To think that 'eat less move more', everything in moderation and CICO is total bollox?

[Honestopinion23]

CICO stands for calories in vs calories out by the way.
I often read the weight loss section on here. Every day there are people embarking on any number of diets and body overhauls and I reckon about 95% of them are unsuccessful. Calorie counting, shake diets, you name it, people always gain the weight back before long. Even celebrities who seem to have done well with weight loss eventually gain it back, e.g. Pauline Quirke. I am watching that new amazon show with Melissa McCarthy and she is also back to being around the same size she was before starting her weight loss. Lisa Riley is another one who lost a lot of weight and most of it is back now. Clearly it's not working and people are making money out of telling fat people that they can be thin if only they want it bad enough or try hard enough. The scientific research shows that once you are morbidly obese, you have an absolutely miniscule chance of getting to and maintaining a normal BMI without surgery. Yes, there will no doubt be people popping up here saying they did just that but you are the exception.

The idea that if you just eat less than you burn is also flawed when a) your body adapts to lower amounts. For instance, those who have gastric bypass and eat v low calories forever still tend to be overweight/mildly obese because their bodies just can't get to a low BMI and b) you're fighting against intense hunger urges that someone who has always been normal weight just can't imagine dealing with.

If I was morbidly obese, I would ditch all the dieting crap, admit that I couldn't fix it and have surgery. I see so many dieting plans just blame the dieter for 'failure' when they're trying to do something impossible. If I was stage 1 obese or overweight, I'd go low carb no-processed for life because I think that is the only thing that switches off the hunger signals in the brain.

I lost 70kg on CICO. No exercise, no faffing about with macros. I still don't know what carbohydrates are. It definitely works, mechanically.

But I put it all back on. So I don't know if I can say that it works practically.

I think just about any diet will work as long as you stick to it. As they say, it's easy to start something harder to continue doing it.

I knew a couple in their 60s who both lost a lot of weight doing WeightWatchers. They kept the weight off but only because they never stopped doing WW, even after they lost all the weight, they were still counting points and encouraging each other. It was just a way of life to them. I think they realised that the hassle of point-counting was a lot easier than how tough it had been on them being overweight.

I know loads of people who have lost weight on Slimming World, but they all gained it back as soon as they stopped going to classes.

I can't understand the take-home message from this thread.

The reality is that most diets do work if people stick to them. It's the sticking to them part that is the problem in most cases. Yes, you do get people who have other medical issues so conventional diets don't work, but for the majority of people if they exercise more, eat less sugar and processed foods and eat more vegetables and drink more water, they will lose weight. It's very simple! The diet industry caters to the fact that most people struggle to make these small changes.

Marking place

If you go on a diet it's a temporary thing to lose weight.
But to be a long term better weight and shape it's a life long change.
That's what is so hard to accept about the rigours of dieting. A bit like deciding to stop drinking . Very hard and depressing to do.

@Taiyo

I can't understand the take-home message from this thread.

The reality is that most diets do work if people stick to them. It's the sticking to them part that is the problem in most cases. Yes, you do get people who have other medical issues so conventional diets don't work, but for the majority of people if they exercise more, eat less sugar and processed foods and eat more vegetables and drink more water, they will lose weight. It's very simple! The diet industry caters to the fact that most people struggle to make these small changes.

I guess the take home message is that what we are told about weight loss and diets is predominantly untrue and is likely to result in failure for which we blame ourselves. There is more information filtering through now to the mainstream so I hope that people more people will eventually see what’s going on.

And yes, of course calorie reduction diets work if people can stick to them. The point is that most people cannot do that long-term, otherwise they surely would? There really is only so much intense hunger someone can take before ‘will-power’ cracks. To expect them to eat in a way that causes those reactions in their body is the problem.

Yes the take home message is (i think,) we can all with a lot of effort lose weight in the short term CICO but if we've been tgrough that cycle a few times we are ready to look deeper. Why do our bodies throw so much hunger at us six months after the weight loss?

MY takeaway from this thread has been from dr zh, we need a new snappy summary of how to lose weight so to replace calories in calories out she says "turn down insulin, enable glucogon".

Im going to say it a lot.
And i feel glad i get this.

Im 20lbs overweight so let's see where my comprehension gets me!

And yes, of course calorie reduction diets work if people can stick to them. The point is that most people cannot do that long-term, otherwise they surely would? There really is only so much intense hunger someone can take before ‘will-power’ cracks. To expect them to eat in a way that causes those reactions in their body is the problem

The diet companies have it well and truly sewn up, they have a product that works temporarily and when it invariably fails the whole work blames the customer for being weak and greedy.

So true, at the moment.

I wonder if we will ever see diet companies jump on this! Eg Market a portable wrapped portion of cheese as a low insulin response food that you can use at work/on the move way to stave off those 4pm carb cravings and get you through to the time you had planned to sit down and have dinner two hours from now .

The challenge is getting out of the mindset that losing weight is an achievable goal in the long term - it's incredibly hard to accept this, and something I'm currently struggling with. I've always been in a larger body, I come from a lineage of larger women. I've lost weight by dieting twice in my life, starting around age 12-14, and always put it back on and more - I'm on the third serious attempt. By calorie counting and increased exercise I've lost over 30 pounds in 4 months, so CICO appears to work. It's not too hard, I still eat the foods I love and have found walking and some other exercise really fun. BUT - the more I read the more it becomes clear that research show diets DON'T work, and only a very small % of people that lose a significant amount of weight can maintain that for more then 5 years, and those that do probably have very disordered eating habits - basically it takes over your life, forever.

This is likely down to lots of reasons, research has shown (as others have mentioned) that it's significantly harder for someone who has been larger to maintain a lower weight, possibly to do with your body being really really efficient (in terms of survival) at processing calories from food after going through very restrictive eating for a long time to lose weight, also possibly the pendulum effect - when you go through a period of restricting foods at some point you're going to swing back the other way, your body will seriously crave all those things you've been missing. There's also evidence to show that when you try and lose weight, your body simply increases your natural weight range to protect you against future 'famines' (diets), which is why people often end up putting on more weight then they lost.

I've been reading about intuitive eating and the fact that you can live a happier life by accepting your body (hand in hand with this is not fat shaming others, and changing society to accept that most of what makes up a person's size is not down to personal choice but genetics and environmental factors - and the desire for thinness is actually rooted in racism and fashion, and nothing to do with health.. and size does not directly correlate to health outcomes), and trying to get off the restrict / binge cycle - you don't crave foods you have free access to..moralising about foods as though they are good or bad doesn't help at all with eating in a balanced intentional way, it just makes you crave the things you're missing

All that to say the appealing thing about anti-diet and intentional eating is living a life where every single #&£& day is not focussed around what you can and can't eat for the rest of your life, being happy with who you are, and having better health outcomes (yo-yo dieting IS really bad for your health). The scary thing is is it's not a diet, you may not lose weight, and having to accept that you may never be thin when that's all we've been told we should be for our whole lives (and read all the judgements about this in comments above to get a taste for how it feels to live in a larger body for 30+ years)...

What you say about the "serious attempt" resonates.

Im either ALL IN (keto, 9 stone by xx.xx.2021) or all out, carbing my way through the day not trying AT ALL

Why can i not apply a buddhist approach to eating? Well im going to try. this time im not making a "serious attempt". Im making some changes...

"Dr ZH" sounds like a bit of an idiot, encouraging people to avoid fibre, etc. I enjoyed this rather pithy summary:

"Zoe Harcombe. Carb avoider, nutritional maverick and the sworn enemy of fibre, five-a-day and common fucking sense. The writer of a nauseating and pointless stream of ridiculous diet books, and creator of endless piles of Daily Mail clickbait fodder, Zoe Harcombe is the long standing Queen of evidence mangling nutri-bullshit, desperate to challenge the orthodoxy in order to drive book sales and website traffic." Andrew Warner (the Angry Chef).

@EccentricaGalumbits

But, unfortunately, willpower is literally the only thing that's ever going to work. There is no other solution, every weight loss method relies on commitment to some level of change, sustained over a long period of time/forever

Any change in diet (by which I mean what you're eating on a daily basis) can take willpower to stick at it. However, if you restrict your carbohydrate intake, the result is much better blood sugar control, because the key hormones (insulin, grehlin, leptin and a couple of others the names of which I've forgotten) are much more balanced.

The important thing to know is that it's these hormones that control your appetite. So eating a lower carbohydrate diet stops you feeling so massively hungry between meals. If you're not hungry, you're much less likely to want to eat.

I agree with you @BIWI, but low carb requires incredible willpower, because pretty much all the good things in life are carbs :)

I don't miss cake and biscuits, but I really really miss bread. And rice with my curry.

For bread, I really recommend The Seriously Low Carb company . It's expensive, but it's just like real bread. It's the only genuinely low carb bread I've found, that is like eating bread rather than soft, dry cake!

You do get used to no rice - but the odd spoonful won't hurt! If I'm making it at home, I use cauliflower rice. Not quite the same, but a good enough carrier.

@milkyaqua

"Dr ZH" sounds like a bit of an idiot, encouraging people to avoid fibre, etc. I enjoyed this rather pithy summary:

"Zoe Harcombe. Carb avoider, nutritional maverick and the sworn enemy of fibre, five-a-day and common fucking sense. The writer of a nauseating and pointless stream of ridiculous diet books, and creator of endless piles of Daily Mail clickbait fodder, Zoe Harcombe is the long standing Queen of evidence mangling nutri-bullshit, desperate to challenge the orthodoxy in order to drive book sales and website traffic." Andrew Warner (the Angry Chef).

She's highly qualified, and advocates that whilst fibre is not an essential nutrient, a healthy diet will contain plenty of it. She recommends that we eat mainly whole foods. If you think that sounds idiotic, you're clueless. Have you actually read anything she's written? Watched any of her lectures? It doesn't sound like it.

Andrew Warner presents nothing in this pithy summary to refute anything she says. He seems to prefer swearing and insulting. Not a very balanced or scientific approach. More 'teenager tantrum'.

@ManifestingJoy

So true, at the moment.

I wonder if we will ever see diet companies jump on this! Eg Market a portable wrapped portion of cheese as a low insulin response food that you can use at work/on the move way to stave off those 4pm carb cravings and get you through to the time you had planned to sit down and have dinner two hours from now .

Like a babybel?

She's highly qualified

She's a nutritionist. I found this enough to put me off:

rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zo%C3%AB_Harcombe

More 'teenager tantrum'.

Well he does blog under the name the Angry Chef.

[quote fallfallfall]@TheFoundations, self discipline in one area doesn't equal self discipline in all area's of health. some people show strength with work situations or financial situations but when the going gets tough they drink too much alcohol or eat a bit much and crash in front of the computer or tv.
food it hard to give up because we need it to survive and over time have come up with some yummy combinations.[/quote]
Some food is massively harder to give up than others, and that's the bit that keeps going wrong for people, because we're not taught this. You can test it over a 48 hour period: Have dinner high in processed carbs one day, and compare your breakfast hunger level the next day to having a carb-free dinner that day. After a carb heavy dinner, you will be hungry for breakfast. After a low carb dinner, you will be much less hungry.

This is due to very basic biomechanisms regarding the body's choice of fuel, which depends on what the body predicts is available, which depends on what the body ate last.

Blaming individuals for not knowing this, despite the fact that it is not widely taught, is unhelpful. Many commercial diets fly directly in the face of this basic science, which means that their diet will only last as long as the will power of the individual to overcome biological urges. We can't do that any more than we can overcome the biological urge to sleep; we have high control initially, then we struggle, and eventually, we either give in, or start losing our faculties. Giving in to sleep when deprived of it would never be regarded as a lack of self discipline, and neither should giving in to eating something that you have actively (although unwittingly) encouraged your body to crave.

I have read an article someone linked to me a year ago, and I thought she was an idiot then, also. These people agree, in more measured tone:

www.wcrf-uk.org/uk/blog/articles/2010/11/zoe-harcombe%E2%80%99s-advice-based-solid-scientific-evidence

Weight loss surgery is not some magic cure for obesity. If the person doesn't address the reasons why they overeat then they will still put weight on after they have surgery

@milkyaqua

She's highly qualified

She's a nutritionist. I found this enough to put me off:

rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zo%C3%AB_Harcombe

More 'teenager tantrum'.

Well he does blog under the name the Angry Chef.

Yes, if it's posted as someone's opinion on Wikipedia, it must be true. Never mind her PhD in Public Health Nutrition.

You clearly don't have any points of your own to refute anything she's said, and are just here to debunk her, despite knowing noting about her.

I'm sure nobody with any sense will respect your unqualified opinion (I'm assuming you're unqualified in this field, correct me if I'm wrong) above that of the PhD.

I'm not sure how someone who has a PhD in public health nutrition could be construed to be unqualified or simply Daily Mail clickbait.

@BIWI

I'm not sure how someone who has a PhD in public health nutrition could be construed to be unqualified or simply Daily Mail clickbait.

Which she initially lied about.

As nobody can trouble themselves to read the page link I posted:

"In 2011, Harcombe stated she was studying for a PhD in nutrition and described herself as a "qualified nutritionist". These claims were questioned.[4][5] During this time she was not registered for a PhD.[6] In 2013, Harcombe was pursuing a PhD at the University of West of Scotland.[5] In 2016, she obtained her PhD in public health nutrition.[7][8]"

So, not entirely trustworthy, I would say.

Look, limit your vegetables, stay away from dangerous fruit, and stuff yourselves with meat, dairy, and fat, if that's what you want. She is still an idiot, capitalising on the desperation of thousands. As are most authors of diet books.