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 didn’t mean pizza and pasta by the way. The traditional med diet is based on fish, vegetables, olive oil and some whole grains but very few processed foods. It’s not based around carbs like the Asian diet is based around rice. Also, the Asian diet has a very low sugar intake and fairly low fat (again, the stuff they actually eat, not what you get at chinese restaurants). It’s the combination of fat and carbs in the western diet that’s the killer. Also wheat consumption is quite low in Asia i would have thought. They are starting to see more obesity issues there too though with rise of western diet.

Which bit don't you get?

There's no need to be rude.

Take the Japanese diet, for example, it is rice-based. White rice with vegetables and maybe some fish. It's a very healthy diet, but it is absolutely carb-based.

You can't say that carbs are bad and we need to eat a low-carb diet and then say, oh. well, we didn't mean those carbs. It is well-established that sugar and processed foods are bad for us and one of the main causes of obesity. Everyone knows that, but I'm tired of the carb-bashing. Pasta, rice, potatoes, bread, they aren't the problem. They aren't what's making us fat.

As I said in a previous post if you want to lose weight:
Exercise regularly
Eat less sugar
Eat fewer processed foods
Eat more vegetables
Drink plenty of water

I really believe these are the key points to being healthier.

You don't understand because you don't understand the difference between the carbs. Refined carbs have already had done to them what the body would have to spend energy doing to them in the diets you've detailed above. Think how hard the body would have to work to turn an ear of wheat into flour. It would be so hard and for so little reward that we'd give up and spit it out. This 'making it easy for the body' is what's at fault. That's why 'whole foods' are healthiest; because your body will tell you if it can get enough nourishment out for the effort it puts in.

Processed carbs take away our body's ability to make this judgment, and the body is a lazy and greedy thing. If it can get energy for little effort, it will. It will be desperate to do so - that's why, when you show it that there's sugar around, it'll keep saying 'Give me more! Give me more!' until you convince it that there's none left by going without for a few days.

People didn't eat processed carbs for a very very very long time, and they weren't overweight. Then they started eating processed carbs quite recently, and are suddenly struggling with fast-rising obesity problems (and many other health issues)

^This! I have no intention of doing bootcamp-style low carbing, keto etc ever again, because I find it impossible to stick to. But the difference in my appetite when I did do it was a revelation. There is no doubt in my mind that massively reducing sugar, refined carbs and processed food is the way forward for weight and health regardless of the calorie content of the other food you do continue to eat.

@Taiyo

I wasn't rude. I asked you a question because I wanted to know the answer. There's no need to be defensive.

Nobody recommending a low-carb diet means all carbs. There's a difference between carbs. You group Pasta, rice, potatoes, bread together but they are not the same. Potatoes are a whole food, bread and pasta are heavily processed (made from flour), rice is a sort of processed wholefood which sits somewhere in the middle.

Didn't realise that was the bit you didn't get, which is why I asked for clarification. Any low carb diet recommends pretty much the same as you, if you count flour as a processed food. And if you don't, why not? It's processed to the point of pulverisation, you couldn't really process it more.

You can't say that carbs are bad and we need to eat a low-carb diet and then say, oh. well, we didn't mean those carbs.

Yes you can. When you tell a person with a typical Western diet to reduce carbs, you mean reduce the carbs they tend to eat. And why do you think that pasta, bread and potatoes aren't making us fat? Of course they are. Bread itself is categorised as a highly procesed food.

Yes Asian diets have rice as the staple but it's one small bowl of white rice, at each meal, plus pickles, meat, fish, veg etc. It's all in moderation, in their traditional diet.

Carbs in our UK diet are generally large portions of bread, pasta etc, plus huge slabs of cake. It's the sheer amount we eat that's the main problem, plus the frequency with all the snacking.

All carbs are bad really, completely untrue and most nutritionists would never tell you to cut a entire food group out.

Yes we shouldn't eat as many but having some isn't a bad thing.

I do find some keto people are almost religious on shooting anything down.

You do realise that you eat carbs on a low carb diet right? As in cabbage, broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, lettuce, avocado, strawberries, raspberries, almonds, aubergines, courgettes and many more. Yeah, so unhealthy. Must top it up with some toast and a kitkat

Yes Asian diets have rice as the staple but it's one small bowl of white rice, at each meal, plus pickles, meat, fish, veg etc. It's all in moderation, in their traditional diet.

Exactly!

All carbs are bad really, completely untrue and most nutritionists would never tell you to cut a entire food group out.

True. But if a typical person from the UK cut out sugar and all refined and processed carbs (which are pretty commonly agreed to be bad for us), they effectively would be cutting out a really pretty large proportion of the carbs they eat. What remained would be potatoes (but not bought chips, crisps etc), rice (preferably brown), carby veg like sweet potatoes, squash etc and pulses (which lots of people don'toften eat), plus the natural sugars in fruit and veg. I doubt a nutritionist would think that was a bad plan.

The human body has no biological need for carbs. I'm not an evangelist about this (just had roast potatoes and I've got some ice cream for later!), but there's nothing in carbs that we can't make ourselves from fat and protein. The only reason we're told that carbs are essential biologically is that if we don't eat them, we'll have to use our fat.

There are essential proteins and essential fats, but there is no essential carbohydrate. It's interesting how we're misled on this by the government, and their vetting of training of doctors, dieticians, etc, given the shape of the industries involved, and ultimately, the shape of the misinformed consumers.

According to this, the Japanese eat A LOT of carbs.

Hunter-gatherers from moderate latitudes tend to get 30-35% of their calories from carbs.

Carbs made up 66% of Vietnamese women's calorie intake.

55% of calorie intake in urban Thailand.

But sure, make out they just had "a small bowl of rice" if you like.

The carbs I have cut out include bread/potatoes/pasta/rice/cereals/ crisps/biscuits/cake/sweets/processed sauces with added sugar. Prior to this my diet mainly consisted of the above.
Now my diet consists of protein, some fats, lots of vegetables and a lot more water, that is much healthier surely ?

Fair enough @lljkk. It looks as if the high activity rates and low consumption of processed foods balance things out for Japanese people. Like I said, advising reducing the types of carby stuff people eat on a western diet is surely more sensible than suggesting someone on a culturally traditional unprocessed diet gives up rice.

I'm not sure we want to emulate the Vietnamese women in that study, since it says the low quality of their diet (too much carb, not enough animal protein) causes undernourishment and lack of energy though!

@lljkk

The first article (about the Japanese) assumes high activity levels. We wouldn't have an obesity problem either if we were all highly active. The only thing carbs do for us is give us energy to move, so if we move a lot, we burn it off. Nobody will dispute that.

The last article (about the Taiwanese) says that they eat lots of carbs and Based on BMI measurements, the prevalence of overweight/obesity among males was almost two times higher than among females: 64.0% and 35.7%, respectively

The hunter gatherers don't get 30% - 35% of their calories from carbs Independent of the local environment, however, the range of energy intake from carbohydrates in the diets of most hunter-gatherer societies was markedly different (lower) from the amounts currently recommended for healthy humans

The Vietnamese are over consuming carbs, not because it's good for them, but because protein and fat aren't available to them, so it's recommended in that paper Emphasis on replacing some of the rice consumed with high quality protein foods and fats will improve dietary diversity

Did you just post a bunch of articles about carbohydrates and hope nobody would read them? Did you actually read them yourself? We know that lots of cultures eat carbs. We're debating whether it's healthy/obesity related. None of the articles demonstrate that with the western lifestyle, it would be a good idea to eat lots of carbs, but I thought that was what you were trying to prove? If not, what point were you making?

@lazylinguist

Fair enough *@lljkk*. It looks as if the high activity rates and low consumption of processed foods balance things out for Japanese people. Like I said, advising reducing the types of carby stuff people eat on a western diet is surely more sensible than suggesting someone on a culturally traditional unprocessed diet gives up rice.

I'm not sure we want to emulate the Vietnamese women in that study, since it says the low quality of their diet (too much carb, not enough animal protein) causes undernourishment and lack of energy though!

White rice is a highly processed food

The problem is that carbs are comforting, cheap and taste goooooooood!

White rice is indeed highly processed but it’s no doubt the other elements of East Asian diets and lifestyles that keep obesity at bay in the population. The problem is when processed carbs are combined with sugar and fat, as they are in the West. E Asian diets tend to be low in sugar and comparatively low in fat, whereas our standard diet has lots of sugar, fat and grains, all mixed together.
It may also be something to do with culture too. We have a horrendous snacking culture and every single event seems to need to be accompanied by some sort of calorie-laden food.

Look, if you want to eat grains, eat grains. However, those of us who cut them out find that we feel better and lose weight and, more importantly, lose the cravings that make it so hard to resist our obesogenic environment. If you’re a person who finds it easy to resist cake and sweets, lucky you and carry on with what you like. But if you’re one of the many who struggles immensely and has been told for years that you’re to blame for not being disciplined enough, maybe think of trying an alternative way where you a) stop blaming yourself for CICO not working and b) start eating in a way to combat the hunger.

It seems to me that you are upset people aren't respecting your choice, but then you are dismissive of the people who have lost weight and kept it off using calorie counting. Why can't you just say that different methods work for different people and we can all respect and encourage each other to be healthier however that method may be?

Where have I been dismissive? I have always acknowledged that there are some that can successfully diet and then keep it off with just calorie counting. 95% can’t though and that’s been proven. My issue is with the mainstream diet advice which is to tell people that it’s their fault that they’ve regained weight and that it’s a failure of discipline. That allows government and food companies to avoid responsibility for their advice, some of which is pretty dangerous (my type 2 diabetic uncle was told to follow a low fat diet that contained sugary foods like orange juice and go ahead bars).

I'm trying low carb now (have been for about a week) and I've not dropped anything!! When I normally start a diet (smaller portions, CICO whatever) it drops quickly and there's a 2-4lbs loss in the first week (probably water) but this time, nothing. It's demotivating because the initial loss spurs me on. Maybe because I've been premenstrual when I started (I get PMT bloat)

I was always very slim, had my babies and was back to pregnancy within 2 months etc. However, was on a certain medication and put on a stone a month! I've now been overweight for 3 years and no diet has ever shifted it. I've finally developed empathy for fat people and feel embarrassed about how I thought about them before.

back to pre* pregnancy

@ladyoflittleleisure same, been low carbing since last saturday and i dont have any of that instant feeling you get with a strict calorie restriction. But it has felt so much easier than keto. Keto kinda messed with my head as i grew to see leeks ,(below ground) as baaaaaad. I think i could keep going longer on "just" low carb. I mean any veg fried in garlic butter is allowed! But who knows.

My mum who is very slim never had a name for any of her diets but she always focused on no cake no biscuits no sweets no chocolate and she didnt seem to change her regular meals much.

I thought the whole point of the thread was that calorie counting and move more, eat less was bollocks.

I don't think it's bollocks, I just think that it's hard for people to eat healthily these days because there are just so many unhealthy choices out there that are really easy to make.

But, I don't think anyone has the answer to this problem yet. There are literally thousands of books out there, each claiming to have the answer to how to lose weight. Each claiming to be the solution. I think everyone should try and find ways to live a healthier lifestyle whatever that means for them personally.

@malificent7

The problem is that carbs are comforting, cheap and taste goooooooood!

Yes i find it quite sad and depressing! I hardly ate meat for decades and was ok. Didnt miss it like i miss carbs. Chose low fat for years and yes i ALWAYS prefered the full fat version! But that never felt as big a deal as no carbs!

We our really up against it. Our bodies long for the one thing we dont need.
Many of us give up protein and hardly feel it.

I was one of them. Had become a grainitarian.