... to tell you that diets don't work for everyone

[Wroxie]

Today is my 9 month anniversary of tracking every bite of food that's gone into my mouth, with the exception noted below:

My birthday (one day in which I had, as I remember, pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast, no lunch, and fish and chips + a couple of donuts for dinner).

And that's it. I don't drink alcohol. No takeaways. No restaurants. Nothing that I didn't weigh, portion, and track faithfully. Even when I bake or make something from a recipe, every ingredient is weighed and the calories per serving calculated. I skip breakfast during the week and have normal, healthy food and smallish portions for lunch and dinner.

I eat, on average, 1,100 calories per day. I have a desk job but I walk for 30 minutes to an hour nearly every day.

Before this, my diet was pretty bad - takeaways 3-4 times per week, pastries for breakfast, sandwich with crisps and chocolate at lunch, biscuits whenever I felt like it- probably more than 2,500 calories most days (I'm 5'3" so that is A LOT).

And now, nine months later, I have gone from 13 stone to 12.3 stone. That's a grand total of ten pounds lost on an extremely restricted diet- and it was all within the first two months.

Please don't give me diet advice - no, I'm not in 'starvation mode' (because that's a complete myth). No, I don't need to 'cut carbs'. Seriously, I do not want your advice. What I want is to point out that, the next time you're tempted to say something asinine like 'it's just about calories in vs calories out' or to dismiss or vilify or judge someone based on their weight, to realise that the human body is not a two-stroke lawnmower engine and weight, food, activity, hormones, age, genes, and a million other factors are at play. Losing weight isn't simple and even with all the willpower in the world - which I have demonstrated - it isn't always possible.

I'm not giving up. I have gotten used to eating this way and I actually feel like my blood sugar is more regulated (no 'sinking feeling' a few hours after eating a big lunch, for example) and I know that as I get older, it will be better to, at the very least, not get any fatter. That, at least, I can probably do. But nothing short of eating less than 1000 calories per day or surgery or medication are going to get me to a 'normal' BMI.

You’re welcome @SchrodingersImmigrant

I hope it made a bit of sense 🙈

Keep it simple. Eat healthily. Every meal. Have treats from time to time. Keep active. Lift weights.

Doesn't work for everyone. I had sciatica. Was recovering from cancer treatment. Weights made me feel sick. I discovered I could do slow running, though and tracking through a FitBit. I figured 'something is better than nothing' and it certainly was. Lost 4 stone and went from 40% body fat to 26% body fat!. Sciatica is gone. I'm 3 years out of cancer treatment. That's healthier than the alternative!

@PurpleDaisies
No I wouldn’t call healthy eating a diet more a lifestyle choice.
I couldn’t tell you how many calories are in anything and I’ve never been on a diet in my life. Yet my weight stays the same.

I’ll just eat to hunger. So I had a healthy breakfast and lunch today but fancied fish and chips and wine for dinner. That’s not a diet. Then tomorrow I’ll think I should probably have a healthy dinner because I had a takeaway yesterday.

No overthinking it.

Sorry yes weights don’t work for everyone. I also do lots of running/ walking/ Pilates.

In terms of metabolism and fat burning weights are good but definitely not for everyone.

@Wroxie

I won't be back to this thread but I will repeat the point I was trying to make- you can literally do everything right and diet your ass off (lol) for a year and still be fat. Or maybe you succeed, but you have less than a 20% chance (some studies say less than a 5% chance) of keeping the weight off for more than five years. You'll have done all that work and then end up fatter than you ever were to start with. Fat isn't about being lazy, greedy, or stupid and the (SPECIFICALLY UNASKED FOR) diet advice you all gleefully, desperately rushed in to share is worthless at best, actively dangerous at worse. 600 to 800 calories per day is called an eating disorder and people die from those. But I guess that's better than being a bit fat, eh?

I agree with you OP. Most people will not succeed long term on the standard dietary advice. Eat less move more is incredibly simplistic when you are dealing with the human body that is regulating your energy with a plethora of clever hormones.

Anyway, no advice even though I’m dying to and just know that many people know it’s not a failure of willpower, it’s just very very bad guidance

@PurpleDaisies

Keep it simple. Eat healthily. Every meal. Have treats from time to time.

That’s just a diet though isn’t it? Just worded differently.

I think the difference is that if you adopt this approach eventually you don't have to think about food so much, because you're so used to making healthier choices it starts to become second nature. It's the obsessive thinking about food/calories/tracking that I think can be incredibly draining with any diet. I'm really into the idea of this approach as I'm a recovering addict (booze) and recovery has been all about replacing my many many shitty habits with better ones (Monster Munch with your vodka for breakfast anyone?). In my experience it takes a few months for each small change to "stick". So no sugar in my tea, for example took about 3 months before I was ok with it and now prefer it without.

But I know what you mean about a diet with different wording. I've heard some folk describe Keto for example as a "lifestyle". I guess because you're not weighing or counting anything. But ultimately it is a diet I guess. I've contradicted myself now haven't I. On reflection I think you're probably right! lol.

@namochangoro

So an hour's walk will burn approx 300 cals of fat

If you have eaten 300 calories of carbs in the few hours beforehand, it won't burn any fat at all.

That's why marathon runners 'hit the wall'. They run out of sugar to burn (glycogen from the liver) and have to start burning fat stores, which is much harder. Unless you have a very low carb consumption before a walk, the walk would have to be very very long before you start using fat stores.

The body will always use carbs first. Fat is like the savings account; carbs are the current account. Why would the body go to all the trouble of converting fat if it's got the readies of sugar available?

[quote Eckhart]@namochangoro

So an hour's walk will burn approx 300 cals of fat

If you have eaten 300 calories of carbs in the few hours beforehand, it won't burn any fat at all.

That's why marathon runners 'hit the wall'. They run out of sugar to burn (glycogen from the liver) and have to start burning fat stores, which is much harder. Unless you have a very low carb consumption before a walk, the walk would have to be very very long before you start using fat stores.

The body will always use carbs first. Fat is like the savings account; carbs are the current account. Why would the body go to all the trouble of converting fat if it's got the readies of sugar available?[/quote]
This is really interesting. Thank you.

Yes @ThirstyGhost that’s it. Being obsessive about food is so unhealthy. You deny yourself something you want it more. It has to be a lifestyle choice. You have to want to make the healthy choices. So have the chocolate in moderation but then make healthy choices other times.

I honestly think if we just listened to our hunger and stopped messing about with calorific intake we would all self regulate. You’re just messing up your metabolism by dieting. It’s a vicious circle.

If you have eaten 300 calories of carbs in the few hours beforehand, it won't burn any fat at all.

But I often haven't. I often exercise fasted, as I posted upthread. Or my exercise output exceeds my meal input. But yes, if you eat carbs the body will burn stored glycogen first and then fat. But hey, it's all got to go! Your body will burn fat once it's through the glycogen stores. I found adding an hour's walk to my hour's run a day significantly helped sustain weight loss, though.

”Unless you have an underlying issue then loosing weight is calories in vs calories out”

Okay, and what do you suggest when someone can’t lose weight so sees their doctor and “nothing” is found? Bear in mind how under diagnosed say lipoedma is, and how many women are fobbed off with menopausal symptoms not needing HRT, or fobbed off with “your TSH is within normal range”?

That's why marathon runners 'hit the wall'. They run out of sugar to burn (glycogen from the liver) and have to start burning fat stores, which is much harder. Unless you have a very low carb consumption before a walk, the walk would have to be very very long before you start using fat stores.

Please look up MAF training. Some ultramarathon runners are finding lots of success with this method.

have the chocolate in moderation but then make healthy choices other times.

That it a diet. It’s just semantics to say that it isn’t.

It’s a good way of eating (and what I do) but pretending that mindfully choosing to have a jacket potato rather than a large bag of chips isn’t a diet is a bit silly.

@SchrodingsImmigrant
Yes MLD is really great. Conservative management is MLD, Compression tights and the Keto diet seems to work well. The other treatment is liposuction by a specialist not any cosmetic surgeon.

Darn, I missed half of what I meant to quote! Was something like “if you don’t lose weight, see a doctor”

I honestly think if we just listened to our hunger and stopped messing about with calorific intake we would all self regulate. You’re just messing up your metabolism by dieting. It’s a vicious circle.

I get what you mean but some of us need to hurry🙈 Just few more kilo and I shall not be morbidly obese. Just plain obese! Exciting times. Exciting times.

Unless you have a very low carb consumption before a walk, the walk would have to be very very long before you start using fat stores.

Which is easy to do. My breakfast is 236 calories (2 fried eggs on half a slice of toast with tea). I could go on a 2 hour walk and burn 600 calories or slow run for just over an hour and burn over 700.

@DorisDaisyMay ah. I assume the lipo has longer effect, doesn't it. But it's quite some procedure. That must be very hard

And I'm always in deficit, calorie wise so I don't build up masses of glycogen stores...

@PurpleDaisies
How is it a diet? I’m not on a diet. I just eat healthily most of the time.

A diet is restricting yourself. If I wanted to eat pizza and chips and chocolate all day I would. But I don’t. I eat to hunger and I eat what I fancy.

I wouldn’t call that a diet.
Today I ate: porridge and fruit. 3 coffees. Soup and cheese on toast. Bag of crisps. Bar of chocolate. Fish and chips and mushy peas. 3 glasses of wine.

I wouldn’t call that a diet. But yesterday I had salmon tacos and loads of veg for dinner. Just don’t overthink it.

I would urge anyone struggling with weight to please watch "Fat Fiction" on prime and the Michael Mosely programme on Channel 4. We have been given the wrong diet advice for years and there is zero science to support it. I have lost two stone in 12 weeks very easily having struggled for years. I can honestly say the Fast 800, and then the 5-2 and Mediterranean diet is an absolute gamechanger. My view on food has competing changed as have my tastebuds and I haven't felt this good or had this much energy in years. I should add I am now comfortably in the normal range so did not have a lot to add so I'm staggered by how successful and easy it has been. The wrong advice has been peddled for years but is now slowly changing given the lack of evidence to support a low fat, high carb diet. The simple fact is- the science doesn't support it and never did. Watching those programmes has honestly changed my life.

I mindfully chose to have a bag of chips tonight 🤷🏼‍♀️.

@delatron

Hunger is not a good indicator of whether or not we need to refuel. If it was, overweight people wouldn't get hungry. Hunger indicates that we are running out of sugar. The body prefers sugar, and, unless trained to do so, has a bit of a tantrum when we start asking it to use stored fat. This is commonly known as being 'hangry'.

When people don't eat for extended periods (fasting/falling down a well etc), hunger dies off pretty quickly, usually within the first 48 - 36 hours. That's because we've started to burn fat, and the body has stopped having a hissy fit and thinking the world will end if it doesn't get a Mars bar, NOW.

We can regulate our own hunger by manipulating our ghrelin release. Ghrelin makes us feel hungry, and is released at the time of day when we normally would expect food. So, if you normally eat at 8am, 12pm and 6pm, that's when ghrelin will trigger you to go find food. If you change it to just 12pm and 6pm, and just eat more at those meals, you'll be starving at 8am for around a week. Then your ghrelin will stop firing at 8am, and voila! You are 'one of those people who doesn't eat breakfast'. It makes for less washing up...

A diet is restricting yourself.

Not necessarily.

Completely agree @LyndaLaHughes

I have full fat butter and full fat milk. Lots of good fats too. We’ve been given the wrong advice for years.