Recommend me a diet please, it's my first time!

[Grobagsforever]

Hi all,

I've piled weight in lockdown! I've never dieted before so not sure which diets are bullshit and which work.

I'm 5 foot 8 and around 11 stones 10 pounds, size 14/16

Want to be back to size 10, around 10 and a half stone.

39 years old. Can't run due to knee injury so exercise during lockdown quite restricted. Will need to exercise to lose weight - any ideas? Love swimming but pool shut/hard to find time.

Many of the calories are WFH snacks and evening wine so they are first to go.

Two kids and a DP. DP also wants to lose weight so may join in

Suggestions for fad free plans? NOT SLIMMING WORLD etc as I hate how they target women.

Honestly? Don't follow a formal diet like WW or Slimming World. It's a slippery slope. They're designed to have short term success but they don't work long term. If they did, there would be no repeat customers and everyone would be slim! The dieting industry is the only one in the world with a business model built on failure!

Seriously, the best thing you can do is be mindful of what you and eat cut back on junk and up your exercise.

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

No snacks between meals
No processed crap
No sugar or anything sugary
Easy on the carbs (bread / pasta)
Plenty of veg but not too much fruit
Two meals a day (skip either breakfast or dinner)

Don't worry about calories
Don't worry about exercise, it makes hardly any difference to weight loss

@singingstones, what makes you say that re exercise?

I lost all my post pregnancy weight through walking 6-8 miles per day whilst still eating a lot of cake...

No snacks and no, or greatly reduced, wine of an evening might prove to be enough in its own.

Low Carb - great support on the Boot Camp threads on here.

I've lost 2 stone on slimming world in lockdown after trying many many different diets and lifestyles etc.
I think it's brilliant , I'm never hungry and my skin is amazing !

Look at Stop Counting Calories And Start to lose weight by Zoe Harcombe. You can also find her on podcasts if you listen to those.
It's all about eating 'real' food and addressing the reasons why we overeat (and it's not due to lack of will power)

I have just started my diet on Monday, which really means no crips cakes, biscuits, and alcoholic drinks and fizzy drinks. Just breakfast, lunch and dinner good home cooked food a much smaller portions. No snakes at all and drinking only tea and water.

If I do this for two months the weight usually comes off and I’m down to my fighting weight.

Like you up a dress size because I just eat far to much in lockdown, now I need to get back in normal cloths and out of sports cloths and pjs every thing is to small and I have the dreaded four boobs.

I lost weight by counting calories until I got a better understanding of how many I should be eating and what that contains... now I just eat mindfully!

@Nanalisa60 I’ve lost 10 lbs without cutting any of that out, I just factor it into my daily allowance and if I have a day where I eat a lot of extra calories I just balance it out over the rest of the week

100% low carb. I’ve been doing keto rather than low carb bootcamp, but they are very similar. I’m down just over a stone in 4 weeks. Started off at 12st6 and now 11st 5. That includes a very carb-heavy camping weekend!

I love it. I’m not hungry, have tons more energy and sleep better. The first week is rough though, but if you can get through that it’s an easy diet to stick to.

Mywifeandkids1

I unfortunately have really bad willpower, so I have just to stop buying all fine food!! But I still eat three normal meals a day just smaller portions!!
I’m one of those people that just have to eat six digestives not one or two, I eat the whole chocolate bar not just a few squares.

Get an app and track your calories. mostly cut out snacks and alcohol. ,but don't totally deprive yourself it's counterproductive. exercise because it will make you feel better.

The problem with slimming world is that if you're not careful you can end up with food obsessions. The group I went to seemed set on how many 'syns' they could get away with. I don't doubt it works the first time round, but I not that many long term members were overweight, including the instructor. I'm like a pp, I can't do things in moderation, so cutting out the crap completely is the only way for me. I know in theory I could have say half a bar of chocolate a day and still lose weight, but in practice it kicks off a feeding frenzy which I can't control.
So I chose to go cold turkey, felt like crap for a week, but reached a happy weight for me, and most importantly I don't have food cravings any more.

*I noticed that many members were overweight

I use My fitness Pal APP track all calories 1200 calories a day more at weekends. I also do 16:8 where I fast not eat til 10 am and not after 6pm when craving chocolate have skinny whips chewy bars!! I was similar weight to you OP weight loss slow and steady I've lost 11 lbs so far!! Good luck x

Exercise makes a huge difference to weight loss and adopting an active lifestyle is your best hope for keeping it off long term.

Also, for illustration, if I am inactive, my TDEE is 1800. If I exercise daily, it’s 2400. That’s an extra 600 calories a day or over a pound a week. Anyone who says it makes no difference is kidding themselves. What they actually mean is that doing exercise on its own while continuing to eat at a large surplus will not be sufficient. However, exercising while also eating at a deficit will improve health, vastly help with weight loss and make your body toned rather than baggy once the weight comes off.

If you choose to go the no exercise route, you’re probably looking at 1200 cals a day diets which for most are unsustainable or one of those awful shake diets that have about a 1% success rate at keeping the weight off once you start eating normally again.

Here you go @Grobagsforever

amp.nine.com.au/article/11f1036b-54c1-44d1-92c6-cca5d7c2bbb0

www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/1/3/16845438/exercise-weight-loss-myth-burn-calories

www.discovermagazine.com/health/exercise-has-many-health-benefits-weight-loss-isnt-really-one-of-them

Whenwillow I know what you mean about SW and WW. I went to weight watchers once. The instructor was obese, albeit a bit smaller than her heaviest. Several of the long term members were morbidly obese and a few of them were manning a table where they sold WW brand chocolate, crisps and cakes. Lots of people bought some and were munching them throughout the meeting. The instructor told us that calorie counting is hard so what we needed to do was to get WW ready meals and just eat them so we knew we were in the right points. She also said we could save up our daily extra points so that we could binge drink at the weekend and kept cracking jokes about eating whole packs of biscuits. I thought it was totally bullshit so I never went back after the second week, despite all the ‘hi hun’ texts from the instructor. You can obviously do your own thing while going there to weigh and get the moral support but the information they give out is crap imo.

I also follow a girl on Instagram doing WW (@wwchefsteph). She’s lost loads of weight and looks great but she frequently posts her meals and OMG the amount of processed rubbish she eats. None of it looks remotely appealing.

Exercise is definitely good for many things, including maintaining weight loss.

If you can commit to 2hrs per day like Grobags did it can help with weight loss, but most people don't have the time for that, especially over the long term.

Otherwise it's putting the focus on the wrong half of calories in < calories

Intermittent fasting! Check out the 16:8 threads. I've been doing this for 6 weeks every single day with no difficulty and am losing weight without reducing my chocolate intake.

singingstories on its own it won’t work but given it increases TDEE substantially, of course it works better than just dieting alone. Adopting a healthy active lifestyle is what works. Dieting itself has a proven 95% failure rate with almost everyone regaining what they lost, often more. In the studies of the few who did keep the weight off, activity was key.

That is to say, it’s not either or. It’s a choice between activity plus calorie deficit OR activity and sedentary lifestyle. The former is going to work better than the latter because you will increase the number of calories your body burns so assuming you eat the same, the deficit will be greater. Doesn’t have to be 2 hours a day in the gym but yes you probably need to be walking or doing something that isn’t sitting for 2 hours out of each day.

I use My Fitness Pal. Absolutely nothing is off limits, so long as I log it and keep under my target. I eat chocolate every day. I snack between meals. I miss meals! I definitely skip breakfast. I exercise. I tend to avoid pasta, potatoes, rice, bread etc but they are not banned. I start eating as late as possible in the day, ideally after midday. I keep a stash of ice pops in the freezer for low-calories sugar fixes. I eat sugar!

For exercise I use Popsugar via YouTube, they have lots of different workouts to suit your ability and they can be low-impact if you prefer. I do pilates sometimes too.

I could never follow a rigid eating plan or cut out the things I like. This gives me total control over what I eat. It works for me.