shouldn't be a chore to be active (medical exemptions apply) I think there's something out there for everyone. I know a lot of people who delight in the fact that they do no exercise and actively avoid walking anywhere.

I don't think it's necessary to count every calorie we eat, short term or long term. It's miserable and will lead to this black and white relationship with food. The worst thing about calorie counting is that it tells you exactly how much you should be eating on any given day, without taking into account hormonal fluctuations etc... some days I'm starving and I eat a lot, some days I don't eat much. That's ok and I don't want to feel like a failure for not hitting a target. If you must calorie count then you need to make peace with going over that allowance sometimes.

Calorie counting can be much more casual than you describe. Especially with an app, it is so easy. Not at all onerous. I have predecided the amounts that eat with most foods (being using an app for a while) but I still like to log what I eat as a record. From there I might notice certain patterns. Sometimes I might find I put water weight on with a particular food for instance so I can take that into account when I weigh myself. I might find I feel fuller or hungrier with certain meals. I don't weigh food, apart from meat where it is easy to estimate as it is sold by weight, I go by volume (tsp, tblsp, cup) so I know what my portion should look like on the plate. I save some of what I would have eaten (previously) for lunch next day or it goes in the freezer so that is a nice motivator as it means I have a variety of lunches ready. I do amend my chosen limits sometimes for special occasions. But I like to save this for special occasions as it makes them more special.

@veryvery I am very aware of how easy it is to calorie count, I did it for years and it made me very miserable.
Not because I fond doing it onerous but because I like to hit my targets and when I didn't I would beat myself up. This obsession with counting calories led me to anorexia, then binge eating and bulimia. I wish I'd never counted a calorie and I still know them to this day.

That's why I dislike it so much. Clearly others don't have this issue with it.

I think I'd find it much much easier to lose weight and eat a healthy diet if I lived on my own! I love veg, salads and healthy stuff and eat that when I'm alone. I can't resist chocolate, processed carbs etc if they are in the house, but I could resist buying them if it were just me.

Dh and both dc eat whatever they like but are all effortlessly slim. Dd (14) in particular hates exercise and has a real sweet tooth but has always been skinny.

Not because I fond doing it onerous but because I like to hit my targets and when I didn't I would beat myself up. This obsession with counting calories led me to anorexia, then binge eating and bulimia. I wish I'd never counted a calorie and I still know them to this day.

But what I am saying is although this is your experience it does not have to be like this. It is just a measurement. As an analogy after breast cancer I have to find a happy balance between avoiding checking myself and looking in the mirror and being obsessive about it. Both extremes could potentially be serious in terms of my health. I have to get comfortable with checking regularly without being overly obsessively checking several times a day because can you lose sense of scale that way and it seriously would impact mental health. It is the same with calories and weight or indeed any measurement or analysis.

@veryvery
Yes I am saying the same thing, have an awareness of how much and what you should be eating. In your head say oh I had an unhealthy quite calorific lunch so I'll have a lighter dinner. I've no issues with that. But you don't need to log it anywhere.

But logging, in itself, does not have to be the enemy. It is the person logging it who makes the decisions as to how to respond to it. For me, I find it interesting, a little hobby. And I find it helpful. Although I appreciate how logging could be a trigger to more obsessive behaviour it needn't be.

I do
Unfortunately my brain thought cheese has no calories... So... Yeah... Logging it really helped me see how much of what is ok and how... Shamefully much I've eaten
We are actually saving money since I started working my way through my portion control. I don't mind logging everything. It's the only way my brain registers it.

I can however easily see how it could lead to obsession and further issues.

I'm quite convinced logging wouldn't make me obsessive or induce an eating disorder - I am not very goal-oriented, competitive or perfectionist. I simply can't be arsed to do it, though I'm sure it works for some people.

The article linked upthread about the Biggest Loser winners who gained the weight back implies that once you've got fat and gone on a diet once, that's it - you will basically be fighting a losing battle for the rest of your life as your body repeatedly and desperately claws back all the pounds you struggle to lose. It's biology and there's nothing you can do about it. Which kind of makes me think - well what's the point of even trying then?!

I’m not convinced by the argument about will power. The evidence is that people in “slim countries” (“blue zones”) aren't stronger willed than the rest of us, they just aren’t operating in an environment designed to make them sedentary, stressed and eating a high sugar, unvaried diet.

It's biology and there's nothing you can do about it. Which kind of makes me think - well what's the point of even trying then?!

Well, if I accepted that the prognosis wouldn't look very good for me! I've had cancer, was overweight, had frequent bouts of sciatica which rendered me pretty much immobile and higher than normal blood pressure. Diet and exercise leading to weight loss has significantly improved my quality of life. If that means I have to exercise and watch what I eat for the rest of my life it's worth it! I'm thankful that I don't tend to believe anything that tells me I'm doomed!