AIBU to think all calories are actually created equal.. and that you can eat two Chunky kitkats and lose weight?

[Dabbles]

in theory, a calorie controlled 'diet' can work? right?

AIBU or am I deluded?

I'm not actually sure that 'a calorie is a calorie is a calorie' is true, actually.

If you follow a low calorie diet, as a woman you (typically) have to stick at 1200 calories per day to lose weight.

If you follow a low carb diet, where you don't count calories, you do eat a higher proportion of fat, and therefore the calories will be proportionately higher. Yet you will still lose weight.

I couldn't believe how I was losing weight despite the quantity of food/calories I was consuming!

all claories are the same.so you could have a 1000 calorie day of crisps or salad.still same calories but obviously nutritional content varies

It's true, calorie controlled diets do work, but you will be hungry and miserable.

Did you eat low carb or no carb, like the Atkins?
But you must have had to count the carb grams?

i didnt count anything

just didnt eat anything unless it had good credentials

i always diet this way

i call it the cake diet

dont eat just cake - feel fine btw

The way a no carb high fat diet works is by not eating carbs your body starts to use it's on fat adn muscle stores for energy- so you burn the fat and lose weight, but you'd have to eat very very little carbs which must have been a nightmare!! How did you function long term?

it depends how long you are going to lose weight over i took a year

and io eat pretty much the same way now but with the occasional freer moments

but basically i wasnt on a diet but ate healthily so it isnt finite

Sorry zippitippitoes, I wasn't talking about your diet, it was in response to becauseimworthit's post above about the low carb diet

Actually zippi your diet sounds good and it's a low carb but good carb when you eat them, and low fat which is great.

BecauseImWorthIt was talking about a low carb high fat diet, and was talking about how a calorie isn't a calorie ect, but the reason she would have lost weight is becaus eof the fat burning thing, also when doing an atkins type diet count the calories you've eaten you might be surprised that it doesn't come to as much as you think.
If you don't eat carbs, thats a lot of calories that you're NOT eating!

i think a low gi diet is the best

i suffer from low blood sugar levels and mood swings so that is excellent for me and you dont feel hungry

then if you just dont have pasta rice potatoes little bread and eat stuff lkike banans and cauliflour instead nyou are there

and of course no cripsi pudding cake etc and plenty of exercise..i did ploads and loads

Can anyone answer this one:

A calorie is (correct me if I'm wrong) the amount of energy required to heat 1cc of water by 1 degree C.

And to calculate the calorific value of something, you do it drying it out completely then setting fire to it and calculating the heat generated.

So my question is - if you burn your dinner a bit, has it got less calories in it?

I must stress that I ask in the interests of scientific research, and absolutely NOT because I am a bad cook who eats too much crap food.

I eat carbs but don't count them - that's one of the great joys of low carbing compared with low calorie dieting. I avoid specific foods that are very high carb, e.g. potatoes, rice, pasta, wheat products and bread, sugar and most fruit, but eat lots of salad and veg. I also eat rhubarb and (occasionally) blueberries/raspberries/strawberries.

BecauseImWorthIt what do you usually eat in a day? I'm genuinely interested not getting at you for your diet

Didn't think you were!

OK

Always have breakfast, and it usually revolves around eggs. Current favourite is 2 poached eggs. Might be a cheese omelette, or a hard boiled egg or two, sometimes bacon and eggs, although that is less often.

Lunch - some kind of protein with veg. (May often be veg left over from the previousnight's dinner). Could be tuna with mayonnaise and salad, chicken breast with veg/salad.

Dinner - Whatever the rest of the family is having, only without the potato/rice/pasta. Next week's dinners are planned to be:

Mon - peppers stuffed with spicy mince, with broccoli and salad
Tues - chicken breasts wrapped in savoy cabbage leaves, with chorizo and mozzarella wrapped into them, with courgettes and salad
Weds - aubergine and courgette bake (layers of both griddled, with a garlicky tomato sauce and mozzarella) with a green bean and shallot salad
Thurs - I shall be out with ex-colleagues at a Chinese restaurant where I will sin enormously!
Fri - always curry night (take-away) and I usually have chicken vindaloo with sag or cauliflower bhuna

The weekend is a bit more haphazard. I may make the rest of the family sandwiches, but I will stick to other things. I often make vegetable soup. I may have an omelette for my lunch. Sunday evening we all go out for dinner as a family and, again, I just avoid the carb element. Tonight I had fillet steak with gorgonzola sauce, with a green salad.

Monday to Thursday I try not to drink wine, but Friday to Sunday I do.

Not a bad way to eat, is it?!

That sounds lovely! Much nicer than what I eat.
Do you find it hard to stick to? I did Atkins once a few years ago and it was horrendous-I felt like I had flu every day and couldn't follow a conversation my brain didn't work!

I don't eat bread now as I get so bloated I look like I'm heavily pregnant, but I will eat potatoes and rice and fruit and instead of normal bread I eat wheat free rye bread and have an open sandwich type thing.

Will you do this long term? Just wondering what will happen if you start to eat carbs adn your body comes out of ketosis!!

I've been doing this since about 2003 - so it is already a long term thing. But I do eat carbs on some occasions. Sometimes it's unavoidable, e.g. if I'm out of the office all day and the only food available is a sandwich (can often happen if lunch is being provided at a meeting).

When I'm on holiday I tend to let things slide - but it does take its toll, and it can be hard to get back on track.

I don't do Atkins. In fact I think very few people do Atkins as it is very structured/disciplined. But I do occasionally do what's called the 3 Day Experiment if I've been particularly bad and I want to get back on track. This is 3 days where you eat only low fat protein and max 5g of carbs per day. As you can imagine it is not the most appetising three days!

Overall I try to take the view that this is a lifestyle choice and therefore not a quick fix diet - so there may be days when I'm bad (as in my Thursday Chinese!) but then the rest of the time I will eat on plan.

The best thing about this WOE (way of eating) is that you can eat genuinely tasty food. No more low fat/low cal 'artificial' foods. It's lovely to eat cheese, cream and butter and know that they're allowed.

Do you worry about the sat fats? We've all gone the other way and stry to steer clear of cream, cheese, butter ect cos of heart disease. Is your cholesterol ok? Sorry if I sound like your school teacher!!

I did to start with - it is so counter-intuitive to eat fat after all the years of being told it is the next worst thing to the devil!

And at first I think I went a bit mad and ate an awful lot of it. Now I eat it more moderately.

I don't know about my cholesterol as I've never had it checked. Suppose I should really!

I think the thing that keeps me focused on it is that I eat mainly 'real' food - nothing that has had to be processed/have artificial additives put into it to ensure that it is low fat or low calorie. And I eat lots of veg/salad. There's very little I eat that you could say was 'bad'.