To think that biscuits don’t make you obese?

[covidtired]

I’m 20 stone 7 . I’m not that weight because I ate too many biscuits - if biscuits weren’t there I would ate anything I could find, and a lot of it !! I’m slowly losing now (was 22 stone 13 on NYD) but I’m still eating biscuits, cake, etc - just in moderation and without a side order of guilt .

Surely the answer is to support mental health more, especially in children and adolescents - I ate for comfort because I wasn’t getting it from anything else - and promote exercise - I was removed from PE due to dyspraxia and bullying, and told not to bother trying ... hence I’m now an adult that finds exercising awful !

Surely fixing these things is the answer, not banning cheap biscuits ?!!

The point about biscuits is they are refined sugar junk

Refined sugar junk makes you fat (not the actual fat they also put in these foods it’s the sugar but the combo of sugar and fat is lethal combo)

Refined sugar junk is the killer. A lot of our foods do this sugar / fat combo...and is the stuff of addictive qualities. High sugar also means highly refined carbohydrate...they are the same to the body

Also see...
Pizza
Burgers with fries
Fries
Crisps
Cereal
White bread with butter / cheese / Nutella etc
Sandwiches
Doughnuts
Pasta dishes
All confectionary

If you eat a lot / even quite a bit of the above, you will find it hard to stop eating. That’s just how it works. You are much more likely to overeat with the sugary/carby junk, it doesn’t satiate and creates an addictive loop in your body’s energy system.

Anyone who has tried a diet based on higher protein / fat and lower carbs knows within a few days it’s very hard to binge and overeat on these foods.

So it’s really hard / almost impossible to binge on these foods

Any meat
Eggs
Veg
Cheese (people may thing...I binge on cheese! I guarantee it’s not straight cheese, it will be with bread or crackers, take out those and cheese is hard to stomach after a while)

In nature there is no food that combines high carbohydrate with fat. And there’s a reason for that! Junk food does that....it is the USP of junk...and why we are getting so fat

Wel done OP!

And happy birthday!!

I was at my heaviest 5 weeks ago. I reviewed what I was eating and the calories were ridiculous in the drinks alone. Factor in virtually no exercise and there is my problem. Over eating and sitting on my backside. I can’t blame anyone else. It’s been hard at times, I’ve craved certain foods but massively cut down. Plus I started the coach to 5K. That was hard but I can jog nearly 1.5 miles without stopping now. It can be done but you need the willpower and support to achieve it. It’s not an overnight fix, like lots of people on here you have to be brutally honest about the fact you might eat too much and do too little.

I know someone who became overweight and it was due to cakes, sweets and biscuits. They love them and use any excuse to eat them. They lost the weight via slimming world but they continue to be a constant source of temptation.

YANBU

I easily eat 10+ biscuits a day, pretty much everyday and I’m a slim size 10. Weigh 10st and am 5’9.

Once upon a time I was 16st and if anything ate less biscuits, but I ate them at different times, ate much more other food, moved less...etc

However, I doubt increasing a packet of biscuits from 30p to 60p (or whatever is proposed) will make much difference

This with knobs on. They could increase the price of Twirls (my chocolate of choice) to a fiver a bar before it would have any effect on my consumption.

@honeygirlz

My own tuppence is I can’t eat in moderation. If I have a pack of biscuits, I’ll eat the whole pack, so I just don’t buy any. The same goes for sweets, chocolate, crisps etc.

So yes, for me, I have banned all of those things. Ive banned those things for a few months now and am now starting my weight loss journey (need to lose 3 stone).

Same here

I don't know how to fix it all or even where to start

ItWasNotOK

So what's wrong with having knowledge...or a goal...or knowing that yes those biscuits even in moderation are keeping the OP fat. Why be so rude? I have lost over ten kilos following this advice. Discovering the power of only having one meal a day (a form of fasting) was the only thing that gave me the discipline enough to lose weight and find a lifestyle that has helped me keep the weight off for four years. Fasting also helps PCOS which the OP says she suffers from. Why don't you offer some sage advice if you are so knowledgable about the OP's particular situation? I used to eat a tonne of biscuits at coffee time and I looked like a beached whale. I now have a one and a half hour eating window where I eat proper food and this lifestyle has taken away all of my cravings. I have never been so energetic, slim and well in my life. A journey starts with one step.

A lot of that comes from having a victim mentality where people feel like since they are sad or someone has upset them or they had a difficult childhood, then it's ok to be unhealthy/act like a dick/be rude to others or whatever. I get it, I had a shit childhood, several abusive relationships and mental health issues and for years I used those things as an excuse for never getting my life in order and not being a very nice person. But that's not a good way to live. We need to take control, despite hardships we've been through

I would put this a bit differently but in substance it's right. I don't think "victim mentality" is fair because I think most people with disordered eating genuinely don't know that it is disordered, or how disordered it is, and aren't consciously using problems that they had in childhood as an excuse. Often people are very invested in the idea that they had wonderful parents and a supportive childhood and only realise in therapy that they also picked up some damaging ideas about food, security etc. I think what I would say is that lots of us have difficult childhoods for one reason or another and we learned ways to cope with that back then which weren't actually very useful. I used to see sweet fatty carby food as a massive source of comfort and security. The challenge is recognising that for what it is - a coping mechanism that isn't actually helping - and learning to find other ways of managing feelings of anxiety and sadness that don't hurt you. It is hard. Therapy helps a lot. It isn't the only way but whatever you do you have to be prepared to be very honest with yourself about why you want to eat what you eat and the feelings that you experience when you do.

And it does help with eating sensibly, because if you know the real reason why you eat certain foods excessively and you find yourself wanting something that you know will trigger a massive binge you can change your narrative from "God, I really want that but I'm not allowed it" to "I don't really want that because I know now that it isn't going to help me."

I'm 4/5stone overweight, it's bread with me too, bread/butter and lack of exercise.

Eating between meals is the killer. There needs to be a natural cycle in the stomach and intestines. Times of day when the body is working hard to process the food, and other times when it's "cruising" to recover. If you're constantly snacking, the body never gets time to recover, hence why it loses the ability to process sugars etc leading to diabetes. Anyone with diabetes knows that it's all about a proper structured eating pattern so that the body has the time to process the carbs/sugars etc.

I think it's why the 5:2 diets and the fast once a day diets work so well - they give the body the time to regenerate and recover.

As for biscuits in particular, they're usually highly processed with additives and preservatives to give them long shelf lives (just like crisps, chocolate bars, etc). Maybe some even have MSG in them. So most of what you're eating is artificial with no nutritional value. You're just putting stuff in your body that it's going to struggle to process, hence why it ends up laid down as fat!

You won't go too far wrong if you stick to the old fashioned 'bacon and eggs' for breakfast and then 'meat and 2 veg' for dinner type of eating.

With no snacks.

Biscuits are literally not required. They are empty calories with no nutritional value.

Yet I already hear the cries of 'what is life without biscuits?'

Slim and healthy?

@hamstersarse

You won't go too far wrong if you stick to the old fashioned 'bacon and eggs' for breakfast and then 'meat and 2 veg' for dinner type of eating.

With no snacks.

Biscuits are literally not required. They are empty calories with no nutritional value.

Yet I already hear the cries of 'what is life without biscuits?'

Slim and healthy?

Fully agree with that. Cooked breakfasts have been demonised but usually lower calories than a bowl of sugary cereal. Meat and two veg main meal is very low in calories. That kind of traditional eating was demonised due to the "fat", but that was due to flawed science as it's now accepted that fat isn't the enemy anymore. Early science was crazily based on burning food and measuring heat given off - if it burned a lot, it was bad for you. Thankfully, science has moved on now and the scientists have realised that different types of food have different effects on the body - after all, your stomach isn't a furnace!

The problem is that everyone touts their own personal beliefs, or what worked for them personally, as the gospel truth that will work for everyone. In reality there’s lots of different, and conflicting, diet advice that needs tailoring to a specific person, depending on their body type, their food triggers, and why they’re fat in the first place (emotional reasons, ignorance, time pressures, etc).

Low carb works really well for me, but it’s not going to work for someone with a sweet tooth, for whom the thought of a life without biscuits is unthinkable. There’s no point telling those people to load up on fats if they’re going to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, pour extra cream in their coffee, and then crumble mid morning and eat biscuits - they’ll end up fatter.

That person might prefer fasting (5:2, 16:8, or intermittent fasting), or calorie counting (WW), or food combing (slimming world - I don’t know much about this one and it sounds a bit mad to me but others swear by it). Most of these diets work if you can stick to them, but that’s a pretty big fucking if.

I miss potatoes and often fail, but I know it’s the right diet for me so I get back on the wagon.

The NHS doesn’t seem to have this sort of tailored advice readily available. It also seems to struggle to diagnose and treat complex endocrinology and/or food intolerance issues that can cause weight gain. Under active thyroid can play havoc with people’s weight, as can a number of hormone deficiencies which make people tired, and fuel themselves with sugar (I put on more weight on maternity leave than I did in pregnancy for this reason, despite not having a sweet tooth).

There’s also not much point taxing biscuits and banning offers if you’re not going to tackle the issue of food deserts, where many people live in places with only small expensive convenience stores with limited access to fresh fruit and veg. Or live in B&Bs and other inadequate accommodation without proper cooking facilities.

I do miss potatoes

"The problem is that everyone touts their own personal beliefs, or what worked for them personally, as the gospel truth that will work for everyone"

No one is saying it's the gospel truth. People are saying what worked for them and maybe some of that will work for others. It is up to OP to choose what she thinks will work.

There’s no point telling those people to load up on fats if they’re going to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, pour extra cream in their coffee, and then crumble mid morning and eat biscuits - they’ll end up fatter.

They absolutely will end up fatter if they do that! I do think overall that people have very little knowledge about what does make them fat. They think it is just calories taken in and calories (apparently) used.

The reality is is that our bodies are much more complicated than a combustion engine that they calorie model was based on. We have hormones that regulate energy use, deciding whether to store energy as fat - which is dependent on so many factors.

I often wonder how people don't question the calorie model more closely - it is so obvious that it is not linear. You can eat 900 calories a day for 2 weeks and lose nothing, then eat 2000 calories and the next day you have lost 3lbs. It baffles me as to why people actually see this happening on their scales and don't question the science behind this.

@ItWasNotOK yes, I suppose I was aiming that comment more at people who tout their weight loss programme in books or apps or on TV, rather than anyone on this thread. Every diet book (or those awful hour long targeted videos that have started popping up on social media) sells their particular way of eating, but many of them are directly contradictory.

There’s this bit in Bridget Jones where she lists her daily food intake and attributes everything she eats to one diet or another, eg breakfast was eggs (Atkins) on toast (WW) with some fruit (Scarsdale). It’s obviously a joke but I bet lots of people eat that way.

OP I suggest you get off MN and instead spend your time doing a little research.

The problem is refined carbs almost entirely so yes biscuits will make you obese. If you cut them out but didn't replace them with anything else (which you should because they have almost zero food value and sugar is inflammatory and is wrecking your pancreas) you will lose weight.
The only way to successfully shift fat from your body is to lower insulin because insulin is designed to store fat. The only way to lower insulin is to stop eating stuff that triggers it's production and that is sugars and starches. All eating triggers it to a degree but once you have used up your circulating sugar and your liver stored sugar you start into your stored fat and this is burned as ketone bodies. Ketones are what our body is actually designed to use as fuel. In nature the odd tuber here and there and fruit would be about the sum total of carby food/sugars.

While you have circulating insulin you have no chance of getting the fat stores out from where they are, into the liver to be converted into ketones and used.

You can fast. You can go on a ketogenic diet (which has v low carbs for good reason) You can go on a diet of foods that do not provoke insulin such as leafy greens, low carb fruit and meat or just the carnivore diet which works so well because almost no insulin is generated.

You never see a fat carnivorous animal (apart from in zoos) for good reason. Animals that eat vegetation all day get fat on just grass because it is chock full of starches and sugars. If you want to keep horses lean you give then 'poor quality' food and no oats. If you want them to work hard without tiring you give them oats but you would need to 'top up' this with a nosebag three times a day.

It's the sugars and starches and flour and sweets and cakes and bread and stuff that does not occur naturally in the wild if we were all still cavemen that we need to avoid. Fish, meat, berries, leaves and nuts do not generate insulin and is hard to have too much of too so nothing is stored and once the glycogen is gone from the liver we become fat burning machines. Fast for minimum eighteen hours to clear the glycogen from your circulation and then also your liver. Stop all starchy sugary foods and start to eat non insulingenic foods OP Your liver will start to mine your fat reserves for fuel for your brain and other organs and you will get slim. We all need to live the way we were designed to live. Some days fed, some days not so fed. Stuffing endless food down ourselves is knackering our systems and we begin to become resistent to the insulin that is constantly being secreted. Give it all a rest. Fast for a bit and miracles happen. Every biscuit will release insulin and it resets the clock. This is why weightloss is so hard. It's hard not having that one biccy or cake in the office or bag of chips. It takes a fucking tonne of discipline and we are designed to eat loads of stuff while it's available because our genes believe we might not be able to get food for the next four days. We are cave dwellers trying to live in a world of plenty and then some and it's killing us.